Children of the Street - [42]

“Here is our place,” Mosquito said, as they got to about the middle of Knutsford. On the veranda in front of the store, there were a couple cardboard mats. Only two members of the gang were back for the night: Issa, the leader, and Mawusi, who was sleeping. Dawson and Chikata shook hands with Issa, who was visibly uneasy.

“Is he all right?” Dawson asked, indicating Mawusi.

“He’s sick,” Issa said. “Fever.”

Ironically, Mawusi meant “in God’s hands,” Dawson remembered from school. He was struck by how small the boy was.

“How old is he?”

“Thirteen,” Issa said.

He looked more like ten.

“Maybe tomorrow I’ll get some medicine from a pharmacy,” Issa said lamely.

“Do you know about the clinic at the Street Children of Accra Refuge?” Dawson asked him.

“Eben told me something about it, but I’ve never been there before.”

“You should take Mawusi there,” Dawson said. He gave Issa one of Patience’s cards.

Issa examined it for a moment. “Thank you.”

“Not at all. I’m very sorry about Ebenezer.”

Issa looked away, his gaze morose.

“Ebenezer was watchman from what time to what time?” Dawson asked.

“From nine to midnight,” Issa said.

“And Mosquito came back at what time?”

“Almost ten-thirty.”

“And Ebenezer was gone by then.”

“Yes, please.”

“And then you went to search for him?”

“First, Mosquito went to that side,” Issa said, pointing to the east end of Knutsford. “When he came back, then the two of us went together to the other side.”

“Let’s take a look,” Dawson said.

Issa led the way. Mosquito stayed behind to watch Mawusi. Dawson glanced back and saw the older boy covering the sick one with a cardboard mat.

There was an old bola truck at the end of the street parked parallel to Kojo Thompson Road. Standing there rusting into oblivion, it reminded Dawson of the railway car at the station.

They went around the perimeter of the truck, carefully searching the ground with their flashlights. They looked inside the rear loader and poked around in the bola with a stick they got off the ground. Dawson wasn’t expecting to find anything special, and they didn’t.

“Let’s go to the other end of Knutsford now,” he said.

There was a pharmacy called A-Plax at Knutsford’s western end, about a dozen street children sleeping on its veranda. Behind that was the dark hulk of the UTC building. Turning right took them up to Derby Avenue, Commercial Street, Kimberly Avenue, and Station Road, all of which ran parallel to Knutsford in that order going north. They had one feature in common: With little or no street lighting, they were very dark, particularly at their far ends. Ebenezer could easily have been attacked here or snatched away. Dead this morning in Jamestown, about two miles away, he had to have been moved and then killed or killed and then moved. There was a third possibility: killed while being moved.

Dawson was thinking about this as they stood at the side of Nkrumah Avenue. It was deadly quiet in the city now.

“Issa, we’re also looking for Tedamm,” Dawson said. “Have you seen him?”

“Yes, I saw him this night with his boys.”

“Which boys are you talking about?”

“Antwi Boasiako and Michael Ofosu. They always follow him around.”

“Where did you see them?”

“At Tudu Road. They were with some girl.”

“Ebenezer had a quarrel with Tedamm, not so?”

Issa nodded, bitterness twisting his features. “He was trying to take Eben’s spot. Eben wouldn’t give him way. That’s why Tedamm killed him.”

Dawson was startled. “What? How do you know?”

“I just know.”

“A feeling in your bones.”

Issa nodded.

“How did Tedamm kill Eben?” Dawson asked. “And how did he get him to Jamestown?”

“I’m sure he came with his ruffian friends and put Eben by force inside a car, then they drove him to Jamestown and killed him there.”

“Is there someone else who maybe wanted to kill Eben?”

Issa sucked his teeth and shook his head. “No one, except Tedamm. Everybody liked Eben.”

“Do you know one Musa Zakari?” Dawson asked.

“No. Who is he?”

“They found him dead in the lagoon about two weeks ago.”

“I heard something about it, but I didn’t know him.”

Dawson suddenly thought of Sly. He asked Issa if he knew a boy by that name. Again, no luck.

A scream rang out and whipped their heads around. It came from the general direction of the railway station. And a second one, now more like a woman keening.

“Let’s go,” Dawson said to Chikata.

They began to run.

27

Inside the railway station courtyard where Dawson had been just hours before, a crowd had gathered to stare at something going on in the garbage dump abutting the wall. There was some light coming over from Nkrumah Avenue but not much. Dawson and Chikata went around the crowd, skipping across the gutter and running up to the rear section of the trash pile, where a fat man was shining a flashlight on the body of a partially disrobed woman.

“Police,” Dawson said. “Get back, please.”

They did. Dawson and Chikata crouched on either side of the woman. With their flashlights trained on her, they saw she was young, probably in her midteens. She was lying on her stomach. Her buttocks were like enormous melons, but her limbs seemed collapsed and crumpled, like those of a squashed insect.