For eveyone who has been following, I have finally finished chap 2. Enjoy. Remember to follow @AlexIjezie1 for more detail

CHAPTER TWO




THE CADAVER HAD a pungent smell. It looked more like a hewed animal carcass. Flies perched around on it, the buzzing sound of their movement gallingly boisterous. Detective Obi jumped down from the Hummer, closed his door and walked to the scene. Some policemen were there already, dressed in their black uniform, with their red police badge etched on it, and dazzling under the scorching Sunday sun.
Detective Obi looked at the corpse, dismembered in so many places: the legs were here, the hands were there, and the head was upside down at that other place, with congealed blood spurring from the neck region. Flies buzzed out of it. The victim barely resembled a human being.
“Whoever did this is a brutal killer,” he said, shifting the body of the corpse upside down. The fly that perched underneath it, nearly entered his mouth, but he dodged.
“I think it might be a ritual killing case,” said the Inspector. “I have seen such cases in the CID, people killing people for rituals and money.”
Detective Obi sighed, as he examined the top of the corpse. He pulled open the threadbare jacket that was still moist with blood. There were some Naira notes in the pocket, a few Dollars, but no identification card. He pulled off his trouser and examined his nude body.
“I don’t think it was a ritual killing. His private part is still intact, and so is every other delicate part of his body.”
“But why would someone murder someone so brutally for nothing?”
“It isn’t for nothing,” replied Detective Obi.
“Then what is it?”
“That is the thing. I cannot seem to place it; I am very sure that there’s a good explanation for this, but I don’t know.”
“So what do you think?”
That was it; he didn’t seem to be thinking anything. The murderers had been so brutal not to leave evidence. The detective sighed. The rates of crimes in this country were drastically increasing, and the perpetuators seemed to be getting away with it.
“Sir,” the voice of one of the policemen suddenly got him out of his thoughts. “We found something.” He was calling from up the valley pathway. His hands were up in the air, pointing towards the opposite direction in the scrubbed pathway of shrubs.
“What’s it?” asked Inspector Jerry.
“I think you come and see it yourself sir,” the policeman replied, his voice echoing in the whirlwind.
Detective Obi and Inspector Jerry followed him across the tearing veil of excess shrubs and vegetation of Iroko trees, and got to the other side. The policeman pointed in front, where an ash Toyota Camry stood, its boot bent like it had been hammered.
“When did this come here?” Inspector Jerry asked.
“Sir, we went looking around and came across this car. We have reason to believe it belonged to the deceased.”
“Good work, good work. Search around it and inside, and see if you’d find anything,” Detective Obi said.
“We’d never figure out who he is,” said Inspector Jerry, facing Obi. “His face is awkwardly impaired.”
Detective Obi sighed. There was no use for a DNA. It was only useful with a large database—Nigeria was still in its childhood, and unless they were extremely lucky, there would be no match. And the bureaucracy of the process was something else; they simply didn’t have the time to be lurking around the database office, day in, day out.
“We found something sir,” the mobile policeman shouted.
Detective Obi looked at what he had brought out from the car: a black HP pavilion laptop, a Globacomm recharge card, some receipts and a passport picture.
“Good work guys. Keep the laptop as evidence; give me the picture.” He turned to Inspector Jerry. “I think we have ourselves a face now,” he said smiling.
Jerry smiled back. Detective Obi took out his phone and dialed a number from his contact, as Jerry inspected the policemen, who were wrapping the evidence.
“Hello.”
“Hello, what’s up.”
“I’m cool, how far?”
“I dey,” Obi replied.
“Are you at home? Was planning to come and say hi,” his friend, Toby replied on the other end of the line.
“No. I’m in a little investigation case now.”
“What’s it?”
“There is a brutal murder scene here. A corpse has been dismembered viciously. I’m still working on the case.”
“Oh my God. Seriously?”
“Yes, and I need your help, that’s why I called.”
“Anything. What can I do?” he asked.
“It’s hard to get a facial picture of the corpse’s face; it callously damaged, but I have his picture. I need to know who he is. Do you think you can help me?”
“I don’t have the equipment I need here. I’d have to go to the office,” Toby replied.
“Then please do. I need to know who this is, and why he was murdered this cruelly.”
“No problem.”
“How long will it take?”
“Perhaps an hour and.”
“Can’t you make it faster?” Obi asked.
Toby laughed his voice hoarse on the phone. He naturally had a cute voice, but the network was interpreting another. “You have to plead with the traffic in Lagos. It depends on it.”
“Okay, no problem. Please do what you can, and immediately you get hold of who he is, please endeavor to tell me.”
“No problem,” Toby replied.
“Thanks.”
“It’s nothing.”
