Children of the Street (3 page)

3

It was afternoon when Dawson headed home. Canvassing the Agbogbloshie neighborhood had been fruitless. If anyone had seen the dead body being dumped, they weren’t saying.

Dawson turned onto the slight incline of Nim Tree Avenue. Lined on either side with fortunately clean gutters, the street ran in an east-west direction. At this time of day, Darko was riding into the sun. The sky, a pale, clean blue overhead, was bright and almost white at the horizon, making the street appear luminous.

Dawson’s house at No. 10 Nim Tree was cream-colored with olive trim. The mango tree on one side had just begun to fruit. It was a tiny dwelling, yet it was still a million times better than the sorry GPS barracks where even a
chief
inspector could often afford only a single room. Policemen were not a rich bunch, and detectives were possibly the least well paid. Dawson and Christine could afford No. 10 only because their landlord was a member of her extended family. He gave them a generous discount and made up for it with his other property. That their low rent depended on family ties made Dawson a little nervous. Family and money could be a dangerous mix.

Every time he came home, Dawson felt a surge of thankfulness, like the swell of a wave. The little house was a sanctuary, armor against the wickedness of the crime he dealt with every day. A bit of a fortress too. His police sense had led him to burglarproof the house to the extreme.

Christine’s red Opel, which was so small Dawson felt he could pick it up and carry it under his arm, was parked in front of the house, meaning she and Hosiah were home from the regular Sunday visit to her mother after church and Sunday school.

“I’m home!” he called out as he came in through the rear kitchen door.

“Hi, Dark.”

Christine was in the sitting room on the sofa as she read the paper.

“Hi, sweetie.” He kissed her on the forehead.

“Tough case?”

“Horrible. Dead man in Korle Lagoon.”

Christine winced, barely a ripple on the fine sheen of her complexion.

“I need some help on something,” Dawson said, sitting down beside her. Before he could get any further, Hosiah came running in and dived onto Dawson’s lap.

“Hi, Daddy!”

“Hey, champ!” Darko sat his son up straight and snuggled him against his chest.

“Guess what I made,” Hosiah said.

“A sports car?”

“No.”

“A truck?”

“No,” Hosiah said, laughing. “Come with me and I’ll show you. But you have to close your eyes first and I’ll tell you when you can open them.”

At his bedroom door, he said, “You can open your eyes now.”

In the middle of the floor of the small bedroom was one of Hosiah’s increasingly complex creations. A genius with his hands, he adroitly crafted model cars, trucks, and motorbikes out of empy cans and milk cartons, old matchboxes, bottle caps, rubber bands, and bits of cardboard. The end products were surprisingly fine toys, considering the crudity of the raw materials Hosiah worked with.

“Wow,” Dawson said. “Is that a spaceship?”

“Yes.” The boy held it proudly up to his father. “Look, Daddy. Here are the jets for takeoff. The pilot goes in here and he can see out of this window.”

The window was a square of plastic cut out from a water bottle. Recently, Hosiah had been expanding his repertoire from land vehicles to airplanes, and now, for the first time, a spacecraft.

“So, how far can the spaceship travel?”

“Um. To the moon, I think. No, to the sun.”

“Really? You know it’s going to be very hot there.”

Hosiah thought about that for a moment. “I’ll put something on it so it doesn’t burn.”

Dawson watched as Hosiah constructed a “heat shield,” his little round head bent in concentration. Dawson rubbed it gently. His son was seven now, suffering from congenital heart disease, yet full of a spirit that uplifted Dawson’s every day.

Christine appeared at the door. “Are we still going to the park?”

Dawson looked at his watch. They would have gone earlier had he not been called out. “Yes, we can still go. Hosiah, tidy your room and then we’ll go, okay?”

“Okay, Daddy.”

Back in the sitting room, Dawson asked Christine, “How was he today?”

“Actually, he’s done very well,” she said.

“Good. So we’ll play a little ball at the park but we’ll take it easy.”

“Right. What was it you were going to ask me?”

He told Christine about Sly and his uncle. “I want to get the boy into school.”

“I’ll see what I can do,” she said, “but you realize, even if we get him registered, he might never go.”

“I’ll try to make sure that doesn’t happen.”

She smiled slightly.

