Lagos Noir

Choir Boy by 'Pemi Aguda

Berger

You want to know the story of the woman who cradles her naked breasts and thrusts them into the faces of strangers? Madwoman, you call her. But what do you know?

You want to know if hers is the story of the grieving mother: the mother whose baby entered the world quiet and blue and too well behaved to be alive. If her breasts became so heavy with milk that her mind broke, snapped so badly that she offers her dead baby’s milk to anyone who will have it.

No, that is not her story.

Okay, now you’re asking if hers is the story of a woman so consumed by her own vanity that she turned every man away. If it is the story of a spurned suitor who spoke a sentence to two sticks at three in the morning and caused her brain to scramble. And now maybe she begs every man on the street to look at her big brown nipples and fall back in love.

But you’re wrong again, that’s not her story.

I’ll tell you her story. But first I have to tell you my story. I am not happy to tell it, but everything is connected. Isn’t every story dependent on another story? Isn’t everything connected?

Please be patient, I will tell you my story. Then I will tell you hers.

It was one of those Friday nights when that big church had their monthly services. The roads were blocked as usual. I sat in that danfo with as many people as the conductor could convince to enter — they were up to six in one row. We were headed to Berger, where my own church was having a night program for the choir members. Mm-hmm, I was a chorister.

No, not anymore. But I am coming to that. Calm down, please. You are the one who has asked for the woman’s story. Every story is connected.

I used to sing so beautifully that many people cried. I would stand on that elevated sacred stage with the purple carpet, and as I opened my throat and let the sounds caress the microphone in worship, the people would look up at me, eyes wide and glazed, tears rolling down either side of their open mouths like brackets. It is the closest I have ever felt to a god.

But that night, stuck between a smallish woman, unnervingly still, and a snoring man, I could feel the frustrations of the whole bus. It was palpable in the humid night air hanging over us in that dark bus. The lights from the phone screens reflected on the exposed metal roof and played tricks on my tired eyes. People sighed, hissed, and cursed Lagos, the church, the air, and even their parents for birthing them in Nigeria.

I wasn’t as bothered as most on the bus; I was going to be early for my program no matter how long we were stuck in traffic. My plan was to get to church early, pray for an hour, then practice some new songs before others started coming in. Let me tell you, my friend — things aren’t always as they should be, you know? See, whenever I got off that stage in church, I became regular. I don’t understand it. Segun, who didn’t make anyone cry when he sang, whose alto sounded like a broken blender — he was the choir director. He was the one fucking all the tenor girls.

I’m sorry; I don’t mean to shock you. I’m just saying it as it is. How did I know? Well, because I am — was — that guy who all the girls confided in. The one who goes unnoticed in the corner of the room until someone else breaks their heart and then they realize, Oh, this one has the perfect shoulder to receive my tears, and his ears are just small enough to hear my secrets and keep them in.

I’m not distracted, I’m getting there! I’m coming to it. You should know everything is layered, don’t ask for an abridged version — you owe it to the story.

So, everyone was tense and uncomfortable in that sardine tin of a bus. It smelled too, like the sweat and exhaustion of the whole week. Nobody complained when the driver decided to try a short cut, a corner-corner road beside Road Safety. You know it? No, the one after the filling station. Yes, that one.

Anyway, it was that fat policewoman sitting in front who suggested it. So, even if we had to pass a one-way to get there, she was going to be our golden ticket. Or can police arrest police in Lagos?

Can you tell when you are about to enter trouble? Can you? Me, I can’t. Even when I had that accident last week, it was because I didn’t see the okada coming. Everyone asked me: “How were you hit by an ordinary okada when you could have jumped out of the way?” I have no answer. I think my survival instincts go numb instead of peaking when danger is around.

Anyway, the conductor jumped out of the bus and directed the driver away from the crawling thread of cars. The gap we created was quickly filled by other hungry vehicles. Even when the smallish woman tensed further, folding herself closer into her body as if trying hard to make no contact, my senses were not triggered. And when the snoring man jerked awake, I assumed it was the sudden increase in speed. I went back to my phone.

It wasn’t until the first person demanded to know how the street we were on linked to Berger; until the conductor jabbed his elbow into the man who tried to reach around him to open the door; it wasn’t till we pulled onto the dirt road with no lights that my hands started to shake.

Suddenly, the bus was full of noise. There were many plaintive cries to Jesus and Allah, and some to the driver and conductor. Someone demanded that the policewoman do something but she stayed quiet. So quiet.

Everything happened quickly after that. I started to text someone — anyone — to tell them I was being abducted, but the bus had swung into a compound. Figures appeared from the shadows to lock the gate behind us. I did not feel like it was quite happening to me yet, it was too surreal — like I was watching a bad Nollywood movie.

And then there were guns and many men yanking us out of the bus. Shaking a bucket in our faces: Drop your phones, drop your phones. Nokias and iPhones and HTCs fell into the plastic bucket amidst Hello? and Ha, what’s happening here, is someone screaming?

I let mine go easily.

We were under a large tree with a single floodlight directed downward. It looked like the setting for an outdoor play. I could see the policewoman more clearly then. She was wide. The buttons of her black shirt barely held her breasts inside. The gaps between each button were shadowy ellipses. I turned away. I wondered if she was a real policewoman gone rogue, or an imposter. Those uniforms are so easy to imitate, you know?

“Officer?” the conductor called out to her from the entrance of the bus.

She cocked her head toward some building and headed there herself. I tried to squint past the tree, past the darkness that withheld the rest of the compound from my eyes — but nothing. We were forced into a queue and directed toward the building. Two buff men started to pat us down and check our bags for valuables. I saw more phones, iPads, and other devices I didn’t recognize. There was a bottle of wine. Another man stood behind, collecting bank cards and asking us to write down our PINs.

The queue moved slowly. I tried to make a mental list of all the items in my bag. Some woman in front of me had tried to do a physical appraisal of her bag’s contents and got slapped by the driver, who had now joined the party. He was a tall man who walked stooped over; he had a toothpick hanging from his mouth. He never said a word.

My Bible. My song notepad. Some music sheets. My wallet. About two thousand naira? Two bank cards — one empty, the other still bursting with my administrative assistant salary that had been paid only the week before.

I had the time of four people ahead of me to decide if I was ready to part with my money by giving them the correct PIN.

But what if they hurt us if they found out we lied?

Then there were three people between me and a decision.

I tried to peep behind the officer and bouncers to see if there was anyone with a gun. I hadn’t seen any yet, and I didn’t know whether to be pacified or terrified of the unknown.

She was staring at me, the officer.

I turned away from her eyes. They were dark slits above swells of fair round cheeks. Then there was one person.

She was still staring at me.

I am not a manly looking man, as you can see. My shoulders aren’t wide enough, my mustache won’t grow past these sketchy strands, and I’m only five-seven. Is that why the choir girls preferred Segun to me? Who knows? The officer was staring at me as if I was more than this skinny person who was doing everything to avoid her gaze.

Then I was standing before the trio. The first man gently took my bag from me. I still didn’t look up. I studied the black tennis shoes of Thug A and the peeling leather of Thug B’s boots.

“What’s your name?” I didn’t answer immediately. The officer’s voice was raspy but soft, like something was pressing down her throat. Maybe fat.

“You no hear Officer?”

I stuttered, said my name. I still didn’t look up.

I moved on to the next man, who collected my bank cards; I wrote down the correct PIN.

The space was bare terrazzo floors and peeling paint on brown walls that opened to glassless windows. Wooden benches sat in rows and we filled them one by one after being stripped of our belongings. The silent roof yawned above us, with its exposed beams and creaking iron sheets. Five fluorescent tubes stuck to the beams lit up the space; a sixth one blinked loudly, causing my eyes to twitch.

To an outsider we would have looked like people waiting for their driver’s licenses at a government office. Except for the occasional moan, whimper, or burst of prayer, we would have passed. I was back beside the still woman. She stared straight ahead with her arms around her chest. I hoped she was all right.

And then we waited. We heard two bikes rev and leave the compound, to the ATMs, I assumed. They left behind a cricket-filled silence that bore down on us from the darkness outside. My pulse played a wild beat in my neck. I kept my gaze level with the sweat-stained brown collar of the man in front of me.

