Part 1 - Finding Sarah's Truth


God knows I had no idea that retirement would be so boring. Mind you, I had my suspicions. I consider Kojo, my husband, lucky because he virtually died on active duty. He got back home from work at the hospital after a long day performing surgery, sat down in front of the TV with a newspaper while waiting for the leftover jollof rice from dinner the day before to heat up in the microwave, and died. The autopsy report showed he suffered a massive heart attack. He was home alone because I left to Cape Town to investigate a case that morning. Ironic that a heart surgeon would die of a heart attack the way he did. Rola, our daughter, and I found some consolation, from what his colleagues told us. They said he must have died quickly.

I also know now, four years after his death, finding myself in retirement, that he would have hated retirement about as much as I do. Like me, he loved what he did, and the idea of waking up and not having anything pressing to do is just not working out for me. Ever since I was ill as a child and my dad urged me to read through his collection of detective stories, there was nothing else I wanted to do in life except to become one. It did not matter that I did not know if it was even a profession in Nigeria, where I grew up, or if there were female detectives anywhere in the world. There certainly was only one in all the detective books I read growing up, and even she seemed to have simply stumbled on sleuthing in retirement. Becoming a detective was my only ambition, and every science class that I took starting in secondary school and the courses that I took in university were in preparation for one day becoming a detective.

The day I got a job as a Trainee Crime Analyst with the Global Police was the happiest day of my life. I suppose I should say next to the day I got married and the day I had my daughter. But those were no real achievements. They were just things that happened to me naturally. I grew up, fell in love, married him and had a kid. I did not have to work hard to achieve these. However, getting into Glopol was a real accomplishment. So real, it felt unreal at the beginning. I was in a daze for weeks, preparing to leave Nigeria where I had returned after studying in the UK to serve my mandatory year of youth service. Both my parents died within three years of each other when I was in university, but they left my brother, who was two years older, and me enough to see us through our university education. He stayed on in Canada, where he ended up at York University. It was my single-minded pursuit of getting into Glopol, which required applicants to apply from their home countries, which made me decide to go for my youth service in Nigeria. Somehow, I begged my way into being posted to the Nigerian Police. Everyone who heard how desperately I wanted to get into the police thought that I had lost my mind. The Nigerian Police had, for want of a stronger word, a terrible reputation. Yet, there I was, with a degree in criminology from a prestigious university in the UK eager to serve with the Nigerian police. As it turned out, I could not have made a better decision towards the pursuit of my chosen profession. During my service year, Glopol advertised and serving with the Nigerian Police gave me an edge, I guess.

Anyway, now at the age of 60, I have been widowed for 4 years. I am retired and at a loss for what to do with myself. I suppose I could write my memoirs. God knows I have seen enough crime to make Sherlock Holmes, Miss Marple, Dr Thondyke... all my favourite sleuths jealous. Writing my memoirs myself rather than have someone else narrate my story will also ensure I don't end up being portrayed like some kind of eccentric freak like these other guys. Poor sods. I'm pretty sure they would be mortified if they ever read the kind of stories written about their exploits. Imagine Holme's reactions to Watson's account of him? Frivolous and superficial Lord Peter Wimsey? And poor Poirot? How would he feel about Hastings' portrayal of him as a vain, mousy creature? Thank God I have no lackeys trying to do me such a favour. I will have none of that kind of nonsense. I will write my recollections and it's nobody's business how I choose to portray myself. But where do I start? From the beginning? What is the beginning? Perhaps I should just let my mind take me where it will. Start with whichever one of my cases comes to mind and go wherever memory takes me after that.

Nigeria is as good a place to start as any. I was in Lagos to attend a Glopol Regional Conference of Criminal Intelligence Officers and decided to spend an extra week in that bustling city looking up distant family members and old friends before returning to my post, which at the time was in Freetown, Sierra Leone.

One of the friends I visited was Aminu Saladin, a Crime Investigator in charge of violent crimes at the Zebra House Police headquarters. When I first met Aminu twenty years prior, he was a young dynamic Criminal Intelligence Officer. He was one of a crop of six that had been assigned to me for training when I was in our Lyon branch office in France. As a fellow Nigerian, I had taken it upon myself to work him extra hard because I quickly figured he was destined to go far. He impressed me with his willingness to prove himself as good, if not better than, the other officers in his group from various parts of the world.

