Murder at Cape Three Points (24 page)

I
N THE MORNING
, D
AWSON
was just out of the shower when Chief Superintendent Lartey called to ask how the case was progressing. Dawson gave him a quick summary of events so far.

“Move it along,” Lartey said crisply. “I need you and Philip back as quickly as possible. Cases are coming in all the time, and I want both of you to attend a new forensics course in two weeks.”

First he rushes me here to Takoradi. Now he’s trying to rush me back to Accra.

“How is Philip doing?” Lartey asked.

“Fine, sir. Very comfortable at the hotel.”

If the chief super detected the jab, he didn’t let on. “I want you to give him more free rein. Let him take the lead as much as possible. I’d like him to move up to inspector when you get to chief inspector. That is,
if
you do. How you perform on this case might determine that.”

Not that you’re trying to pressure me
, Dawson thought. “Yes, of course, sir.”

He was glad to get off the phone with his boss as he answered a knock on the door. It was Chikata.

“How was the party?” Dawson asked as he invited him in.

“I’ve seen better,” Chikata said.

“Did you hear anything useful?”

Chikata dropped into the sitting room chair. “I was talking to a woman who used to work in Smith-Aidoo’s corporate affairs department. She says she resigned, but I got the feeling she might have
been sacked. Anyway, she was boasting that Takoradi has a much lower crime rate compared to Accra, and I said, wasn’t Charles Smith-Aidoo brutally murdered some months ago? I didn’t tell her what I do, by the way. She was drinking and her tongue was loose, so I got her to say more. She told me she had heard that Fiona was having an affair with some businessman in town, and maybe it was the businessman that killed her and Charles.”

“Oh, really?” Dawson said with interest. “That’s the second time I’ve heard reference to her possible involvement with a businessman. Did she give a name?”

“No. She said she had heard it was a banker, then she changed it to an oilman, then a bookstore owner, and all this time she was leaning on me and giggling and breathing her alcohol fumes on me. I couldn’t keep her on the subject. She kept asking me if we could go upstairs to my room.”

Chikata pulled a face, indicating just what he thought of that idea.

“Come on, let’s go.” Dawson said as he heard the sound of Baah’s taxi pulling up. “I’m going to introduce you to Superintendent Hammond.”

“Ah, right. Is he going to be glad to see me?”

“I doubt that very much.”

B
AAH PULLED
up in front of the police headquarters, and Dawson and Chikata alighted. They went inside where Dawson knocked on Hammond’s door, opened it, and put his head in.

“Good morning, sir.”

“Morning. Come in.”

Dawson introduced Hammond to Chikata, who received only a curt nod from the superintendent.

“Kwesi DeSouza called me this morning to lodge a complaint against you,” Hammond said to Dawson.

“A complaint? Regarding what?”

“You made sarcastic and discourteous comments to him, you insisted on repeating questions that we have already dealt with, and after you saw him in his offices at STMA, you hounded him at TTI while he was supervising exams.”

“Questioning possible suspects is harassment? In that case, we might as well do nothing, sir.”

“There you are,” Hammond said, flipping his palm up demonstratively. “Did you hear what you just said and how you said it? Exactly the sarcasm Mr. DeSouza is talking about. Coming from CID Headquarters doesn’t give you any right to insult people. We are a closely knit community here, and we behave differently than people do in Accra. You have to respect that.”

“I was in no way discourteous to the man,” Dawson said coolly. “He felt insulted because he has an overinflated opinion of himself and thinks that as the chief executive of the STMA, he’s somehow above being questioned. He could be the president of Ghana, for all I care. If there’s a need to interrogate him fifty times, I will go back and do so fifty times.”

Out of the corner of his eye, Dawson saw Chikata freeze and hold his breath. For several moments, Hammond stared at Dawson in consternation. “What about you, Inspector Dawson?” he said finally. “Do you not have an inflated opinion yourself?”

Dawson mentally dismissed the question as irrelevant. “Would you like to hear what I learned from Mr. DeSouza that might be useful information, sir?”

“Go ahead,” Hammond said churlishly.

“He said there is, or was, a rumor that Fiona Smith-Aidoo was having an affair, but he could not say with whom. Sergeant Chikata has also heard that from a second source.”

“There are all sorts of rumors all the time,” Hammond contested. “Doesn’t mean they’re true.”

Dawson remained steadfast. “Yes, but Chikata and I will keep it in the back of our minds and follow up on it. I also interviewed Mr. Cardiman on Saturday.”

“And?”

“I agree it’s difficult to see how he could have ambushed the Smith-Aidoo’s vehicle.”

“So you went all the way to Cape Three Points to establish that,” Hammond said condescendingly.

“But if there was an accomplice—”

“Who? What accomplice?”

“Well, I don’t know that yet, but—”

“Okay, okay,” Hammond said impatiently. “Work on that theory,
if you like. I don’t know what you’ll get out of it, but it’s up to you. Regarding Mr. Smith-Aidoo’s mobile, I went to Vodafone, and they did a trace on the Lawrence Tetteh that Mr. Smith-Aidoo was communicating with. It’s not Tetteh, the CEO at Goilco. So we don’t need to concern ourselves with that question anymore.”

Dawson tensed as a hot streak flashed across his left palm like lightening. He paused a moment to let it subside. “Thank you for finding that out, sir.”

“No problem.”

Dawson’s phone rang, and he picked up the call. It was Jason Sarbah.

“I’ve spoken with Mr. Calmy-Rey, Inspector,” he said. “He will be available to meet with you at nine o’clock tomorrow morning at our offices. He is located on the top floor. You will be escorted there as soon as you arrive at reception.”

