“What should I do?” Dougal asked.
“What do I care? Just don’t get yourself kidnapped in my country.”
Dougal felt stupid. He stared at the man whose countenance had gone from unrestrained bemusement to pure disgust. Dougal was desperate for help. His face pleaded on his behalf.
“Look,” the man said, “get rid of that jacket, for one.”
Dougal looked down at himself, his eyes drawn to the stain. It was ruined, anyway. He hurriedly took off the jacket. His shirt was wet and clung to his body. He folded the jacket then unfolded it and rolled it up.
“Get rid of it,” the man said.
Dougal understood. The jacket was like a target painted onto him. He glanced around for where to stash the cheap thing.
The man held out his hand. “Give it to me,” he said.
Dougal handed over the jacket. “What now?” he asked.
The man picked up his bag and in an unnecessarily loud voice said, “You are what they call mumu over here. If you are lucky, you’ll get a flight back to England today. If you step out there, be ready to lose everything you ever worked for in your life. And maybe even your life itself.”
Dougal watched him go, then peered at the man outside, then locked eyes with the police officer who was still standing rigid and appearing confused, then looked back at the man who had saved him from being kidnapped. He turned around to check for the stooped white man from the flight, for safety. He was gone.
Dougal picked up his bag from the ground. At least he hadn’t lost any money, and he still had theirs. He had come out tops. Yes, he’d taken time to off fly to Nigeria during term time, he’d lost two days of holiday for that, but he still had their money. If only he could get out of Nigeria before they found him. Before they figured out that he’d been warned. He imagined the chap waiting outside bursting into the airport and chasing him down. His heart beat even faster.
At the British Airways desk, Dougal asked the lady if he could use his return ticket to get on the next available flight home.
The lady took the ticket from him and inspected it. “Sir, you just arrived this morning.”
“I just want to get the hell out of this place,” Dougal muttered.
Betsy would agree with him that they had made a profit out of the failed kidnap attempt. If she would go along with him and leave out the flight to Nigeria, he could tell the story to their friends about how he had outsmarted Nigerian con artists. If she played along and they both pretended he never actually took the flight.
The woman shifted backward in her chair and called over to a male colleague.
Matthew would play along. After all, he’d also fallen for the con. It was as much his fault that Dougal had almost gotten kidnapped in Lagos. He shivered. It’d been so close. If not for the eavesdropping gentleman from the flight. So close. But the bastards had done their homework well; the only thing that still puzzled him was why they chose a poor schoolteacher — of all the mumus in London, why him? And how on earth did they get to know so much about Uncle Sam?
“Sir, what seems to be the problem?” the male attendent asked. “Sir? Sir? Sir, is everything okay? Sir?”
“How did he know his name?” Dougal said, staring into the man’s face.
“What, sir?”
“The man, the anticorruption man, how did he know my uncle is called Sam? I never told him my uncle’s name. How did he know it?”
“What are you talking about, sir?”
“He knew my uncle’s name. How could he have known that, unless... Oh my God. I’ve been swindled. He’s the con!”
“Are you waiting for Dougal?”
The driver checked the name written on the name card and nodded, even though what the man said didn’t sound like what he read. And he was there to pick up a white man, not a Nigerian like the slender, bespectacled man in a suit standing in front of him. But next to the Nigerian was a white man, slightly stooped, mopping his forehead with a damp white handkerchief, and sweating as if water had been poured over his head. And he was wearing a white jacket. The jacket had a large blue stain on its pocket.
Killer Ape
by Chris Abani
Ikoyi
It was hard to believe that the monkey had done it. Not monkey, Okoro thought to himself, crossing the word out in his notebook. He wrote ape, and next to it, chimpanzee. Accuracy in recoding data and attention to detail were a detective’s best friend, especially in a case as bizarre as this one.
“Why would an ape, your pet ape, kill your husband?” Okoro asked the white woman who was standing by the French doors holding the midsized ape like a baby. It clung to her, and an expression of sorrow in its eyes made it look vulnerable. The terry cloth diaper it was wearing exacerbated this and made it appear even more like a baby. That look belied the blood on its hands, thick and even, matting the fur. The chimpanzee had clearly tried to lick its hands clean and had left blood all around its mouth. It was an unsettling sight, although Okoro wasn’t sure if it was more the idea of a murdering chimpanzee or the fact that this was a pet wearing diapers. The British in Nigeria were a strange bunch, he thought. This woman, he thought, glancing at his notes, this Dorothy Parker, was particularly strange.
The light coming in through the French doors was dusty and mote-laden. It spilled across the expensive Berber rug, falling on the body of Gordon Parker. He was lying facedown in a pool of his own blood. There were several nasty cuts on the back of his head, and a large bump had risen.
Mrs. Dorothy Parker blew a long stream of smoke out of the French doors from the cigarette she was smoking. Pinched between forefinger and thumb, it was in an ivory holder with a gold inlay, an expensive piece. There was a deliberateness to her that made Okoro think that she was very likely not the emotional kind.
“How would I know?” Dorothy Parker responded. “Bobo here has many gifts, but speech is not one of them.”
At the mention of its name, the chimpanzee paused in licking its hands and peered at the woman. They made eye contact and the ape lowered its gaze as though afraid of what it saw in hers.
Okoro noted this and wondered if it was a frame job. But the idea was so absurd he was at a loss to explain how or why anyone would frame a chimpanzee for murder. He thought about asking her, but instead said: “Bobo? That’s not the name I expected you to have given him, Mrs. Parker. There is something about you that makes me think you’d have chosen a name like Theodore.”
Dorothy Parker looked Okoro up and down and snorted. He couldn’t tell if she was expressing amusement or derision.
“Theodore? Why that would have been perfect, but my husband loved the circus. He did have an unnatural affinity for the lower classes,” she said.
“How do you mean, Mrs. Parker?” Okoro asked.
“Oh, I don’t know. He had cheap tastes. Liked to hang out with the natives more than us expatriates. I mean, no offense, Sergeant...”
“Okoro,” Okoro said.
“Yes, quite,” Dorothy Parker replied. “As I said, no offense, but our sort of people have little in common with the likes of the natives.”
“I see your point. Keeping an ape as a child must be much more preferable to mingling with us lowly humans,” Okoro said.
Dorothy Parker flushed from embarrassment but said nothing.
Detective Sergeant Okoro had caught the weekend shift, which he typically didn’t mind because it was an easy one. Much of the work happened on Saturday nights, the usual run-of-the-mill fights and stabbings and then the occasional murder, but a light load. Lately, most people in Lagos were dying in robber-related crimes, which often meant that to avoid turf wars, Homicide detectives gave up those cases to Robbery. When Okoro suggested the two units be merged into one, Robbery/Homicide, he was met with derision and dismissal. Stabbing-related deaths mostly occurred in the clubs and brothels which again involved ceding many cases to Vice. This was why Homicide’s caseload was quite light, something all the veterans in the unit seemed to love, and they would fight anything that changed the status quo. Anyway, there were few detectives in the Homicide unit who liked or knew how to execute proper forensic investigations.