DSP Umannah was looking sharp that Saturday and by the time Abel got to the restaurant, he was halfway through a bottle of red wine.
‘This wine is good,’ he told Abel as they shook hands. ‘I remembered it from last week,’
‘Yes. I remember it too.’ Something made him feel that Umannah had purposely arrived early on account of that wine.
‘So, you said your report is done and you have news for me,’ Abel said as soon as he had placed their order.
‘Yes. I have finished my report and will submit it on Monday. There are things I felt I should discuss with you, seeing that we have become quite acquainted and because your brother was good to me.’
‘Sure.’ Abel’s palms were clammy from anxiety. ‘What have you found out?’
‘When I read Ofio’s report, I had the sense that he did a good job, which is why I have merged our two reports into one. This case was reassigned to me because, in the past three years, my team and I have cracked four missing people’s cases. I will be straight with you, and this is off the record. This is what a friend will do for another. I have reasons to believe your brother was a victim of criminal rivalry.’ His eyes bored straight into Abel’s.
‘This is not the kind of report we give to family members, but your brother was good to me and you have been good to me. When this case started everyone was a suspect from Santos to his wife, but gradually people were eliminated.’ He paused to take a sip. ‘I am sure you know the kind of business your brother was into, right?’ Abel nodded. ‘It was high yield, high risk. There was a lot of money involved. Someone got greedy, others got pissed off and your brother disappeared. We will keep looking but I can almost tell you with certainty that he will never be found.’ He paused, but when Abel did not react, he went ahead.
‘I am sorry, Abel, but these kinds of people don’t bury bodies or make ransom demands. They simply disappear you to teach others a lesson. I am really sorry but that’s the case we have here.’
Abel was silent for a long time. It was one thing to have a hunch, but a completely different ball game when you knew for certain. Here was a policeman telling him that his younger brother, a man who had a wife and a son, was gone forever. How did you digest or communicate that piece of news? How would he tell their mother?
‘I am really sorry Abel. I wish I had better news than this. The commissioner has requested a report and this will be my summation. But I suppose the family needs closure so I will ask you to go see this man.’ He pushed a piece of paper at Abel. ‘Call him and say you are from me. He is expecting you.’
Abel took the paper. On it was the name ‘Walata’ – a nickname, he was sure – and a phone number.
‘Today?’
‘Yes, today. He lives in Ikoyi.’
Abel thanked him and rose. ‘I will take care of the bill.’
Outside, Abel nosed the car out of Musa Yar’adua Street, drove down Idowu Taylor to Adeola Odeku and onto Ahmadu Bello. He was in Ikoyi ten minutes later, something that would never be possible on a weekday. As he drove into Osborne, he dialled Walata’s number, praying he would be home.
‘Who give you this number?’
‘DSP Umannah.’
‘About Sabato?’
‘Yes.’
‘I will text you my address. I am waiting.’
The house was on Lugard Avenue, a few hundred metres from the UNICEF office. The road was bad, waterlogged and filled with potholes. Abel’s car got snagged and he had to rev and reverse before he could continue.
Walata was bare-chested. Tall, dark and imposing, he had a deep voice and cut the picture of a criminal who had managed the tricky transition from the mainland into the gentrified locale of old Ikoyi.
His house was an all-white duplex that sat on huge grounds. There wasn’t much free space inside: big ceramic vases stood all over the house like sentries guarding the paintings and sculptures, most of them by stars and masters of contemporary Nigerian art.
Abel looked around while Walata took a call. He espied an Enwonwu, a Grillo, an Onobrakpeya and two by El Anatsui. There were paintings from Gani Odutokun, Ndidi Dike, Rom Isichei, Kanebi Osanebi, Victor Ehikhamenor, Uche Edochie and others whose signatures he couldn’t read.
‘You really like art,’ Abel said when Walata finished his call.
‘They are investments.’ His voice was gruff, his English flailing as he explained what he meant. ‘A white man tell me once, art works can be a store of value. I don’t know who the artists are but I get this Lebanese woman who help me to buy and she say if I ever need money she can help me sell. And she say, if the artist die I will get more money. So, maybe if I need money and I want to sell something, I will kill the artist first.’ Abel began to laugh before he realised the man wasn’t joking.
