Children of the Street (6 page)

8

Over the next three days, there were no leads. Dr. Biney’s official report didn’t add anything to what Dawson already knew from attending the autopsy. It would take ages to get back the test results from Korle Bu Hospital’s new DNA center, which was of limited capacity. Many of its samples still had to be sent out for analysis in South African labs and at the University of Southern California—a costly and time-consuming exercise.

Dawson, preoccupied over Hosiah, felt out of sorts, as if he might be heading into a blue mood. But it was Friday, and the prospect of the weekend brightened him somewhat.

S
aturday, Dawson, Christine, and Hosiah visited friends in Lartebiokorshie. They had a son of around Hosiah’s age, so he had someone to play with while the adults talked. As they chatted on the veranda of the house, Dawson’s phone rang.

“Yes, Wisdom?”

“Dawson, Yves just sent me his rendition of the boy. You wouldn’t believe how fine it is.”

“Have you emailed it to me?”

“Yes, I have. And my boss wants it in the paper as soon as possible, so you’ll see the article tomorrow.”

“Okay, no problem.” Before he hung up, Dawson said, “Thank you, eh?”

“Who was that?” Christine asked.

“I’m afraid I have to leave,” Dawson said. “Something new on the case has come in.”

“You really have to go right now?”

“Yes, I apologize.”

Christine didn’t look happy.

T
he email was waiting for Dawson on his laptop at home. He had bought the slightly used computer in multiple payments for a total of GHC450, which was a good bargain.

“Oh,” he said under his breath as he saw the images. “Outstanding.”

Yves Kirezi had created two black-and-white images, one showing the lagoon boy with a serious expression, the other showing him smiling to reveal the right upper missing canine tooth. “LB” ’s eyes were deep and energetic. His face was open and generous, the kind that makes people want to approach and chat. How had Yves captured that?

Dawson sent a reply to Wisdom thanking both him and Kirezi. He got on the phone to Chikata.

“Meet me in Agbogbloshie in two hours.”

Chikata almost choked. “What?”

“We have the sketch. I want to start showing it around.”

“Ah, Dawson. Sir.
Today
?”

“We’ve lost a week already. No more time to waste.”

“I know, but …”

“Are you drunk?”

“No.”

“Good. So see you in two hours.”

D
awson had a couple things to get done in those two hours. First he bought the cheapest possible ream of paper from a small store near Central Post Office. Next, laptop slung over his shoulder, he hotfooted it to Salaga Internet to print LB’s image and get a hundred copies made. At Salaga, bringing in his own paper dropped the price drastically, knowing the owner dropped it even more, which was a good thing, because Dawson was perilously low on cash. No one else in CID would spend his or her hard-earned wages on any part of an investigation in such a personal way. Dawson was either a saint or a fool. His colleagues would vote the latter.

H
ave you ever seen anyone, or do you know anyone, who looks like this boy?

That was the standard question Dawson and Chikata asked as they handed out the lagoon boy flyers. They split up, Chikata venturing into Agbogbloshie Market east of Abossey Okai Road to canvass the always-observant market women, while Dawson took Agbogbloshie west of the street.

He came across a group of six teenage boys languishing by a defunct kiosk in front of a puddle of water. Dawson greeted them as they sized him up. The biggest one stood. Introducing himself, Dawson shook hands. The boy’s name was Abdel, a name typical of northern Ghana. Chances were his native tongue was Hausa.

“Do you speak Twi?” he asked Abdel hopefully.

“Yes.”

Dawson handed him a flyer. “Do you know this boy?”

His companions crowded round the picture, leaning against one another with the casual intimacy of pals. There was an avid discussion in Hausa. Dawson understood snatches of it.

“We don’t know him,” Abdel said finally.

“But Abdel, my friend,” Dawson said, “I heard some of you say you might have seen him before.”

Abdel was surprised. “Do you hear our language?” he asked in Hausa.

“A little bit,” Dawson replied in kind.

The boys all smiled at him instantly, appreciating his effort.

“Why are you looking for him?” Abdel asked, returning to Twi for Dawson’s benefit.

“I’m not. He’s dead. I’m trying to find out who he is.”

