***IN
THE SHADOWS***
Andrew Okulobia had one of those faces
you could easily overlook in a crowd. He was slightly built and had barely met
the physical requirements to be a member of the Mobile Police Corps. He was the
kind of guy who could get lost in a crowd easily and his Divisional Officer had
made good use of his inconspicuousness on several occasions for undercover
work.
He stepped into the dimly lit bar and
pulled up the hood of his black sweatshirt. He looked around and found an empty
table at the back which was mostly covered in shadows. He stopped by the bar
and ordered a bottle of malt. He would look suspicious drinking a non-alcoholic
beverage in a place like this but the spot he had chosen would make him a
shadow in the midst of shadows. No one would notice him.
In the month since the robbery at the
bank Andrew had spent his time off prowling the most notorious bars and joints
in town. He knew DPO Abutu was not going to launch an investigation into the
incident and he was beginning to think there was something suspicious about the
DPO’s complacency. He had been trying to get any clues he could about who the
robbers were. There had been a few daring robberies and assassinations in the
last year and somehow, he felt they were all connected.
Five minutes after he came in, two men
took the table next to his. They were both very drunk. Even though they were
talking at the top of their voices, Andrew could barely hear them because the
music coming from the speakers was turned all the way up.
“…heard they took…million Naira”, the
guy in the red silk shirt with the beer gut and half his buttons undone was
saying.
Andrew saw the look of surprise on the
other man’s face but his response was lost in a cascade of drum rolls from the
music blaring though the speakers. Andrew was about to turn his attention back
to his bottle of malt when Beer Gut leaned in close to the other guy wearing a
black CrazyPeople T-shirt with droopy eyelids and whispered something in his
ear after casting a furtive glance around. That decided it for Andrew. This guy
knew something about the robbery that wasn’t public knowledge.
Four hours later when both men
stumbled out of the bar towards their car in the parking lot, Andrew was right behind
them. Beer Gut opened the doors with the remote control and was about to get in
when he turned away and started to throw up on the side of the car. His friend
was saying something about him not being able to hold down his alcohol when
Andrew walked up to the car.
“He’s right you know. You really
shouldn’t drink if you can’t keep it down”, Andrew said as he walked up to the
two men.
Droopy turned around and his smile
turned into a frown as he asked who Andrew was. Beer Gut retched one final
time, wiped his mouth on the sleeve of his shirt and came around to their side
of the car.
“Who are you?” Droopy asked again
taking a step forward. Andrew noticed his fists were clenched at his sides and
he shifted his weight to the balls of his feet as he came forward. He had a
fighter’s gait and Andrew surmised he was the dangerous one out of the two.
“I just couldn’t help overhearing your
conversation back there” Andrew began, “and I would like to ask you a few
questions if you don’t mind”. A look of surprise crossed beer gut’s face for an
instant and then he burst out laughing. Andrew took a step forward and Droopy
reached into his pocket, pulled out a jackknife and went into a half crouch
with his knife held up in front of him. Beer Gut had stopped his guffaw and had
a knife in his hand too.
Andrew assessed the situation and
concluded he could take both men. But it would be messy. And he didn’t want any
attention drawn to what he was doing. He knew it would cost him his job if his
boss found out he was investigating the robbery at the bank on his own.
“Like I said, I just want to ask you
some questions. I don’t want any trouble.”
“Well, too bad you are in trouble
already”, Beer Gut replied, and then to Droopy, “Take care of this guy and
let’s get out of here. I have a headache and I need to sleep it off.”
Droopy came forward then and Andrew
saw he had been right about him. The man moved like a panther about to pounce.
He was about two feet away when Andrew pulled out his gun.
“Step back and toss your knife over”,
Andrew said. “And you too”, he added, moving his gun to point at Beer Gut’s
head. Both men did as they were told and then Andrew asked them to get on their
knees and put their hands behind their heads.
“Now we are going to talk”, Andrew
began, “I am going to ask you a few questions and you are going to answer me to
the best of your knowledge. If at any point I feel you are lying to me, you’ll
never get the chance to wonder if you should have told me the truth instead”.
Ten minutes later, Andrew knew what
was going round the underground grapevine. It was not a lot.
The robbery had been carried out by a
gang no one seemed to know anything about. They were not small time crooks.
Rumour had it that their leader was well connected and had links to several top
politicians and businessmen in the country. Beyond that, the man was a ghost.