He was tall lanky, energetic, excited, and eager to lap up everything. He had a full head of hair, which made it impossible to predict his grey and balding look when I met him in Lagos decades after our first encounter. He had also filled out, but I could not tell whether it was fat or muscle under his slickly-cut suit. After his training, he rose very quickly through the Nigerian system and had kept inviting me to come for a visit as soon as he got posted to head the Criminal Investigation Department. My conference in Lagos afforded me the opportunity of honouring his invitation. He asked me out to an early dinner because, as he apologetically explained, his wife and daughter were away in Benin visiting his mother-in-law who had taken ill. So, he took me out to eat at the Eko le Meridien in Victoria Island.

We were just settling down to some chicken peri peri, sweet potato fries served with spicy tomato and onion sauce when his phone rang. As he picked it up, he signalled his apology, which I quickly waved aside urging him to answer his call.

"Hello?" he very nearly barked into the phone. "This had better be really important cause I told you.... Oh!" He then listened with eyes darting here and there as if in pursuit of an elusive fly. "Has she been positively identified as the missing girl?" He looked directly at me as if my ears which had suddenly pecked up had blasted horns.



An hour and a half later, I was in his office poring over pictures of the dead teenager and other crime scene photos.

"I am not sure she was killed where her body was found. See? The grass around her seems pretty much undisturbed." I took the photo from him and was about to start studying it when he came over to perch on the edge of the table next to me.

"Well, what do you think?" he asked impatiently as if expecting some kind of miracle from me.

"I can't make much of these... It looks like her body was covered up even though she had been stripped naked."

"Yes, see this one?" He pushed another photo in front of me. "She was covered with her clothes which had been ripped off her body. Her head was even laid on her bunched-up cardigan like a pillow. See?" He handed me a third picture.

"And the rape test?"

"I am still waiting for it. I expect she must have been raped. Why else would she have been stripped?"

We both fell silent as we studied the remaining pictures.

"Whoever ripped off her clothes seems to have had second thoughts about leaving her completely naked," he said.

"Either that or an attempt to throw off scent."

He nodded slowly, "I see what you mean."

"By ripping off her clothes..."

"The first impression is that it is a sex offence?"

"Well..." I picked up the magnifying glass lying on the table and peered closely at one of the pictures. It was a close-up of the dead girl's lifeless face. She could have been sleeping peacefully lying there. If death had not claimed her while she was asleep, then someone had taken the trouble to close her eyes. "Any clue yet as to the cause of death?"

"We are also still waiting for the autopsy report, but one of the investigators who examined her at the scene found a gash at the back of her head."

He handed a close-up picture of the back of the girl's head. I studied it for a while. "Could have been from a blow to the head. Looks deep and big enough to do serious damage. But is it enough to have caused her death?" I wondered aloud.

Just then, his phone rang again. It could not have been a better-timed answer to my question. It was a call from the forensic pathologist working on the girl. As soon as he saw who the call was from, he said, "Hold on Doc, I need to put you on speakerphone. I have a colleague, Ms Kumbi Coates here with me." He put the phone on the table between us.

"She died from the wound at the back of the head. I found no evidence of rape but discovered something more interesting. The girl had surgical repairs of spontaneous perineal tears." The Pathologist's voice sounded bored as if she made this kind of discovery every day. I gave Aminu a questioning look and it was apparent from his face that he too did not quite comprehend her medical jargon.

"Doc? Can you translate that to English, please?" He rolled his eyes at the handset.

"Oh! I mean she had stitches to repair tears to her vagina. Tears which are typically sustained during childbirth."

"Childbirth?" Aminu and I chorused.

"Yes, childbirth."

"Are you sure? According to the parents, she is barely sixteen."

"The parents did not mention that she had a child when they reported her missing?" I asked, finding the omission rather curious.

"They did not. Are you sure that the injury was from...?"

"The suturing was to repair a third-degree injury to the perineum involving the anal sphincter complex it ...."

"Plain English, Madam!" I was the one who cut her short this time.

"Yes, I am sure. She's given birth at least once "

"What do you mean? Is there a chance she's had more than one child?" Aminu sounded almost angry.

"It's impossible to tell how many, but she has given birth. I can take another look at her pubic bones for separation, which would have occurred to allow the infant to pass through the birth canal. The ligaments connecting the pubic bones must stretch during birth... But I doubt if it will reveal anything new. Bone regeneration at these sites might have left small circular or linear grooves on the inside surface of the pubic bones. All that such parturition will tell us is what we already know. That she has given birth vaginally at least once. Hello?"

