He was looking for something recognizable from long ago, but nothing familiar had struck him so far. Even the road he was on was newly constructed and not the same one he had traveled with Mama and Cairo.
Dawson was to meet an Inspector Fiti at the police station. The directions were in his head. He turned right onto a fitfully paved road, drove slowly up a small incline, and pulled up to a small, stand-alone square building painted the signature dark blue with the words GHANA POLICE SERVICE-KETANU across the top in white.
Before the entrance itself, there was a small covered veranda, where three people were seated on a wooden bench. As he walked in, Dawson saw a counter at the front with space to fit no more than two people behind it. To his left, down a couple of steps, were two small jail cells, and to his right was an office whose door was shut.
Two constables in the standard GPS gray-and-black camouflage-like uniform were behind the counter doing some paperwork. The younger, round-faced one, who looked to be in his mid-twenties, looked up inquiringly.
“Good afternoon, sir. You are welcome.”
“Good afternoon. I’m Detective Inspector Dawson, Accra CID.”
The constable stood up even straighter.
“Yes, sir, Inspector Dawson, sir. I’m Constable Gyamfi.” They shook hands. “That is Constable Bubo over there.”
“Good afternoon, sir,” Bubo said, standing up with an acknowledging nod.
“I will let Inspector Fiti know you are here, sir,” Gyamfi said, coming around from behind the counter. He knocked on the closed office door, opened it, and put his head in.
“Please, sir, Detective Inspector Dawson from Accra is here.”
“Who?” Dawson heard the inspector say.
“D.I. Dawson, sir. From CID, sir.”
“From Accra, you say?”
“Yes, sir.”
There was silence for a moment. The door opened fully, and Inspector Fiti emerged. He was probably in his late forties, pointy-faced with a thick neck and sweat rings at the armpits of his olive shirt, which was coming undone from underneath his paunch. He seemed both puzzled and wary as he approached Dawson.
“Good afternoon, Detective Inspector,” he said. “Can I do anything for you?” His voice was coarse and sticky, like freshly laid asphalt.
Now it was Dawson who was puzzled. “I’m here regarding the murder case? Gladys Mensah?”
Fiti looked blank. “I was expecting someone from Ho.”
“I don’t know much about that part,” Dawson said. “All I was told by my chief super was that the minister of health wanted Accra CID to be in charge.”
“Who is your chief superintendent?”
“Theophilus Lartey.”
“Oh, yes. I know him.”
A trim, clean-shaven, baby-faced man had been hovering behind Fiti in the doorway of the office, but now he approached Dawson.
“Welcome, Detective Inspector,” he said, shaking hands. His voice was gentle but resilient, like the sensation of soft, wet grass on bare feet, and his inflection hinted at some significant stay in England. “I’m Timothy Sowah, program director of the Health Service AIDS program in the Volta Region. Gladys Mensah was doing volunteer work with us. She was the best. These past three days have been horrendous.”
“Excuse me one minute,” Inspector Fiti said brusquely, returning to his office and shutting the door.
“He doesn’t seem very happy I’m here,” Dawson said, lowering his voice.
Timothy made a face. “No, he doesn’t.”
Seconds later they could hear Fiti on the phone asking someone at the Ho station what was going on.
“Can I have a word with you outside?” Timothy said to Dawson.
They stepped out.
“Don’t let this on to Inspector Fiti,” Timothy said, “but I had a lot to do with your being here instead of the chap from Ho.”
Dawson was surprised. “You did?”
“Yes. Look, I was worried. I wanted to be sure we got someone really good on the case. I know the CID chap stationed at Ho, and I’m sorry, I’m not impressed. I couldn’t take the risk. I really want this murder solved. So I called the minister, and he agreed to have Accra handle it. So here you are. Trouble is, I’m sure everyone thought everyone else was going to inform Inspector Fiti, and so it ended up no one did. I apologize if I’ve caused a bit of an incident.”
“It’s all right,” Dawson said. “At least now I’m clear how it happened.”
“Let’s go back inside.”
Inspector Fiti had emerged from his office again. “Accra CID is always doing this,” he said bitterly. “They think we can’t handle our own affairs.”
“I’m sorry to have caught you unawares, Inspector,” Dawson said. “I’m here to help, that’s all.”
Fiti heaved a sigh. “Okay. Anyway, you can come into my office.”
It was small and jumbled, as untidy as Inspector Fiti himself. Tilting stacks of papers on the desk were gathering dust, and there was more chaos on the floor. There were only two chairs, and Fiti asked Constable Gyamfi to bring in a third. It was hot and airless in the room despite the whirring ceiling fan. Squashed close to the other two men with the door shut, Dawson felt suffocated.
His first order of business was to let Sowah and the inspector know the latest, and he told them about the autopsy on Gladys.
“Strangled,” Timothy said, looking stunned. “Strangled, my God.”
“Do you have the autopsy report?” Inspector Fiti asked.
“Yes, I do,” Dawson said, handing it over to Fiti, who read it in silence.
“I see,” he said curtly when he was done. “I would like to make a copy.”
“Of course,” Dawson said.
Fiti got up and removed some papers from the top of a small photocopy machine.
“Can you give me your version of the chronology of the events around Gladys Mensah’s death, Inspector?” Dawson asked as Fiti began to copy the first page.
“Chronology,” Fiti said slowly, as if considering the nuances of the word.
“When the body was found and so on.”
“Yes, I know what the word chronology means,” Fiti said.
“I apologize, Inspector.”
“Today is Tuesday. Gladys went to Bedome on last Friday in the afternoon. She was killed sometime during the evening or night of Friday. On Saturday morning, Gladys’s brother Charles came to report her missing, and on the same morning, Efia, a woman from Bedome, found her body. Crime scene unit came in the afternoon and took their photographs and all those things, and then the body was taken to the VRA morgue on Saturday night to await the postmortem.”
“Did the crime scene guys say when they’d be ready with their report?”
“They said next week,” Fiti replied with a shrug. “They always say next week. It could be next year.”
“You’re right,” Dawson agreed. “Back to Gladys, though. What was she doing in Bedome?”
“She was a volunteer with the GHS AIDS outreach program,” Timothy explained. “We provide voluntary counseling and testing-VCT-in both urban and rural areas, and we have a limited supply of antiretroviral medicines to dispense to HIV-positive people, especially for pregnant women.”
“You use a lot of volunteers?”
“A few. We have an arrangement with the medical schools. Every year they provide us with three or four medical students who do their electives with us. Gladys was one of them. Ketanu and Bedome were on our VCT list this year, and she picked those.”
“Was she the only volunteer for the two towns?”
“Yes.”
“Might there be anyone in Ketanu or Bedome who didn’t like what Gladys was doing?”
Timothy took a breath. “Unfortunately, yes. She clashed badly with Bedome’s head priest-name’s Togbe Adzima-over this trokosi business. Have you heard about it, Inspector Dawson? These women they call trokosi? Supposedly wives of the gods serving at a shrine as penance for a family crime? They’re often brought to the shrine as girls as young as nine, and once they reach puberty, the fetish priests begin to have sex with them.”