And then the officer called out my name. I froze before I twisted to the back. The still woman finally turned to stare at me in confusion. I’m not one of them, I wanted so badly to clarify to her gentle brown eyes. She just asked for my name! Instead I turned my head slowly toward the exit.

“Me?”

“You.”

I held my lighter bag in my hand as I bumped against the knees of my fellow abductees to get out to the aisle.

“What is that in your bag?”

My heartbeat doubled, if that was possible. I started to worry that I had somehow managed to hide something from them.

My neck went hot. “Wh-what?”

Her hand pointed to the bag. Her wrist and fingers were so tiny, out of proportion with the rest of her. Like someone had tied a rubber band there to prevent the fat from seeping into her hands. I looked from the bag to her hand.

“Ma?”

Yes, so I was a timid man, still am depending on the situation. Have you ever been stared down by a huge policewoman with one tiny hand in her trouser pockets and the other pointing at your bag?

I opened the bag and peered inside. She reached over herself and pulled out my music sheets. “This.”

“Oh,” I sighed, “it’s just music.”

“Music?”

“Yes, ma.” Sweat slid down my neck to glide down my spine. My T-shirt stuck to it.

“You’re a musician?” She leaned back against the doorless frame.

“No, ma, I’m a chorister.”

“For church?”

“Yes, ma.”

She gestured for me to follow her outside the building. I trailed her around to the side with no windows. I missed the light.

“So you sing in church?” She was leaning against the wall. I could no longer see her clearly, just a dark outline of a sinister mass.

“Yes, ma.”

“Choir?”

“Yes, ma.”

“Shey, your God will forgive us for this one we don do tonight?”

Who was I to preach repentance to a woman who held my safety in her tiny hands? I nodded, mute.

“Oya, sing for me.” The request was whispered. I pretended not to hear. I took a tiny step backward.

“Oya. Sing for me.” It was louder this time. No longer a request. A demand.

“I... I can’t sing, ma.”

I didn’t think there was space but she reached behind her to pull a small gun from her waistband. This was my first time seeing a gun up close. It glinted dully in the little light it could catch. Then I felt it against my skin, smack in the middle of my forehead.

“Oya, choir boy, I said sing for me.”

My mouth opened and closed. I swallowed air, coughed it out. Then: “In Christ alone my hope is found; He is my light, my strength, my song...”

I stared down at my leather slippers, at the dust, at a new wound on the little toe of my right foot.

The officer moved her gun to tip my chin back up. I was forced to look at her, to survey her forehead, gleaming with sweat; her nose, wide and oily; her tiny eyes, beady things squinting at me; her big lips, painted in flaky brown, curled up to one side.

“This cornerstone, this solid ground, firm through the fiercest drought and storm...” My voice was small, my notes halting as they left my mouth. Don’t think of church, don’t think of the altar, I told myself. “What heights of love, what depths of peace...”

And then her other hand rose to my waist. It raised my T-shirt up, her hand grazing my jutting pelvic bone. She moved the gun back to my forehead and then she tucked a hand into a belt loop and pulled me forward. I closed my eyes. She did not prompt me to open them.

“When fears are stilled, when strivings cease...”

She unbuckled my belt with one hand. Then she yanked my penis into her grip. I was limp all over. I swallowed air; I couldn’t sing anymore. Her hands were sweaty against me. I swallowed air again. I swallowed nothing. I pinched my eyes shut tighter.

Her gun tapped my chin again. “Finish your song.”

“My comforter, my all in all... Here in the love of Christ I stand.”

She stood there with her eyes closed, working on my thing slowly with her lips turned up in that way. I wanted to bash her skull into the wall behind; watch it splatter. But there was that gun and there was me — the skinny timid man whose shoulder the choir girls cry on after fucking Segun.

Is it still worship if the ears that hear it belong to a criminal? If the eyes that drift shut at its sound belong to this woman with her hands down my trousers?

She let go of me suddenly, as if disgusted by my lack of response. She tucked her gun back into her waistband and stalked away. Her gait was a horizontal sway, one heavy tread after the other. I tidied myself and started to walk back, hesitantly, to join the others. I wondered if they’d heard me singing. I realized I had tears on my cheeks when I saw the stooped driver cocking his head at me. The policewoman didn’t look at me again.

They let us go eventually. The people who gave the correct PINs were put into the bus and dropped off at Berger. I don’t know what happened to the other people; my still neighbor was one of them. The traffic had cleared by then, and I went straight to church where I sat in the back and cried all through the program. Everyone thought it was the Holy Ghost.

I’m only telling you this so you will understand what it did to me. Yes, I have come to her story. It is a short one, but you need to remember how this episode had affected me — I couldn’t sing in church anymore without remembering slimy hands against a flaccid cock. So I left.

Yes, I’ve gotten to it.

It was past eleven p.m. another night — slightly over a year after my... you know, the episode. I was only just starting to relax again in night buses.

You ask me why I didn’t stop taking buses? Ah, what could I do? Nothing. There are no options for a poor man. Poor man has to work; poor man cannot afford to live on the island; poor man closes really late. I had to suffer through the journeys, my butt clenched so hard on the thin pads that did nothing to cushion against the metal frames. Peering at every passenger for a sign of duplicity.

Anyway, I was in a bus heading toward Yaba from Obalende. We’d gotten to that stretch of road that ramps off the Third Mainland Bridge. The only street where lights repel the police and attract hooligans? The one people speed past because of all the horror stories? Well, we didn’t go fast enough for this story. The robbers stopped us with the tires that littered the road, so close to our destination.

It was the night I almost pissed my pants when I saw a gun for the second time. And this woman was sitting beside me, and she trembled and I trembled. We all trembled. It must have been a slow night for them to be stopping a danfo. The road yawned empty and ominous before and behind us.

They knocked the bus conductor unconscious because all his bus stop bravado had been reduced to a murmuring mess of Yoruba gibberish. One of them had the driver lying flat under his foot. The other three asked us to bring out our phones, bags, and money. I was seated in the row directly behind the conductor and it didn’t take many whimpers and growls before it was my turn. I handed over my cheap Nokia, familiar with the routine.

And then the one with the long fingernail on his pinkie saw her. He had a knife, and I remember thinking it was quite fancy with its decorated handle of gleaming stones. But the curve and glint of the knife laid any illusions of fancy to waste. He pointed the knife at her, then jerked it to point outside. She obeyed. I had to clamber out of my window seat so she could pass. I admit that I immediately plastered myself against the bus to try to render myself invisible.

Then, with the knife resting on her collarbone, I saw him rip her blouse open. It was a loose floral shirt that was cut high. But she had those breasts that would announce themselves even in a nun’s habit. I am indicted by the memory of watching them jiggle over the bumps in the road that night.

The ripping sound was loud. She stepped back, recoiling. The man raised the heavy handle of the knife and hit her head with a dull thump. She whimpered and stood still. His gang paused to look at him, clearly surprised at this twist. One chuckled and called him an omo ale — bastard. Pulling breasts out of her lacy navy-blue bra, he lowered his head and took a nipple into his mouth.

I remember his shirt, you see. It was one of those green My Money Grows Like Grass tees. I remember his neck; it was strained at that angle — I could see his spine pressing out of his sweaty skin. I remember the silence.

Oh, it was silent. I couldn’t stop looking from between my fingers. No, don’t look at me that way. I couldn’t. Was it the horror that had me frozen? I don’t know. Maybe I wanted to see if she would handle it differently than I had? But then, she had a bigger audience.

It was silent except for his suckling and little moans. Everyone stayed quiet as he moved from left to right, and right to left. The blood trickled down her face from the skin his knife had split below her hairline.

It is because I couldn’t stop looking that I saw when she left her body behind. Her eyes went blank, my friend. There was nothing left in her dark irises. And that was when I turned away. Another woman in the bus began to cry loudly. It was as if they shared the same spirit and she was the one who could weep.

Nobody cried for me.

I remember the sound. It still sits at the back of my neck. It was one lady, but I swear she sounded like a whole village of mourning women. It came out of her and the robbers snapped back to action.

