“Togbe was beating her because she talked to me. I won’t allow that. She deserves our protection.”

“You could have stopped him without beating him up. He is the High Priest of Bedome!”

“There wasn’t any time to be nice about it.”

Fiti dropped his head and rubbed it as if nursing a headache.

“They insist on sending someone from Accra instead of our own man from Ho,” he said, almost to himself. “Our own man from Ho is no good. And so whom do they send? You. You. Beating up a priest of this shrine. I just can’t believe it.”

Fiti went over to Efia and had a few words with her. From where Dawson stood, the inspector at first seemed sympathetic to her, but when he waved her away, the gesture looked callous. She looked once at Dawson, and he could see she was crying.

Suddenly she came back and clasped his hands. “Please, Mr. Dawson, sir. Take my daughter away from here to live a good life. Please, I beg you.”

Then she turned and ran away.

Nunana noticed how silent and downcast Efia was as she scooped the pounded fufu into a pot.

“What’s wrong, Efia?”

Efia shook her head, but she didn’t say a word.

Nunana touched Efia’s left cheek, and she flinched. “He beat you?”

Efia nodded.

“Why?”

She shook her head.

“Come here,” Nunana said. “Come.”

She led Efia away so they could have some privacy.

“What happened?” Nunana pressed her. “You might as well tell me. I will find out in the end anyway. Why did he beat you?”

“Because I talked to the policeman from Accra.”

“About what?”

“Gladys.”

“But why did you do that?”

“I thought we were safe-but someone saw us and told Togbe.”

“Ao, Efia!” Nunana said. “Don’t you know you have to be careful? These people who come here from Accra just do their business and go home and never think of us again. You don’t know that? Don’t talk to them!”

Efia nodded, wiping tears away.

“What did he ask you?” Nunana said. “The policeman.”

“Just what I saw that day. You know-how I found Gladys. And what Togbe was doing that evening she came here and if they were quarreling, and if he went somewhere after she left.”

“And what else?”

“If I’ve seen a silver bracelet they say Gladys was wearing before she died and now it’s gone, and I told him I haven’t seen anything like that.”

Nunana’s blood ran cold, and at once she knew what had happened. After Efia had rushed back to Bedome to report Gladys’s death, Togbe had gone to the plantain grove to “see for himself.” He must have arrived there before anyone else, and when he saw that bracelet on dead Gladys’s wrist, he just could not resist taking it. Nunana’s lip curled. What kind of man steals jewelry off a dead body?

Just then she had another thought that took her breath away and left her matchstick legs unsteady. What if… what if Togbe had taken Gladys’s bracelet even before that? Say, at the time she was killed? In other words, what if Togbe had murdered Gladys?

24

NOT A GOOD DAY .

Inspector Fiti, in a state of high distress and agitation, had kicked Dawson out of Bedome. Like a chastened schoolboy, Dawson had obediently returned to Ketanu, which was bruising to his ego but probably the better part of valor.

He lay on the bed in the guesthouse and stared at the water spots on the ceiling. Now that adrenaline was no longer suffusing his brain, now that he was calm enough to think, he wondered exactly what had happened. He didn’t remember anything clearly beyond the point at which he’d entered Togbe Adzima’s house. After that it was a clouded memory, like a river laden with swirling silt. This wasn’t Dawson’s first such experience. It had been the same when he had beaten up the rapist for his disgusting comment about little girls. He didn’t recall striking him or how many times, but at the end of it all, someone’s face was a bloody mess and it wasn’t Dawson’s.

The eeriness of it was that he couldn’t physically feel anything while he was in attack mode. Was he outside himself watching his shell, or was he inside completely insulated from sensation? What was the explosion that went off inside him? Did he get it from his father?

Now he was annoyed that he was spending time and energy trying to figure himself out when he should have been contemplating the case.

His mobile rang, and he fumbled for it in his pocket.

“Hello?”

It was Christine. “Dark, I’ve been trying to reach you for hours.”

Dawson heard the tremor in her voice, and he sat up rigid.

“What’s wrong?”

“It’s Hosiah.”

Dawson’s heart stopped.

“He’s going to be okay, Dark, but he’s been hurt.”

“What happened?”

“Mama took him to Augustus Ayitey this morning.”

“Who?”

“Augustus Ayitey, the traditional healer she mentioned the other day.”

“Go on.”

“They were trying to make Hosiah go through some kind of cleansing ritual-don’t ask me what-but he was putting up a fight and while that was going on he hit his head against the tub or bowl or whatever it was and burst his scalp open.”

“But he’s all right?”

“Apart from being terrified and having to get stitches in his head, yes.”

“I’m coming home right now.”

“Please be careful driving. I don’t want anything to happen to you.”

“Nothing will.”

It was just after dusk when Dawson got home. He had broken every possible speed record getting back to Accra. Hosiah burst into tears the moment his father walked in. Dawson scooped him up in his arms and sat down on the sofa next to Christine.

“Daddy’s home now,” Dawson said softly. “Daddy’s home.”

He rocked Hosiah back and forth for a while and then took a quick look at the scalp wound. It had been neatly closed up, but there was still a little dried blood around it.

“Eight stitches,” Christine said. “Mama took him to the University Hospital.”

“Does it hurt?” Dawson asked Hosiah.

“Yes,” he said, sniffing his tears away.

“You want Daddy to check it and see if it’s all right?”

“Okay.”

“Here, wipe your nose.”

Hosiah messily scrubbed at his face with a tissue Christine had ready. Dawson made an elaborate show of peering at Hosiah’s scalp and turning his head this way and that.

“It’s almost all better already,” he said brightly. “Soon you won’t even know it’s there.”

“What does it look like, Daddy?”

“You want to see? I can show you if you like.”

Hosiah agreed, and Dawson took him to the bathroom, where he used a hand mirror and the mirror over the sink to show Hosiah a reflection of his injured scalp.

“Oh,” he said.

“See?” Dawson said. “It’s not that bad, is it? And when they take the little stitches out in a few days, everything will be healed up.”

“Why do they have to take the stitches out?” Hosiah asked in alarm.

“They can’t leave them inside your head, Hosiah. You know how Teddy Bear has sewing in his head?”

“Yah?”

“You want to have a head like Teddy Bear?”

Hosiah giggled. “No.”

“All right then, so that’s why they have to take them out.”

“But will it hurt?”

“It might a little bit, but not as much as it hurt today.”

Christine and Dawson gave their son a bedtime snack of warm, sweetened akasa and then took him to bed. Before Hosiah went to sleep, though, they had the painful task of explaining that Daddy would have to go away again in the morning and would not be there when Hosiah woke up. This caused more crying and clinging, and it took quite some time to get him to settle down for his bedtime story.

Unlike on an ordinary night, Hosiah wanted Daddy to stay with him for a while, so Dawson lay down next to his son until Hosiah’s breathing turned rhythmic and he was fast asleep. Dawson left a night-light on, went out to the sitting room, and sat down next to Christine. She was staring morosely at the floor.