“Tomorrow morning, detective.”
“More likely this afternoon.”
He waved me away and returned to making notes in a file folder. It made sense he was worried. We were dealing with powerful people, powerful people perhaps trying to kill each other.
Half an hour later I was driving to the security guard’s house at Marine Base. When I saw it, I knew I had not driven to a palace. Concrete, bare with no fence, the building seemed more like a small school with rows of rooms on either side of a U-shaped pattern, typical of public housing in this part of town. Judging from where they lived, Security Guard Okon Abasi and his family were not living the Nigerian dream.
A young naked girl of about six ran from behind the building, nearly bumping into me. An older girl, perhaps eleven, wearing only panties, followed her, shouting for her to return to the kitchen and to finish washing the plates.
I was embarrassed. I was not used to seeing naked or nearly naked girls. Where I grew up, in the townships, such sights were unknown. Usually, township people were rich, but my parents were simply comfortable. I was lucky. Everyone in Nigeria lived in extremes. The security guard and his family lived here, in the slums of Port Harcourt, while his employer lived in paradise, or as close as modern Nigeria came.
I called to the older girl.
“Good afternoon, sir,” she said, apparently unaware her half nakedness made me uncomfortable.
“How are you?” I nodded at her.
“Fine, thank you.”
“I’m looking for the Abasis. Do you know where they are?”
“That’s us.”
“Where is your father?”
“He’s gone to work.”
“Is your mother at home?”
She hesitated-a smart kid, wondering who I was and what I wanted. Before she could ask another question, I told her that I was a friend of her father’s. I said I had a message for her mother. She stared at me suspiciously. I looked like a cop. My guess was Mom and Dad did not have many friends with the police.
“She’s sleeping inside. Let me call her for you.” She disappeared into the building, the second room on the left row, calling Mommy as she ran in, looking once over her shoulder at me.
I waited outside. Moments later, a young woman came out with the girl in tow. Both of them looked at me suspiciously. Mother and daughter for sure. “Yes? What can I do for you?” The mother was of average height and heavily built, with a dark complexion.
“Mrs. Abasi?”
“Who are you?” She revealed nothing more than she had to. Maybe her daughter told her I was police; maybe, like her daughter, she saw the law in me.
“Can I come in?”
“What do you want?”
“Police.”
That was all I had to say-to some people. She did not bother to ask for my badge, stepping slightly to the left, allowing me just enough space to squeeze past her into the building. I found myself in a small room, a combined sitting room and bedroom. Through an open door, I saw another room with a smaller bed. Kitchenware was set up in the corner of the room. No TV, just a six-battery radio on top of the wooden room divider, along with books and some prized possessions (earrings).
The chairs were all rickety. I sat in one. Carefully.
She probably guessed why I was there. There was no point being coy. “I’m investigating the bomb blast at Okpara’s. Where your husband works.” Her facial expression did not change-a mix of suspicion and feigned lack of interest. “Has Okon told you about the blast?”
“Yes, the news’s all over.”
“Who wanted your husband’s employer dead?”
“Papa Iniobong don’t tell me much. Okon was lucky to be at the gate when it happened or. .”-she gestured to the sky with her open palms-“I would have been a widow. Just like that. I told him to leave that place. All those big men and their big troubles, just leave it. But he won’t hear.”
“He didn’t tell you anything else? Did anyone threaten his boss before the explosion?”
“I don’t understand, sir.” Now the suspicion was obvious-and the fear.
“The question is simple enough. Has anyone threatened to kill his employer?”
“How can I know about such things? Am I a big man?”
“So your husband never told you of any plot to kill Okpara?”
“God forbid!”
“Did you see him bring any strange objects home in the past few days?”
“No.” The walls were completely up now; they were thick, tall, and had broken glass on top.
“Has he been behaving unusually lately?”
“No. Papa Iniobong is very, very normal.”
“Are you positive?”
“I answered your question.”
“He wasn’t under pressure lately?”
“No.”
She was giving me less and less. There was not much point continuing. “Okay. And he didn’t bring home any large sums of money lately?”
She grinned, exposing perfect teeth.
“No?”
The grin stayed. I was the one expected to leave. She either was stupid or smart, maybe both. Certainly, I saw nothing to indicate she had come into a lot of money recently. But I could have her watched, have her bank records checked. “Thank you for your time, Mrs. Abasi.”
“It’s Matilda. And you’re welcome, as long as you leave and don’t come back.” Same smile.
“Matilda, then. Thank you. Have a nice day.”
She followed me to my car, perhaps to make sure I was leaving, and watched as I drove off. I saw her in the rearview mirror, arms folded over her chest, waiting until I was completely gone.
When I returned to our office Femi told me that Okon had been brought in and was waiting in the interrogation room.
“Excellent,” I said. “I’ll tell him hello from his wife.”
“How did it go with her?”
“She knows something but I have no idea what. Maybe she just knows enough to tell me nothing.”
“But she won’t speak, eh?”
“Nothing worthwhile.” I shook my head. “I doubt we’ll get anything from Abasi, either.”
“Well then, go ahead and waste your time interviewing him. I’ll stay here to get some useful work done.”
I gave him a sarcastic grin as I left our office. Femi liked paperwork, while I have always been the sort of guy who wants to shred the papers and go out into the field. This time instead of going out into a field, I walked across the Yard.
CHAPTER SEVEN
At the main building, Corporal Ogbonnaya Ubani was at the counter. I told him I wanted to see Abasi. He brought up a constable who took me to the interrogation room. Abasi was already there, and looked up as I walked in. I took a spare chair and dropped the bombing report on the table in front of him. It made a loud thump. I also pulled out a pocket tape recorder and pressed Record.
“You understand your rights?”
“No.”
“You have the right to have a lawyer present.”
“Am I being arrested? For what?”
“Are you willing to waive your rights?” Sometimes I found it helpful to ignore rights, something of course I’d never want done to myself.
“No. But that won’t matter, will it?”
“Sometimes. Not today. Too much is at stake.” He seemed confident enough. Perhaps he had nothing to hide after all. He was not insisting on lawyering up. “Do you know the man that ran from the bomb scene personally?”
“Who?”
I read from the report: “About six feet tall. Big man. He drives a white 305 Peugeot.”
“That guy? He said he was the plumber, that Okpara called him over. It was suspicious, my master asking for a plumber himself.”
“So you did not believe him?”
He nodded. I rather liked him. “I knew he was lying. I knew the workers who came to the house. I’d never set eyes on him before. And he was too well dressed for a plumber. But I checked inside. Stephen Wike told me to let him in.”
“Wike?”
He nodded again.
“This is the truth?”
“Yes. Wike told me that they had called a plumber for the upstairs washroom.”