47 

Progress had stalled. I had flown back to Sierra Leone in December of 2000 on a Ghana Airways flight loaded with people returning home for Christmas. At the check-in desk Simon and I had waited more than two hours while passengers ahead of us, overburdened with two, three times the baggage allocation, tried to persuade the airline staff to allow them to board. When our turn came the baggage clerk gratefully waved through our two small holdalls and we watched them trundle out of sight on the conveyor belt, in between the boxed microwave cookers and the folded pushchairs. After an overnight journey we were delayed for twelve hours in Accra, where we waited for our connecting flight. It turned out the plane that should have carried us to Freetown had belly-flopped onto the runway in the previous week. Air Ghana was down to a single plane: the aircraft on which we had arrived. In the meantime the plane had been sent to collect passengers who had been stranded in Abidjan for the last four days. When it returned to Accra it would take us to Freetown.

We boarded at six in the evening, just as the darkness was beginning to close in. The air was surprisingly cool, the sky overcast as we waited on the tarmac, holding boarding passes that bore no seat numbers. An hour later the plane stopped over at Abidjan, where we sat on the runway for nearly three hours more while the ground staff tried to open the hold and retrieve the suitcases belonging to the disembarking passengers. The mood among those still on board was growing tense: with the curfew hour rapidly approaching in Freetown we were in danger of having to turn back. After eleven o'clock air traffic control at Lungi would not be able to give us clearance to land.

I called to the flight attendant nearest me and explained the problem: ‘Umm,’ he agreed urbanely. ‘We are doing the best we can. I'm sure we will be taking off soon.’ He smiled pleasantly and returned to his position by the cabin door. I walked up to him and repeated myself. I asked him to take my message to the captain. I had the impression he did not understand me. His manner remained pleasant, but he did not move. I sat back down. A few minutes later, unable to contain my frustration, I walked up the gangway and through the First Class cabin to look for the captain myself. I found him, standing with his back to the cockpit door, surrounded by angry passengers already engaged in trying to persuade him to fly straight to Freetown instead of Monrovia, which should have been our next scheduled stop. Eventually, and to my surprise, the captain concurred and made an announcement over the tannoy. We relaxed. Then he flew to Monrovia anyway.

We landed at Lungi two hours after I had resigned myself to returning to Accra. A senior airport official on board had used the plane's radio to alert the airport authorities, bypass the regulations and keep the runway lights burning. At one in the morning, after a thirty-hour journey, we passed through immigration. That night we slept at the airport, on an old sofa in the VIP lounge. People lay with their heads on their hand luggage, on the seats and floor around us. The toilets were blocked; there was no running water. I looked around, taking in the heavy velvet drapes hanging from the floor to the ceiling across a tall window that looked out onto a view of the runway; the shag carpet, matted and stained; the semi-defunct air-conditioner rattling and wheezing on the wall opposite. The decor hadn't changed at all, not since I hid in the same room when I was just six years old, waiting to fly out of Sierra Leone and into three years of exile.

Since the day of our inauspicious arrival I had directed my efforts at tracing every one of the Mende soldiers court-martialled for their part in the alleged coup attempt. There had been nine. Five of them were dead. Upon their release from prison three had taken work in Kenema in the south. They had become security officers: two at the Sierra Rutile mine and the third at the Tongo Fields diamond mine. I went to the Ministry of Mines to check their records of employment and the feasibility of travelling to Kenema. I discovered the mines had been overrun by the rebels in 1992. Many of the staff were taken hostage; others had fled or been killed. The diamond mine was now controlled by the RUF, who used the income from the sale of so-called blood diamonds to buy arms. Of the whereabouts of the last remaining soldier there was no word. It was just as likely he was dead, sucked into the void of the war and the fighting between the RUF and the Kamajors. The life expectancy in Sierra Leone of a soldier, even a former soldier, was short.