They took our money and our bags and our voices.

After they sped off on their bikes, the other women gathered around the victim. They tucked her breasts away and gave her their scarves to cover the shreds of her blouse, but she did not say a word. I have never heard a silence so scary.

And then a man laughed. I don’t remember which. He laughed and slapped his thigh and shook his head.

The laughter seemed to provoke something in her. She brushed the women aside and went to him. She put her hands underneath her breasts, cupped them, and pushed toward him.

“Go on. Finish it. Kill me.” And the laughter did not stop. Yes, it was me.

I couldn’t stop laughing: at the idea that covering her breasts would somehow cloak the memory; at the idea that after tonight, she wouldn’t wake up every night feeling the slobbery slipperiness of a stranger’s tongue under her shirt. I laughed at the foolishness.

The driver recovered and the conductor was shaken awake. They asked everyone to get back in, but she didn’t. We left her behind, pushing her breasts toward the bus as she became smaller, and grainier, and unidentifiable through the dusty rear window of the bus.

There she is now. And this is her story that you wanted to know.

The Walking Stick by E.C. Osondu

Agege

They found the body in the early afternoon, just when the children from the infant classes were coming back from school. They let the toddlers out early so that they could have their lunches before they became too hungry. If he had not died, he would have been in his favorite bar in the camp, holding a bottle of his favorite lager beer — 33 Export — by the scruff of the neck, and calling the returning schoolchildren by the special nicknames he had for each one of them as they ran home.

“Ma wife, ah dis no good-o you not even wan greet ya husband today. Ha, my wife no good-o,” he would say to one of the little girls returning from school.

To another a boy with a big belly he would call out: “Big belly boy! See how your belly big, and you neva start to drink beer yet. When you start to drink beer your belly will be bigger than this drum.” Then he would point at the big red drum filled with a block of ice and beer bottles that shivered as they rested on their freezing bed.

Usually after his third bottle of 33 Export he would start dancing. By this time, the older children would be on their way back from school. He had no cute exchange with these ones, and he dared not give them cute nicknames. As he danced, they mocked him — they called him names. These were tough kids. Life in the Refugee Resettlement Center off the Agric bus stop in Agege was rough, and even at this age they had seen quite a few of the cruel ways that life could slash and cut people up, children included.

“Drunkard man, see how he is dancing like his legs are broken,” one of the schoolboys said one afternoon, and they all began to laugh. They had already learned how to make their wretched lives more bearable by making others feel even more miserable.

“Tell him to buy us 7UP,” one of them urged their leader.

“Drunkard man, c’mon, buy us 7UP,” the leader of the group demanded. He was not begging; his voice was hard.

The man held out his half-empty bottle of 33 Export. They shook their heads. They were hungry, and beer would only make them feel even more famished. They wanted 7UP. They could imagine its cold, filtered sweetness flowing down their throats into their bellies. Was it his offer of beer that made them angry? Seemingly from nowhere, a certain cruelty crept into them, and they picked up stones and began throwing them violently at the man. He stopped dancing and yelled when a rock came close to hitting him. He clutched the beer to his chest, cradling it as if saving the bottle was more important. The woman who owned the drinking shack ran out with a broom and chased after the children until they fled. “Useless children!” she yelled after them.

The next day on their way home from school, the boys were looking forward to another interlude at the bar — they liked the entertainment — but the man with the drink was not there. As they stood outside the shack looking for him, the woman who ran the bar came out. That was when she realized that something unusual had happened: the man who would usually be on his third bottle of 33 Export lager was not there.

Where was he? Why was he not at her bar drinking? Was he at another bar?

No, hers was the man’s favorite bar in the camp. He could not have risked leaving the camp and going into town to drink. The owners of the bars in town were not Liberians, and they did not like the Liberian refugees, even though they liked their money and their girls.

The man was not at her bar drinking today because he was dead.

Dead men do not drink 33 Export lager.

Sergeant Joseph Gorewa was sitting at his desk in the Isokoko police station in Agege, trying his best to think. This was an impossible task, considering that the police station was right beside the ever-noisy Agege Market and also opposite the railway tracks. There was a saying that if you could not find something at Agege Market, you wouldn’t be able to find it anywhere in Lagos. If there was ever a break in the constant din from the market, it would be interrupted by the shrill whistle of an approaching locomotive train, belching smoke, with passengers perched like locusts on every part of it.

Joseph Gorewa had many things on his mind. At this moment, though, he was thinking about the act of thinking. He wondered how it was possible that as soon as one thought exited his mind, another followed. How was it that the mind could have all these thoughts and not burst?

But one thought was persistently crowding out the rest: how could he make his pay last beyond two weeks? No matter how much he tried, he could never make his take-home pay last to the end of the month. He was thinking that there must be some way to be more frugal. Perhaps he could stop making calls and start only sending messages because they cost less. He had tried it once, but each time he sent his wife a text message she would text him back saying, Call me now. Perhaps this was a strategy he needed to try again.

At that moment his phone rang. It was his boss; the DPO. Joe Gorewa stood up and saluted as he took the call. He could never take a call from his boss while seated. No matter how much he planned to, on every occasion he would find his legs forcing themselves upright and his hand shooting out in a salute.

“There has been a homicide at the Refugee Resettlement Center by the Agric bus stop. You must go there immediately. These are refugees, so there are going to be all kinds of people interested in this case. I’ll need you to move really quickly on this one, Gorewa,” his DPO said.

Gorewa saluted again and walked outside to find an okada taxi to take him to the refugee camp. He would have to pay with his own money and then fill out paperwork for reimbursement, which would take months of snaking through the system before he got it. Still, he was excited. He was always excited at the news of a homicide. He liked to get to the bottom of things, and he would get to the bottom of this one.

The refugee camp used to be a government-owned dairy and corn farm from the colonial days. At some point the dairy farm closed and the corn farm soon became overgrown with grass. The mechanical equipment could be found peeking out of the wild grass. Yet the workers still went and received their salaries at the end of the month. They came in the morning, congregated under a tree where they ate rice and noodles and smoked cigarettes, and then they went home.

When war broke out in Liberia, the government, in desperate search for a place to house the fleeing refugees, suddenly remembered the old farmyard and sent the refugees to live there. They had tried their best to make it into a little Liberia. They played Liberian music, and had little shacks that sold Liberian foods. Some of them left the camp for the day to work in the city and came back at night — mostly women and a few tired old men and children. It was to this camp that the man who we met earlier drinking a bottle of 33 Export arrived one evening, holding a black walking stick. No sooner had he arrived than he made his importance known: he was no ordinary refugee; he was the personal assistant to a warlord. He claimed that the walking stick he carried at all times was no ordinary stick, but was made out of diamonds. It had once belonged to Samuel Doe, but the warlord who was his boss had confiscated it when Doe was captured. He was keeping the diamond walking stick safe for the warlord, who was still fighting in Liberia.

This was an impressive thing; an amazing story. No one in the camp had that kind of closeness to warlords, power, and diamonds. The man who drank 33 Export became the most respected man there.

Sergeant Gorewa went immediately to the chairman of the camp. He knew the chairman from a couple of months back when he was investigating the sale of marijuana. When they had talked, the chairman had convinced him that this was no big deal and that he was in charge of the camp.

The chairman took Sergeant Gorewa to the small shack where the dead man had lived and died. It was constructed from rusted roofing sheets. The stiff body lay in one corner, where it was attracting flies in large numbers because of the small space and the heat. There was a deep stab wound on the neck. Whoever had stabbed the man knew how to wield a knife. No man could survive that kind of wound, Gorewa mused.

The chairman disclosed that the only thing taken from the room was the black walking stick.

“What black walking stick?” Sergeant Gorewa asked.

“The man always had a black walking stick with him,” the chairman explained. “He said he used to be the next-in-command and personal assistant to one of the warlords, and that the walking stick was made from diamonds. He was holding onto it for his boss, and when he received the order he would sell the diamonds and be rich.”

“Was the stick actually made of diamonds?” Gorewa inquired.

“Between you and me and my God, I do not know whether he was telling the truth. But he sure used that stick to get the girls, and he always had money to drink. You should go ask the woman who runs the bar over there — she might have more answers than I do. He spent practically all his days there.”