Aminu was apparently lost in thought, "Thanks Doc." His voice was barely audible.

"You're welcome. I'll send you the full report ASAP."

We both remained silent after the doctor hung up.

"It's such a huge omission. I think we need to bring her parents in for questioning." Aminu said, sounding pissed off one minute and the next looking really puzzled. "Is it possible that the parents did not know she gave birth?"

I was still thinking about that possibility and finding it difficult to believe when he answered his question.

"But if she was surgically treated for injuries sustained during childbirth, then it is not likely this is one of those instances when a teenage girl manages to keep her pregnancy and childbirth a secret."

"It definitely is curious, but I want to suggest that we go to them rather than bring them in."You are right. A visit to them at home might be more useful."

The house was in a quiet street in one of the many estates that Aminu explained to me as we drove along the Lagos/Epe Expressway had sprung up to dot the freeway over the last ten or fifteen years. The stretch of the Expressway starting around Mobil House in what used to be known as Maroko, a so-called ghetto which was demolished by a military government action in the '90s. None of it was recognizable to me because I had not visited Lagos in a long time. Judging by the affluent buildings, and massive international schools which replaced Maorokothe ghetto, it was easy to forget that we were in a city which has a reputation of having some of the world's highest rates of out-of-school children in the world. I could not help asking Aminu what had happened to people whose houses and livelihood had been demolished to make way for their apparently more affluent fellow citizens. In response to my question, he pointed out a decrepit estate, made up of forlorn-looking blocks of flats. Most of the buildings were punctuated by cock-eyed wooden shutters and missing louvre blades. The exterior walls were predominantly grey, but here and there, one could see hints of faded yellow and brown paint overwhelmed by splashes of decayed algae which made weird patterns on the cracked walls. The roofs of most of the buildings were similarly weirdly patterned by mismatched roofing sheets. Most of this estate was in darkness but the buildings closest to the freeway were visible because of the streetlights.

"Some of the people from Maroko ended up there. It's called Jakande Estate. It was never completed because the civilian governor, whose ambition was to build affordable houses for the masses, was ousted by a military coup. When Maroko was demolished, some of the people from there simply moved into the uncompleted estate. I hear it will also soon be demolished."

"Why?"

"Well, the story is the same old one. To make room for better buildings which the average Nigerian won't be able to afford."

"And where will they go this time?" I persisted.

He shrugged. "I don't know. But as we say here about almost everything 'that is Nigeria for you.'"

"Where the rich get richer on the sweat and blood of the poor who seem to have been badgered into colluding with their oppressors to keep sucking them dry?" I could not resist venting even as I caught Aminu's rueful smile.

The estate where the girl's family lived was a gated community. Unlike most other areas of Lagos that we had driven through, the entire estate was well-lit, no doubt by hundreds of power generators whose discordant sounds assailed the night. It was beautifully laid out and had carefully delineated parks with charmingly trimmed flowers in front of all the bogus houses. Inside the parents' house, I noted how the townhouse was just as beautifully laid out to match the exterior as Aminu and I were invited to sit facing the apparently grieving parents, Richard and Evelyn Odumo. They sat close together on a loveseat facing us. They seemed eager to help by telling us what they had earlier reported to the police. They said the girl had been scolded for misbehaving and the family had gone to bed. They found her missing when they woke up in the morning and had thought that she ran off. They reported the case to the police after they had gone to see if anyone at her school had seen her. They were then contacted by the police that her body had been found by a farmer in a field off the express road towards Epe Town.

"So, around what time did you go to bed the night that she went missing?" Aminu asked.

"The usual time. The children go to bed between 8 and 9 PM and my wife and I are usually in bed by 10.30 PM at the latest," the man sounded still dazed from shock.

"And in the morning, who discovered she was missing?"

"I went to wake them so they could get ready for school, but she was not..." the mother was explaining when she became distracted. A plump-looking young girl of about twelve with large eyes had come into the room in her nightie.

"Prince woke up again. He wants water. Should I......" She started to explain.

"You know he' is not supposed to drink anything so late. Let me go and take him to the toilet so he won't wet the bed.," her voice sounded hoarse from crying.

"He has already wet his bed."

The mum was already up and walking into the corridor from which the girl emerged.I smiled kindly at the man. "Trying to get him to stop bedwetting?" I asked. "My daughter is going through the same process with my grandson. How old is your boy?"

"Yes, he is almost four and should have stopped by now." In spite of his sorrow, I did not miss the hint of paternal pride behind his eyes when he talked about his son.

