Murder at Cape Three Points - страница 15
“She’s angry with me.”
“What happened?”
Sly bowed his head even further and wrung his fingers. It didn’t look like the answer was forthcoming, so Dawson proceeded to the bedroom. On most occasions, these upsets were minor. Maybe not this time, he thought, as he heard Hosiah crying. He stopped in the doorway. Christine was sitting on the bed holding her son close as he whimpered and sniffled against her chest. For a panicky moment, Dawson thought perhaps something had gone wrong with his heart condition, but then they would have kept him in hospital, surely?
Dawson’s appearance apparently unleashed a fresh round of tears from Hosiah. He sat on the bed next to his son, who promptly launched into his arms and held on tight. Dawson raised his eyebrows questioningly at Christine. He wished someone would tell him what was going on.
“On Saturday when you went next door,” Christine told him quietly, “you left your docket on the sitting room table. Apparently Sly opened it and saw the picture, and today he told Hosiah about it and frightened him.”
Dawson drew in his breath sharply and closed his eyes for a moment in the painful realization of what had happened. The cardinal rule was that his sons never see any autopsy or murder photographs.
He rubbed Hosiah’s head gently back and forth. That usually comforted him. “Shh. It’s okay. Are you scared?”
The boy nodded. Dawson shifted him to his knee so they were facing each other.
“Tell Daddy why you’re afraid. You have to stop crying, though. Here, blow your nose.”
He held a hanky to Hosiah’s nose and he made a reasonable effort.
“That’s better,” Dawson said. He kissed him on the forehead. “Now what’s wrong?”
Hosiah spoke haltingly as he fiddled with his father’s fingers. “I don’t want you to go to look for the juju man.”
“What juju man?”
“The one who makes people’s heads come off. Sly told me that’s why you’re going to Takoradi.”
“I see,” Dawson said. “You’re scared that there’s a juju man who might hurt Daddy?”
Hosiah nodded, his face beginning to crumple again.
“No, no,” Dawson said, forestalling another teary performance. “No more crying. Listen to me. What Sly saw isn’t because of juju. You know I catch bad people, right?”
“Yes, Daddy.”
“Okay, so this bad man is just the same as all the other ones I catch. He’s afraid of me, so he’s not going to try to cut off my head. In fact, you know what he’s going to do when he sees me?”
“What?”
“He’s going to run away.”
Hosiah looked at him with a glimmer of encouragement creeping to his face.
“And then you know what’s going to happen while he’s running away?” Dawson asked.
“What?”
“He’s going to run right into the kenkey woman at the market and trip over all her balls of kenkey.”
Hosiah looked at him for a second of bewilderment and then giggled at the unexpected, conjured image of the starchy, solid balls of fermented corn meal flying all over the place. “No, he’s not, Daddy.”
“He is,” Dawson insisted, grinning.
“And then he’s going to get all stuck in the kenkey balls,” Hosiah laughed, his imagination sparked, “and the kenkey woman will say, ‘Hey, what are you doing in my kenkey balls?’ And then he’ll have kenkey balls all over his body, and she’ll make him pay for them, won’t she, Daddy?”
“Yes, exactly right. And that will be the end of that. Then Sergeant Chikata and I will take him to the police station. What do you think?”
Hosiah nodded uncertainly once and then with more conviction. Dawson glanced at Christine, who was smiling but still looked concerned.
“Has he had lunch?” he asked her.
“He didn’t have as much as he usually does.”
“Are you hungry now?” Dawson asked Hosiah.
He nodded enthusiastically and Christine took his hand. “Come along. I’ll get you some more to eat.”
DAWSON RESTED HIS hand on Sly’s shoulder and guided him outside to the backyard. The boy was shaking and Dawson knew why. A sound beating was the only kind of punishment he had known while in the care of his ill-mannered uncle. Now he was fearful that his new father was about to continue the tradition.
“Tell me what happened,” Dawson said as they took shelter from the sun under an awning he had constructed a couple of years ago. “Start from the beginning.”