The woman who owned the bar was dark, plump, and talkative. She said the dead man was a great customer and had a sweet tongue. She gestured to a lizard on the rusted roof of the bar, saying that the dead man could convince the lizard to get off the roof, come sit at the table, and buy him a bottle of 33 Export. She added that he was also a great debtor, and brought out a blue ledger to show Sergeant Gorewa how much the dead man owed.

“What about the walking stick?” Gorewa prompted.

The woman replied that everyone in the camp knew about the walking stick; that the trouble was that the man had gone to a bar in Agege and had boasted about it. This had probably fallen on the ears of the wrong people, and they had come to the camp, stabbed the man to death, and made away with the walking stick.

“Did you believe that it was made of diamonds?”

She said that it was hard to be a refugee, and that the war had brought out the worst in some Liberians. She really wanted to believe that the walking stick was made of diamonds. This was the version of things she preferred; it was a good story. The idea of a stick made of diamonds was something that brightened her dark life as a refugee in a bewildering country.

Sergeant Gorewa’s mind began to work on many things at once, the way it always did. It was going to be easy to find out who committed the crime. He would go to his friend Alhaji, who bought gold and diamonds at Agege Market and ask him to be on the lookout for a diamond walking stick. It was bound to turn up sooner rather than later, and he would make the arrest quickly.

Yet something troubled Sergeant Gorewa. In fact, many things troubled him. How could a man escape the bullets from the war in his own country only to be killed by a knife in a strange land? Next, he recalled something that the woman had said about the dead man — that he had a big mouth. She had then elaborated to suggest that the dead man was a boastful person, and added that it was the guy’s mouth that got him killed. He wondered about the woman’s choice of words too: the man had been killed by a knife, from another man’s hand, and yet his mouth must share the blame for his death.

Sergeant Gorewa also wondered if he really wanted to find out if the man had been telling the truth about his walking stick. His instinct told him that the man had been lying, but he really loved the idea of a walking stick made out of diamonds.

The schoolchildren looked out for the man drinking beer and dancing for a couple of days, but he did not appear. They did not miss him; it was no big loss. They had many other games to occupy their time. They walked, ran, and kicked up sand. They picked up stones and decided they were going to throw them at the agama lizards.

Uncle Sam by Leye Adenle

Murtala Muhammed International Airport

Dougal was hot and he was afraid. He had been warned about this, the heat. He’d shrugged it off at the time. Everybody knows Africa is hot. It is Africa, after all. But when he stepped out of the British Airways jet and onto the ramp and he inhaled the hot air, it felt like he was drowning standing up. He was instantly wet under the armpits and around the neck. He wished to sweet Jesus he could just take off the white jacket. Heck, other than a couple of men in suits — and they were black — he was the only one not dressed for the tropics. Underneath, his Marks & Spencer cotton shirt was already showing patches of sweat.

It was not too late; he could take off the darn jacket. A patch of blue had blossomed out from the bottom of the chest pocket. Sudoku. He had forgotten to replace the cap when he’d folded the complimentary copy of the Guardian away and put the ballpoint pen into the pocket. Then he’d made it worse when he asked the stewardess for water. He had dipped the surprisingly large and thick napkin from the meal pack in water and tried to dab the ink away. The stain taunted his OCD. It was cruel that he had to keep the jacket on.

He could turn back and refuse to leave the aircraft, but instead he continued walking along the dusty blue carpet of the ramp, Nigerians brushing past him with their bulging hand luggage and their unapologetic impatience.

He had never been to Africa. Nigeria seemed the wrong place to start. He followed occasional signs and the throng that had overtaken him, and eventually arrived at the immigration booths where he was told by a man not in uniform to join a different queue. The foreign passports queue. And it was just as long as the impossibly long one he’d been on. There couldn’t have been this many people on the flight. Thirty sweltering minutes later, he walked through baggage claim and out into the arrivals lounge of Murtala Muhammed International Airport. He was truly in Lagos. What the hell was he doing?

He stayed in the lounge, surrounded by Nigerians who paid him no notice and men and women in different uniforms — some armed, some not — and he looked out of the floor-to-ceiling glass panes at the waiting crowd staring back into the lounge. He could see the heat outside rising off the top of cars that pulled up to collect passengers. Still, it was not too late.

It was eight in the morning but he was sweating like he was in a sauna. It felt like he was the only one suffering in the choking heat. The other passengers from his flight seemed fine, naturally. He found a tall, free-standing air-conditioning unit whirling out air from dirty vents and stood in front of it. He watched the vents with suspicion. He imagined he could smell the dust. He even tasted it in the back of his throat. Or it could just be the smell of Lagos itself. A police officer was seated on a stool next to the refrigerator-sized machine, the barrel of a Kalashnikov resting on his crotch, his head bent to a noisy game he was playing on his phone. He had no epaulets on his shoulders. He could be any rank in any force.

“Do you need a taxi, sir?”

Dougal swung around. A girl with a brown face that glistened as much as her glossy red lipstick was standing next to him. He shook his head. She didn’t leave; she just stood there staring at him. He looked outside, conscious of where she stood and where his bag lay on the ground.

In the sun, amongst the crowd of people on the other side of the road, a man was holding up a large card with his name written on it: Dougal McManaman. It wasn’t too late. Yet.

“We have air-conditioned cars for hire,” the girl said.

“No thanks, I’m fine.”

By the time Dougal peered back out the window, the card with his name on it was gone and a mosaic of brown faces, each of them looking the same as any other, stared his way. He panicked. Then the card went up again. The man holding it up had only taken a second to mop sweat from his forehead. Dougal did the same with the sleeve of his white jacket and saw the blue ink stain on the pocket as he did so. He just wished he could take the darn thing off. He was cooking under it. The stain was testing the limits of his self-restraint. He looked at it again, even though he didn’t want to, and again it made his skin crawl.

The man outside did not look like a chief. He couldn’t be Chief Ernest Abraham Okonkwo II, who spoke with an American accent, invited Dougal to Nigeria, paid for the first-class ticket, and reserved the presidential suite at the Sheraton Hotel. This new man was young, glancing about constantly — like he was on the lookout — and was wearing a brown costume that was faded at the shoulders.

Dougal tried again for a signal on his phone. He’d had no luck when the jet was on the runway. The mobile still had his UK SIM card. The network had assured him his roaming had been sorted. He did stress, several times, that he was traveling to Nigeria. Maybe he’d upset the customer support lad. Maybe the Indian chap in some call center in Bangalore was punishing him. He switched the phone off and on as Betsy always did when she thought something was wrong with her own phone. Around him, other people were using their phones. Phones worked in Nigeria. He held the phone up — nothing.

Betsy had warned him not to come. She told him to call the police. She went on the Internet and printed out dozens of stories about Nigerian fraudsters — 419, they call them. But Dougal had shared the news with Matthew, Betsy’s brother, who had been the best man at their wedding. Matthew had looked up Okonkwo & Associates and the lawyer’s website seemed legit. They were even on Wikipedia. Matthew showed all these to Betsy, but she said she knew Dougal would be kidnapped.

Okonkwo, who had strangely insisted on being called Chief Ernest, promised to be at the airport in Lagos. The chief swore by his mother that he would route his private jet via Lagos first thing in the morning, before leaving for Monaco, so he could be there when the plane from England arrived. But it wasn’t the chief holding up the name card now, it couldn’t be. And there was no way to contact him to ask if it was safe to go with this stranger outside.

“Are you waiting for a taxi?”

Dougal had been aware of the man who’d come to stand next to him in front of the hopeless air conditioner. He’d even shifted a little to the side so the man could also get some dusty, coolish air. The slender, bespectacled man had placed his briefcase on the floor between them. Dougal remembered him from the flight. They had shared the first-class cabin with just two other passengers: a black girl who looked too young to be traveling alone, and a slightly stooped white man who wore a dark suit and kept asking for more champagne. He was also standing by the glass pane now, the stooped white man, within earshot, looking out for his driver, perhaps, or maybe he was a sheep, instinctively sticking close to the one person who looked like him. They were about the same height. One could even say they looked alike. Somewhat.

