Easy Motion Tourist (11 page)

The sky was brightening and cocks were crowing in the slum beyond the station, but Ibrahim was at his desk, waiting for the police commissioner’s next call, wondering what he would give as an update, and fighting the urge to send an officer to buy a packet of cigarettes.

If he hadn’t called the commissioner in the first place, to boast about capturing the Iron Benders gang, the man would probably have continued sleeping and missed that damn report on CNN. The commissioner had also asked how it happened. Ibrahim started to explain how his boys had been out on patrol but the commissioner cut in with ‘How did you let this get on the news?’ As if Ibrahim could arrest every journalist in Lagos.

A local report would have been bad enough. Pompous reporters would have asked rude questions, used long words, and blamed everything in the country on police corruption. Their real gripe would have been where the crime happened: Victoria Island, one of the few enclaves of relative safety in the city – an illusion that those who lived on the Island, and those who aspired to, guarded religiously.

But it had gone international, and no doubt, the same way Nigerians are always ready to take issue with any foreigner who dares to insult their country, everyone who had a platform from
which they could make noise would be fuming and raging at CNN’s ‘unfair’ portrayal of Nigeria. And he, Ibrahim, would be the grass under which two elephants battle; not because a murder was committed on his watch, but because he was the policeman meant to make sure that such things, when they do occur, do not tarnish the precious image of the island of the rich.

There was also the body in the cell. Taking care of the carjacked woman was easy. She thanked him when he told her that all she had to do was sign a statement that he had written for her. In few words it said she was carjacked near CMS, she walked to the station to report the crime, she recognised one of her assailants in the cell and the suspect became violent and tried to escape. The woman signed the statement and he tore up the one she had originally written. A police car took her home.

Amaka, on the other hand, would not be so easy to gag – if that was even possible. Ibrahim’s predecessor briefed him on her: ‘Be careful with that one. She’ll give you a lot of problems.’ He called her a ‘frustrated lesbian’ and the charity organisation she worked for, ‘a club for prostitutes.’

When she first turned up at the station and said that a girl was raped while in detention there, Ibrahim called his predecessor and asked what to do. The man laughed and told him to find a lawyer.

She walked into his office as if she was his boss. She introduced herself as the girl’s lawyer. He wanted to warn her that he knew all about her, but when she shook his hand and beamed that beautiful smile, he forgot she was the enemy.

She was not the man-hating witch he’d expected. She appeared to be intelligent and she acted politely. She didn’t want to take the police to court; she just wanted the officer in question to pay the girl he had arrested in front of Y-Not. She agreed that
it could hardly be called rape, as the woman offered sex for her freedom. But, she argued, since the girl shouldn’t have been arrested in the first place – for soliciting, which couldn’t be proved – she shouldn’t have had to bribe anyone to regain that freedom. The way she saw it, the officer owed her client for services rendered, or the Nigerian police had to answer a case of forced imprisonment and rape.

She impressed him with the way she made her case, though he tried not to show it. She was blackmailing him to make a police officer pay a prostitute – too many crimes to list. But she was dangling before him a court case that made her offer seem gracious.

Unlike his predecessor, he understood her. Here was a woman who used her knowledge, her charm, and anything at her disposal, to look after other women. She was like Mother Theresa to those girls.

Several times, he asked for her number but she always turned him down. It had become a friendly game they played each time they met. If he were single, she would be the perfect wife for him. But why would such a sophisticated girl want to marry a common policeman? They would never have met, and even if they had, they would never have been friends. Yet, her line of work made her a constant visitor to his station and they were now friends, even if not close.

Why did she have to come that night? Why didn’t she stay in his office when he told her too? She’d taken the British journalist to the Minister of Information. What happened in the cell would probably be discussed. What was she doing with the bloody minister, anyway? Maybe powerful men were her thing? Perhaps for all her charity work and seeking justice for all womankind, she was just like every other female. Maybe that
was why she had never allowed them to talk seriously about seeing each other outside the station. Maybe he just wasn’t rich enough. Either that or she really was a lesbian.

He picked up the phone: ‘Musa, come here.’

‘This is not Musa, sir. This is Oyebanji.’

‘Where is Musa?’

‘He has handed over to me, sir.’

