A man with sunken cheeks, his faded brown Ankara outfit loose around his gaunt frame, looked around the crowd before stooping to the ground and picking up the phone he had seen fall from the woman trying to fight the men.
As he stood, he looked around before putting his hand into his pocket. The phone vibrated. It startled him, but nobody noticed. They were too busy filming the thief they had caught. He looked down at the screen of the ringing phone. ‘Guy Collins.’ He looked at the woman the area boys had knocked out. He looked back at the phone. He frowned at the sky; at God who had seen him stealing the poor woman’s property, and he answered the call.
‘Amaka, where are you?’ the caller shouted into his ear. He cupped his hand over his other ear so he could hear the man over the noise. ‘Amaka? Amaka?’ She was Igbo. He was Igbo. He bit his lips. He cursed. ‘Hello?’ he said. ‘Who are you?’ He turned his back to the action and began to edge his way out of the crowd.
‘Who is this?’ the man on the phone shouted. He sounded like a real oyinbo, not just someone with an oyinbo name.
‘Where is Amaka?’
‘Are you her friend?’
‘You better come here now, now. They are going to kill her.’
‘What?’
‘She is on the road here. They are beating her. They are going to kill her.’
‘What are you saying? Who’s beating her? Why are they beating her?’
‘The area boys. They have already killed one thief. They are descending on her now.’
‘What? Who are you? Where is she?’
‘She is at Oshodi market.’
‘Market? Who are you? Can you help her?’
‘Me? What can I do? You better come now-now, before they put tyre on her neck and pour her petrol.’
‘Please help her.’
He ended the call and switched off the phone. It was too late for anyone to help the woman, but God saw that he had done all that he could.
A skinny young man stood with his back to Amaka’s car and looked around. He opened the door and ducked inside. He snatched the handbag from the passenger seat and tucked it under his shirt. At first he walked quickly through the crowd, then he jogged along the road and finally he turned unto a narrow, overgrown passage between the walls of adjacent buildings. He sidestepped mounds of excrement and swatted at flies. He checked behind him before taking out the handbag. There was a notebook laptop inside. It felt light. He tucked it under his armpit and searched for its power adapter.
He pulled out a passport and flicked through its pages before sliding it into his back pocket. He found a mobile phone and its charger, a cardholder, and a wad of pound notes. He stuffed everything into his pockets. He threw out a compact mirror, a lip balm, a nail file, and a bunch of keys, unzipped a side pocket and felt inside. He grabbed the contents. In his palm there was a black SD memory card among four mobile phone SIM cards. He picked up the memory card and inspected it, then looked up as two men walked past the entrance to the passageway. He dropped the memory card and the SIM cards back in to the bag and tossed it away. As he walked away, the bag sank into the vegetation until only its thin black strap was visible, curled over the stem of a plant like a snake hiding in the foliage.