“Good morning, Doctor,” I said, walking up to him. “Sorry to bother you. I’m Homicide Detective Peterside and this is Detective Olufemi Adegbola. State police.”
He smiled and shook our hands as if he meant it. “Very good, then. What can I do for you, officers? I don’t have too much time, you saw the people waiting outside.”
“It shouldn’t be long. We have some questions.”
“You said you are Homicide? Why do you want to talk to me? Who’s your Oga?”
We call our superior officers Oga as a mark of respect. “I’m sure you know.”
“Yes. I do.” His face was hard to read-he would smile whether he liked or hated you. “I have achieved a certain station in life, detective. If Homicide wants to speak to me for some reason, I’ll talk to your Oga.”
I ignored the barely veiled threat. “Okpara’s house has been bombed.”
“I’ve been phoned.”
“Do you know anything about it?”
“Of course not. The call was the first I’d heard.”
“You’re running against Okpara to be the candidate for governorship for your party.”
“So?”
“You have a motive. We have to follow up on all possibilities.”
He shook his head, dismissive. “This is a waste of my time. We are political rivals, not gangsters.” He walked away, taking out a cell phone. “This conversation is over.”
Puene, like many politicians in Nigeria, had difficulty seeing things from outside his own perspective. He had little patience with people who did not see things his way. He showed himself to be a forceful, intimidating, and overbearing individual. This had the potential to be a real problem for the yankee-trained doctor-turned-politician, as it could cost him allies.
Well, maybe interviewing him was a stupid wild guess, but it felt good to needle the jerk. We walked out, Femi trying to be invisible. The primaries were twelve days away. Violence was always in the air to begin with, and this race was close.
It was a long drive back to headquarters. We took Ikwerre Road to Diobu. By Nigerian standards, the roads were smooth. By any other standards, as Bette Davis had said, you had to be prepared for a bumpy ride. Large potholes loomed everywhere and were hard to avoid, the asphalt washed away by erosion to expose red earth.
There were scattered stalls along the roads. People chatted in the roadside markets. Drivers honked impatiently while noise from the many repair shops was deafening; it sounded like a thousand voices were shouting and cursing all at once. The carbon monoxide pumped into the atmosphere from the car and truck exhaust pipes made it difficult to breathe. The public housing was situated close to the roads, with garbage littering the streets. When the rain came, it got very flooded, making it difficult for cars to pass and a living hell for pedestrians.
I sighed. Port Harcourt is not all about filth and dirt and disarray, but it certainly seemed like it much of the time. Most people lived in stench, say along Creek Road, the center of Port Harcourt. It was much nicer to live in neighborhoods that had playgrounds, where the noise level was low, the taps flowed with water, and working streetlights were taken for granted.
But that was in the Government Reservation Area. Elsewhere, tap water was unreliable, forcing many people to rely on water tankers and Mairuwa (water hawkers). Power outages were almost routine in the rest of Port Harcourt, where you could at times go for days without electricity. Too bad for those who did not live in the Government Reservation Areas.
CHAPTER THREE
We soon arrived at headquarters, and I was able to stop philosophizing, and return to work.
When Femi and I walked in, a news story on the Okpara bombing was on the TV in the common room. Mrs. Karibi, the judge’s wife, was interviewed about what she had seen. That was too bad-I did not like my witnesses exposed.
It was past six in the evening when I called it a day.
“I’m off,” I told Femi. “Get on with the report. I’ll review it when you’re finished.”
“I’ll have it ready tomorrow morning.”
“And Femi. .”
“Yes?”
“We’ll have to keep an eye on Wike, Okpara’s assistant. He didn’t act normal. Maybe it was the bombing that had him jumpy, but it felt like something else. He knew more than he let on.”
“Sure, boss. Whatever you say.”
With that I drove off. By now it was 6:20. I went home to change into something more relaxed, then drove to Freda’s.
Her place was far enough from the refinery fires that kept part of Port Harcourt unnaturally lit so that it was dark by the time I got to her place, dark enough so if you looked up, you could see stars. I rarely looked up at the stars-what was the point? Freda’s apartment was a three-bedroom modern bungalow, part of a building complex wired to a giant industrial generator that supplied private power in case of outages. Her complex also provided clean water, pumping it into a massive overhead tank. The rent was high, high enough to keep civil servants, police detectives, and other ordinary people outside, looking in-just as we might look up at the stars we could never reach. But Freda could afford it. Her job paid very well. She could afford leather seats in her living room; mine were done in fabric. The seats were more like a very long cream-colored couch, placed in an L shape.
I never understood her dislike for paintings. Nothing hung on the walls except for a clock. Rubber-tiled flooring matched the color of the walls.
Where she had really gone overboard was her array of electronics. A twenty-one-inch flat-screen TV, the latest on the market, accompanied by an LG mini-theater system. Her bedroom was a lush ash with a white carpet, with an Arabian rug beside the mahogany bed. By her bedside, on a small night table, was a portrait of Christ with the crown of thorns.
Her kitchen showed the most effort. It made my own kitchen look like the cheaply furnished room it was. She had a standing gas cooker with an oven for baking, a superdeluxe Zanussi fridge, and a multifunction food processor that looked ready for space travel.
She opened the door, wearing the dress I had first seen her in. “This is for our anniversary,” she said, smiling.
I swallowed. I’d thought our anniversary was next week.
“Like it?” she asked.
“Of course. I remember that night. I cherish it. Just as I cherish you.”
Without any gift, I then avoided saying anything else by kissing her. I did not fool her for a second. She laughed as soon as our lips parted. I think I had enough smarts to look embarrassed. We went down the stairs to where my car was parked. I did not like it that she was always a step ahead of me. And she always was.
“I’m taking you somewhere exotic for the night. You’ll love it.” Where, I didn’t know yet, of course.
“Oh?”
“Somewhere cozy,” I said as we got into the car.
“Where, exactly?” She was on to me, but we both knew that.
“If I tell you, it won’t be a surprise.”
I thought quickly as I drove, trying to look as if I knew where I was going-I was probably going straight to the hell reserved for inattentive boyfriends. I thought about the dress she had put on and, in a flash of semi-brilliance, took her to the place we’d gone for our first date-Protea Hotel.
I kept us going with sweet talk until we pulled up outside. When she saw where we were, her lips gave me a gift. “This is the most romantic thing you have done in a long time,” she said. She appeared happy; that was all that counted. I would accept being shallow right now.