Children of the Street (15 page)

Authors: Kwei Quartey

Tags: #Fiction, #Mystery & Detective, #General, #Thrillers, #Suspense, #African American

A little past ten o’clock, Dawson and Chikata found Mosquito hanging around the outside of the railway station.

“How are you?” Dawson asked him. The boy looked nervous.

“I’m fine. Let’s go to my base.”

They crossed Kwame Nkrumah Avenue and walked along Knutsford Avenue. People were still awake, but many were already asleep on the pavement.

“Here is our place,” Mosquito said, as they got to about the middle of Knutsford. On the veranda in front of the store, there were a couple cardboard mats. Only two members of the gang were back for the night: Issa, the leader, and Mawusi, who was sleeping. Dawson and Chikata shook hands with Issa, who was visibly uneasy.

“Is he all right?” Dawson asked, indicating Mawusi.

“He’s sick,” Issa said. “Fever.”

Ironically, Mawusi meant “in God’s hands,” Dawson remembered from school. He was struck by how small the boy was.

“How old is he?”

“Thirteen,” Issa said.

He looked more like ten.

“Maybe tomorrow I’ll get some medicine from a pharmacy,” Issa said lamely.

“Do you know about the clinic at the Street Children of Accra Refuge?” Dawson asked him.

“Eben told me something about it, but I’ve never been there before.”

“You should take Mawusi there,” Dawson said. He gave Issa one of Patience’s cards.

Issa examined it for a moment. “Thank you.”

“Not at all. I’m very sorry about Ebenezer.”

Issa looked away, his gaze morose.

“Ebenezer was watchman from what time to what time?” Dawson asked.

“From nine to midnight,” Issa said.

“And Mosquito came back at what time?”

“Almost ten-thirty.”

“And Ebenezer was gone by then.”

“Yes, please.”

“And then you went to search for him?”

“First, Mosquito went to that side,” Issa said, pointing to the east end of Knutsford. “When he came back, then the two of us went together to the other side.”

“Let’s take a look,” Dawson said.

Issa led the way. Mosquito stayed behind to watch Mawusi. Dawson glanced back and saw the older boy covering the sick one with a cardboard mat.

There was an old bola truck at the end of the street parked parallel to Kojo Thompson Road. Standing there rusting into oblivion, it reminded Dawson of the railway car at the station.

They went around the perimeter of the truck, carefully searching the ground with their flashlights. They looked inside the rear loader and poked around in the bola with a stick they got off the ground. Dawson wasn’t expecting to find anything special, and they didn’t.

“Let’s go to the other end of Knutsford now,” he said.

There was a pharmacy called A-Plax at Knutsford’s western end, about a dozen street children sleeping on its veranda. Behind that was the dark hulk of the UTC building. Turning right took them up to Derby Avenue, Commercial Street, Kimberly Avenue, and Station Road, all of which ran parallel to Knutsford in that order going north. They had one feature in common: With little or no street lighting, they were very dark, particularly at their far ends. Ebenezer could easily have been attacked here or snatched away. Dead this morning in Jamestown, about two miles away, he had to have been moved and then killed or killed and then moved. There was a third possibility: killed
while
being moved.

Dawson was thinking about this as they stood at the side of Nkrumah Avenue. It was deadly quiet in the city now.

“Issa, we’re also looking for Tedamm,” Dawson said. “Have you seen him?”

“Yes, I saw him this night with his boys.”

“Which boys are you talking about?”

“Antwi Boasiako and Michael Ofosu. They always follow him around.”

“Where did you see them?”

“At Tudu Road. They were with some girl.”

“Ebenezer had a quarrel with Tedamm, not so?”

Issa nodded, bitterness twisting his features. “He was trying to take Eben’s spot. Eben wouldn’t give him way. That’s why Tedamm killed him.”

Dawson was startled. “What? How do you know?”

“I just know.”

“A feeling in your bones.”

Issa nodded.

“How did Tedamm kill Eben?” Dawson asked. “And how did he get him to Jamestown?”

“I’m sure he came with his ruffian friends and put Eben by force inside a car, then they drove him to Jamestown and killed him there.”

“Is there someone else who maybe wanted to kill Eben?”

Issa sucked his teeth and shook his head. “No one, except Tedamm. Everybody liked Eben.”

“Do you know one Musa Zakari?” Dawson asked.

“No. Who is he?”

“They found him dead in the lagoon about two weeks ago.”

“I heard something about it, but I didn’t know him.”

Dawson suddenly thought of Sly. He asked Issa if he knew a boy by that name. Again, no luck.

