He puts a pair of binoculars to his eyes and searches for the canoe. He jumps with fright as a man’s head comes into the field of vision. It is stuck on the end of an upright pole on the bow. Its mouth is open and the right eyeball has been scooped out. At first, the crane operator thinks it must be an extraordinarily lifelike mask and someone’s sick idea of a joke, but as he shifts the field of view slightly, he sees the decapitated man sitting inside the canoe with ragged, bloody pieces of tissue projecting from the dark gorge in his neck.
The crane operator turns his head and retches violently.
HOSIAH WAS ASLEEP. HIS little chest, wrapped in layers of gauze bandages, rhythmically rose and fell. His 24-hour observation in the Intensive Care Unit had passed uneventfully, and now he was on the step-down ward. Darko Dawson sat at his son’s bedside keeping watch, frequently looking up to check the cardiac monitor on the wall.
He was thankful Hosiah was out of the ICU. It meant he was stable and progressing. Dawson had found the high-tech, intensive care environment overwhelming. To him, the array of machines wasn’t so much a reassurance that every possible body system was under surveillance; it was a reminder that every possible body system could go wrong.
He was aware of a slight soreness in his own chest, as though he too had gone through Hosiah’s cardiac surgery-sympathy pains for the boy who meant everything to him. Dawson felt relief and deep gratitude. He and his wife, Christine, had endured the agony of watching their son slowly deteriorate over the seven years of his young life. Hosiah had been born with a large ventricular septal defect, and his physical condition had progressively worsened as his need for surgery had become more urgent every day. Ghana’s National Health Insurance Scheme only paid for the basics, like anti-malarial drugs. Open-heart surgery was not basic. The fee was far beyond their ability to pay.
Dr. Anum Biney, a forensic pathologist who had worked with Dawson on several murder cases, had called up his friend, the director of the National Cardiothoracic Center. Biney’s personal appeal on Dawson’s behalf had resulted in the approval of the operation for a nominal fee.
Dawson was off from work for ten days. It had not been easy to obtain clearance for temporary leave from the Homicide Unit at the Criminal Investigations Unit, CID, whereas Christine, who was a primary school teacher, had easily secured extended time off from work so she could be with Hosiah until he was well enough to return to school.
