Murder at Cape Three Points - страница 9

“Have you spoken to him since the time he told you on the phone that he hoped the death of a loved one never happened to you?”

“Months after the murder, we met once at an event in Accra. I told him I was sorry, and he gave me his condolences in turn.”

Dawson saw there was a lot to think about here: Jason Sarbah had been anguished and angered by his daughter’s death and probably still was, but he was also an ambitious man looking for a lucrative career. Was the murder of his cousin Charles a kind of two for one-get revenge and get his job? No, that seemed too neat, like an attractively wrapped box containing nothing.

Dawson became aware that Dr. Smith-Aidoo had been watching him ponder. “When do you return to Takoradi?” he asked her.

“Tomorrow. When do you expect to get there?”

“Tuesday afternoon or evening.”

“I will call you Wednesday morning sometime.”

They stood up.

“It warmed my heart to see your boy doing so well, Inspector,” she said. “I think it’s a good omen for the way the investigation will go.”

Dawson hoped she was right. In his experience, omens were overrated.

ON SATURDAY AFTERNOON, AFTER Dawson had spent time with Hosiah at the hospital, he rode his aging motorbike to CID Headquarters on Ring Road East. It was a seven-story, ailing building the color of dirty sand. It looked no more significant than an old apartment building. Its appearance didn’t match its impressive name, Criminal Investigations Department.

Except for the ground floor charge office where a certain amount of chaos was standard, CID was quiet on the weekends. Dawson took the narrow stairway to the fourth floor where he let himself into the detective’s room, greeting the only other person there, a detective sergeant preparing for a big court case on Monday.

On most days, the room was stifling, but today a soft breeze came through the louvered windows on either side. Only senior officers, assistant superintendent, and above, got air-conditioned rooms. Junior ones, from constable to chief inspector, did not. If Dawson ever wanted to have the high privilege of an air-conditioned room one day, he was going to have to knuckle down, comply with Lartey’s orders and solve this case.

He sat at his desk to examine the Smith-Aidoos’ case docket, whose front cover was the standard appearance of all such police records.

DOCKET GHANA POLICE FORCE

Date of offense Monday, 9 July/Tuesday, 10 July

Complainant Sapphire, Smith-Aidoo, MD

Principal Witness(es)

Sapphire, Smith-Aidoo, MD

George Findlay (Offshore Oil Installation Manager, Malgam)

Michael Glagah (Safety Officer, Malgam Oil)

Clifford Stewart (Crane Operator, Malgam Oil)

Ghana Navy Service personnel

Accused ____________________

Offense HOMICIDE

Victim(s) Charles Smith-Aidoo, Fiona Smith-Aidoo

He opened the folder and flinched. Front and center was a printed image of Charles Smith-Aidoo’s severed head stuck to the end of a gnarled, wooden pole like a gruesome lollipop. It looked both real and unreal, like a botched waxworks beginning to swell up and melt in the heat. The mouth gaped. The left eye was partially open, and the right eye had been removed. Dawson imagined the murderer holding the head firmly while pressing and screwing it down onto the erected stake. He shuddered and began to feel nauseated. Cutting off a person’s limbs was vile, but decapitation crossed a line into a realm of brutality that he could not understand.

Charles’s headless body had been propped up against one side of the canoe’s interior, dark irregular bloodstains around the neckline of his shirt. The murderer seemed to have mounted a display for maximum, sickening impact. Fiona Smith-Aidoo’s body was stretched along the floor of the canoe behind her husband’s. It appeared crumpled, more carelessly thrown-less staged than his.

Dawson had to stop looking at the photo. In his last case, a serial killer had disfigured his adolescent victims, but there, it had been the number killed that defined the horror. None of the individual victims had been inflicted with this degree of cruelty.