Gold of Our Fathers - страница 19
No marks on his belly, which was an odd, mottled grayish-yellow color. At the sides of his trunk closest to the ground, the purplish-red coloration of pooled blood-lividity-suggested the position he had been in after death: on his belly. To confirm, Dawson turned the body, which rolled in one piece, like an artless statue. Yes, there was the blanched, oval section on Bao’s abdomen, where his weight had prevented blood from pooling.
Dawson took photos of all of this, because the lividity would change with time, and if it took a while to get the body to the morgue, which he suspected it would, the corpse would deteriorate in all sorts of other ways.
Sackie returned as Dawson was taking pictures of the ligature marks on Wei’s wrists and ankles.
“Someone is bringing the bags for you, sir,” Sackie said.
“Thank you. How is the victim’s brother doing?”
“He’s just sitting there saying nothing.”
“Tell Obeng to escort him back to the taxi and wait for us. I’m going to look at the other site. When the bags arrive, I want these ligatures collected, all the clothes, the pots and pans, the shotgun, and the bucket. Please don’t throw the water out. There could be traces of blood in it.”
“Yes, sir.”
Dawson walked back to take a look at the site’s lone excavator resting high on the crest of the collection of pits. It was sullen yellow in color and caked with mud. The long boom attached to the hydraulic arm and the intimidating claw bucket bore the manufacturer’s name-XCMG. Chinese make, Dawson supposed. He turned to look around, the slight elevation affording him a better view. Several hundred meters away in the dry, unforgiving laterite where only the hardiest plants grew, two Toyota pickups were parked at an angle to each other. Dawson assumed that they belonged to the Chinese brothers.
He took a walk down to look the trucks over. They were similar, although different models. One of them, dull charcoal in color, looked like it had taken quite a beating on bad roads. The other, clearly a newer pickup, was metallic red. Dawson tried the doors, but both were locked. The inside of the charcoal vehicle was full of trash and discarded food cans. The red one was decent. Dawson looked closely at the truck beds for any signs-especially bloodstains-that the vehicle had transported Bao’s body from another location. He couldn’t find anything, but whichever pickup belonged to the victim would have to go to the Motor Traffic Unit (MTU) at Regional Headquarters in Kumasi for further examination.
Returning to the site where the body had been dug out, Dawson saw a man and woman alighting from a silver-gray Toyota Prado at the edge of the site, where the crowd had now thinned out to just a half dozen or so. The man had a TV camera on his shoulder. Dawson made short work of the space between him and them.
“There’s no filming allowed,” he called out as he approached them. “This is a fresh crime scene we are still investigating. Please put the camera away.”
The man hesitated and didn’t quite obey.
“And who might you be?” the woman asked.
“Detective Chief Inspector Darko Dawson. And you are?”
“Good morning, Chief Inspector. Akua Helmsley. Environmental reporter for TheGuardian newspaper. I’m doing a documentary on illegal gold mining in Ghana.”
She had a British accent. Her skin was fair and flawless. She was tall for a woman-just a couple of inches shorter than Dawson. She gestured to the man behind her. “That’s my cameraman, Joshua Samuels.”
“Please, Mr. Samuels,” Dawson said, “put the camera back in the vehicle.”
Sullenly, Samuels put the camera down in the front passenger seat.
“What are you doing here?” Dawson asked Helmsley.
She seemed to smile somewhat as she considered him, as if a little amused. He didn’t let it bother him.
A light breeze lifted her flowing black hair slightly off her shoulders. “You’ve got a dead Chinese man, I understand, Chief Inspector,” she said. “Do you know who he is?”
“The investigation is only in its preliminary stages,” Dawson said. “I know almost nothing about him.”