Banks, Cops and Robbers (6)

***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