Gold of Our Fathers - [24]
Wei began talking to her in Chinese, and even to Dawson’s ears, it was clear how halting and tentative his speech was, as if he were trying to choose his words as carefully as he could. The more he spoke, the more Lian’s face clouded over, and when Wei was done, she regarded him with an expression somewhere between incredulous and affronted. She took a step back, and for a moment Dawson thought she was about to retire to some internal chamber of the house, but instead she began to shout questions at Wei in a disturbing barking manner. He seemed to be trying to answer, but he never got very far, and after a while, overwhelmed by emotion, he covered his face with his hands and began to take deep, heaving breaths.
Lian staggered past him, looking confused, lost, and bewildered. Dawson watched as she swung around and shouted something else unintelligible at Wei, and then bolted for the door. Wei caught her before she got there, trying to hold her without hurting her as she struggled, screaming.
My God, Dawson thought. Worse, much worse than he had imagined, but then it often was.
Wei was trying to talk to her even as she was flailing. Then, like a light switched off, the energy left her and she collapsed into a ball on the floor sobbing in a strange braying fashion. The housemaid, who had appeared in the sitting room in alarm, knelt down by Lian, gently patting her back. After some moments, Lian’s crying lost strength, but quiet episodes were interrupted by bursts of more grief.
“Can we help her to get up and sit down?” Dawson suggested.
Huang asked her, and she agreed. Wei assisted her to the sofa.
“Please,” Dawson said to the maid, “can you bring her some water?”
She hurried then to the kitchen and returned with a glass of water. Lian took one sip and gave it back, staring ahead blankly with swollen eyes.
“What was she saying when she first heard the news?” Dawson asked Huang.
He shrugged. “Something like… not believe it. How Bao dead?”
Dawson nodded. He’d seen the broadest range of emotions in his time. This was only one of the many.
Lian sent Huang and Dawson a querying look. Wei said something to her, obviously in explanation.
“Tell her I’m very sorry for the death of her husband,” Dawson told Huang after he had explained to her.
Huang did that, and then she asked Wei a question. He sat in the sofa closest to her chair and began what Dawson assumed was an account of everything that had happened that morning.
“She want know why take so long you inform her,” Huang said.
“Tell her I’m sorry for that,” Dawson said. “It was because we had to see to some police business first.”
She nodded in acceptance and asked something else.
“She want know if anyone caught,” Huang said, “and I told her no.”
“Thank you,” Dawson said. “Please ask her if she feels well enough for me to ask her some questions, or does she need some more time?”
Huang posed the question to her. “No, she okay, Mr. Dawson. You can go ’head.”
“Did Bao sleep here last night?”
“She says yes.”
“Excuse me for asking, but did she sleep in the same bed with him?”
“Yes.”
“What time did he leave to go to work this morning?”
After a short discussion, Huang came back to Dawson. “He told her last night that he go to help Wei fix excavator four o’clock in the morning, and so he have to wake up two thirty. She set her alarm clock and wake him up, and he leave about ten minutes.”
Kumasi to Dunkwa in under two hours, Dawson thought. Probably quite feasible that early, especially if Bao drove anything like his younger brother. “After she saw him for the last time,” Dawson asked quietly, aware that this might trigger tears again, “did she speak to him again?”
He was right. When Huang asked Lian, her chin began to quiver and her face cracked, shredded again by grief. She shook her head.
“No,” Huang said sadly. “She never speak to him again.”
“I’m sorry,” Dawson said. “I need to ask her something. Does she know of anyone who would want to kill Bao?”
A long discussion followed between the Lian and the Chinese males.
“She says she think Ghanaian galamsey men hate Bao, so maybe one of them do it.”
“Anyone in particular?” Dawson thought he had discerned a name in Lian’s long response.“She thinks Kudzo did it?”
Huang was astonished. “How you understand what she say?”
“I didn’t,” Dawson said. “I just heard the name Kudzo. Why does she think Kudzo did it?”
She shrugged in answer when Huang posed the question, and gave a sharp, short answer.
“She never trust them,” Huang explained, avoiding Dawson’s eye for some reason. “Always gave Bao trouble.”
“That isn’t all she said. Tell me all of it, Mr. Huang.”
He was squirming. “She say she hate this country,” he confessed. “She wish she never come here. She hate the black people, they lazy, all they want is money for no work. Thieves, make trouble all the time.”
“Ah, I see,” Dawson said.
“Sorry, sir,” Huang said.
Dawson shrugged. “At least she’s honest.”
“Lian wanna know where Bao body,” Huang said. “She want see him.”
“By now it should be at the mortuary at Komfo Anokye Teaching Hospital,” Dawson said. “If she feels prepared to go today, we can go there now.”