‘Call him now. Tell him to come back.’ He slammed the receiver down. If he couldn’t go home, nobody could. He thought for a moment then he picked up the phone again. ‘Tell Musa to go to the Sheraton. The Minister of Information is staying there. I want to know when he leaves and who is with him when he does.’

Five minutes later, Oyebanji called back. ‘Sir, Musa is not answering his phone, sir.’

‘What? OK. Ask Femi and… whoever is there, to come to my office now.’

In a room at the back of the station, four shirtless officers, sweating and exhausted, fists sore, were interrogating a member of the Iron Benders gang.

Hot-Temper stepped in front of the body of the boy who was hanging head-down from a broken ceiling fan to which his feet were tied using a watering hose.

‘Ol’ boy, you want to die for nothing?’

The boy’s body swayed, dripping sweat and blood into a pool on the ground.

‘We already have information that one of the cars you snatched was the same one that you and your boys used to dump the girl that you killed. The madam you snatched the car from has come to report in this station tonight. Just tell us who sent you and we’ll let you go.’

The boy did not respond. Hot-Temper sucker-punched his belly. He coughed blood and saliva.

‘Bring the ring boiler.’

An officer who had been leaning against the wall unplugged the apparatus in his hand. It had a plastic handle with a power cord on one end, and the two ends of a thin metallic tube on the other. The tube, which was about the thickness of a pen, extended five inches from the handle and looped four times to form a coil at its furthest point. Through swollen eyes, the boy saw the glowing red coils dangling before his face. His body twisted like a snake held up by its tail.

‘Remove his trousers,’ Hot-Temper commanded.

The policemen gripped the boy. With the tips of his thumb and index finger, Hot-Temper held the boy’s penis and inserted it into the hot coil. The boy’s scream reverberated through the building and the smell of burning flesh wafted through the room. He howled and writhed like a snared animal until his energy was spent and then he whimpered like a dog.

Hot-Temper yanked the coil away, and with it, sizzling, seared skin.

‘Look at what you are making me do to you for nothing. I don’t want to punish a young boy like you. I know that other people sent you. Just tell me their names and all this will end. If you don’t tell me what I want to know, I will put your blucos back into this thing and plug it until you fry like suya.’

The boy recalled the blood oath he swore when he joined the gang. He remembered the walk through a bush path. He smelt the wet soil. He felt the tickle of tall blades of grass brushing against his arms, leaving dew on his skin. All around him there was nothing but beautiful, open green land. He was standing in
a clearing before the oiled wooden figures and bloody plucked feathers of the shrine. He tasted the dry blandness of his own blood mixed with the blood of the others as he sipped from the clay pot that sucked his tongue. He remembered the witch doctor’s warning: ‘You have vowed to keep each other’s secrets secret. Whoever breaks the promise made upon this ground shall be swallowed by the ground.’ He saw the decaying bodies of those who had sworn at the same shrine and went on to break their promises. They were left to rot unburied, scattered like refuse around the shrine, playthings of the gods. If he spoke now and broke the oath, he would die and he would become one of those shameful corpses whose souls would roam this earth as ghosts unable to find their way home. He would die.

Hot-Temper opened Inspector Ibrahim’s door without knocking.

‘Sir, we have a name, sir.’

‘Really?’

‘Yes, sir, Chucks.’

‘Chucks? The same Chucks?’

‘Yes, sir.’

Ibrahim leaned back in his chair. He had seen it happen all too often; a small-time crook gets ambitious and forces the police to come after him in spite of the bribes he has paid in the past. Chucks had been a reliable snitch who told on any criminal encroaching upon his operation. His scam was selling impounded motorcycles that he bought illegally from officers of the state’s traffic task force and passed on as imported second-hand goods. So, he had graduated to stolen vehicles?

‘Oga, let me take some boys and go and bring him, bulldog style.’

Ibrahim thought about it. It was almost five in the morning. Matori, where Chucks lived, would have long woken up. If
they tried to grab him bulldog style like Hot-Temper suggested, without a warrant, they could provoke a riot. It had happened before. Officers sent to get someone were barricaded by spare parts traders and Area boys. They didn’t allow the men to leave until they gave up on the armed robbery suspect they had gone to fetch. Besides, he could update the police commissioner with news of a suspect, and have another update later when they had the man. Why waste the two good updates on one? There was only one thing to do: wait until night when Matori would be quiet.

‘Who else knows?’