“What’s that look?” Dawson asked.

“You can’t stand Uncle Gamel getting away with not sending the boy to school.”

“You’re right. I can’t.”

T
hat night Dawson, a confirmed insomniac, lay on his back, with the blackness pressing against his eyes as he thought about their earlier excursion to the Efua Sutherland Park. It hadn’t been too bad. He and Christine had played catch with Hosiah, throwing the ball as directly to his waiting hands as possible. That was better than playing soccer, where dribbling and running after the ball was more strenuous. They were walking a fine line between letting Hosiah be as active as a boy his age should be and limiting his exertions to what his heart, with its ventricular septal defect, could handle. His symptoms varied from day to day. He rationalized it as the defect changing in size. “The hole in my heart is small today, Daddy,” he would say.

So far, Hosiah had never given an indication that he felt something was wrong with
him
as a whole. That was a relief for Christine and Dawson, but they knew their son’s healthy adaptations, both physical and psychological, might not last forever.

His prescribed medications only patched the problem. The real solution, cardiac surgery, was staggeringly expensive. There was now a National Health Insurance Scheme, NHIS, but the very basic medical care it covered most certainly did not include heart surgery. For years, Dawson and Christine had been saving up, adding a generous contribution from an uncle of Christine’s, but the target was still practically unattainable. They had applied for a personal loan at Standard Bank, Ecobank, and Barclays, but hadn’t qualified at any of them. Besides, the interest rate was a horrible 21 percent.

Then, nine months ago, wonderful news had arrived. The GPS announced an official policy that it would pay all medical and surgical fees for its employees and their dependents. For a moment, Dawson’s and Christine’s hearts soared with the fantasy of submitting Hosiah’s medical report to the police service employee financial office, which would approve the surgery. But then reality struck like a sledgehammer.

It turned out that the GPS would not prepay employees’ medical or surgical expenses under any circumstances of illness, major or minor. All payments would be strictly on a reimbursement basis. That put Dawson and Christine right back at square one: they would have to finance Hosiah’s operation at the Korle Bu Hospital Cardiothoracic Center and then present the receipt to the GPS. After that, there would be a long process of validating, cross-checking, and obtaining successive levels of approval, including the director general of GPS. And then, if they were lucky, they would receive the reimbursement after several months.

Another idea had come along about half a year ago. Edith Kingson, a senior clerk in the financial office at Korle Bu, had met Hosiah when Dawson once took him along to render a payment for a hospital visit. So delighted was she with the boy that she took Dawson aside and suggested he fill out a special “financial clemency petition” with an attached letter detailing Hosiah’s circumstances. She would personally try to push it through, but Edith was at pains to warn Dawson she could not guarantee that anything would come of it.

She was right to have tried to keep Dawson’s expectations low. In the six months since submitting the petition, he had periodically called Edith, but she had had no news for him.

Beside him, Christine normally slept so heavily that a thunderstorm would not wake her, but Dawson could tell from her breathing pattern that she wasn’t in deep sleep right now. She stirred and turned over.

“Dark?”

“Yes.”

“I can’t sleep either.”

“Surprising. For you.”

Christine moved in closer, tucking her head into the hollow of his shoulder. Her skin smelled of sweet and spice. He felt the tension in her body slowly dissipate, and she drifted back to sleep long before he did.

H
e woke at five-thirty. Christine would surface soon. He showered and was getting dressed when his mobile rang from the bed stand. He went out to the sitting room to take the call. He knew who it was from the caller ID.

“Dr. Biney, good morning!”

“Good morning, Inspector Dawson! How are you?”

“I’m doing well. And yourself?”

“No complaints, my good man. Forgive me for calling this early, but I wanted to catch you before you start your day.”

“No problem at all.”

Asum Biney was a superb doctor and now one of the best of the very few forensic pathologists in the country. He was the director of the Volta River Authority Hospital in the Eastern Region, where Dawson had first met him. He gave several days of his time every month to hospitals in Accra and elsewhere, routinely starting at dawn and heading home late at night.

“To what do I owe the honor, Doctor?”

“I’m doing a few days at the Police Hospital Mortuary because one of the docs is out on sick leave. I noticed this new case you have—the fellow discovered in the Korle Lagoon?”

