‘The girl . . . didn’t I warn you about city women? They’re no good. They dress fine, fine, you don’t know a thief from an honest one. Just be careful, Mr. Sango. Don’t bring more thieves here. I don’t want them on my premises. Hear that?’
Sango forced a smile. ‘Thank you, Lajide. Aina will not come here any more. That is, if she gets out of this mess.’
Sango went back to his report. He read over what he had writ
ten, chewed his pencil, and continued:
The public must be satisfied that he could have died by no other means than suicide. Otherwise that feeling of unsafety will always lurk in the citizen’s mind. After all, it is the citizen who pays the tax that pays the police. Therefore he must be protected from gangsters, hooligans, robbers, rich men who flaunt authority . . .
He looked over the last sentence. There was something there. The public liked a paper which spoke up. The Trobski murder had something unsavoury about it, and the West African Sensation would not let those concerned make a mess of things. People would speak of the Sensation as the fearless paper.
2
Sango did not hear the knock but looked up when the doorway darkened. The tall woman who came in could have been fifty or sixty or eighty. Her jowls were shrunken, and a pathetic expression lingered in the depths of her wine-red eyes. She was a total stranger to Sango.
‘Take a seat,’ he said with reverence. He was afraid.
She sat down very slowly, assessing him. Something in her manner chilled the beating of his heart.
‘She sent word to you . . .’
‘Who?’
‘My daughter, Aina.’
Sango flopped into an arm-chair. He could not see the resemblance between Aina and the old woman. But he felt the slow, confident grip of her power over him. The word ‘witch’ occurred somewhere in his subconscious, but he quickly dismissed it as out of date. She was behaving with the air of a mother-in-law in the tenth year of her daughter’s marriage.
‘She said you should come and bail her . . . they want to put her in jail.’
Amusa Sango bit his lip.
‘You have been very kind to her so far . . .’
Amusa jerked himself up from his seat. ‘Me?’
‘She hides nothing from me. She is my daughter, and I trained her, since she was like this . . .’ She made a motion to show Aina’s height at the age of taking the first steps.
How much did this woman really know? What was at the back of her mind? Amusa thought of her age, of the generation in which she had grown up, and he became afraid. I wish my mother were here to match her magic against your magic, if that’s what you’re trying to use against me. You know I am young. I may be able to read and write, I may work in a big office, but I am as a child where your worldly wisdom is concerned. I wish my mother were here.
‘So, Aina told you about this place?’
‘Yes; and your servant, Sam. He comes from near our village. You know we are not Lagos people. We only come here for a while.’
Your servant Sam. But – no, Sam wouldn’t do that. He wouldn’t take a powder from you to sprinkle over my breakfast beans. I have been very kind to him. So that’s out of the question. You cannot poison me through Sam.
‘Well, I’ll think about it. I’ll see if I can help her.’ He tried desperately to sound all-powerful and authoritative. ‘But if she has really stolen that cloth —’
‘Don’t listen to them.’ The energy behind her words startled him. She had absolute faith in the honesty of Aina. She rose. ‘I want to tell you this: I may leave the city without notice. My work involves travelling to Abeokuta. I sell cloth, you see.’
‘The same thing here,’ said Amusa. ‘It is going to be as if I run away, if I bail her and leave the town. That is against the law.’
She did not understand. Her wine-red eyes were regarding him malevolently. He broke off, his mouth half open. In that moment he felt the full impact of the woman’s power. He knew he had no other choice than to obey.
•
He called at the charge office after breakfast. Aina was not there. A policeman told him that along with other prisoners —
‘Prisoners? Magistrates Court No. 2? What are you talking about?’