‘Let’s go to the garden. What do you want to drink? I have single malt whisky. Glenlivet. Very nice. Hot drink that feel like ice cream in your mouth.’
Abel accepted the drink. He set it down on the table and waited for Walata to drink before he followed suit. The drink was smooth, going down with the slightest burn. The brute was right – a hot drink that felt like ice cream.
‘I know your brother well. I work with Sabato Rabato. We make money together. He is a good guy but he have one problem.’ Walata said as he refilled his glass.
Sitting down, his huge belly hung in massive folds. He had three tattoos, one on each bicep and another on his chest. The one on his chest was in old text and, sitting close, Abel eventually made out the word ‘ekun’.
Yoruba for ‘tiger’.
‘See, I tell you we have made money. Plenty. But there is one thing I can never forget: everybody must bow to somebody. Pope bow to Jesus, Jesus bow to God, even Devil sef, bow to God. But Sabato don’t believe in that kind of thing. He used to call himself a self-made man, but I don’t think so. You cannot make yourself. After God has created us somebody will make us. There is difference between creating and making, I tell you.’
He paused to take a call, during which he issued threats. Abel shuddered: the way Walata sounded on the phone was the way he must have sounded to Santos.
Walata took a sip, smacked his lips and turned back to Abel. ‘See, this is how I see life. Everybody need ladder to climb up and sometimes that ladder is a human being. You understand?’ Abel nodded. ‘So, that is what happened to Sabato. I think after he climb up somebody remove the ladder.’
Abel inhaled deeply and let it out slowly.
Here he was drinking, without doubt, the best Scotch he had ever tasted, with a rich thug who may have killed his brother, or given the order, and he was powerless to do anything.
Steeling himself, he downed the drink in his glass and rose to his feet.
‘Walata, tell me, did you kill my brother?’
‘Me?’ He looked insulted. ‘My brother, I have done many, many bad things in my life but Sabato was my friend. He was foolish and stubborn but he was my friend. But you see, in this world there is nobody you like more than yourself. I did not kill Sabato, but I did not stop them from removing the ladder.’
He rose to his full height, dwarfing Abel.
‘This is Lagos, my brother and good and bad things happen at once.’
—
Abel cried all the way home, the tears streaming down his face as he drove. From the moment he got the text that morning in Asaba, he had known this wasn’t going to end well, yet that could not lessen the blow from Walata. As the man led him to the gate of his huge property, Abel had asked him one last question.
‘Do you know who removed the ladder?’
There was a long pause. Walata tapped him on the shoulder and said, ‘My brother, this thing we do is like war. When a soldier fall down in the war front, how can you know which of the bullet killed him?’
Abel’s tears were for their mother, their sister Oby, for Ada and for Zeal. He cried for himself, for the brother he hadn’t really known, for the love he didn’t fully acknowledge.
He tried to remember the last time he had seen Soni. It was about eight months before he disappeared. Soni had dropped by to see him at school. Abel was supervising a continuous assessment test and had only had time for a handshake before Soni left with his friends to Enugu State where a business partner was getting married.
Abel wished he had had more time, and that instead of a handshake he had given his brother a hug. It was those fleeting goodbyes that haunted you, those half-realised farewells that remained forever in abeyance.
—
Later that night, many hours after he had returned, the harbinger of bad tidings, he lay in bed, cowering under the duvet as he listened to her sobs. When he could take it no longer, he turned the key and opened the door that connected their rooms.
She was kneeling at her bed as if she had been praying, naked from the waist up, her gown bunched around her.
‘It’s OK,’ he said pulling her up and enfolding her in his embrace, her breasts against his bare chest.
He was aroused and knew she could feel his erection now. He held her, both of them half-naked on that bed for what seemed like a long time. Then she looked up with tear-filled eyes and kissed him. He tasted salt and wine and desire. He pushed her back on her bed and took one hard, dark nipple in his mouth. Ada cried out as if in pain but when he made to pull away she pushed his head back.