My search for the mysterious Steven reached the same conclusion. I hadn't even managed to discover his surname. There was something odd, bizarre even about his anonymity, in a country such as this, where blood ties counted for so much. It made him seem like an imaginary character and I began to wonder if he existed at all. Uncle Momodu had no idea – he hazarded a guess that Steven might have gone back north and probably joined the rebels.

Morlai had been discharged from Connaught Hospital in June after almost three months. All the time he was there I kept in contact through Yabome and worried he might die of something else, a secondary infection picked up from the unhygienic surroundings. His joint had been drained and a small piece of metal removed, the cause, apparently, of the infection. He still walked with the slightest of limps, but in almost every other way he was back to his former self.

Together Morlai and I pursued a further lead, this time to find an ex-fisherman and street boy by the name of Alimamy Bakarr. He had featured at the trial, though his evidence had not mentioned my father. He was rumoured to have been the person who threw the dynamite at Kamara Taylor's house – this last piece of information came from the defendants. This was the talk, apparently, among the soldiers during the time they were all in Pademba Road together. Alimamy Bakarr, Morlai Salieu and Bassie Kargbo all came from the same area of Port Loko: S. I. Koroma's constituency.

Bassie Kargbo, for a sum of money, promised to locate Alimamy Bakarr who, he said, had moved from Waterloo, where he had lived for many years, to a Freetown slum near the harbour known as Saw Pit. We had twice arranged a rendezvous and each time Bassie Kargbo showed up alone at our agreed location – the rice shop on Bai Bureh Road. On both occasions he had demanded more money from me before he would promise to try to set up another meeting. I had begun to doubt whether Bassie Kargbo was telling the truth, so Morlai offered to go to Saw Pit himself, accompanied by Bassie Kargbo, to find Alimamy. I wanted to go with them, but Morlai was adamant: it was far too dangerous a place and I would only attract attention. He would be better off alone.

Alimamy Bakarr's digs turned out to be a drug den. Morlai described it to me later: people lying together on the floor of an upstairs room, openly injecting drugs, smoking cannabis and heroin. Morlai could not disguise his revulsion. Alimamy Bakarr appeared swathed in heavy gold chains. At first he had agreed to speak to Morlai. But each time Morlai went back Alimamy made a different excuse and once slipped out at the back while Morlai sat on the wall at the front with his notebook and the list of questions I had given him. Finally Alimamy stopped answering the door altogether, leaving Morlai waiting, watching the addicts arrive edgy and nervous and leave, sated, a long time later: slow moving and glassy eyed as chameleons.

One afternoon I lay on my bed, inert with mental fatigue, enumerating my many frustrations with the country and with the task I had set myself. It had taken me months of work to get this far, and every step of the way I felt I was pushing against some mighty, unspoken resistance. Time and time again I had felt that hardly a fact or a single item of information had been volunteered; every day I made half a dozen telephone calls; I trekked out to interview anyone who would talk to me, then found myself returning to the same place to ask for more information – questions I had omitted to ask, chase details they did not think, or perhaps wish, to supply. This was as true of people who had no reason to dissemble as of those who did. As I lay there, in the hot room, staring at the ceiling, I did something I had never done before: I allowed the dark thoughts to crowd in one by one and my anger turned towards my father. How could he have been so trusting of his so-called friends, even of his sworn enemies? This was the question I asked myself over and over. How could he have flouted the warnings, allowed the danger to come so close?

‘Leave them in their ruined country,’ I wrote in red ink in the pages of my notebook, ‘surrounded by ruins, ghosts, flies, motherless children. Fly back to Britain – comfort. How could he have trusted them? Ever? Ever?’ I made a list of everything that infuriated me. ‘Fatalism. Disloyalty.’ I wrote leaning heavily on the nib of the pen so that now the words appear strident: ‘No conscience. No personal responsibility. Who cares about accountability?’ On the opposite page I wrote: ‘They say God has punished them all. But look around you! Look around! It's not over yet.’

Yabome must have realised my frustration, for I made no attempt to hide it. The next afternoon, on our way back to the house from running an errand in town, she directed Dura off the main road and up a short street just off Main Motor Road at Congo Cross. We climbed down from the car in a compound containing two houses and a round open-air seating area, just like a village barrie. Something about it felt familiar. I had been here once before, long ago.