No one knew him. No one knew his name. No one knew what he looked like. Andrew
had a feeling that this man; this shadow, was the thread that connected all the
robberies and assassinations that had happened over the last year.
He felt more frustrated than he had
ever felt. How could those who called themselves law enforcement officers sit
idly and do nothing while criminals ran amok? Worse still, he suspected his
Divisional Officer had direct ties with some of these criminals. What could one
man do against a system that was so corrupt?
***ASHAAN ASH-SHAY (SOMETHING FOR YOUR TEA)
***
Christmas had crept up on Andrew
without him even realizing it. He had not noticed all the signs that usually
signaled the arrival of the festivities. He had been so preoccupied that the
echo of fireworks which had become more frequent in the past month only faintly
registered at the periphery of his mind. He had not noticed the gradual shift
in the weather which had gotten colder as the days passed or the decorations on
most buildings or even the Christmas carols with their familiar words blaring
from almost every speaker in town.
When he stepped out of the house that
morning on Christmas Eve, it was as though he had been existing in an alternate
universe up until that point. It may have been the heavy harmattan haze hanging
in the air or the cold which did it. But whatever the reason, awareness came rushing
in. And for the first time, he truly saw the Christmas decoration lights
pulsating with their hypnotic rhythms; felt the Christmas spirit that was in
every smile and every pleasantry exchanged by the people he passed on his way
to work.
Ever since he had wrangled what little
information he could get out of the two thugs at the bar, Andrew had thrown
himself completely into his work. It had been a way for him to overcome his
feeling of helplessness in the face of all the corruption he saw in the system.
He couldn’t change the system but he could make sure he cleaned up his little
corner of it. In the last three months, the amount of infractions on his beat
had drastically reduced.
Everyone was saying he would get a commendation
at the end of the quarter and possibly a promotion. Somehow though, he had the feeling
that his DPO was not entirely happy with how efficient he had been.
Andrew
was whistling when he walked into the office that morning. He had seen a couple
of cars parked outside in the parking lot when he walked into the station. They
were flashy cars and he wondered what was happening and who owned the cars.
He
signed the time register and was walking into his DPO’s office to tell him he
had resumed his shift when he was stopped by a sergeant stationed at the door.
‘’Oga say make nobody disturb am until him
visitors don comot’’ (The boss has asked not to be disturbed until his
visitors leave).
Andrew wasn’t surprised because DPO Akoji had the occasional
visitor he was closeted with in his office but he had a gut feeling there
was something off this time. So he went to sit at the complaints desk which was
directly opposite the door to the DPO’s office.
After
about half an hour, the door to the office opened and three men walked out. The
first two men to walk out didn’t get more than a cursory glance from Andrew. It
was the third man who was still in the office shaking hands with the DPO that
held his attention. He was dressed in a crisp white shirt tucked into brown
chinos trousers with brown suede shoes. His sleeves were folded to his elbow
and when he turned to leave he had a smile on his face. From the creases around
his mouth, Andrew guessed he had that smile on his face most of the time.
Andrew’s
gut feeling that there was something wrong was amplified the minute the smiling
man walked out the door and nodded to him in greeting. And then it hit him. It
was the smile. Andrew looked at the man’s face and saw that the smile which probably
never left his face didn’t go beyond his lips. His eyes were cold. And once you
could see past the facade of the smile, all that was left was a garish mask of
ruthlessness and viciousness.
Andrew
walked into the office immediately the smiling man stepped out. His DPO
obviously was not expecting him because as soon as he saw Andrew walk in, he
snatched up the brown envelope lying on his desk and tossed it into a drawer.
But Andrew had already seen the Dollar bills sticking out of the envelope. And
then there was the hamper just by the door. It was the biggest and best stocked
hamper Andrew had seen in his life.
‘Andrew, Merry Christmas! Look inside that
hamper whether you go see anything when you like.’’ (Andrew, Merry
Christmas! Look in that hamper and see if there’s anything inside it you might
like), his DPO boomed.
“Thank
you sir, but I’m fine.”
“Haba, Andrew. Na bad manners to reject gift from your
senior oo.” (Come on, Andrew. It’s bad
manners to reject gifts from your superiors!).
“Sir,
I’ll take a look at it when I’m getting off my shift. I just came to let you
know I had reported in.”
“Okay.
Carry on!”
As
Andrew saluted and walked out of his DPO’s office to go and sign in with the
desk sergeant, he had no doubt whatsoever that he had just seen his boss
receive a bribe.
To be continued