"They say boys are usually slower at these things," I added, even as I sensed Aminu's impatience with me. He was eager to continue the questioning examination.

"So, when you said your daughter misbehaved, what exactly did she ...."

"Sir!" the mum called from inside.

"Yes, dear!" The dad answered and rushed out of the room.

Aminu and I looked at each other surprised. I don't know what he was thinking but I found the fact that the woman called him "sir" more than a little odd. First, the man looked young. He looked considerably younger than his wife. Also, just in front of us was a large picture of the family. The man was dressed in a well-cut black suit with a white shirt, while the wife had on a long flowing black dress. Her hair was exquisitely styled, and she had on a set of three necklaces made up of what looked like corals and pearl-shaped gold beads. They were both sitting down with the dead girl and her two sisters flanking them while the boy sat poised like Buddha in front of the parents. All the children were dressed in white and black outfits. The composition of the picture was very sophisticated. Nothing to hint at the exchange we had just heard with the woman calling her husband "sir" as if he was her feudal lord. But then I had lived outside Nigeria more than half my life and a lot of the persistent mores were by then strange to me. They returned to the room and sat huddled closely on the seat they had vacated.

"So, what happened to her child?" Aminu threw the question at them, clearly determined not to give them a chance to settle down. I noticed how the man's right hand which was resting between his thighs and his wife began to shake slightly. The woman firmly reached for the shaking hand and covered it with hers.

"There is no child," she explained in a soft but firm voice.



"Did the child die?" I asked, studying them.



"We don't know which child you're talking about." She responded.



"The child that your daughter gave birth to... What happened to it?"



"She did not give birth. She was just a child herself..."



"Madam, we know for a fact that she had a child."



"That is impossible," the woman insisted.



"We're her parents, we would have known if she had a child." The father finally found his voice.



"Yes, you ought to know. Which is why I'm asking you again to give you a chance to tell the truth. What happened to the child? Where is the child?" Aminu pressed.



They both fell silent for a while.



"Officers, if this is going to be the line of questioning, then I think... I think we need legal advice and representation. I am a lawyer, so I know my rights," the father sounded more confident than he had been before.



Aminu got up and I followed suit. As we drove away from the house, we remained silent most of the way.



"I remember that growing up here, one of my mother's greatest fears was that I would get pregnant out of wedlock. I guess having a teenage daughter who gets pregnant is still a big enough deal around here to make people so defensive."



"Ahm, I think it depends on the social class or religious standing... I really don't know what to make of them. Teenage pregnancy is really not that rare."



The next morning, we went to the girl's school. We were very quickly ushered into the principal's office. The rather young school head seemed quite distraught by the news of the girl's' death, which had apparently spread like wild-fire through the school.



"I want you to know that the school will do all we can to help find Sarah Odumo's killer."



"Or killers," I pointed out.



"You mean there was more than..."



"The point Madam here is trying to make is that it's too early in the investigation for us to know."



"I'm sorry. I jumped to conclusions," I thought she sounded rather nervous. More anxious than to be expected despite her being distressed by the death of her student.



"So, is there anything you want to share with us?" I asked as I reached out for her restless hands, which she held had clasped together on her table.



"Tell you? I don't..."



"My dear Miss..."



"Akor, Perpetual Akor."



"Perpetual, I've always found that a very fascinating name. Same as Constance. Solid names that give the impression of a steady, focused character." As I rambled on in my most maternal voice, I sensed Aminu's impatience once again. I gave him a quick glance. I instinctively knew that we needed to help Perpetual Akor relax if we were to get any help from her. I felt her hands relax underneath my right hand which I had laid firmly on them. She smiled.



"Sarah was really not a bad girl. She was smart, quite intelligent. I'm also her maths teacher. Was her..." She seemed momentarily lost in thought.



"She was quite good. She was also ambitious. Her parents had promised to send her to the university abroad and she was determined to make her required credits at the first sitting. I heard she had even registered to take the GCE O'levels this year even though she still has one more year ahead and the school does not encourage it."

"So, you did not approve of her taking the GCE?" Aminu noticed she was rambling and asked the question to rein her back.



"No, no, no! I had nothing against it. In fact, it was the dad who reported to me that she registered for GCE on her own. He said they... himself and her mother did not approve of her taking the exams this year. Which is quite strange because parents are usually the ones eager for their kids to write external exams..." Her voice petered out as she seemed lost in thought again. I nudged her hands slightly.