“Are you waiting to be picked up?” the black man asked.

“I think that lad there is mine,” Dougal said. He pointed at the man with the name card. The stooped man seemed to be listening.

“I see. Erm, listen, I couldn’t help overhearing your conversation on the flight. Before we took off. You were talking to someone on the phone.”

“Yes.” Dougal took a more careful look at the man. On the aircraft, he had been reading a copy of the Financial Times before he pulled out a computer and worked on what looked like spreadsheets. He had also declined the champagne and didn’t have any alcohol with his meal — unlike the stooped man who couldn’t have enough of the stuff.

“Again, I must apologize,” the black man said, “but from what I heard, it sounds like you are being swindled.”

“What do you mean?”

The man looked at the officer, whose head was bent to his phone. “Someone you’ve never met invited you to do some business with him, yes?”

He was taller than Dougal, who took a step back and took him all in.

The man continued, “They paid for your flight, booked you a hotel, and maybe even sent you some money?”

Dougal nodded. “They sent money; Western Union.”

The man smiled and shook his head. “And this business, whatever it is, you stand to make a lot of money from it, yes?”

Dougal nodded.

“Without spending a lot of your own money?”

Dougal stared at him.

“Or none of your own money,” the man went on.

Dougal searched his pockets for his cigarettes.

“If you don’t mind me asking, what is this business? They told you they are in possession of some millions of pounds and they need an account to keep it in?” He searched Dougal’s face. “They said they are related to a former head of state and they need to get his assets out of the country?”

Dougal looked outside, at the man holding up his name.

“They said you inherited some millions from a relative who died in Nigeria?”

“Yes, my uncle. He moved to Nigeria in the sixties. He married a Nigerian woman.”

The man chuckled. “And he left you a lot of millions, right?”

“They said they’d been looking for me for some time.”

The man bent over with laughter and gripped Dougal’s arm as if to stop himself from hitting the ground. A gold Rolex peeped out from under his sleeve. His grip was tight.

Dougal thought of Betsy. He still had the five thousand pounds, anyway. He would take her on holiday to Mabaya. That would sort her. “What should I do?”

With the back of his hand, the man cleaned tears from his eyes. “Dugal, right?”

Dougal pronounced his name properly for him.

“See, the only reason I came to talk to you is because I saw you standing here, having second thoughts, I assume. Let me ask you something — are you a rich man?”

“No, I’m a schoolteacher.”

“What about this uncle of yours, was he rich?”

Dougal shook his head. “He ran a bar.”

The man tried, but couldn’t talk and laugh at the same time, so he turned his face from Dougal and bent over laughing again, holding his belly with both his arms. Dougal looked around. A few people glanced at them. The policeman looked up briefly and then continued with his game.

“My friend, there is no money and no Uncle Sam,” the man said after he managed to straighten back up. “It was probably a lucky guess that you happened to have a relative in Nigeria. Did you even know the man?”

“No.”

“And they know you are not rich?”

“What?”

“The people who invited you. They know you are a schoolteacher, yes?”

“Yes.”

“Do they know what you look like?”

“No. They asked me to wear this.” Dougal held his arms out. His eyes went to the blue stain.

“A white suit is strange in Nigeria.”

“Yes.”

“So they don’t know what you look like. Thank God for that.”

“Why? What are you getting at, anyway? Who are you?”

“I will tell you who I am in a minute. First, like I said, I got suspicious when I overheard your conversation on the plane. You see that man out there? He is here to kidnap you.”

A loud gong went off in Dougal’s head. He looked at the man outside and his body felt weak from the furious beating of his heart. Betsy was right. It felt as if she was standing next to him, rebuking, mocking him with her silence. Her unspoken I told you so permanently etching itself into one of the wrinkles under her eyes. What a fool he’d been. But they sent him money. He still had some of it. They sent him money, and they knew his uncle. They even knew he was his mother’s half brother from her first marriage to an Irish miner. How could they know all those things? He’d asked, just to be sure, and after a couple of days, Okonkwo — Chief Earnest — called and said the tattoo was of a bird in flight. A dove on the departed relative’s shoulder. How could they have found that out if they didn’t know the man? They could have dug up his grave. He shuddered. But who would go to that extent just to lure a schoolteacher to Lagos to be kidnapped? Who would they demand ransom from? Betsy?

“They’re going to kidnap me?”

“Yes. He will kidnap you and your family will pay them ransom to release you.”

“But...”

“But what? You people make me angry. You have never been to Nigeria, maybe you don’t even know any Nigerians, and some stranger calls you and says come to Nigeria to collect some millions you didn’t work for, and you come. Next thing, you get kidnapped and they’ll be saying Nigerians are bad, Nigerians are this, Nigerians are that. I have a mind to arrest you for conspiracy to defame Nigeria.”

“What?”

The man reached into his breast pocket and pulled out an ID card. He held it up to Dougal’s face. “I am a director of the anticorruption agency here.”

The police officer hopped from his stool and stood to attention. His phone sang away in his clenched fist as his eyes darted back and forth between the men standing before him.

Dougal could see it now: Betsy receiving the call. They would put him on to let her know it was no joke, then they’d warn her not to call the police. She would tell them how they had no money. They would tell her to sell the house or take a loan on it. They’d probably already planned everything. The money they sent, the cost of the flight, it was all just an investment. Betsy would take out the loan, she wouldn’t call the police, and the kidnappers would get their money. It was all so sophisticated.

“What should I do?” Dougal asked.

“What do I care? Just don’t get yourself kidnapped in my country.”

Dougal felt stupid. He stared at the man whose countenance had gone from unrestrained bemusement to pure disgust. Dougal was desperate for help. His face pleaded on his behalf.

“Look,” the man said, “get rid of that jacket, for one.”

Dougal looked down at himself, his eyes drawn to the stain. It was ruined, anyway. He hurriedly took off the jacket. His shirt was wet and clung to his body. He folded the jacket then unfolded it and rolled it up.

“Get rid of it,” the man said.

Dougal understood. The jacket was like a target painted onto him. He glanced around for where to stash the cheap thing.

The man held out his hand. “Give it to me,” he said.

Dougal handed over the jacket. “What now?” he asked.

The man picked up his bag and in an unnecessarily loud voice said, “You are what they call mumu over here. If you are lucky, you’ll get a flight back to England today. If you step out there, be ready to lose everything you ever worked for in your life. And maybe even your life itself.”

Dougal watched him go, then peered at the man outside, then locked eyes with the police officer who was still standing rigid and appearing confused, then looked back at the man who had saved him from being kidnapped. He turned around to check for the stooped white man from the flight, for safety. He was gone.

Dougal picked up his bag from the ground. At least he hadn’t lost any money, and he still had theirs. He had come out tops. Yes, he’d taken time to off fly to Nigeria during term time, he’d lost two days of holiday for that, but he still had their money. If only he could get out of Nigeria before they found him. Before they figured out that he’d been warned. He imagined the chap waiting outside bursting into the airport and chasing him down. His heart beat even faster.

At the British Airways desk, Dougal asked the lady if he could use his return ticket to get on the next available flight home.

The lady took the ticket from him and inspected it. “Sir, you just arrived this morning.”

“I just want to get the hell out of this place,” Dougal muttered.

Betsy would agree with him that they had made a profit out of the failed kidnap attempt. If she would go along with him and leave out the flight to Nigeria, he could tell the story to their friends about how he had outsmarted Nigerian con artists. If she played along and they both pretended he never actually took the flight.

The woman shifted backward in her chair and called over to a male colleague.

Matthew would play along. After all, he’d also fallen for the con. It was as much his fault that Dougal had almost gotten kidnapped in Lagos. He shivered. It’d been so close. If not for the eavesdropping gentleman from the flight. So close. But the bastards had done their homework well; the only thing that still puzzled him was why they chose a poor schoolteacher — of all the mumus in London, why him? And how on earth did they get to know so much about Uncle Sam?

“Sir, what seems to be the problem?” the male attendent asked. “Sir? Sir? Sir, is everything okay? Sir?”

“How did he know his name?” Dougal said, staring into the man’s face.