The call ended. He took the picture and scanned it with his little scanning device—he got it from the security training workshop he attended in New York a year ago—and sent the picture to Toby’s email: toby@sect.com.
Detective Obi sighed as he walked forward. He still couldn’t understand everything that was happening. There out to be something out here evidence that would wrap this whole case up. He walked slowly to the pathway from where he had come, lost in his thought, with Inspector Jerry following him like a controlled automatic robot, set with powerful Duracell batteries. Obi’s leg got stuck in one of the uprooted shrubs, and he bent down to release his slippers from it.
Slowly, his eyes kept gazing on the floor, like he had seen something extraordinary. He continued moving slowly, creeping as he walked, squatting low to see the ground at a good range of view.
“What are you doing?” Jerry asked, stupefied. He was gripping his small pistol gun firmly with his hands. He prepared, and not ready for sudden surprises.
Detective Obi remained squatted; his knees were on the mud, as he gazed on the ground, and felt it with his hand. Jerry couldn’t help but admire his Ankara attire, the remarkable and noteworthy designs; the tailor that sewn it was an expert.
“He ran through here,” Detective Obi turned to Jerry and said.
“Sir?” Inspector Jerry was still confused.
“The man passed through this area,” he said, pointing at the shrubs and the grass vegetation, as if it had prints on them. “Look at the branches there; it tore part of his cloth while he was passing here. Can you see it? Someone was chasing him.”
Inspector Jerry just nodded his head. He could see the little patch of the dead man’s shirt, the blue cloth so minute in Detective Obi’s hands.
Detective Obi continued. “His assailant must have accosted him on his way to his car, and he ran through this place to flee.”
Inspector Jerry didn’t say anything. He only stared at the man as he kept moving here and there. Detective Obi kept walking slowly, like a predator following its prey. Inspector Jerry followed him pass through the shrubs, and they reappeared back where the corpse was. Detective Obi stopped, a few distance away from the corpse.
“Someone else appeared out of here,” he said, pointing. “The person must have knocked him off.” He continued, pointing at the ground. “The sane here is compressed inside. He must have knocked him off here, and he fell down. It was the weight of his sudden fall that must have caused this.” Inspector Obi nodded his head, starting to understand what the man meant; he was surprised how he brought up all the occurrences, like he had been here himself.
Detective Obi continued. “They might have been eight men,” he said, after moving around for a while.
“How can you know that?”
“The footprints, there are eight pairs.”
“It could be the same person walking eight times around.”
“No it isn’t. Look closely, you’d see that it is eight different footprints, different boots. Obviously, it wasn’t one man wearing eight shoes.” He paused, as he allowed Inspector Jerry gulp that. No wonder they had called him; this inspector didn’t know anything about investigating a crime scene. Perhaps he knew, but not this one. Such a person was always good in spraying bullets from his gun, and chasing after running criminals, but not under covering a criminal that was autonomous. He continued. “This one close to the corpse must be that of the person that knocked him down. It is closest to him; it should be the guy’s own.”
“Or the girl,” Jerry replied. “You know, it could be a lady who did this.”
Detective Obi laughed out. “We don’t usually associate such brutality with women.”
Inspector Jerry shook his head. “I have seen women as brutal as this in my ten years of working with the CID.”
“This certainly is a man’s own. The footprints were made by someone wearing a Armani pointed shoes.”
“A woman could wear them too,” Inspector Jerry said. “What I’m just saying is that we shouldn’t rule out the possibilities that it’s a woman.”
“Alright, alright, we have both on our suspect list.” Detective bent down and stared at the corpse one more time. He caught sight of something tiny in the chest of the corpse. He tried to pull it out with his hands, but it didn’t seem to come out.
“Do you have a knife or something sharp on you?” asked Detective Obi.
Inspector Jerry nodded his head. “I have a little penknife.”
“Good, hand it over to me.”
“What do you want to do with a penknife?”
“For Christ’s sake, can you stop asking me all these yeye questions, and hand me a fucking knife? You called me here to do your job, so please allow me do it and stop disturbing me. Please hand me your knife.”
Inspector Jerry reluctantly handed his penknife to Obi. Obi collected it and squatted low. He used the penknife and sliced a bit of flesh from the corpse’s chest. It still didn’t come out. He pushed the knife inside a bit, and took out some flesh. The congealed blood was now black, and it splattered on the sleeve of his Ankara attire. Inspector Jerry felt the nausea take over him; it was a terrible and irritating sight to see.
“Got it.” Detective Obi rose up in excitement.
Inspector Jerry stared at his hands, and saw what he had brought out from the man’s chest. It was a metal bullet, very tiny that he wouldn’t have noticed it. Its color was ominous, perhaps because of the coagulated blood that covered it.