"I looked into it and found that it was one of our chemistry teachers who had... was the one who registered her for the exams. Anyway, he is no longer with us."



"You fired him? Simply for helping her register?"



"No... em...em..."



"No, you didn't fire him? Or..."



This time it was Aminu's hand that I reached out for to restrain him from pushing her too far."We had to let him go," she offered reluctantly and then added quickly, "but it was not because of her."

"Why did you let him go?" I asked in my maternal voice again.



"Please, this is something that could really mar the image of the school. We're extremely firm on our policy of zero tolerance when it comes to issues of, issues of..."

"Sexual predators?" I offered.



"Yes!" she heaved, "but we have never had a situation where it got out of hand." She said sitting up straight as if her personal integrity was at stake.



"So did the teacher sexually abuse her?"



"No, God forbid!"



"But it is not an uncommon thing even in a school as prestigious as yours. There's no repository of sex offenders. Schools have no way of vetting teachers before employing them and most of them manage to find their way into schools to prey on vulnerable children," Aminu said



"Not on my watch!" Perpetual almost screamed. "Here we are constantly at alert. Which is why I found out that he tried to kiss a girl in his office very early one morning before school even resumed and I was going to hand him over to the police when he ran away." She seemed to have run out of steam when she jerked open the top drawer of her desk and brought out a file.



"Here's his file."



"And you are worried he might be implicated in Sarah's death?" I asked as Aminu reached out to take the file.



"I haven't stopped praying it should not be so, since I heard. What if he killed her just to spite me or the school?"



"And you didn't think to come to us with your suspicions? What if we hadn't come here today?"



She reached for another file on her table and brought out a sheet of paper. I took it and quickly noted that it was a notice summoning the board of the school to an emergency meeting to be held later that day.



"I'm not the only owner of the school. I wanted to consult my board on how to...""Manage the situation?" Aminu still sounded reproachful.



"Miss Akor, I assure you that we' are grateful for all you've told us. I must also commend your determination to keep a close lookout for paedophiles in your school. It cannot be easy without some institutional support."



"Thank you, ma," she sounded profoundly grateful.



"We'd still like to talk to your teachers," Following my cue, Aminu sounded a little more amiable.



"Of course. Please, feel free. And if there is anything else I can do. Anything at all."



Aminu placed a call to his colleagues with the information that we found in the sacked teacher's file. He instructed them that the chemistry teacher should be taken in for questioning as soon as he was traced. We then proceeded to talk to almost all the teachers, but nothing new really came up. They mostly corroborated my impression about Miss Akor's sincerity when she told us about her vigilance in watching out for sexual predators.



We also then asked to talk to her classmates. From all indications, her closest acquaintance was a fellow student, a boy, Godwin who was a year ahead of her. We decided to talk to him at greater length.



The boy looked upset and depressed. More than her other peers who it was obvious were still in shock at the news of her death. , It was apparent that Godwin had been more than just friends with the dead girl.



"So how long was Sarah your girlfriend?" Aminu fired at him not wanting to give him the chance to deny their relationship.



"Em... em... it's been on and off .... Since .... Since she came to this school last year.""What do you mean on and off?"



"I sent her Valentine's card and that day she agreed to be my girlfriend.. It was a Friday and I even called her phone on the Saturday and we talked, and she seemed to like me. Then I think her dad caught her talking to me and he cut off the call. I could not get her again that weekend. By Monday, when I saw her, she refused to talk to me."



"So?"



"We broke up because I didn't understand why she refused to talk or even look at me."

"Did it not occur to you that it might be because her parents didn't approve?"

"Yeah, but that didn't explain why she was acting so weird. Most parents won't approve, but that doesn't mean anything."


I smiled. "He's quite right. How many Nigerian parents approve of their teenage children dating?"

"So, you guys broke off for a while and then...?"

"She wrote to me some weeks later. Apologizing and saying she really liked me, and you know? Stuff like that."

"We don't know. Did you get her pregnant?" Aminu fired at him.

"WHAT? Was she... did she...?"



"You mean did she have a child?"



"No... I meant did she die having an abortion?"



"Abortion? Do you want to tell me that you didn't know about the baby?" Aminu continued pressing him.



"Wow! Baby? What baby?"



"What baby? Indeed, that should have been the parent's first question!" I was propelled up from where I was sitting as the boy's question struck me like a bolt of lightning. I got up and stood between the boy and Aminu. I raised my hand to restrain Aminu from further badgering the boy but could see from the way his face lit up that my utterance had struck a chord with him as well.