“What, sir?”

“The man, the anticorruption man, how did he know my uncle is called Sam? I never told him my uncle’s name. How did he know it?”

“What are you talking about, sir?”

“He knew my uncle’s name. How could he have known that, unless... Oh my God. I’ve been swindled. He’s the con!”

“Are you waiting for Dougal?”

The driver checked the name written on the name card and nodded, even though what the man said didn’t sound like what he read. And he was there to pick up a white man, not a Nigerian like the slender, bespectacled man in a suit standing in front of him. But next to the Nigerian was a white man, slightly stooped, mopping his forehead with a damp white handkerchief, and sweating as if water had been poured over his head. And he was wearing a white jacket. The jacket had a large blue stain on its pocket.

Killer Ape by Chris Abani

Ikoyi

It was hard to believe that the monkey had done it. Not monkey, Okoro thought to himself, crossing the word out in his notebook. He wrote ape, and next to it, chimpanzee. Accuracy in recoding data and attention to detail were a detective’s best friend, especially in a case as bizarre as this one.

“Why would an ape, your pet ape, kill your husband?” Okoro asked the white woman who was standing by the French doors holding the midsized ape like a baby. It clung to her, and an expression of sorrow in its eyes made it look vulnerable. The terry cloth diaper it was wearing exacerbated this and made it appear even more like a baby. That look belied the blood on its hands, thick and even, matting the fur. The chimpanzee had clearly tried to lick its hands clean and had left blood all around its mouth. It was an unsettling sight, although Okoro wasn’t sure if it was more the idea of a murdering chimpanzee or the fact that this was a pet wearing diapers. The British in Nigeria were a strange bunch, he thought. This woman, he thought, glancing at his notes, this Dorothy Parker, was particularly strange.

The light coming in through the French doors was dusty and mote-laden. It spilled across the expensive Berber rug, falling on the body of Gordon Parker. He was lying facedown in a pool of his own blood. There were several nasty cuts on the back of his head, and a large bump had risen.

Mrs. Dorothy Parker blew a long stream of smoke out of the French doors from the cigarette she was smoking. Pinched between forefinger and thumb, it was in an ivory holder with a gold inlay, an expensive piece. There was a deliberateness to her that made Okoro think that she was very likely not the emotional kind.

“How would I know?” Dorothy Parker responded. “Bobo here has many gifts, but speech is not one of them.”

At the mention of its name, the chimpanzee paused in licking its hands and peered at the woman. They made eye contact and the ape lowered its gaze as though afraid of what it saw in hers.

Okoro noted this and wondered if it was a frame job. But the idea was so absurd he was at a loss to explain how or why anyone would frame a chimpanzee for murder. He thought about asking her, but instead said: “Bobo? That’s not the name I expected you to have given him, Mrs. Parker. There is something about you that makes me think you’d have chosen a name like Theodore.”

Dorothy Parker looked Okoro up and down and snorted. He couldn’t tell if she was expressing amusement or derision.

“Theodore? Why that would have been perfect, but my husband loved the circus. He did have an unnatural affinity for the lower classes,” she said.

“How do you mean, Mrs. Parker?” Okoro asked.

“Oh, I don’t know. He had cheap tastes. Liked to hang out with the natives more than us expatriates. I mean, no offense, Sergeant...”

“Okoro,” Okoro said.

“Yes, quite,” Dorothy Parker replied. “As I said, no offense, but our sort of people have little in common with the likes of the natives.”

“I see your point. Keeping an ape as a child must be much more preferable to mingling with us lowly humans,” Okoro said.

Dorothy Parker flushed from embarrassment but said nothing.

Detective Sergeant Okoro had caught the weekend shift, which he typically didn’t mind because it was an easy one. Much of the work happened on Saturday nights, the usual run-of-the-mill fights and stabbings and then the occasional murder, but a light load. Lately, most people in Lagos were dying in robber-related crimes, which often meant that to avoid turf wars, Homicide detectives gave up those cases to Robbery. When Okoro suggested the two units be merged into one, Robbery/Homicide, he was met with derision and dismissal. Stabbing-related deaths mostly occurred in the clubs and brothels which again involved ceding many cases to Vice. This was why Homicide’s caseload was quite light, something all the veterans in the unit seemed to love, and they would fight anything that changed the status quo. Anyway, there were few detectives in the Homicide unit who liked or knew how to execute proper forensic investigations.

Even the white British Scotland Yard — trained detectives who worked alongside the Nigerians knew little of the forensic methods that fascinated Okoro. The fact that he drew most of his “technical” knowledge from the fictional Sherlock Holmes did little to help his credibility. Though he was a detective sergeant, Okoro had very little power, and he found himself overruled even by junior white colleagues with whom the beat commanders always sided. He knew his promotion was more about the British trying to prepare an officer corps to hand over power to than about any real change or an actual belief in the Nigerian officer’s abilities. This meant Okoro had to toe the line unless he wasn’t assigned his own single-officer cases. Toeing the line meant going out on calls, taking witness statements, and then returning to file reports, which placed the blame for the crime on the individual the investigating officers intuited might be guilty, followed by a confession that was beaten out of them as efficiently and quickly as possible to close cases.

That meant Sundays for Okoro were usually a slow day of report-writing at the station. But this morning a call had come in, from Ikoyi, which in itself was a surprise given that the wealthy suburb had very few crimes, much less murders. Okoro was the only detective on duty, which automatically made this case a single-officer investigation, and for him meant that he could channel as much Sherlock Holmes as possible. To say he was excited was to understate matters. Maybe closing this case using his preferred methods was just what he needed to earn him the credibility he so desperately needed.

It was bad enough that his manner of dress — clean shirts, pressed suits, polished wingtips, and the occasional fedora — in a unit where his colleagues looked like they had just rolled out of a brothel and straight into work, earned him the taunts of dandy. A euphuism he knew really meant homosexual. He rationalized it away by putting the bullying down to the manner of the men in these kinds of jobs. He rarely challenged them for fear of confirming their suspicions about him. It would be dangerous for him on many levels if anyone knew he liked men. There was the anti-sodomy law which had been used in the mother country to imprison one of his heroes, Oscar Wilde. It was still on the law books here in the colony and would be enforced with no difficulty. Then there was his career, which he couldn’t afford to have derailed. Men like him knew how to keep quiet, how to spot in silence the codes that revealed like-minded men, sympathetic men. Theirs was a lifestyle conducted in subterfuge, the secrets and ways of it closely guarded.

Detective James Okoro loved motorcycles. If he could afford one he would have liked an original 1950 Indian Chief, but he could only afford a 1949 Vespa 125 Corsa, with an aluminum alloy frame. It looked quite nice and its high-pitched engine whine sounded to him like a siren and he loved that he could turn heads. As he rode across the mainland bridge toward Ikoyi, he felt his excitement growing

It was a quiet Lagos Sunday and the rich residential area of lkoyi was lush with green palms, manicured lawns, and shocks of red hibiscus, purple bougainvillea, and yellow sunflowers. It was 1958 and the eve of independence. The air of freedom, of hope, was palpable. Already this once all-white neighborhood was a salt-and-pepper mix. The elite Nigerians, prepping for their takeover of power, had already moved in. Actually, it probably wasn’t accurate to say that it was once an all-white locale because even in the late nineteenth century there were rich locals living here, and Detective Sergeant Okoro was particular about accuracy. That was what made Sherlock Holmes such a success. Attention to detail.

Unlike most of the other houses on the street, this one had no gate or fence. Just thick ivy shrubs for privacy and a gravel-filled driveway with a black Morris Minor parked at the end of it. Okoro took in the well-kept grounds and noted that there was probably a gardener on staff, should that be relevant. He came to heavy double front doors, the wood carved elaborately with local motifs and scenes. It was beautiful and made Okoro wish he could own a place with doors like that. He pulled the rope hanging from the door, weighted by the brass figure of an Oba of Benin. Deep inside the house he heard the chime of an old bell.

A man appeared at the door. He was in his late thirties. Handsome and very dark, he wore a beige khaki uniform — a starched safari jacket and shorts — and his feet were laced into very shiny oxblood oxford shoes. “Are you the policeman?” he asked.

