Murder at Cape Three Points - страница 19

“Thank you. How did you recognize me so easily?”

“Have you forgotten your picture was in all the papers last year after you caught that serial killer?”

“Oh, I see,” Dawson said, laughing. “Yes, I had forgotten.”

They got into Abe’s car, a yellow Toyota Corolla. Abraham talked continuously as they made their way through the center of town. He had an easy laugh and was quite funny. He drove aggressively, which surprised Dawson because his nature seemed otherwise easygoing.

“Traffic is heavy,” Abraham commented.

“Not as bad as Accra,” Dawson replied. He looked around at the vehicles parked in marked spaces along the curb. Good luck persuading drivers to do that in the capital. White, yellow, green, and pink buildings with square facades evenly lined the pavement. The canopied first floors were businesses while the second and third floors were residences with decorative balconies.

“So the oil business has really made a difference here,” Dawson said.

“Oh, yes, both in town and out. New hotels, new houses, and new vehicles. Advertisements on the radio talk about offices being oil industry ready. We’ve become the Oil City.”

“Yes, I’ve heard that.”

“I hate that name.”

Dawson smiled at Abe’s obvious affection for his town.

“Here we are,” his cousin said, pulling into a parking space.

His shop, Abraham’s Stationery, on the corner of Ako Adjei and Kofi Annan Roads, was located opposite the Barclay’s Bank in a congested commercial area where vendor stalls packed the pavements. Before he took Dawson upstairs to the second floor where he and the family lived, Abraham showed him the shop.

One assistant stood behind the sales counter and a second one was high up on a ladder getting something for a customer. The shop wasn’t large, yet it was packed with every imaginable style, color, and size of copy paper, writing instruments, computer supplies, toner cartridges, and exercise books.

Dawson was impressed. “I like it. You have everything here.”

“Almost,” Abraham said. “I want to start carrying computers too, but I don’t know where I’m going to put them.”

“You’ve already outgrown yourself.”

“Yes, that is it.”

They exited the shop and went around to the rear of the building via a side alley.

They went up two flights of steps at the top of which Abraham’s wife, Akosua, was waiting. She was about her husband’s age, around forty. With an endearing dimpled smile, she greeted Dawson with the same elation that her husband had. Slim and straight, she was the physical opposite of Abraham, whose body was rounded off everywhere.

They had a cozy sitting room with a flat-screen TV, a small adjoining kitchen, and two bedrooms down a short hallway. After about an hour, Akosua announced that dinner was served. When she brought the dishes out to the table that she and their young housemaid had prepared, it was clear that they had put themselves out in the good tradition of Ghanaian hospitality. On a wide plate stood four smooth, perfectly shaped ovals of fufu brushed with a light coating of water to make them glisten. The fufu was made by strenuously pounding boiled cassava in a large mortar while adding water until it turned into a soft, glutinous mass.

Next to the plate of fufu was a deep bowl of steaming palm nut soup, its rich golden-red oil snaking languidly around succulent chunks of fish and turgid white eggplant. The sight and the aroma made Dawson’s salivary glands contract so hard that they hurt.

Akosua brought a towel, soap, and a two bowls of water to the table. She waited for the men to wash up before she followed suit. The three ate traditionally with the fingers of the right hand only. Like many, Dawson would tell you he loved fufu, but in fact it was really all about the soup. It provided the heavenly flavor as well as the lubricant for a generous chunk of fufu to pass from the lips to the back of the throat and down the gullet in one smooth motion. He was famished and had to moderate his impulse to eat at high speed, especially a meal this sumptuous. He burned energy like a racehorse and was hungry punctually every four hours. Yet he had never been prone to putting on weight. Because he was tall and lean, people often underestimated his physical strength.