The house belonged to Frank Jalloh, head of the CID in 1974 at the time of the arrests. We sat on an old velour sofa in a spacious and somewhat underfurnished reception room while someone went to fetch Frank Jalloh. In due course he appeared: a short, fleshy man with dark skin and a thick neck, dressed in cotton pyjamas. The three of us – Yabome, Simon and I – sat on the sofa, while Frank Jalloh took a large chair opposite us.

Somewhere along the line on her mother's side Yabome and Frank Jalloh were related, it turned out. This was so often the way in Sierra Leone. Yabome opened with the traditional greetings, declined the offer to send out for cold drinks. After a few minutes she turned to the reason for our visit. She explained what I was doing, appealed to him to speak to me.

Frank Jalloh regarded her, neither agreeing nor demurring. He was silent, impassive. Whatever he was thinking, his face betrayed no sign of it. Presently he began to describe the evening my father was arrested and taken to the CID: ‘I found them there. Sitting in my office. Forna and Taqi. Sitting in my office. When I came in. They had been arrested.’

I wasn't sure if he wanted to begin straight away. I asked a question – what, exactly, I cannot now recall.

‘They were in my office. The two of them. I allowed them to wait there while this thing was going on.’ He didn't move on. Instead he repeated himself two or three times more.

Yabome was sitting on the edge of the sofa, waiting politely. After a few more minutes she eased herself slowly up: ‘Yes. Well, see what you can remember. It's a long time ago, but you can think about it in the meantime. She'll ask you what she wants to know. Let's say tomorrow? By ten o'clock?’ I scrabbled in my bag for my notebook, hastened to write down the appointment.

‘They were sitting in my office when this thing started. I found them there. The two of them. Forna and Taqi.’ He was still using exactly the same phrases. We shook hands and left.

The next morning I faced Frank Jalloh. This time we were sitting outside on the porch. He was dressed in a long, pale-blue gown, embroidered at the neck. He was fiddling with a short-wave radio. He didn't offer me anything to drink. I sat down and took out my notebook. I had not brought my tape recorder this time, feeling instinctively it would be an error. I didn't want to do anything that might put him off.

‘So what do you want to know?’ He placed the radio on the battered metal table at his side.

‘I need to know about the events of the twenty-ninth of July. The night of the dynamite attack on Kamara Taylor's house.’ It had come down to this. I knew what had not happened on that night. I did not know what, if anything, had really taken place.

A silence followed. Frank Jalloh picked up the radio, adjusted the tuning knob, set it down again without turning it on. ‘I found them already there when I got to the CID. Taqi and Forna. I knew them. I asked them, “What are you doing here?” They said, “They have brought us here.” They had been arrested.’ As he spoke I wrote down his words. ‘I went to my office and sent for them. They said, “We don't know what we are doing here.”’

Frank Jalloh's feet, crossed at the ankle, barely reached the floor. He was sitting in front of a grubby, cream-painted wall. Behind him was a window to the room where we had met the day before. I sat with my back to the compound. There was nothing on the veranda save our two chairs and the metal table with the radio on it. When I arrived a boy had been sweeping the beaten earth of the yard and I could hear the incessant sound of the broom, to and fro, to and fro. Sweeping the same place he would sweep again tomorrow. I waited for Frank Jalloh to continue.

‘I found them already there, in the CID.’ He was repeating what he had told me yesterday. I assumed he would continue the story and I listened in silence, letting him take it at his own pace, not wishing to rush him. But after twenty minutes I found I had scarcely added another word to my notes. He had checked the station diary, he told me, but there was no mention of the arrests there. He had called the commissioner of police, a man called Kaetu Smith, who would not tell him anything. I jotted that down, beginning to feel my patience ebb away with the minutes. Beyond that sliver of detail we had not progressed. He continued to cover the same ground while I tried to hold on to my residual calm. He picked up the radio again. I allowed the silence to lengthen.