He covered her body with kisses, from her face and her neck down to her belly, luxuriating in the essence of that which he had imagined for so long. When he pulled down her dress, he was surprised to see that she wore no panties.
He kissed between her legs, tongue flicking over pubis, lips over labia, tasting her and teasing out moans as she pulled her dress over her head and flung it across the room. She reached out and pulled off his boxers.
They didn’t fall asleep afterwards. They just talked, her fingers tracing the welts on his back where she had dug in and drawn blood as she climaxed not once, not twice, but thrice.
She talked about the night she met Soni at the club. He had been confident, in control, without an iota of shyness. She talked about the first time they made love, how he had triggered her first multiple orgasms. She told him about finding his letter and hating him. She spoke about the wedding, how she tried to see what it was that made Soni think Abel was the salt of the earth.
‘Don’t you feel oppressed by this constant urge to be good?’ she asked him.
‘I am not always good,’ he said, kissing her lightly. ‘I just have a low threshold for trouble.’
She told him again about refusing to name her son after him and the big fight that had caused between her and Soni. She told him about the day Soni disappeared.
‘We had been fighting and I wasn’t speaking to him.’ A month before, he had come back after a trip abroad and when she unpacked his things she found a pair of panties in his bag. ‘They’d been worn, stained.’ The pain was raw in her voice. ‘We hadn’t made love in one month and I just lost it. I didn’t let him touch me. By the time he disappeared, we hadn’t made love for two months. I was tired. I knew I wanted him but I felt betrayed. See, I always knew there would be other women. He told me before we got married and I accepted that. My friends couldn’t get it but I used to put condoms in his bag when he was travelling. I knew I couldn’t stop him so I had to keep himself and myself protected.’
Ada reached over and picked up the remote control to turn off the air conditioner.
‘It’s too cold,’ she said, snuggling up to him. ‘I couldn’t go to another man. That’s not me. Despite all his women, I knew Soni loved me and would die for me. So I stayed faithful. I had planned a wild night that Saturday evening. I bought edible undies. I did my hair. I cooked a nice meal. I changed his sheets, lit scented candles and sent him a naughty text like I used to. He replied Can’t wait my love. See you at 9pm.
‘But 9pm came and he didn’t come home. I thought, Lagos traffic, but by 9.30 I was getting worried. I called his number; it rang once then went off. I called Santos, who said Soni had told him to take the day off so he wasn’t with him. I didn’t sleep. The candles burnt out. The food went cold. I called his friends and people he did business with. No one had seen him.
Santos and I went to the police the next day. They said we had to wait for seventy-two hours. Or was it forty-eight? I told them it was unusual. Soni could be crazy but he was never irresponsible. The police asked if we’d been fighting, if there was another woman. I told him we just made up, and one of them sniggered. “Maybe oga hasn’t made up with you,” he said. I told him to shut it. The other officer apologised.’
They called her two days later to say she should come and identify a car that had been found in a ditch.
‘I told them it was Soni’s car and they said, “Well, that is cause for some happiness. There was no blood, no gunshots, and no damage. So, we believe he left the car alive.” That was almost four months ago, Abel.’ She eased up on an elbow to look at him. ‘I pray every day but I am all prayed out. I know what Soni did for a living, the women he slept with and the kind of men he dealt with. I knew something like this could happen and with so much time gone, I have no reason to believe he will come out of this alive. I have lost all hope.’
When she paused to turn the AC back on, Abel leaned close and flicked a tongue over her nipple.
‘And you haven’t helped matters,’ she said, pushing him away playfully. ‘I have been on fire since you came into this house. When I walk past you or touch you I want to catch alight. The only time I felt like that was with Soni.’
Abel hushed her with a kiss and pulled her to himself. He held her close as they both cried and fell asleep.
—
Abel wakes up sweating. The luminous dial of the clock on Ada’s wall tells him it is seven minutes past 3am. That is when he realises, or rather, finally admits to himself, that he does not want Soni to be found. Not now. Not ever.
He looks at Soni’s wife sleeping half-naked beside him and realises that, like fingers in a glove, he has found his niche.
Lagos is now his home.
THE END