“Can we use your room for a moment?”
She nodded. “No problem, sir. It’s free.”
The audience began to disperse, the spectacle of the day over.
Akosua, still unsteady on her feet, leaned against Regina as they followed Dawson down the corridor. Chikata accompanied them into the office, where there were two desks, one with a computer that was switched off. Dawson wondered if it worked. Many of CID’s computers were old, burned-out fixtures.
Chikata moved the chairs from behind the desks, offering them to the young women. Akosua was trembling. Her eyes were bloodshot and as painfully swollen as those of a pummeled boxer. Now, Dawson could get a good look at her. While Regina was around twenty, twenty-one, Akosua couldn’t have been more than about seventeen. She was built very slightly, with a mousy, anxious face. She had a small tribal mark on her left cheek. Her hair was badly cut and straightened, but she had made an effort to gather it back and look sophisticated. Her dress, a Ghanaian print, was on the shabby side with oil stains. She wore cheap plastic slippers. Yet Dawson could see the care she had put into her appearance.
Physically, she and Regina could not have been more unlike each other. Regina was richly made, her body forcing her blouse and tight jeans to conform to her curves. Akosua looked like she ate once every other day.
Constable Simon came in with a bottle of Voltic water.
“Thank you, Simon,” Dawson said.
“No problem, massa. Please, do you need anything else?”
“No, thank you. You can go.”
Dawson snapped the seal on the top of the bottle and handed it to Akosua. “Have water. You need it. Take your time.”
For the first time, Akosua looked up at him and met his gaze. “Thank you,” she whispered, taking the bottle.
Regina, supportively holding her friend’s free hand, watched as she tilted her head back and drank thirstily, her glottis loudly registering each gulp.
“Ei!” Regina exclaimed with a half laugh. “Take a breath, Akosua.”
The girl did, stopping only briefly, and then finished up the bottle.
Dawson took it from her. “Better?”
Akosua nodded, wiping her chin with the back of her hand. “Please, yes. Thank you.”
Dawson perched on the side of the desk, the one with the computer. “So. You wanted to talk to me. Here I am.”
She might have felt intimidated by him or been shy, or both. She looked uncertainly at Regina, who took up the slack and said, “Please, Mr. Dawson, we came to look for you yesterday afternoon, but they said you weren’t here and we should come back today.”
Dawson didn’t comment, but his not hearing about who had come looking for him was a common occurrence. More often than not, the receptionists did not take a message, verbal or written, nor did they pass it on. “Come back tomorrow” was an all-too-frequent response to the visitor in search of a CID officer.
“I’m sorry I was so hard to find, Akosua,” Dawson said, addressing her rather than Regina, trying to coax her out. “You say the drawing of the boy resembles your boyfriend?”
“Yes, please,” she said softly, her hands wringing in her lap.
“What is his name?”
“Please, his name is Musa Zakari. I haven’t seen him for ten days. As soon as I saw the picture in the newspaper, I knew it was him.”
Regina pulled out a mobile from her jeans pocket. “Mr. Darko, I took some pictures of Akosua and Musa some weeks ago, if you want to have a look. Then you can see how he looks like.”
Dawson and Chikata came around so they could see her phone screen. Akosua looked on as Regina went through each of four photographs, all containing Musa. One of them really got Dawson’s attention. Musa was standing behind Akosua with his arms around her, his smiling face nuzzling against her neck as she leaned against him. Comparing a drawing to a photo was often difficult, and the facial features were not a dead-on likeness to Kirezi’s sketch. But the smile. It was the smile with the same missing cuspid that did it. Somehow, Kirezi had captured it perfectly.
“That’s a fine picture of you and Musa,” Dawson said to Akosua.
She smiled tentatively, a smile marred by sadness.
“How did he lose his tooth?” Dawson asked.
Akosua cleared her throat. “Please, about three months ago, some thieves at Agbogbloshie Market beat him and stole his money. His mouth was bleeding and his tooth was loose, and it was paining him so he pulled it out and he was going to throw it away, but I said no, don’t throw it away-give it to me, and he said, Ah, but what will you do with it? And I said I would make a necklace with it, so when I wear it I know I have you with me even if you are not there.”
Without warning, tears erupted, running down her cheeks, and a whimper escaped her.
Regina gave her friend a handkerchief and then rubbed Akosua’s back soothingly. “You’re doing well,” she said.
Dawson squeezed the girl’s hand encouragingly. “I know this is tough. Try for me, eh? I’m very glad you came to see me.”
She pressed the handkerchief against her eyes. Dawson gave her a chance to recover. He asked her gently, “Did you make the necklace with the tooth?”
Akosua nodded, taking a grimy piece of paper carefully out of her pocket. She unfolded it gingerly, revealing a thin strand of leather with a single strung item-a tooth. Dawson picked up the necklace and examined it. The tooth, one of the cuspids, was dazzling white and smooth as pearl. In a minute hole drilled through its base was a small metal loop, to which the leather string was attached. Dawson felt that surge of excitement that came with a significant break.
“You made this, Akosua?”
She shook her head. “Regina’s husband-he makes jewelry at the Arts Center.”
“Oh, very good.” Dawson acknowledged Regina. She smiled, looking proud.
Dawson looked up at Chikata. “Can you get me one more chair?”
“Sure.” Chikata left the room.
“When was the last time you saw Musa?” Dawson asked Akosua.
“The Saturday before last.”
“That’s the fifth of June, the day before the body was found.”
“Yes, please.”
“Where did you see Musa that day?”
“We went to Nima Market.”
“At what time?”
“In the evening about six o’clock.”
“Did Musa live in Nima?”
“No, please. He stayed at different places. He was a truck pusher, so he stayed anywhere he had work.”
“He lived on the street?” Dawson asked.
“Yes, please.”
“Did he have any family?”
“Please, no. He came from the north. He didn’t have anyone here.”
Chikata came back with a borrowed chair. Dawson sat down at a comfortable angle from Akosua. His previous position, sitting on the edge of the desk, which forced her to look up at him, had seemed dominating. He wanted her to feel at ease.
“What you’ve done,” he said, “bringing us Musa’s tooth, is a very good thing, Akosua, because we can test it to see if it belongs to the person in the lagoon. If it does, then it means that the person in the lagoon was Musa.”
“Yes, please.”
“But we have to keep the tooth for some time,” Dawson went on. “We won’t break it. We just have to remove a small piece from it, so small that you wouldn’t notice. You get me?”
“Yes, please.”
“About the fight you say Musa had with the thieves-did you see it happen?”
“No, I wasn’t with him.”
“How old was Musa?”
“Sixteen. He was going to be seventeen.”
“And how old are you?”
“Seventeen too.”
“Do you know anyone who didn’t like Musa?”
She shook her head. “Everyone liked him.”
“That evening when you and Musa went to the market, what time did you leave each other?”