‘What happened next?’ I asked eventually.

‘I don't know. I found them there already. After that I was removed and posted to Kono.’ I could scarcely believe what I was hearing. Was that it? Was that what I had come here for?

‘But you must know something – about the facts of the case.’

‘Why would I know?’ He was being deliberately obtuse. He held the radio in his hands; his fingers were short and thick, the palms and the backs of his hands smooth and plump.

‘You were the head of the CID. You must have discovered something before you went to Kono. Tell me whatever you do know.’

‘Why are you asking me?’

I frowned. I was temporarily silenced. What on earth was he talking about? Was this some sort of joke?

A young woman had appeared at the doorway behind him. She adjusted her lappa, folded her arms across her chest, and was listening as we parried. I pressed on. He blocked me. I noticed the glimmer of a smile on her face. A few minutes later, when I glanced at her again, she was smirking openly. I was completely baffled. I had no understanding at all of why I was being treated in this way. Already it had taken a full forty minutes to get to this point.

‘Why did you tell me to come here, then? Why did you agree to see me?’ I demanded. Anger coloured my voice and there was nothing, but nothing I could do to disguise it. I knew I was breaking with every convention, challenging an older man who was my social senior in this society. I was risking everything but I was unable to contain myself. In that instant came the release, like falling, I felt the last vestiges of my self-control slipping away.

‘It was you who wanted to come here,’ he replied, unruffled. The woman sniggered audibly.

With that sound I jumped to my feet. ‘Is it funny? Is this so funny?’ I demanded of her. She didn't reply. ‘Maybe you find it amusing but I do not. Not at all. This is my father, my family we are talking about. And you think it's funny to see me sitting here wasting my time.’ I directed all my rage at her until, with satisfaction, I saw the smile slide from her face. She stared at me, shock mingled with uncertainty across her features. Frank Jalloh sat silent and unmoving. I groped behind me for my chair and sat back down. The woman disappeared into the house. That's it, I thought, certain he would ask me to leave. I gave it one last shot. I decided to reveal my only card: ‘Did you know that Kendekah Sesay was brought to our house that night?’

Frank Jalloh looked up, his eyes, small and dark, curtained by folds of flesh, were directed at me. I had him. I had his attention. Silence while he regarded me, properly and for the first time. He nodded, slowly, still watching me. The game was over. Yes. Yes the CID had known. ‘Yes,’ he said.

I drew a dividing line in my notebook, across the page at the point where the interview changed course.

On the night of 29 July or, to be precise, the early hours of the morning of the 30th, Frank Jalloh was woken at home by the commissioner of police, who informed him there had been an attempted coup, and that the matter was already being investigated by Jalloh's deputy Bambay Kamara. In turn Frank Jalloh telephoned Bambay Kamara at his home, asking why he had not been informed of the matter straight away. He was, after all, the CID boss. Bambay merely apologised for the omission. On his way into the offices the next morning Frank Jalloh encountered his deputy again. This time he learned that Bambay had already visited the crime scene and collected the evidence.

‘Kamara Taylor had called him first. Instead of me, he called my deputy. Bambay was hand in glove with the politicians. It was even Bambay who gave instructions to the chief of police. Without consulting me!’ On the last three words of the sentence Frank Jalloh's voice, which had barely broken above a sort of thrumming monotone, soared momentarily with indignation. He went on to describe his relationship with his second-in-command. Bambay visited State House regularly; he was known to be a favourite of Stevens and S.I., he said. Often the president or the vice-president would call the CID on some matter, talk to Bambay first, and only then ask to be put through to Frank Jalloh. It had got to the point where orders were being issued over Frank Jalloh's head straight to Bambay. By 1974 the whole situation was beginning to vex Frank Jalloh considerably.