‘Knows what, sir?’

‘About Chucks?’

‘Just me and the officers interrogating the boy.’

‘Good. Don’t mention it to anyone. I want to see all of you now.’

In a notepad on his desk he wrote ‘Operation Bulldog.’ He drew two lines under the words and added ‘The siege on Matori.’

Only a hunted spy sprinting through the gates of a friendly embassy would understand how I felt when we drove into Eko Hotel.

I pointed out empty spaces but Amaka continued driving and pulled up far from the entrance. Her phone rang again. Who kept calling her? She had promised to explain everything once we got to the hotel. What could she possibly have to say? If she wasn’t working with the inspector then who was she? Why had she come to get me? What exactly did her charity do? Why did she lie about being sent by Ade?

She answered her phone as she stepped out of the car. I couldn’t tell if she was speaking English. She walked with quick strides and was soon ahead of me, deep in conversation. Did it have something to do with me?

In the early morning light I got a better look. She was tall: maybe five ten. She had a well-toned, yet feminine body. She worked out. She stood straight and walked in a no-nonsense manner that made her even sexier. Who was she?

Climbing the steps leading to Eko Hotel’s open-plan lobby she put the phone down. Someone was on hold.

‘I’m sorry. I had to take that call,’ she said.

‘It’s all right,’ I said. I was embarrassed that she might have
caught me looking at her bum. ‘You have to check out of your room now. I’ll get another room in my name for you to move into, for the moment’

‘Wait a minute. You still haven’t told me what all this is about.’

‘I’ll explain everything in the room. Please, we have to hurry up and get you into another room.’

I saw her point. At her urging, we walked in separately. She met me at my room and together we packed my bags then I went downstairs to check out, leaving my suitcase behind. I made a show of walking out of the hotel with my laptop bag and a backpack. Then when I was sure nobody was watching, I walked back in from the other side and took the elevator up to her floor. I knocked, half expecting her to be gone with all my belongings but she smiled as if she was happy to see me. Maybe she had also been afraid I wouldn’t return.

She had taken off her shoes.

‘Did you tip the man at the desk?’

‘Yes. Five thousand naira like you told me to.’

‘Good. He’ll remember you.’

‘You’ve done this before haven’t you?’

‘It may come as a surprise to you but I generally don’t spend my nights rescuing white boys from the police.’

‘OK, how long are you going to play that card?’

She smiled again. She took my laptop bag from me and placed it on the table.

‘OK, let me explain.’

As she spoke, she sat on the bed and lifted her legs onto the covers. She pulled a pillow under her arm and lay on it on her side, facing me.

‘Like I said, I work for a charity. We work with prostitutes. We
give them counselling, financial support, shelter if they need it, medical aid, that sort of thing. Prostitution is illegal in Nigeria so nobody watches out for these girls. They are molested, extorted, short-changed, raped, killed, you name it. You saw something tonight, outside Ronnie’s bar?’

I nodded. The terrible scene replayed itself in my mind. I pulled a chair up to the bed and sat facing her.

‘What you saw, it has happened before. Not like that, not so openly, but at its worst that’s exactly what we try to prevent. Many of the girls have my mobile number. Someone, one of them, called to tell me what happened. I went there and luckily for you, people saw you getting yourself arrested. That’s how I got to know about you. I knew you would need help so I came to find you.’

‘Well, thanks for that. I guess I owe you one. But why come for me?’

‘You work with the BBC, that’s what you told the police. You went out there for a reason. You sensed a story, didn’t you? I came to get you because you’re a journalist. What happened at Ronnie’s will happen again and nobody will do anything. You know why? Because the girls are prostitutes and the killers are powerful men. The media won’t get involved because they’re afraid of these men. The police won’t investigate this murder, or those girls who disappear daily. Why? Because they too are afraid of the big men who pay them to keep the peace and the so-called black magic they use the girls for. When I heard that a foreign journalist had witnessed it all, I had an epiphany.’

I wanted to tell her that she was right; I had gone out there because I sensed a story, but I did not work for the BBC. She wasn’t done, and it seemed a frivolous little detail, so I let her continue.

‘You witnessed something terrible. You can do something about it. You can tell the world what you saw.’

‘I have to tell you something. I’m trained as a lawyer. This journalist thing, I’m not really that good at it.’