Okoro surmised he must be the houseboy. He never understood that term. It could only be meant to demean, as most houseboys were usually above thirty and more like butlers in the range of the work they did and in their ability to run households. They were often very well spoken and educated. Some of them had a few other houseboys and maids working under them. They were like fathers to these young men and women, and many used their position and privilege to educate their wards who might otherwise never have that opportunity. Okoro respected them.

“Yes, and you must be Mr....?”

“Good morning, sir. I’m not mister, just Emmanuel. My name is Emmanuel.”

“Well, good morning, Emmanuel. Am I at the right place? I hear there has been a murder?”

Emmanuel looked Okoro over. Both men seemed to recognize something about the other, but when Okoro leaned in to take a better look, Emmanuel glanced away, behind Okoro, as though searching for more policemen.

“Are you alone, sir?” the houseboy asked.

The moment had been fleeting, and Okoro couldn’t be sure, so he let it go.

“Yes, I am. No need for a lot of officers to investigate a death.”

Okoro noticed something in Emmanuel’s eyes at the word death. A reddening of the eyes, a wetness, and then a quick shift of the gaze away. He knew from the call that had come in that morning that the person who had died was Emmanuel’s boss. Okoro was surprised that an employer’s death would elicit this kind of response from the houseboy.

“Is everything all right?” Okoro asked.

“Of course, sir. This way, please,” Emmanuel replied.

He led Okoro down a wide hallway with hard ceramic floor tiles that rang out underfoot. There were big-framed black-and-white photos on the walls. In every photograph, there was an ape alone, or an ape being held by a woman. There was only one image of a couple on their wedding day.

“No children?” Okoro asked Emmanuel.

“No sir, just the monkey.”

“And do you have any idea who might have killed your master?”

“Madam says the monkey killed Gordon,” Emmanuel responded.

“Gordon? You called your master by his first name?”

“Mr. Parker, I m-meant to say,” Emmanuel stammered.

“But you said Gordon. That means something.”

“It’s just a mistake, sir. We are mourning the loss here.”

Okoro smiled at Emmanuel’s discomfort. He knew there was more. It was not uncommon for white bosses to take up affairs with staff — usually female though. Maybe it was nothing. There was enough going on here and he couldn’t afford to be distracted. Sherlock Holmes wouldn’t approve. It was the easiest way to miss the small details that can break a case wide open.

“It is a chimpanzee, I can see that from the photos,” Okoro said. “So, it’s an ape, not a monkey.”

Emmanuel nodded and began to walk again. “Yes sir,” he said. “The monkey is an ape. This way, please.”

Emmanuel led Okoro into a large living room at the end of the hall. It was airy and full of light from the French doors at the far end that led into the garden. Emmanuel stopped at the entrance to the living room, refusing to go inside. He glanced briefly at the body on the floor and looked away. A woman stood by the French doors holding a chimpanzee in a diaper in her arms.

“Madam, this is the police,” Emmanuel announced, and turned to leave.

Okoro stepped forward. “Good morning, Mrs. Parker. I am Detective Sergeant Okoro.”

Okoro moved around the crime scene, viewing it from different angles, searching for a clue. For anything that might reveal what had happened there. There was something in the way that the body was lying, spread-eagle. Clearly the body had fallen forward and it was also clear that the blow had been delivered from behind and that it had caught the victim unawares. But the knees were all wrong, as if the victim had been kneeling when struck. But that made no sense — why would a man be kneeling in his living room? Perhaps he had been made to kneel, which suggested a premeditated murder, an execution even. That would rule out the chimpanzee. It wasn’t that Okoro had any difficulty believing a chimpanzee would kill a man. They were in fact killers, and carnivorous too. They ate their young sometimes and definitely ate other monkeys. But they only attacked if they felt threatened. What would make a pet feel threatened?

“Did your husband get along with Bobo?”

“Yes, Gordon doted on him. Why? This wasn’t Gordon’s fault,” she said, and paused. “Or Bobo’s, for that matter. Just a dreadful accident.”

“Of course,” Okoro muttered. His gaze drifted back to the body. Something was off. He bent down and examined the wound on Gordon’s head. The whole back of his head had been ravaged. No teeth marks, no claw marks. The beating had been savage though it looked like it had been done by a manmade object. Something metal perhaps.

“Are there any objects missing from this room, Mrs. Parker?”

“I don’t know. Ask Emmanuel, that’s his job.”

Okoro nodded. “Emmanuel,” he called out.

Emmanuel appeared at the door as if by magic. Okoro thought it strange he hadn’t heard him clacking up on the tile flooring.

“Yes sir,” Emmanuel said. He stood at the door, seemingly reluctant to enter the living room. His eyes seemed glued to Gordon’s body. And there was that look on his face again. A deep sorrow and grief. Why? Okoro wondered to himself.

“Are there any objects missing from this room, Emmanuel?”

“I don’t steal,” Emmanuel replied, his voice soft in tone but with an edge as sharp as a knife. He locked eyes on Mrs. Parker — the look between them was chilling. Okoro missed none of it.

“I’m sorry, Emmanuel,” Okoro said, breaking the tension. “I didn’t mean to imply that. I am curious about what might have been the murder weapon.”

The houseboy pointed at the chimpanzee, or maybe Mrs. Parker. “That’s the murder weapon,” he said.

Okoro nodded. He prowled around the living room, looking for a sign of anything displaced, any dust rings left behind after something heavy and metal had been moved. He couldn’t find anything.

“What is going on here, sergeant, what exactly are you implying?” Dorothy Parker asked.

“I’m not implying anything. Just doing my job.”

“I’ve told you what happened. Bobo here had an incident, and killed my poor Gordon.”

“Of course, Mrs. Parker. Remind me again how you know for sure Bobo killed your husband? Were you a witness?”

“I didn’t see it happen but when I came into the room when Gordon wasn’t answering my calls, I saw Bobo standing over him covered in blood.”

“Standing over him? Like he had just clobbered him to death?”

“Yes, like that.”

“Was anyone else in the room?” Turning rapidly to Emmanuel before Dorothy Parker could answer, Okoro said: “And you, Emmanuel. Where were you when it happened?”

The man seemed lost in a daze.

“How long did you work for Mr. Parker?” Okoro asked him.

“Too long, really, wouldn’t you say?” Dorothy Parker answered for him.

Emmanuel blinked but said nothing.

Okoro turned to Dorothy Parker. “Was he a religious man, your husband?”

“No, not at all religious. Why do you ask?”

“Something about the way the body is lying.”

“The body? That’s my husband!”

“Of course, madam. My apologies. There is something about the way your husband is lying that suggests he was kneeling when he was struck.”

“You can tell that from the way he’s lying?”

“Yes. Is there any other reason your husband may have been kneeling?”

Dorothy Parker flushed at the question and Emmanuel swallowed and looked away quickly.

“Prayer?” she said, more question than answer.

“But you just said he wasn’t at all religious.”

“Mr. Parker found religion tiresome,” Emmanuel interjected.

Okoro and Dorothy Parker both turned to look at him.

“I’m sorry,” Emmanuel mumbled. “I had no right.”

Dorothy Parker cut her eyes at him, then turned to Okoro. “Gordon wasn’t much of anything, really. Just a civil servant.”

Okoro studied her for a minute. She seemed way too collected and calm for a woman who’d found her husband dead in their house just that morning. But she was white and English and he had heard they were cold; emotionally stunted, his father had called them. He would know, he had fought alongside them in Burma in the Second World War.

Okoro took out a small camera and began taking pictures.

“Why are you taking photographs?” Dorothy Parker asked.

“The latest in criminal investigation, madam. We preserve the scene for posterity. Even here in the colonies we like to keep up with the latest. Did I tell you Sherlock Holmes, the great British detective, is a hero of mine?”

“Why and when would you have told me that? Also, you do know that he isn’t real, don’t you?”

“Real enough for Scotland Yard to learn from.”

“Look, l don’t want to be rude, but as you can imagine, this has been an overwhelming day. When can I expect you to be done?”

“When I am done, madam — I’ll be gone when I’m done. Have you had a good strong cup of tea? I hear you English find it helps with shock. I’m more of a Scottish man myself.”