In the afternoon of the same day, the 30th, Frank Jalloh decided to visit Kamara Taylor's house himself anyway. He collected a sample of the dynamite, observing, he told me, that the explosion was so near the master bedroom it would have been impossible for anyone sleeping there to have escaped unhurt. Later, much later, when he heard Kamara Taylor insist he had been at home, he came to his own conclusion. Kamara Taylor and the family must have been appraised of the attack before it happened.

The sample of dynamite he collected that day matched a type sold exclusively by one manufacturer: Delco, who were based in Lunsar. Frank Jalloh visited their factory himself and spoke to the manager. He learned the dynamite had been sold to several soldiers. The manager identified Kendekah Sesay, who by now had been reported absent without leave, as being among them. Frank Jalloh interviewed some of the soldiers who had been in the Murraytown barracks on the night of the 29th. He learned that Kendekah Sesay had been injured early in the evening when a stick of dynamite detonated in his hand during a clandestine demonstration. Kendekah was hidden somewhere in Freetown before being sent to Magburaka Hospital in a taxi. The driver of the taxi was a man by the name of Yamba Kamara. The vehicle had been chartered by an unconfirmed person. At Magburaka the trail went cold. Frank Jalloh discovered Kendekah had mysteriously disappeared from his bed on the ward one night a few days after he arrived.

A trawl of the army followed. There were numerous arrests and interrogations. Frank Jalloh had conducted most of these himself with the permission of the commander-in-chief. Some of the meetings the soldiers confessed to had indeed taken place at Habib Lansana Kamara's house, close to the barracks in Murraytown. But not one of the soldiers named Mohamed Forna in connection with a conspiracy or placed him at any of the meetings, nor did they name Ibrahim Taqi. Habib Lansana Kamara, in Frank Jalloh's opinion, would have been happy to see the army mutiny. He hated the army authorities for the way he had been treated. If there was talk of a rebellion he would have been only too pleased to support it. But Frank Jalloh believed Habib Lansana Kamara was probably only remotely connected with whatever occurred that night. It was Habib's link to Mohamed Forna that drew the interest of the authorities.

S. I. Koroma himself telephoned Frank Jalloh and told him where to find Kendekah Sesay's body. The first time he called and instructed him to send his men to arrest Momodu Forna. In a second telephone call he told him to prepare a team of divers. I asked Jalloh about the man, Ibrahim Ortole, in whom Momodu had confided about Kendekah Sesay.

‘Ortole was an informant. I saw him with Stevens, sitting in Stevens's office. Stevens trusted him. He had been informing ever since the days of the UDP. He would tell them where the party was holding meetings. They would go and send in their boys.’ Although Frank Jalloh claimed he had known and respected my father – ‘a great friend’, no less – he had never passed on the information that Ibrahim Ortole was operating as an informant.

As the investigation progressed Frank Jalloh was summoned to State House to see the president. He used the opportunity to complain that Bambay Kamara was undermining his authority. ‘We have respected you all along,’ Stevens had told him, ‘but if you don't want to do your job, then perhaps you should leave.’ He recognised he was being given an ultimatum: cooperate or go. As it was, they took the decision for him. He was sent on assignment and then transferred to the far north-east of the country well before the trial opened. His job as head of the CID was handed to his rival Bambay Kamara.

Frank Jalloh spoke for a while longer about Siaka Stevens: his fear of Mohamed Forna and his hatred of Ibrahim Taqi. ‘Stevens knew Forna had been a competent minister. But by that time they were persecuting everyone from the north. He hated Taqi. Stevens thought he could fool everyone about the money he was taking, but he knew Taqi was out to get him. Forna and Taqi were together so much of the time.’ There he stopped talking.

We sat in silence. It was half past twelve. We had spoken for two and a half hours. I had covered thirteen pages of my notebook with writing. My fingers were stiff and my wrist ached, but I made no move to go. Dura had already arrived to collect me and I had waved him away. I would have to walk home now. Frank Jalloh sighed heavily. He looked away, reached for the radio and turned it on. His attention was no longer with me. He fiddled with the tuning dial and held it up to his ear. The hiss and high-pitched whine from the instrument filled the air. It was as though I was no longer there. The interview was at an end.