‘You’re a lawyer?’

‘Yes. I mean I used to be. I still am, I guess, but I always wanted to be a journalist, so now I am. But I am not John Pilger or John Simpson. I wish I were, but I’m no investigative journalist.’

‘I’m a lawyer too.’

‘Really?’

‘Yes.’ She looked at me as if she’d recognised a friend, and I swear her face softened, changed, almost like she saw me in a different light. ‘I’m not asking you to do anything dangerous. All you have to do is write. I have information that I’ll give you. Names and facts. You will treat me as a source, of course. Nobody can know about me. I can give the information to any other journalist, but you’ve seen what happens with your own eyes. This is your story to tell.’

‘All I have to do is write?’

‘Yes. All you have to do is write.’

I got that feeling you get when you still have time to back away, to make a different choice, but you can’t stop yourself making the wrong one.

‘And you think it’ll make a difference?’ I said.

‘I hope it will. It’s a start. The alternative is to do nothing. I won’t do that, and I don’t think you want to either. Someone has to tell this story. You were there, at Ronnie’s, for a reason. You went outside to see the girl, for a reason. Who better to tell this story?’

‘You said you have information. What kind of information?’

She rolled her legs off the bed and sat on the edge. Barely a foot separated us.

‘What I’m going to tell you now, I have never told anyone. You’ll understand why, in a moment.’

She reached for her bag on the bed then changed her mind and turned to face me.

‘I keep a record of men who use prostitutes in Lagos. I have their names, their addresses, their phone numbers. I know where they work, what they like, how much they pay. I know the ones who are rough, the ones who are married, the ones who beat the girls, the ones who take two girls at a time, the ones who don’t use condoms. I have their licence plate numbers, their pictures, videos of them. I know where they take the girls – you name it. I even know the ones who know each other.

‘I record it all to keep the girls safe. When a man wants to pick up a girl, she sends me his licence plate number. I check my records and tell her what to expect, how much she can charge him, stuff like that. I’ve been keeping the records for over two years now and the database keeps growing. There are some names I have that I tell the girls not to go with.’

‘The violent ones?’

‘Yes.’

‘What do they do to the girls?’

‘What men do. What do you expect? They beat them up, refuse to pay them, rape them, make them sleep with their dogs. I don’t get it, how a man, given birth to by a woman, can be so cruel to other women. But, never mind about the beaters and the rapists; I’m taking care of that. The names I’ll give you are the names of the men who girls have gone with and then vanished.’

‘Those who did that to the girl tonight?’

‘Yes, the people who do such things. I must warn you, they are powerful men. They are well connected, rich, and influential. I see
them on TV accepting awards and making speeches and I wonder what people would do if they knew what I know about them.’

‘Exactly what do you know?’

‘I know that girls have gone with some men then simply dropped off the face of the planet. A man picks up a girl, she’s never seen again, doesn’t answer her phone, doesn’t call her parents, doesn’t touch her bank account, what do you think happened to her?’

I remembered the girl in the gutter; had she simply gone with the wrong person?

‘How did you come to be involved with all this?’

I had imagined that her charity simply tried to get girls off the street, but now it was obvious that her operation was a lot more complex than that. She didn’t judge these women, challenge their way of life or try to change them. She only wanted to them to be safe. Was she was once one of them herself?

‘You mean why do I work with prostitutes? I guess it was bound to happen.’

She got off the bed, eased out of her jacket, straightened her blouse and pushed her feet into her shoes.

‘Where are you going?’ I didn’t want to be left alone right then but more than that, I knew that something big had just dropped onto my lap. This wasn’t going to be a simple column or a random blog post. This was not just a scoop – it could be a detailed, thoroughly researched book. The kind that’s talked about on breakfast news. It was perhaps more than I could pull off, I mean, writing a book is not something you just wake up and do, but thinking of the possibilities filled me with excitement. I could do something big here, something important, something that could change my life and other people’s lives. Perhaps coming to Nigeria wasn’t such a mistake after all. I thought of Mel. What would she be doing right
now? Probably on her way to work, or to the gym; I forget which days are her gym days.

‘Are you OK?’ Amaka said.

‘What? Oh. Yeah. I’m good.’

‘I need to take care of something. Go to sleep. You need to rest. I’ll be back soon, and in the morning there are some people I want you to meet.’