He rested his head against the wall as he practiced a piece he had composed the week before, a cyclical arrangement with intertwined melodies. After a few minutes of playing, it put Dawson in a relaxed and meditative mood, almost trancelike. It was the next best thing to smoking marijuana, and in his months of kicking the habit, he had increasingly relied on his mbira to relieve tension. In the “good old days,” he combined smoking with mbira playing, a doubly heightening experience.
After half an hour, he became pleasantly drowsy. He reached out for the light switch on the wall to turn off the bare-bulb ceiling light and stretched diagonally across the bed since it was a little too short for him. He felt tired, but he couldn’t sleep. His mind flitted over the events of the past two days like an undecided hummingbird. Instinctively, he felt that the Smith-Aidoo murder had greater breadth and depth than any of his previous cases. Two corpses in a canoe adrift around a deep-sea oil rig, a severed head with an excavated eye socket, a nineteenth-century pocket watch with a scrawled inscription invoking blood ties. What did it all mean?
IN THE MORNING, DAWSON once again hired Baah’s taxi services for the day. On the way to Sekondi-Takoradi Police Headquarters, the young driver, curious about the Ghana Police Service and the work of a detective, peppered Dawson with questions.
“So I think say you dey come to Tadi to investigate that man they dey cut off his head.”
“Yes. Charles Smith-Aidoo. Did you hear something about it?”
“They say it be juju.”
“What do you think?”
He nodded. “It could be.”
Baah’s reference to the involvement of supernatural powers was the second one after Sly’s. An idea struck Dawson. “Do you know any juju men in Tadi?”
Baah hesitated. “Many of them dey.”
“Can we go to them?”
“I can take you,” he said with a nervous smile, “but me, I won’t talk to them. I fear them.”
“No problem.”
“So I should take you now?” Baah said, taking his eyes off the road briefly to look at Dawson.
“No-this evening, if we have time. If not, then tomorrow.”
“Okay, sir.”
THEY ARRIVED AT Sekondi Headquarters around 8:30. Superintendent Hammond was in a meeting with three of his detectives and Dawson had to wait until they were done. Two detectives left while ASP Seidu remained behind.
“Good morning, sir,” Dawson said as he came in, switching on what he hoped was a disarming smile.