A scream rang out and whipped their heads around. It came from the general direction of the railway station. And a second one, now more like a woman keening.

“Let’s go,” Dawson said to Chikata.

They began to run.

Inside the railway station courtyard where Dawson had been just hours before, a crowd had gathered to stare at something going on in the garbage dump abutting the wall. There was some light coming over from Nkrumah Avenue but not much. Dawson and Chikata went around the crowd, skipping across the gutter and running up to the rear section of the trash pile, where a fat man was shining a flashlight on the body of a partially disrobed woman.

“Police,” Dawson said. “Get back, please.”

They did. Dawson and Chikata crouched on either side of the woman. With their flashlights trained on her, they saw she was young, probably in her midteens. She was lying on her stomach. Her buttocks were like enormous melons, but her limbs seemed collapsed and crumpled, like those of a squashed insect.
Dumped, like trash
, was Dawson’s first thought. He was faintly aware of someone crying in the background.

“Blood,” Chikata said, pointing.

Her disheveled blouse was soaked with it, and more so on the right. Dawson touched her. She wasn’t cold. She wasn’t warm either. She was tepid.
Tepid
. He’d never used that word for the temperature of a human being. That was for bathwater or a beverage.

Her head was turned in Dawson’s direction. He shined his flashlight in her face. Her eyes were open, but her pupils didn’t react and the corneas were already turning opaque. There wasn’t a pulse.

“Dead,” Dawson said. “See if you can get Bright and the crew.”

“I’m on it,” Chikata said, phone already out.

Dawson looked up at the fat man.

“Did you find her?”

“No, massa.” He pointed his beam about ten meters away, where a young man was comforting a weeping woman. “That woman over there.”

“Do you have a mobile?” Dawson asked.

“Yes, massa.”

“Give Detective Sergeant Chikata your number in case we need to get in touch with you. Stand to one side, please—over there—but do not leave, understand?”

“Yes, massa.”

“I can’t reach CSU,” Chikata said.

“Why not?”

“No network coverage.”

“No network coverage in the center of Accra? Ewurade.” Dawson pulled out his own phone, and handed it to Chikata. “Try mine.”

He went over to the crying woman and the guy with her, who told Dawson his name was Patrick. The woman, Faiza, was his friend. She was eighteen or nineteen and pregnant, her belly stretching out her T-shirt.

“Are you okay?” Dawson said.

She moaned but didn’t really answer.

“What happened?” Dawson asked.

Patrick spoke to her in Hausa. She babbled something incoherent in reply.

“She was coming to throw something away and she fell over the body,” Patrick translated.

“We heard a scream,” Dawson said. “Was that Faiza?”

“Yes, we all heard it too and came running.”

“Does she know the dead girl?”

“No. She’s just shocked, that’s why she’s crying.”

“I understand. Did she see or hear anyone else around here?”

Patrick asked her and translated her reply to Dawson.

“No, she didn’t see anyone. And she says she begs you, don’t take her to jail.”

“I’m not taking her to jail,” Dawson said. He looked around.
How did the dead girl get here?
Was she carried through the entrance? Or from the station?

Chikata walked up, handing Dawson back his phone. “Bright says they’re on another case in Mataheko.”

“How long before they get here?” Dawson asked.

“At least one hour.”

Dawson grunted. That really meant considerably more than one hour.

Chikata was staring at the body. “Is it the same killer, Dawson?”

“If that’s a stab wound to the right side of her back, then I think it is.” He glanced at the spectators. Some were dispersing while a fresh bunch was arriving to take a look. “I need you to question people who live in and around the station—ask them if they saw anything suspicious this evening. We want to know how this girl got here.”

“I’ll try my best, Dawson.” As he walked away, Chikata added over his shoulder, “But you know how Accra people are—they don’t talk to policemen.”

“Have some faith,” Dawson called back. Chikata’s question was echoing in his mind.
Is it the same killer?
He made a call. As it rang, he prayed there’d be an answer. There was.

“Dr. Botswe? Inspector Dawson here.”

“How are you, Inspector?”

“I’m well, but there’s been another murder.”

“Really. Where?”

“Inside the railway station courtyard. We’re waiting for the CSU to arrive. Can you come to the crime scene? I would like your opinion.”

“I’ll be there as soon as possible, Inspector. I’m not too far away.”

“Thank you very much, sir.”

T
he crime scene team had still not arrived. The corpse, now covered by a length of cloth someone had produced, was getting colder and stiffer.

“Inspector?”

Dawson turned at Allen Botswe’s voice.

“Thank you for coming, Doctor. You got here very quickly.”

“I was close by on Graphic Road.”

“Are you ready to take a look at the body?”