“Do you mean a Scotch man?”

Okoro smiled. “Something like that.”

“You are quite rude,” Dorothy Parker said. “I shall be making a report to your superiors.”

“Of course, that is your right, madam. I would expect nothing less.” As Okoro took the photographs, he mentally ran through the questions he hadn’t asked. What would Sherlock do? He paused and looked up. “Can Emmanuel hold Bobo for a moment?”

“I don’t want to hold the monkey, sir,” Emmanuel said. “I don’t like dirty animals.”

“You would know,” Dorothy Parker spat.

This exchange confirmed in Okoro’s mind what he had already suspected — Gordon Parker had been involved in an affair with his houseboy. And the wife knew. Yet the thing between her and Emmanuel, the subdued and seething rage, smelled of some kind of collusion, but a forced one. Okoro turned his attention once more to Mrs. Dorothy Parker.

“Can you put Bobo down?” he asked.

“Why? You bloody—”

“I wouldn’t recommend finishing that statement Mrs. Parker,” Okoro cut her off. “I need to examine your hands and take photos.”

Dorothy Parker reluctantly set Bobo down. Okoro watched as the ape ambled over to Gordon’s body. It stopped just short of it and began to whimper, rocking from side to side. It dipped its hands in the blood on the floor, which was now congealed, and held them up in what looked like awe. It kept whimpering. There was a look of sadness and something else in Dorothy Parker’s face. The first crack in her façade that he had seen. She held out her hands. Okoro reached for them and she pulled back. He smiled and lifted his camera instead and resumed taking photos. There were strange cuts on her hands.

“How did you get those marks?” Okoro asked her.

“Bobo gave them to me.”

“Don’t look like claw marks,” he said. “Looks like something sharp nicked you a few times.”

She said nothing.

“How long was your husband dead before you called?”

“I called as soon as I found him,” she said.

Okoro nodded, then asked to see Emmanuel’s hands. The houseboy held them out. Not a mark on them. No callus or blister, not even a scratch, and they were soft to the touch. He clearly didn’t do any of the strenuous work around here.

“Are there other servants that work here?”

“Yes sir,” Emmanuel said.

“Take me to them.” Turning to Dorothy Parker, who was now holding Bobo again, the blood from his paws all over her blouse, Okoro said: “As soon as I have interviewed the rest of the staff, I will be pretty much done here. In the meantime, I do have to call the coroner’s office to come and take your husband. May I use your telephone?”

Dorothy Parker waved at the phone on a side table.

Okoro dialed the number and spoke softly into the receiver, then turned back to Dorothy Parker. “Thank you, madam. Please excuse me.”

Emmanuel led him out of the room, through the kitchen, and across the garden to the servants’ quarters. As they walked Okoro turned to Emmanuel. Best to confront this head on, that’s how Sherlock would have handled it. A confession can be extracted without a beating, Okoro told himself.

“I think you know how your boss died,” he said. “What’s more, I think you were there when it happened.”

“I really don’t know what you’re talking about,” Emmanuel responded, not breaking his stride.

“How long were you having sex with Gordon Parker?”

Emmanuel stopped, his shoulders slumping, face down.

“I know. And I know that you know that I know,” Okoro said.

“You know nothing,” Emmanuel said in a choked whisper.

Okoro put his hand on Emmanuel’s shoulder. “Trust me, I know. I know because we are the same. Because I can tell. From your manner, from the faint traces of tiro around your eyes, from the way you looked at him, from the way she reacted to you. I know. Tell me what happened here, Emmanuel.”

The houseboy sank to his knees, tears running down his face.

“Confess to me and I will find a way to make it right for you. I know you didn’t kill Gordon. I suspect his wife did it. Now, I know you know homosexuality is against the law, but the bigger thing here is murder. No one will care about that if you just tell me what happened, what I need to convict her.”

Okoro hated himself for lying. The moment Emmanuel told him what had happened, he would become instrumental as a witness and his homosexuality would emerge. There was no easy way to solve this and protect the innocent. There was love in the way Emmanuel reacted when Gordon’s name was mentioned, more than he could say about Dorothy Parker. If anyone was the victim here, it was Emmanuel, and Gordon of course, but he was dead, so that didn’t matter so much.

“I don’t care about me! I care about him! About him! He is a good man, was a good man. If anyone finds out, this will destroy him. I can’t let that happen. I can’t. I love him.”

Emmanuel was crying now, shoulders heaving. The maids and other houseboys had gathered on the veranda of the servants’ quarters to watch with sad eyes.

“Go inside!” Okoro commanded them.

They went back inside and shut the door.

Okoro sat next to Emmanuel, facing the opposite direction. “Do you smoke?” he asked, holding out a cigarette.

Emmanuel shook his head.

“Quite right, good man. Filthy habit, really,” Okoro said, lighting one up. He smoked half of it next to the sobbing Emmanuel. He could see Dorothy Parker watching them from the French doors of the living room. Finally, he spoke. “So here is what I think happened: You both thought she had gone out and you were about to have sex in the living room. Gordon was on his knees with you in his mouth when she walked in on you. She reacted in shock and anger and hit Gordon in the back of the head with something. Many times, judging by the state of his head. You fled, and while you were gone she hid the murder weapon and called the police and tried to pin this on Bobo... Does that sound about right?”

Emmanuel nodded his head. “Except she knew. I think it was an ambush — like she knew,” he said between sobs, gulping for breath to force the words out. “She pretended to go out. Took the car. I was making steak, tenderizing the meat, when Gordon called me in. I use the base of a small axe to beat the meat. The same axe I use to cut through bone when I need to. It is very sharp. Anyway, she must have only gone to the end of the road because she was back so soon and surprised us. It all happened so fast.”

Okoro patted him on the back. “She used the meat

tenderizer?”

“Yes.”

Okoro nodded, thinking to himself that this explained both the wounds on Gordon and the cuts on Dorothy Parker’s hands. She must have hit Gordon repeatedly with the base of the axe until blood got on the handle, causing it to slip and nick her palms a few times.

“I don’t suppose we will ever find the murder weapon?”

“I threw it into the bay,” Emmanuel said.

“Of course you did.” Okoro thought about how hard all this must have been for Emmanuel. To cooperate with his lover’s killer to frame the poor chimpanzee. Could a chimpanzee even be arrested for murder? Charged? What were the laws with regard to animals that attacked and killed their owners? That would be the jurisdiction of Animal Control, not Homicide.

“I love him,” Emmanuel said again. “And he loved me too. Why couldn’t she let us be? She only loves that monkey, it’s unnatural.”

Okoro nodded. They sat in the grass for what seemed like a long time while Emmanuel collected himself. Okoro helped him up.

“Can I say goodbye to my wards before you arrest me?” Emmanuel asked.

“For what? You didn’t murder Gordon. Besides, what would be gained from all that scandal. It’s all quite messy, this whole situation.”

“So what happens now?” Emmanuel asked.

“Well, the coroner will be here soon to remove Gordon’s body. Say nothing to them. I’m going in to talk to your mistress.”

“But...”

“But what? The monkey did it. That’s what my report will say.”

Even Sherlock Holmes would have agreed with him on this decision, of that he was sure. Anyway, he had solved the crime and nobody was beaten to get a confession. In a manner of speaking, he had won. There would be other cases, less complicated in terms of victims and perpetrators, but for now his quiet victory would have to suffice.

Emmanuel remained silent. His eyes said it all.

Okoro headed back inside.

“Well?” Dorothy Parker said. “Are you done here?”

“Yes, I’m done, Mrs. Parker. My verdict is that the monkey did it. May Bobo and Gordon forgive us all.”

The last thing Okoro saw was Mrs. Dorothy Parker petting Bobo and whispering soothing sounds. As he walked down the gravel path, the coroner’s van pulled up.

“An unusual one, I hear,” the coroner said to Okoro.

“Yes, highly irregular,” Okoro replied. “Killer ape. That has to be a first.”

Back at the station, it was quiet as Detective Sergeant Okoro threaded the report sheet into the typewriter. This was one of those moments when he was grateful there was a line to toe.