Abdel translated again for his friends. They got shifty-eyed and uneasy, and one of them muttered “Police.” They were suspicious of Dawson, and even if one or more of them might have recognized the lagoon boy, their instincts were telling them that this was trouble.

“Okay,” Dawson said lightly, giving them a few more flyers. “Please ask some of your other friends, or your families, if they know this boy. If you hear something about this, please try to call the number there.”

He thanked them.
“Nagode.”

But as he walked away, Dawson felt it was a lost cause. There was no chance these kids would call him. He prayed Chikata was having better luck.

9

Chikata hadn’t done any better. People were either evasive or just not that interested. He and Dawson called it a day.

Monday morning, Dawson was cautiously hopeful that things would begin to move in the right direction. LB’s image would be ready for the evening TV news broadcast. Dawson saw to it that the picture went up in all the waiting areas of the CID building, alongside the other Wanted and Missing Person posters.

Last night, he had read Wisdom’s well-crafted
Sunday Graphic
feature entitled
DEATH IN THE LAGOON: IS THIS WHAT IT WILL TAKE?
Rather than just reporting LB’s death as a crime, Wisdom had made it a sociological study of Korle Lagoon and its surrounding areas.

By Tuesday, Dawson was praying for some kind of lead—anything at all. By Wednesday he was telling himself to settle down to reality. Things never happen as quickly as one would like. It could be months before they got any leads. The case could go cold too. The piles of folders and papers on his desk were a reminder of that.

After lunch on Wednesday, just as it was beginning to seem like another routine day, Constable Simon, who worked on the second floor, came up to Dawson’s desk.

“Please, massa, can you come? We have a problem downstairs.”

“What is it?” Dawson asked, getting up.

“A certain girl came asking for you,” Simon said, “but there’s something wrong with her. While she was waiting, she just collapsed on the ground and started to cry.”

Chikata stood up as well. He and Dawson followed Simon out the door and down the narrow stairs to reception on the second floor, a relatively open area at the intersection of the three wings of the sand-colored building. The two receptionists and a growing crowd of people were standing around a scrawny teenage girl, who was on the floor weeping.

Crouched beside the girl was a stout young woman imploring her in Twi, “Akosua, please, get up. Don’t cry, Akosua, eh? Please.”

She was trying to scoop Akosua into her arms, but the girl was unwieldy, as limp and floppy as a rag doll. In between sobs, she was saying something that Dawson could not make out at first.

Simon looked at him and said, “Massa, it’s your name she’s calling.”

“
My
name?” Dawson said, craning forward. “Are you sure?”

Simon was right. In Twi, Akosua was moaning, “I want Mr. Darko, I want to talk to Mr. Darko.”

He knelt down beside the woman. “Are you her friend?”

“Yes, please. My name is Regina. You are Inspector Darko? The one they said in the newspaper we should call if we have information on the boy in Korle Lagoon?”

“Yes.”

“Please, yesterday Akosua and I saw the drawing of the boy. It looks like her boyfriend. She has been looking for him for more than one week. She won’t eat, and she can’t sleep. I have to force her to drink even just a little bit of water. As soon as she saw the picture, she said, ‘That is Musa,’ and she started to cry. She almost fainted when we were waiting for a tro-tro to bring us here.”

Dawson looked quickly around. First order of business, get Akosua off this stage and away from this audience. Covering her face with her hands, she had quieted down now, only whimpering slightly, breathing quickly and deeply.

Dawson touched her shoulder. “Akosua, I’m Darko. Can you stand up?”

She nodded, still hiding her face, as though scared to face the world.

“Come on, then. I’ll help you.”

Dawson took her arm and supported her as she shakily got to her feet. To Constable Simon, he said, “Please get her some water.”

To talk to her, he needed a relatively quiet and private place, which could be difficult to find at CID. One of the secretaries in the Public Relations Office was standing nearby. Dawson knew she worked in a small office with only one other woman.

“Can we use your room for a moment?”

She nodded. “No problem, sir. It’s free.”

The audience began to disperse, the spectacle of the day over.