“Yes, I am.”

Dawson pulled aside the cloth. “Her blouse is full of blood,” he said. “Looks like it’s a stab wound to the back, but I don’t want to disturb her clothes until CSU gets photos.”

With a small grunt, Botswe crouched next to the body. “If it is indeed that—a stab in the back—then it resembles Musa Zakari’s.”

“There’s something you don’t know,” Dawson said. “This is the second case since Musa’s.”

“Second?”

“Yesterday we found a young male teenager murdered in the same way, dumped in a muddy ditch in Jamestown. And his neck was broken with his head twisted around one hundred and eighty degrees.”

“Goodness.”

“Again, my question is whether these could be ritual killings.”

“Were there any other mutilations of the teenager? Eyes, genitals?”

“No.”

“What about his background?”

“He was a shoeshine boy living on the streets.”

Botswe was nodding. “These are not ritual killings. This is a serial offender with motivations completely different from those of the ritual killer. You can see what his signature is—single stab wound to the back with an additional mutilation, and then throwing the body in a distasteful place: the dirty lagoon, the muddy ditch, and now the garbage dump. His M.O. is to prey on these street youth. I have no doubt that we’ll find this girl to be in that category.”

“I’m still not sure about the signature. Why chop off Musa’s fingers but not do something similar to Ebenezer?”

“Evidently that macabre twisting of the head
is
similar in the mind of the offender.”

“Wait,” Dawson said, snapping his fingers. “Dr. Botswe, you said the killer does what?
Throws
the body in a distasteful place.”

“Yes, that’s right. What is it, Inspector?”

Dawson sprang to his feet. “I’m a fool,” he said. “The killer didn’t drag the body here. He
threw
it.”

Dawson turned, leapt across the gutter, and ran out the railway station’s entrance. Now on the outside of the wall running along Nkrumah Avenue’s sidewalk, he turned left and trotted up about thirty meters to four concrete blocks piled on top of one another next to the wall. Stepping up on them brought Dawson’s shoulders past the top of the wall. He could easily see everything on the other side. The garbage dump was right below him.

Botswe looked up as Dawson’s head appeared, and the light of realization dawned on his face.

Dawson returned to him at the crime scene. “You get me now?”

“Yes, I believe I do, Inspector.”

“Here is my theory,” Dawson said. “Level with the garbage dump on the pavement the other side of the wall, there’s a stack of concrete blocks. The sidewalk is wide enough to accommodate any size vehicle, even up to an SUV. The killer drives up with the dead body in the boot or whatever. He mounts the sidewalk with the vehicle, backing it up to the concrete blocks. He stands on those while dragging the dead body out of the boot, then tosses the body over the wall.”

As they were talking, CSU arrived. There were four of them, including Bright.

“We meet again,” Dawson said.

“And in the same kind of place,” Bright observed. “Smelly and dirty.”

“Aptly put,” Botswe said. “Part and parcel of the signature.”

Bright looked at him, wondering who he was. Dawson introduced them.

Chikata came up. “Dawson, Issa is with a friend who says he might know the victim.”

“Good,” Dawson said. “Let’s go and talk to him.”

Dawson followed Chikata to where Issa and his friend stood next to the gutter.

“Hi, Issa,” Dawson said. “What’s happening?”

“This is Jonathan,” Issa said, indicating the boy beside him. “He says maybe he knows the dead girl.”

Jonathan looked to be sixteen or so. He had a lazy eye. “I heard someone say her name is Comfort,” he said, “and I know a girl called Comfort.”

“Who is that someone?” Dawson asked.

“I don’t know the man,” Jonathan said. “He was here earlier, but he’s gone now. I heard him telling people that he recognized that girl and that her name is Comfort and that she’s a head porter at Agbogbloshie Market.”

“What did this man look like?”

“Tall,” Jonathan said, lifting his right hand high above his head. “And thin like he hasn’t eaten for two months.”

“How old?”

“Maybe … thirty? I don’t know. He looks old.”

“Was he wearing some colorful clothes?” Issa said.

“Eh-heh, yes,” Jonathan said. “Some crazy orange and purple clothes.”

“Then that must be Flash,” Issa said. “The prostitutes at Timber Market pay him to use a tent belonging to Tedamm.”

Tedamm. Again
.

“And you think you might know the same Comfort this guy Flash was talking about?” Dawson asked Jonathan.

“I know one Comfort Mahama who is a
kayayo
at Agbogbloshie Market.”

“Are you willing to look at the body and identify her if possible?”

Jonathan looked nervously at Issa, who said to Dawson, “Please, can I go with him? He’s afraid.”