“Yes. It’s very bad.”

“Indeed, and even with refrigeration, the decay will continue. We should get to it today as soon as possible.”

“Bless you, Dr. Biney. I was preparing for a nasty fight to get the case on before the end of this
week
, never mind today.”

“Well, I’m glad I could save you the agony. I’ll have the staff put it on for eight this morning.”

“I’ll be there.”

Dawson went to Hosiah’s room, where Christine was getting him up.

“I have to go.” He kissed them both. “See you tonight.”

“Bye, Daddy.”

“Careful, Dark.” Christine said that every day. She meant it.

“I will be.”

4

The phlegmatic Sergeant Baidoo, a man of few words and Dawson’s favorite CID driver, steered the made-in-India Tata police jeep over the rough, unpaved road that led to the Police Hospital Mortuary (PHM). It was a depressing gray stucco building browned off with decades of dust. It needed to be either remodeled and expanded or razed and rebuilt. Dawson liked the second alternative.

Baidoo parked under the flowering flame tree that lent a welcome patch of color to all that dreariness. Reception was to Dawson’s left as he went in. Straight ahead against the far wall were two old coffins piled one on top of the other. They had been there for years, part of the furniture now. He turned left to reception, where there was a sign on the wall that read
JESUS CHRIST DIED FOR YOUR SINS
. On seeing Dawson, the young lance corporal at the desk behind the counter sprang to his feet.

“Morning, massa,” he said, using the alternative word to “sir.” Maybe it was a legacy of the British colonial police service, when black officers referred to the white officers as their “masters,” but now
massa
was comfortably used by the junior ranks to address their superiors.

“Morning, Brempong,” Dawson said. “How are you?”

“Fine, massa.”

“Is Dr. Biney in?”

“Yes, massa. He’s inside.”

“Thank you.”

“Yessah.”

Dawson went through the double-door entry labeled
STRICTLY OUT OF BOUNDS
. With no forewarning, the autopsy room was directly behind that, which had caught Dawson off guard the first time he had come to PHM. There were only two autopsy tables for a backlog of corpses possibly a hundred times that. Four mortuary attendants were in constant motion, like traffic at a busy intersection. Dr. Biney was at the right-hand table. He was masked, but when he looked up and saw Dawson, his eyes crinkled at the corners with his smile.

“Inspector Dawson! Welcome.”

“Thank you, Dr. Biney, it’s good to see you.”

“I’m just finishing up with this case, and we’ll do yours next. Would you like to suit up while we get your case ready?”

Dawson branched left to the changing room, where he gladly put on the most important item, his mask. The gown went on second. He took a breath before returning to the autopsy room proper. The odor in the room was subtler and less assaulting than that of, say, Korle Lagoon, but it was oddly more penetrating, as if it got under one’s skin.

Between Dr. Biney and his attendants, it was a frenetic but coordinated dance. On finishing their case on the left-hand table, two attendants dumped the organs back into the body and transferred it to a gurney. As they wheeled it out, a new case was being wheeled in. Simultaneously, on the second table, one attendant was readying the next case for Dr. Biney with a vertical incision from neck to pelvis. No matter how many times Dawson had been here, he had never grown completely accustomed to the matter-of-factness with which the team worked, and he still flinched inwardly at the harsh bang of bodies on the gurney metal. Relax, he kept telling himself.
They don’t feel anything
.

As they waited for his case, Dawson chatted with Dr. Biney—not empty pleasantries: the two men were always genuinely glad to see each other.

“Here we go,” Biney said, as Dawson’s case was wheeled in. “Ready?”

The body had been washed in the adjoining room, so it looked a trifle better than it had the day before, but the amount of decay was just as severe and the smell was no less sickening. The top layer of skin was blistering and sloughing off, revealing a curiously white layer underneath. The abdomen was extremely distended, rounded like a cathedral dome.

“The putrefaction hasn’t stopped completely,” Biney said, catching Dawson’s look. “Biology will do what it wants, refrigeration be damned.”

Dawson grimaced, trying not to gag. “This one is hard to take.”

“Yes, it is. Has your investigation turned up anything so far?”

“Nothing. We have no idea who he is.”

