“Mr. Sarbah?” Dawson rose from his chair.
“Yes, please. You say your name is?”
“Dawson. Inspector Darko Dawson.”
“Ah, I see.” He had a slightly hoarse voice, but it didn’t trigger Dawson’s senses. They shook hands.
“Please, have a seat.” Sarbah sat in a facing chair. “I don’t usually accept visits from strangers, especially at this time of the night, but Forjoe tells me you’re a friend.”
“Yes,” Dawson said, going along with it. “I’m investigating the murder of Charles and Fiona Smith-Aidoo.”
His face revealed a flicker of interest. “So what can I help you with?”
“Jason Sarbah at Malgam Oil is your son, is that correct, sir?”
“Yes. Is something wrong?”
“Not at all,” Dawson said pleasantly. “Just checking that I have the right Sarbah. As part of my investigation, sir, I’ve been looking into the Smith-Aidoos’ and Sarbahs’ past. I understand Tiberius and Bessie were your parents?”
“Yes.”
“Your father was once accused of killing Bessie and Robert, is that correct?”
Sarbah closed his eyes and rubbed his brow slowly, as if he had a headache. “Please, Inspector Dawson, this is not a memory I enjoy discussing.”
“I understand it must be painful,” he said gently. He was going to be empathetic, but he wouldn’t let Richard evade any questions either. “However it’s important. I was ordered here by CID Headquarters to assist the Sekondi police with the investigation, so that’s what I must do. Any details you can provide are much appreciated, Mr. Sarbah.”
“And if I choose not to?”
Dawson remained polite. “Then there are one or two options. I can return daily to question you, which will become quite tiresome-for you, not for me. Or would you prefer to join me at the police station for interrogation?”
“Very well.” He sighed. “My father Tiberius married Bessie Smith in England in 1925. They had two children-my sister, Abigail, and me. I never knew her because she died of meningitis in 1932, and I was born in 1938. Bessie and Tiberius divorced each other in 1940.”
“By that time,” Dawson said in a neutral a tone as possible, “your mother was already having an affair with Mr. R.E. Aidoo, is that correct?”
Sarbah looked resentful. “Yes, that is so,” he admitted.
“I’ve been wondering,” Dawson said measuredly, “what tore your parents apart and drove your mother to R.E.”
“I don’t know for sure. No one actually told me, and I don’t remember. I was only two years old at the time, after all-too young to understand. In retrospect, irreconcilable differences and my father’s drinking, perhaps.”
“He was an alcoholic?”
Sarbah grimaced. “Yes. I’m not sure how severe it was at the time of the divorce, but in later years the alcohol became lethal.”
“I’m sorry,” Dawson said quietly. “R.E. and your mother had Simon and Cecil, your half brothers?”
“Yes, R.E. had returned to Takoradi with my mother and me in 1942. Simon was born in 1943 and Cecil in 1945.”
“Did you get along well with your half brothers?” Dawson asked gently, fearing that he may be treading on sensitive ground too soon.
“Let’s just say things could have been better and leave it at that,” Sarbah said, tensely tapping the side of his thigh.
“What about Tiberius?” Dawson asked. “When did he come back to Takoradi from the UK?”
“In 1948.”
“I’m sure he wanted to see you,” Dawson said encouragingly.
“Of course he did. I was his son, and I wanted to see him too, but…”
Sarbah shifted his weight and Dawson waited.
“But R.E. and Bessie conspired to prevent us from being with each other.”
Dawson could feel the bitterness that Eileen had ascribed to Sarbah. He had a seething anger. “Why do you think that?”
He shrugged, but it was unresolved pain he was expressing, not nonchalance. “R.E. and Bessie hated my father. I remember hearing how R.E. once humiliated Daddy in public-called him a ‘drunken failure.’ ”
“How old were you at the time?”
“Twelve, thirteen-something like that. Two years before the murder. I presume you’ve been told about that?”
“Yes-1952?”
“Yes, sir. I was fourteen, Simon was eleven, and Cecil was nine. The three of us slept in the same room at one end of the house, R.E. and Bessie at the other. In the middle of the night, someone stole in through the screen window of their bedroom, butchered their bodies, and slashed their throats. Bessie screamed before she was slain, and Simon heard her. He woke me up and we ran to the room and saw it…” Sarbah shuddered.
“I’m sorry,” Dawson said with feeling. “A child should never see anything like that. Cecil too?”
Sarbah shook his head. “I wouldn’t let him go into the room.”
“Good man,” Dawson said approvingly.
“At first I couldn’t understand what had happened,” Sarbah went on, anguish on his face. “I saw blood, so much of it everywhere-on the bed, on the floor, on the walls-and then I saw my mother’s eyes were still open, looking at me and begging me to save her. I’ll never forget that. I saw red spraying from her neck, and I heard a gurgling sound and realized she was breathing through a gash in her throat. I remember saying, ‘Mama’ several times as I went to her and tried to lift her up in my arms, but her head fell back…”
Sarbah stopped talking. He was gulping down air in an apparent effort to control the grief that must have been as fresh as it had been that horrific night when he was only a young teenager. Dawson got up from his chair and kneeled down beside him.
“Take it easy, sir,” he said quietly. “Take a rest. You don’t need to finish it all right now.”
Sarbah fell back in his chair and took three deep breaths, as if trying to calm himself.
“Would you like some water?” Dawson asked.
Sarbah waved that away. “I’m okay.” He smiled wanly. “Now you understand why I don’t like to talk about this.”
“I do understand. I had no idea you had been through such a terrible trauma.”
“The murder itself was only the beginning of the nightmare,” Sarbah said, his voice even huskier than before. “You must be aware through your work, Inspector, how two or more eyewitnesses to the same crime can report completely different versions of what happened.”
Dawson, transferring to a chair closer to Sarbah’s than the original one, said, “I know the problem only too well.”
“Well, there you are. What I saw was not the same as what Simon said he saw. Our parents’ bedroom was dark when he and I got there. I believe I was in front of him-in fact I’m sure of it. He claimed I turned on the light, but I don’t remember doing that. I thought he switched it on at the wall after I had already entered the room. In any case, the first thing I recall seeing then were the bodies of my mother and stepfather, but Simon reported to the police that he saw a man leaving through the window, the same way he must have come in.”
“And he identified the man as Tiberius,” Dawson said, taking an educated guess.
“Yes, sir. The police questioned us over and over. I swore, and still do, that I never saw anyone else in the room-let alone my father-but Simon insisted.”
“Tiberius was taken into custody?”
“Yes, and interrogated for hours on end.” Sarbah looked directly at Dawson. “He denied he had anything to do with the killing, and I believe him till this day. Lots of things about Simon’s story didn’t add up. Did he see the man holding a weapon-a knife or machete? At first he said a knife, but then he changed his story and it was a machete. What was the man wearing? Simon couldn’t remember. Was the man bloody? ‘Yes, I think so.’ Why didn’t your half brother, Richard, also see this man? ‘I don’t know.’ His story was not holding up. Daddy didn’t have a great alibi, but neither could the police place him at the murder site.”