"Do you have the letter she wrote to you?" I asked the boy.



"I have all her letters. She said she was able to express herself better by writing. She said there were a lot of things she could never say to me or anybody. So, she preferred to write things... you know... things that were heavy for her to say."

I thanked him and we got permission from the school to take him home and pick up the letters, which turned out to be quite a cache.

Aminu and I sat on opposite sides of his desk in his office pouring over the letters. There were seven in all. I read the earliest three and he had the remaining four.

"Apart from the usual romantic drivel to be expected in a high school romance, there seems to be some kind of undercurrent running through these," I said trying to figure out what to make of the love letters.

"I know what you mean." He picked one letter up and began to read. "'There are things I can never tell anybody because it is too dangerous for me and the people I care about.' What does she mean by that?"

"Or here, when she writes that 'you don't have to worry about my so-called dad. He is just pretending to be what he is not. Just keep away from him. I am sorry he slapped you.'" I read from one of mine.

"And there is this one which I find very confusing. 'It is only because of Annette and Prince that I have not run away. I do not want to leave my flesh and blood here with them. They are the only ones I care about.'" He read again.

"Let's see if Godwin can help throw some light on these." I was glad we had decided to go through the letters before sending Godwin back to school. Both his parents were at work when we went to pick the letters and we had left word for them to come over to Aminu's office. They had still not turned up.

Aminu went to fetch him while I quickly went over the remaining four letters. When Aminu came back with the boy who had been sitting in the reception, he also brought the autopsy report which had been delivered while we were out.

I tried to make the boy comfortable to gain his confidence.

"Godwin, please sit down. I'm really sorry that Sarah died. I can see from the letters that you two cared a lot for each other."

"Yes, ma. She is... I mean was really very nice. She was also different from other girls. She was smart."

"From her letters, she sounds really mature. How old was she?"

"She thinks... she thought she was around 17 or 18 but she was not sure."

"Not sure? With a father who is a lawyer? Why would she not know her own age?"

"That's the thing ma. She said... she said... they were not her real parents. But she made me promise not to tell anyone."

"So where are her parents?"

"She did not know. She said, since they took her from them, she had not gone back. She was very young when they took her, and she cannot even remember her village or speak the language anymore."

"Took her?" Aminu put down the report he had been reading. "Was she kidnapped?"

"I don't know.... I don't think so. She said her real father died and her mother had five other children that she couldn't care for. So, she gave the older ones to people to help her train them. She only kept Sarah's youngest brother."

"Are Annette and Prince her younger ones? She says they're her flesh and blood in one of the letters."

"I think so. I don't know. When I asked her, she just laughed and said she cannot tell me the truth about them. I only know that Deborah is not her sister. She didn't like Deborah because Deborah was always reporting her, spying on her for the parents."

"Spying on her?"

"You know, about me and her and everything she does at school."

I decided to push him a bit more about the baby.

"You know Godwin, you have been most helpful with these letters. I also want you to know that you're not in any kind of trouble. At least not yet." I saw how he quickly sat up. "Relax, the only way you can get into trouble is if we find out that you've been lying to us or keeping a secret...."

"I swear ma, I am telling you everything."

"What about the baby?" Aminu asked as if on cue.

The boy looked very puzzled. "I don't know. She never told me that she was pregnant."

"Could it have been your baby?"

"Ha! No sir!" He threw his hands up. "There was nothing like that between us! We never, I mean... we did not..."

"Have sex?" I tried to help him come up with the words he seemed incapable of uttering.

"Yes, ma. I mean, no ma. We never did...."

"Why not?"

"We just never did. I couldn't go to her house and my mum was always at home. She only started working last Monday or she would have been there today."

Somehow, I believed him. He did not try to sound sanctimonious or deny that they might have had sex if there had been an opportunity. We let him go when his anxious mum came for him. He, however, left us with more questions than when we started questioning him.

By the next day, we were forced to rule out the randy chemistry teacher who was traced to Port Harcourt where he was teaching and had got another job in yet another school. He had been at the school every day that week and could not have been in Lagos where she was killed. The school in Port Harcourt could not thank us enough when we told them why Miss Akor let him go. I took the trouble to advise them to always check with past employers before taking on new teachers.