Dr. Biney turned to George, a wizened veteran of PHM and the most experienced of the mortuary attendants. “Did you see anything of interest while washing the body?”

“Please, yes, Doctor,” George said deferentially. “First thing we noticed was this.”

He held up the corpse’s right hand.

“Curious,” Dr. Biney said, stepping in to examine it. “The thumb and all fingers except the index are hacked off.”

“Fresh wounds?” Dawson asked.

“Very likely. At or around the time of death.”

Dr. Biney looked at Dawson, who turned the corners of his mouth down. “I have no idea what it means.”

“Neither do I,” Dr. Biney said. “Anything else, George?”

“Yes, Doctor,” he said, lifting the corpse’s bloated top lip.

“Missing upper right cuspid,” Dr. Biney said. He peered closer. “Looks like the whole tooth is out, not just broken off. I can’t tell how long it’s been missing, though. I’ll make a note of it on my report. Was that all, George?”

“Please, yes, Doctor.”

“Carry on, then.”

As George began the incision, Dr. Biney turned to the counter next to the sink. “We have his clothing over here, Inspector. By the way, get ready for the release of gases from the body. It won’t be pleasant.”

The clothes were dry now—a worn T-shirt and long shorts with a safety pin at the waist where buttons should have been.

“Look at this,” Biney said, carefully spreading the T-shirt out with the back facing up. “Here on the right side, a hole, slightly rectangular, and some staining around it—presumably blood.”

“Stab wound?” Dawson said.

“Ah, you’re always sharp, Inspector,” Biney said. “Stab wound is exactly what I’m surmising.”

Dawson coughed and choked as Biney’s warning about the abdominal gases materialized. Even the hardened George muttered an exclamation.

“Not for the faint of heart,” Biney said, returning to the autopsy table. Dawson followed after a moment’s hesitation.

“So what I can tell you at this point,” Biney said, as George began removing the chest plate, “is that he was fifteen to seventeen years old.”

“Fifteen to seventeen?” Dawson echoed, shocked. “Oh, that changes the whole picture. He’s a boy, really. I thought he was much older.”

“The decomposition lends that impression, but on the bone survey with our brand-new, secondhand X-ray machine, courtesy of the government of Denmark, I see nice young bones, and the epiphyses still open, so he probably had another couple of inches at least to grow.”

“Doctor,” George said, peering into the boy’s chest cavity. “Look at this.”

Biney joined him. “Goodness. Massive hemothorax. The right lung is practically swimming in blood. Suction it out, would you, George? Inspector, you’ll want to see this.”

Dawson watched as Biney removed the right lung.

“There’s a laceration on the posterior surface associated with severe disruption of the lung tissue,” he said. As Biney explored, the other attendants gathered to look on with interest.

After a minute or so, Biney said, “It’s a deep laceration, far into the tissue of the lung. Let’s examine the right posterior chest cavity. George, would you wash it out, please?”

After a couple of rinses, Biney could get a better look.

“The muscles of the fifth intercostal space are disrupted, and here you can see splintering of the sixth rib, where the weapon struck it with considerable force on the way in. Turn the body on its left side, please?”

The attendants did so, holding the corpse steady as Dr. Biney examined the back.

“Because of swelling and decay, it’s hard to spot it at first, but here is the external wound corresponding to the internal injury. See that, Inspector?”

“I do.”

“In turn, the external wound matches the tear in the victim’s shirt where the knife struck. I estimate that the blade was six to eight inches long.”

“Vicious,” Dawson murmured.

“Yes, indeed. Stab wound to the back resulting in perforation of the right lung, massive hemothorax, and death.”

“Time of death?”

“I hesitate to assign a specific number, but remember this: the body was lying in a warm, wet environment saturated with bacteria. Under such conditions, this degree of putrefaction could have developed in just hours.”

Dawson stared at the murdered boy’s face. “I don’t know how we’re going to identify him. He would be unrecognizable even to someone who knew him. The missing tooth might help, though.”

“Or a forensic artist,” Dr. Biney said. He chuckled ironically. “I’m just dreaming.”

Dawson smiled. There was no such thing as a forensic artist in Ghana.

As they washed their hands, Dr. Biney said, “Inspector, I believe you have your work cut out for you.”

“Doctor, I believe you are right.”