Akosua, still unsteady on her feet, leaned against Regina as they followed Dawson down the corridor. Chikata accompanied them into the office, where there were two desks, one with a computer that was switched off. Dawson wondered if it worked. Many of CID’s computers were old, burned-out fixtures.

Chikata moved the chairs from behind the desks, offering them to the young women. Akosua was trembling. Her eyes were bloodshot and as painfully swollen as those of a pummeled boxer. Now, Dawson could get a good look at her. While Regina was around twenty, twenty-one, Akosua couldn’t have been more than about seventeen. She was built very slightly, with a mousy, anxious face. She had a small tribal mark on her left cheek. Her hair was badly cut and straightened, but she had made an effort to gather it back and look sophisticated. Her dress, a Ghanaian print, was on the shabby side with oil stains. She wore cheap plastic slippers. Yet Dawson could see the care she had put into her appearance.

Physically, she and Regina could not have been more unlike each other. Regina was richly made, her body forcing her blouse and tight jeans to conform to her curves. Akosua looked like she ate once every other day.

Constable Simon came in with a bottle of Voltic water.

“Thank you, Simon,” Dawson said.

“No problem, massa. Please, do you need anything else?”

“No, thank you. You can go.”

Dawson snapped the seal on the top of the bottle and handed it to Akosua. “Have water. You need it. Take your time.”

For the first time, Akosua looked up at him and met his gaze. “Thank you,” she whispered, taking the bottle.

Regina, supportively holding her friend’s free hand, watched as she tilted her head back and drank thirstily, her glottis loudly registering each gulp.

“Ei!”
Regina exclaimed with a half laugh. “Take a breath, Akosua.”

The girl did, stopping only briefly, and then finished up the bottle.

Dawson took it from her. “Better?”

Akosua nodded, wiping her chin with the back of her hand. “Please, yes. Thank you.”

Dawson perched on the side of the desk, the one with the computer. “So. You wanted to talk to me. Here I am.”

She might have felt intimidated by him or been shy, or both. She looked uncertainly at Regina, who took up the slack and said, “Please, Mr. Dawson, we came to look for you yesterday afternoon, but they said you weren’t here and we should come back today.”

Dawson didn’t comment, but his
not
hearing about who had come looking for him was a common occurrence. More often than not, the receptionists did not take a message, verbal or written, nor did they pass it on. “Come back tomorrow” was an all-too-frequent response to the visitor in search of a CID officer.

“I’m sorry I was so hard to find, Akosua,” Dawson said, addressing her rather than Regina, trying to coax her out. “You say the drawing of the boy resembles your boyfriend?”

“Yes, please,” she said softly, her hands wringing in her lap.

“What is his name?”

“Please, his name is Musa Zakari. I haven’t seen him for ten days. As soon as I saw the picture in the newspaper, I knew it was him.”

Regina pulled out a mobile from her jeans pocket. “Mr. Darko, I took some pictures of Akosua and Musa some weeks ago, if you want to have a look. Then you can see how he looks like.”

Dawson and Chikata came around so they could see her phone screen. Akosua looked on as Regina went through each of four photographs, all containing Musa. One of them really got Dawson’s attention. Musa was standing behind Akosua with his arms around her, his smiling face nuzzling against her neck as she leaned against him. Comparing a drawing to a photo was often difficult, and the facial features were not a dead-on likeness to Kirezi’s sketch. But the
smile
. It was the smile with the same missing cuspid that did it. Somehow, Kirezi had captured it perfectly.

“That’s a fine picture of you and Musa,” Dawson said to Akosua.

She smiled tentatively, a smile marred by sadness.

“How did he lose his tooth?” Dawson asked.

Akosua cleared her throat. “Please, about three months ago, some thieves at Agbogbloshie Market beat him and stole his money. His mouth was bleeding and his tooth was loose, and it was paining him so he pulled it out and he was going to throw it away, but I said no, don’t throw it away—give it to me, and he said, Ah, but what will you do with it? And I said I would make a necklace with it, so when I wear it I know I have you with me even if you are not there.”

Without warning, tears erupted, running down her cheeks, and a whimper escaped her.

Regina gave her friend a handkerchief and then rubbed Akosua’s back soothingly. “You’re doing well,” she said.