We decided to invite the parents in for questioning later that next day. They arrived with a man who the "father" introduced as their lawyer. We spent most of the session with them trying to get background information about them and their children. However, they were no longer as helpful as they had seemed the first time we talked to them. They were reluctant to part with even what should have been the simplest information. We, however, managed to pry from them the fact that they had met and lived in Ghana for a while. The man said he studied at Legon and their children were born there. They moved to Nigeria because he wanted to set up his practice in Lagos. They could not seem to agree on the dates of birth of Sarah and Debora, their two older girls and when I asked if they had been born in a hospital, they looked at each other before the woman nodded. We had to press further before she came up with the name of a hospital in Accra, because at first she said she could not remember. We let them go when it became obvious that we could not get anything more out of them, but we let them know that we would be bringing them in for further questions. After they left I put a call through to the Glopol office in Accra asking my colleagues there to help trace any records of the hospital or the family in Accra.

While we waited for the Accra office to get back to us, we decided to go back to the house with a search warrant. We went with a team of officers to do a thorough sweep of the entire house. On getting there, we met with resistance from the father who demanded to see our warrant before letting us in. The fact that the husband had no choice but to let us in apparently unsettled the wife. She started urging him in a loud voice. "Sir, you are a lawyer, protect your home! Do something. Protect your family!" She was under some kind of illusion that, as a lawyer, he should have enough clout to stop us from doing our work. She ended up wailing, and accusing us of harassing them while the killers were escaping instead of allowing them to mourn their daughter. The husband had to physically restrain her. "Cool down, dear, they don't know that they are doing the devil's work. God will vindicate us." The woman was so agitated that Aminu took the precaution of asking one of our officers to stay with them so that they would not impede our investigation.



While our team was searching through the house, I went in through the corridor through which I had seen the family go back and forth during our first visit in search of the other children. I found the two girls, Deborah, the plump girl of about twelve, with large eyes that we had seen the first time we were there, and Annette, a fair, skinny girl who looked to be about six years old huddled together in the first room that I entered.

I had to coax them into talking to me. Annette said she could not remember anything about the night that Sarah disappeared, just that she did not come to bed. She would have known if she came to bed because Sarah always tucked her in and said her prayer with her before getting into the bed that she shared with Prince. Annette believed that was why Prince had started wetting his bed again. She thought it was because Sarah was not there to wake him up to pee during the night.

Aminu came to join me just as I was about to start talking to Deborah. Our session with her proved to be interesting because she remembered that Sarah had come back home late the night before her body was found, and their parents had been really mad at her.

"Come home late from where?" I asked.

Deborah fixed her large eyes on me and blinked rapidly.

"Was she late coming back from school?" I rephrased the question.

"No, she... she came back home from school with me. But... But... she... em... emm..."

"Go on! Whatever you tell us will help us find the person who hurt her. Do you want us to find them?"

She nodded but remained quiet as she took furtive looks at the door.

"Are you afraid your parents will be upset if you..."She nodded quickly.

"Oh, you don't have to worry about them. We have permission to talk to you. They'd want you to tell us anything that'll help us find her killer."

"She ran away!" she blurted quickly as if she had been waiting to unburden herself with the weight of the information.

"Ran away? Ran where?" I asked.

"I don't know, but when we came back from school that day and Daddy called me to ask if I saw her, you know, with Godwin again, and I said yes, because I saw them eating together in the cafeteria and he paid for her food. Daddy said... He said... they would deal with her when they got back from work." She stopped then added regretfully, "She heard me talking to daddy."

Picking my words as carefully as I could I asked, "Who would deal with her?"

"Mummy and Daddy., I'm am so sorry I told on her. But I have to. I have to tell them whenever she misbehaves with boys, and she kept misbehaving with Godwin."

"Can you explain to me how she misbehaved."

"Talking to him, hugging him, holding hands with him. I even caught them .... Caught them... you know, kissing one time."

"And why do you have to tell on her?"

"Because... I'm a good girl... and if she does not stop, she will end up in hellfire. Mummy and Daddy told me so."

"So, she ran away and you never saw her..."

"She came back. She came back in the night. Long after mummy and daddy came back from work and they called her to their room. They were all shouting."

"They?"

"Mummy and Daddy and Sarah."

"She was shouting too?"

"Yes, she said she wanted them to take her back with ... I don't understand the rest."

"What rest?"

"The other things she said."

"Don't worry about trying to understand it. Do you remember the things she said?"

"I think she said she wanted them to take her and her children back to the village."

"Village? Are you sure you heard her say that?"