“Thank you very much, Mr. Sarbah.”

“You are welcome, Inspector.”

Dawson ended the call. “I have a meeting with Mr. Calmy-Rey tomorrow morning,” he told Hammond.

“Okay.”

“Were you able to interrogate him back in July, sir?”

“Yes. He had been out of the country at the time of the murder. He obviously thought very highly of Smith-Aidoo—no motive whatsoever to kill him or have him killed. Please, Inspector Dawson, do not antagonize Mr. Calmy-Rey.”

“I don’t intend to, sir,” Dawson said pleasantly. “Just one other thing I forgot to ask before. On the postmortem report by the pathologist Dr. Cudjoe, he didn’t mention gunpowder burns around Fiona Smith-Aidoo’s entrance wound. Did either of you attend the postmortem?”

Hammond shook his head. “Seidu was supposed to be there, but they gave him the wrong time and performed the autopsy in his absence. I was quite annoyed.”

“Do you have any contact number for Dr. Cudjoe?” Dawson asked.

“Yes. I’ll text it to you.”

“Thank you very much, sir.”

O
UTSIDE
,
AS SOON
as they were out of earshot, Chikata looked at Dawson in astonishment. “What is the man’s problem?”

Dawson shrugged. “Insecurity? I don’t know, but if he’s more concerned about hurting people’s feelings than he is about finding out who killed the Smith-Aidoos, there’s nothing I can do about that. Honestly, I don’t care anymore. I didn’t come here to make nice.”

“Do you want me to call my uncle about him?” Chikata asked, as they got back into Baah’s taxi.

Dawson shook his head. “No, it’s not worth it.” It was a consideration, but he didn’t want Chikata to put himself in an awkward position between Hammond and Lartey. “In any case, he might just call your uncle anyway, to complain about me.”

“Massa,” Chikata said, laughing, “I thought Superintendent Hammond was about to have a stroke when you pulled DeSouza down from his pedestal.”

“What I said was true,” Dawson asserted. “DeSouza had no reason to react so negatively to me—unless he’s the murderer, of course. In that case he has good reason.”

That remark set off another round of laughter for Chikata, with which Dawson eventually joined. Meanwhile, he saw he had just received Hammond’s text with Dr. Cudjoe’s number. He tried the number twice without success.

“Where now, sir?” Baah asked.

“Let’s go to the Effia-Nkwanta Hospital Mortuary to look for Dr. Cudjoe.” He turned in his seat to address Chikata. “Hammond wasn’t telling the truth about Smith-Aidoo’s phone. Either he didn’t take it to Vodafone at all, or the Lawrence Tetteh in the address book is really the Goilco CEO.”

“How do you know?” Chikata challenged. “Is it your
juju
hand again?”

He was one of the few who knew about Dawson’s synesthesia and had always referred to it as his “
juju
hand,” half seriously and half in jest.

“That’s right,” Dawson said.

“It’s as though the superintendent doesn’t want us to succeed,” Chikata said. “Why is he trying to hinder us, or is he protecting someone?”

“It could be both.”

T
WENTY MINUTES LATER
,
they pulled into the uphill driveway of the hospital, and Baah parked to the side. Dawson and Chikata went into the waiting area where patients were sitting or lining up at the information booth. A sign pointed to the HIV Voluntary Testing Clinic, but there was no signage for the mortuary. After asking two people in succession, they were directed up a long flight of steps and across the road. The mortuary was in a dismal grey building with odd, inverted U-structures on its roof.

They went in the open front door. At a small receptionist’s desk to the left, a man was laboriously writing in a large notebook. He looked up.

“Yes?”

“We’re looking for Dr. Cudjoe?”

“Please, you can try the office,” the man said, pointing across the hall.

Dawson and Chikata went in and found a tech in a khaki jacket looking through a filing cabinet.

“Very sorry,” the man said, in response to Dawson’s inquiry. “Dr. Cudjoe has traveled to Ashanti Region.”

“Do you know when he’ll return?”

“I’m not actually sure. Do you have his mobile number?”

“I have a number for him.”

Dawson brought up the number he had for Cudjoe on his phone and showed it to the man to be sure it was correct.

“Oh, no—it’s five-six-six at the end, not six-five-five.”

Dawson and Chikata exchanged glances but didn’t say anything until they were outside again.

“I bet you superintendent deliberately gave you the wrong number,” Chikata said.

“Perhaps,” Dawson said, inclining his head. “It could be a genuine mistake, though. I can see accidentally switching five-six-six to six-five-five.”

“I can’t,” Chikata said with conviction. “Considering everything else about Hammond’s behavior, I don’t think he made a mistake at all.”

A pretty, young nurse walked past them and Chikata’s head turned as if drawn by a cable.

“Nice,” he commented.

“Not as nice as my wife,” Dawson said.

“Yes, but I can’t have your wife,” Chikata said with a snort.

“True.”

A
S THEY RETURNED
from the hospital, a thunderstorm began, their first experience of rain in the Western Region. It put Accra’s showers to shame, and to the surprise of Dawson and Chikata, everyone seemed to have large, colorful umbrellas at the ready. In Accra, your umbrella was the nearest building you could find.

After hitting a few puddles, the taxi stalled out, and Dawson and Chikata jumped out to push after the ignition failed several times. The car came to life again after a few shudders, and Baah kept the engine revved while the other two men hopped back in, soaked to the skin.

“Let’s go home,” Dawson said. He didn’t like wet clothes.