Dawson squeezed the girl’s hand encouragingly. “I know this is tough. Try for me, eh? I’m very glad you came to see me.”

She pressed the handkerchief against her eyes. Dawson gave her a chance to recover. He asked her gently, “Did you make the necklace with the tooth?”

Akosua nodded, taking a grimy piece of paper carefully out of her pocket. She unfolded it gingerly, revealing a thin strand of leather with a single strung item—a tooth. Dawson picked up the necklace and examined it. The tooth, one of the cuspids, was dazzling white and smooth as pearl. In a minute hole drilled through its base was a small metal loop, to which the leather string was attached. Dawson felt that surge of excitement that came with a significant break.

“You made this, Akosua?”

She shook her head. “Regina’s husband—he makes jewelry at the Arts Center.”

“Oh, very good.” Dawson acknowledged Regina. She smiled, looking proud.

Dawson looked up at Chikata. “Can you get me one more chair?”

“Sure.” Chikata left the room.

“When was the last time you saw Musa?” Dawson asked Akosua.

“The Saturday before last.”

“That’s the fifth of June, the day before the body was found.”

“Yes, please.”

“Where did you see Musa that day?”

“We went to Nima Market.”

“At what time?”

“In the evening about six o’clock.”

“Did Musa live in Nima?”

“No, please. He stayed at different places. He was a truck pusher, so he stayed anywhere he had work.”

“He lived on the street?” Dawson asked.

“Yes, please.”

“Did he have any family?”

“Please, no. He came from the north. He didn’t have anyone here.”

Chikata came back with a borrowed chair. Dawson sat down at a comfortable angle from Akosua. His previous position, sitting on the edge of the desk, which forced her to look up at him, had seemed dominating. He wanted her to feel at ease.

“What you’ve done,” he said, “bringing us Musa’s tooth, is a very good thing, Akosua, because we can test it to see if it belongs to the person in the lagoon. If it does, then it means that the person in the lagoon was Musa.”

“Yes, please.”

“But we have to keep the tooth for some time,” Dawson went on. “We won’t break it. We just have to remove a small piece from it, so small that you wouldn’t notice. You get me?”

“Yes, please.”

“About the fight you say Musa had with the thieves—did you see it happen?”

“No, I wasn’t with him.”

“How old was Musa?”

“Sixteen. He was going to be seventeen.”

“And how old are you?”

“Seventeen too.”

“Do you know anyone who didn’t like Musa?”

She shook her head. “Everyone liked him.”

“That evening when you and Musa went to the market, what time did you leave each other?”

“About seven o’clock. One friend came to help Musa take something to Maamobi.”

“Did you know that friend? His name?”

“I know his name is Daramani, but I don’t know him well.”

Daramani
. Dawson stiffened, but then he reassured himself. There were undoubtedly countless Daramanis in Accra, not just the one he knew.

“Do you know where this Daramani lives?”

“He lives in Nima. I went to his house with Musa one time.”

Nima
. Where Dawson’s Daramani lived.

“About how old is this Daramani?”

“I don’t know,” she said, adding, “older than me.”

“Do you like him?”

“I don’t like him.” Akosua squirmed. “He was always looking at me like he wanted to be with me.”

“Do you think he was jealous of Musa?”

“I don’t know.”

“If we take you to Nima, can you show us his house?”

“I think so. But I don’t want him to see me.”

“Okay, no problem.”

Dawson stood up. So did Chikata.

“You stay here,” Dawson said to him abruptly.

Chikata was puzzled. “Why shouldn’t I go with you?”

“It doesn’t need two of us to go to question this man. You’ve got a lot of paperwork to finish. Come along, Akosua.”

As they left the room, Dawson could feel Chikata’s stunned look burning a hole in his back.

N
ima was bustling with furious midweek commerce, men and women weaving through the crowds with loads of merchandise while they dodged horn-blaring cars. Truck pushers forged paths through the jammed traffic, their unwieldy carts piled with scrap metal, engine blocks, old TVs, and computers. The sidewalks were packed with traders bursting beyond the boundaries of Nima Market. With no space for pedestrians on the pavement, vehicles and people shared the street in a constant battle for dominance.