"I think so. Maybe. I didn't hear her well."

"What else did you hear?"

"They all started shouting together and somebody screamed and then everything was quiet."

"Who screamed?"

"I think maybe Sarah or Mummy but I'm sure it was not Daddy."

Aminu got up and went and knelt beside her.

"Deborah, you've been a very good girl. You have been very, very helpful. But I want you to think carefully before answering my next question. Okay?"

She nodded again, flashing him a quick smile.

"Do you remember when she came into the room after she left your parents that night?"She did not even pause to think. She shook her head vehemently. "She didn't."

"How do you know that she didn't?"

"Because I waited to ask her what she meant about her children, but she didn't come to bed until I fell asleep."

"She might have, after you slept."

"No, that was the night that Prince started wetting his bed again because she wasn't there to wake him up to pee."

I watched as Aminu dashed out of the room. After he left, I tried to make the two girls comfortable by thanking them again for being so helpful. Aminu came back and confirmed what I suspected. He reported that he had gone to tell the team combing through the house to run some luminol tests on the parents' room and other strategic places in the house as well as the two family cars.

The luminol tests revealed that blood had been spilled around a large dresser with round jutting ends in the parents' bedroom. There was also evidence of blood on the floor around the dresser as well and in the wife's car.

Even before we got the report from Ghana, we had our theories about this strange family, but nothing could have prepared us for what we got from the records found at the hospital in Accra. First, the hospital was not even in existence when Sarah and Deborah were born. Although Annette and the little boy, Prince, were really born there, the mother's name recorded for these two was Sarah Odumo and even more shocking, the father's name was recorded as Richard Odumo.

Aminu was wide-mouthed as I read it out to him.

"You mean, he slept with his own daughter and fathered two children by her?"

I sat thinking for a while and it did not take long before it hit me.

"Remember what Godwin said about ....?

"It all makes sense now!" He did not let me finish.

"I'll go and get an arrest warrant for those two." He rushed out of the room.

The Nigerian press had a field day with that case. Confronted with the result of the luminol tests, the DNA results which confirmed the two young children's paternity and other evidence, the story that this picture-perfect family had woven around itself very quickly came unraveled. The couple confessed.

It turned out that Sarah was not related to either Richard or Evelyn Odumu, who were both from River State in Nigeria. Though Evelyn did not have much of an education, she was a wealthy businesswoman and was seven years older than Richard, whom she had known since he was a boy. She was his late older sister's childhood friend and their relationship had started out with her helping him when they ran into each other in Ghana. She fell in love with him and paid for him to study law at the University of Legon. It was at a point in her life when she was desperate to get married because of her age. On his part, it seemed he entered the relationship more out of gratitude than true love. As it turned out, she could not have children and so she adopted Deborah. Shen then took on Sarah, an Igbo girl who was about nine years old at the time, as a maid. Unfortunately, Sarah soon blossomed into a beautiful teenager and caught the eyes of Richard who impregnated her when she was almost thirteen. When Evelyn found out, rather than get mad at Richard, who she loved and worshipped, to a point of near insanity, she allowed the girl to have the child. She justified her action by sending Sarah's poor illiterate mother a dowry. Therefore, traditionally marrying or buying Sarah's womb. She also promised Sarah education and even vouched to send her abroad for tertiary education. All of this was uncomplicated in Evelyn's mind. She believed in the traditional practice of barren women buying wives for their husbands and she herself was a product of such a marriage. She believed that she had remained true to her word and all seemed well in the family. When she realized that Richard was hankering for a son, she even encouraged him to continue sleeping with Sarah who then gave birth to another child, the boy, Prince.

The family returned to Nigeria because Richard wanted to attend law school and set up his own law firm. Things started to fall apart when Sarah, now in senior secondary, fell in love with Godwin, a fellow student and began to act out threatening to disrupt the whole charade. It was Richard who struck Sarah in a fit of jealousy, not really intending to kill her. But when she died after hitting her head against a dresser, it was Evelyn who had the presence of mind to clean up the mess. She was the one who drove and dumped Sarah's body. In the end, it turned out to be a very simple case, really, if you have a twisted mind.



Hey guys! Thanks so much for reading. I'll be sharing new stories soon, so stay tuned. Please comment and share. Lots of love

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lalasticala can my story be shared on front page so more people can read?

Great story, One of the best crime stories I've read..kudos!

Thank you!

michael123pelemo:
Great story, One of the best crime stories I've read..kudos!