“A bullet?” asked Inspector Jerry, obviously a dumb question to ask.
Obi wiped the bullet with his cloth and gawked at it closer. “He was shot in the chest before he was dismembered.”
Inspector Jerry nodded his head, habitually. “Why dismember him then, after shooting him?”
“I don’t know. Perhaps they wanted someone to think it was a wild animal that devoured him.”
“They nearly tried. At first, I thought it was a wild animal’s job.”
“It’s not just that. The bullet is an expensive and sophisticated one—a lead 22mm caliper. These sorts of bullets aren’t gotten in Nigeria. Even we at SECT do not have it.”
“So what you thinking?”
“There is something more, to just this dead man. How did his killers get hold of such bullets?”
Jerry’s face was blank. Obi sighed, as he stared at it, wondering what such a dumb cop was doing in the CID. That was the problem with the Nigerian government; they kept recruiting and recruiting, even when there was no space. It was the same problem in SECT, almost everywhere was cramped filled with desks and chairs. They recruited on the basis of “I know you, you know me”, the same problem that led to employment of inexperienced workers. He sighed.
“I’d go round and see if I’d find anything,” Jerry said, walking out with his bemused face.
Obi scratched his head. This was becoming a hard nut to crack. OK, this man was running from his car because he was chase; he passes through the shrubs and his cloth gets torn by one of the thorns there; he is then knocked off by someone here; then he is shot in the chest and then dismembered to cover their tracks. From all of these, it was obvious the man didn’t know them. His car wasn’t parked in a reckless manner, and there wasn’t a scratch on it, so he wasn’t rushing to drive away.
His phone rang. It was Toby on the line. He quickly took out his Galaxy S3, wishing he could hear the full track of Fela’s song now. He really needed something comforting to assist and fathom this mystery.
“You’ve got anything?”
“Nothing much actually. It was hard getting his identity, with this crappy database we have.”
“But you did.”
Toby laughed for a millisecond. “Yes I did.”
“He’s a journalist.”
“A journalist?”
“Yes. He works with the Punch newspaper,” he replied over the phone.
“So what was a journalist doing at this time of the night?”
“I don’t know; perhaps he was trying to get an article for his newspaper column.”
“At this time of the night? These journalists really have to learn the dictionary meaning of night.”
He was interrupted by Inspector Jerry, who walked behind him and whispered, his voice echoing in the air mutely, like he didn’t want someone else here, to hear. “I’ve got something,” he said.
Detective turned to Inspector Jerry. He had significant guise. Obi said to Toby on the phone. “Can you hang on for a minute? I’d be with you soon.” He looked at Jerry. “What do we have here?”
“I found this,” he said, holding something with his thumb and his forefinger.
“A tape?”
“Yes.”
“Where did you see it?”
“Just across the thick shrubs, on the other side, not to far from his car.”
“A tape,” he said again, seeming like he was talking more to himself, than to the inspector. “I think this is now making more sense.”
“I think he was killed because he knew something,” Jerry said, and Detective Obi nearly yelled excitedly. At least he wasn’t such a dumb ass, he thought.
Detective Jerry got back on the phone. “He really was a journalist,” he said.
“What?”
“We just found a tape now. I think whatever happed here, he was killed because he overhead something. And whatever he heard, it must be in this tape. We’re coming to SECT now to play this tape; so unfortunate I don’t have a record player here.”
“Okay. Where are you reading from?”
“Don’t know the area. Somewhere on the outskirts of Lagos, in-between Lagos and Ogun state, some kind of shrubby forest.”
“Okay. I’d get everything put together here at SECT. Do you need any other thing?”
“Em…no, just call the others, and tell them to all come to the office immediately. Have them briefed on the matter on ground.”
“Alright.”
“And, thank you very much.”
“It’s nothing.”
“It’s something, making you leave your house, and your Sunday rice to come do something for me. It’s kind of motivating knowing that I have a true friend who’s got my back.”
Toby coughed on the other end of the line. “See you later. Let me put things together at the office quickly.” He hung up.
“So what now?”
“I think I know we know why he was killed. Whatever he must have heard must be on that tape; he must have recorded it and thrown it away to prevent getting caught with it. The door of his car is still open, which suggests he must have gone back to look for the tape, when he met his demise.”
“All this trouble for one tape?” Inspector Jerry said, shaking his head leisurely.
“This one tape might have the answers to what we need; the answers that would round up this investigation. Whatever happens, we have to hear what is inside the tape. I suggest we go to SECT. Shey you don’t have anything doing.”
“Of course not, no be our job? Na me bring you; we go do ‘am together,” he replied, for the first time, speaking pidgin.

Why open a new head for each chapter?