“Treat as urgent, please,” Tayo said as she dropped the call to her lawyer. There was no way in Chance Heaven she could have guessed that she would be needing Puneet’s services already.

Everything had been perfect. Dauda had been the perfect human; the perfect gentleman. So what was this news she was seeing on TV about his arrest? And, for murder?!

She wondered if she was being too forward calling up her lawyer to help someone she hardly knew. Wasn’t this the same foolishness that had always left her with a broken heart? Wasn’t this the same easy-trust trust habit that had made her Nollywood’s ‘Miss Always Almost Married’? Or maybe it was just her extending kindness to a man who deserved it.

His kindness had reminded her to find the family of the woman whose heart gave her a new life, just to thank them. However he was, this man had clearly weaved a greater impression on her than she thought. But what if he did kill his wife?
***
Yenegoa United players were distraught. They had refused to board the flight back to Yenegoa. They were requesting that the club apply for their play off match to be postponed. Not until Dauda assured them that the club’s management would get him out on bail, by the next day, did they get on the plane.

Police detention had nothing on the magic in Dauda’s words, it turned out. The man had renewed their purpose, re-ushered their focus, in just five minutes. They still were not sure how well they would cope in that play off match if their coach happened to not be back with them by then, but they knew they would surely fight. For their coach, and for themselves.

Abbey wondered if he would be able to live up to the faith Dauda had placed in him and Effiong. They were supposed to keep the boys’ heads ‘in the game’, but even his own head was in what might happen to this man whose impact on his life had transcended the game by a mile.
***
It was a new day. 11 a.m in the morning. But for Dauda, the day would do well to say its goodbyes already. The club’s lawyer had just left after saying what he was sent to say. However, Dauda was struggling to believe any of it.

He couldn’t believe he was sitting in a police custody room, just a day after his life was finally about to start, at 44. He couldn’t believe he had just been asked to resign ‘by mutual consent’ or be fired. He couldn’t believe that the club would turn their backs on him at the first real chance he gave them. At the same time, he couldn’t deny how good this first chance was. Too good to turn down, maybe.

His eyes fixated on the lawyer’s slim briefcase as he backed the custody room’s door on his way out. His heart sank as he remembered that a resignation letter bearing his signature was sitting somewhere in that briefcase.

Weights. Emotional weights. They never left him, never forsook him. They were always there, especially when he was having it rough. Unlike his club’s management. Former Club’s... They were with him when his father routinely abused his mother. They had were with him when his father sent his mother packing. They were with him when cancer snatched his mother away. They were there when his wife left him, when he nearly forgot how to breathe.

They were there just before a then fourteen-year-old Sadiq became his caregiver. They were there while Sadiq helped him find a reason to live, when he helped him resurrect his cocoa business.

They were there with him in loneliness when Sadiq got married and moved into his own apartment with his wife. They were there when he bathed in a pool of liquor and some ladies. They were there when he used to make those booty calls; to Sally, Thelma or his favourite, Hope, with a ‘p’ that went silent on freaky days.

They were there on that day at Ajibode, when he put overdosed capsules into Aliyah’s medication pack just before she took them. They were there when he heard she had dosed off on the wheels and been involved in a road accident. They were there when she died with Sadiq by her bedside.
They were there when Nadia stormed the airport with a battalion to arrest him.

In a world where emotional baggage were also checked at airports, he knew there was no way he was getting on that plane, anyways. And they were there now, when some unknown Indian-looking man dressed like a lawyer opened the door, looking all pumped.

“Good morning. I’m Puneet Mehra. And I will be your attorney…if you let me, that is.”
It wasn’t a good morning for Dauda. Far from that. But he will respond. “Sadiq sent you?”

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