The Trials of Maclean Agu Book 2

The moon shone with the intensity of a million lamps and I glared back with the intensity of a million eyes. I had just had my fill of pounded yam and Oha soup topped with a large gallon of fresh palm wine. So instead of joining in the chat with the others, I decided to lay down on the soft grass, a short distance from the blazing fire in the midst of my Father’s compound and think of my luck. Although the blackness of the night had fully set in, merriment was still ongoing; the children were clapping and singing, pipes were smoking, flutes playing and most importantly, my mother’s sonorous laughter threading through it all — Maclean was back and alive and he was getting married!

I had proposed to Sansa and she had agreed to marry me — six months into our relationship, six months after all hell had let loose on me. It wasn’t that I had no worries in those six months though, in fact, it had been far from trouble-free. I had been ejected from my apartment, and regretfully, my brothers and the other urchins had had to return to their respective bases. I was jobless and the only job I found in all that time was that of a car wash attendant which I did for a week before dropping the towel and bucket. Most strangely, the document with my signature had been found and TrustMond had come for my neck. That morning was like a dream, two police officers knocking on the door of my dainty one-room apartment where I was having breakfast of soaked Gari and fried fish:

“You are under arrest, Mr Agu.”

“Under arrest? For what?”

Of course, the Nigerian police will only tell you that you’d find out more when you got to the station and that whatever you said would be used against you in the court of law. Typical, that sort of thing.

I went with them, fidgety, wondering what kind of luck I had, just when I was thinking the drama was over and I could live a normal life, with Sansa.

I was jailed for days on end, packed together with three dozen inmates in a fairly large cell with nothing but worn cartons for beds and tiny vents for windows. Sansa rained hail and brimstone on the officers every time she came, threatening that they would pay for their ‘indecency’. She would come from work to see me every day, with wraps of Boli and groundnut or coolers of cooked food which the wardens never allowed her to directly give me, on grounds of it containing incriminating evidence. Eventually, only about a tenth part would get to me. I was nevertheless grateful for this tenth part, because I found that most inmates would kill for a twentieth of it.

Sansa regularly updated me on the steps she was taking to get me out. It was from her that I finally heard about the incriminating document, that Mr Abayo had looted about two hundred million of taxpayer’s money and had disappeared without a trace as soon as he sniffed that the police were on to him. As an accomplice therefore, the noose was around my neck to produce him. Yet, I wondered why in those three weeks I wasn’t called in for questioning, just dumped along with a mishmash of snoring and stinking cellmates, served stale food during the day and served as gourmet to the mosquitoes at night.

Here I was five months later, glaring back at the moon and drinking in all the breeze of freedom I could. How it happened, I am not exactly sure. One morning, an officer had approached the cell and the dozens of us had rushed to the bars, in anticipation of being let out. The officer swiped viciously at the bar with a whip and the dozens of us crashed back, trampling and falling over each other. When he finally lifted the piece of paper and called my name, asking me to step forward, I reeled, like a canon had just gone off next to my ear. I paused for a long stunned moment until the officer’s voice boomed again.

It had been a while, perhaps a week, and I was beginning to think that typical of some ladies, Sansa had forsaken me, but when I saw her there at the reception with some of my brothers, my heart enlarged and engulfed her. She hugged me, despite my filth and whispered that she’d never leave my side. When I asked what had happened, she said we’d talk about it.

I couldn’t believe my luck when I was handed fresh clothing and allowed to walk free out of the police station, the officers glaring at me, like a fox glaring helplessly as his dinner is being gulped down by a lioness.

Sansa later said she did all she’d done to ensure that the matter was not taken to the court, that she’d had to step on toes, grease fingers, grant favours to make the document go away. And since the document no longer existed, I could walk. Unless, Mr Abayo was ever found, if he ever testified against me. Sansa didn’t say much more about it and I didn’t think to ask much about it since she looked battle-weary and in fact fell ill after the ordeal.

Looking over to where my family sat by the blazing fire brimming with joy, I knew a happy life had truly just begun for me. I had found a good woman and that was enough for me.

Before I closed my eyes and declared Moon winner of Glare, I muttered a brief prayer that Mr Abayo would rot to death wherever he was.

#2

Sansa was a special breed. At least, this was my conclusion after she told me her story.
Her father, a policeman, had met an untimely death in the hands of armed robbers when she was five years old, and being the eldest of eight children, she’d had to join her mother’s business, trading crayfish in Aba and Onitsha, sleeping on cold floors and traversing different states on foot for survival. After secondary school, she laid off her studies so that her younger ones could continue. When she decided to go to the university, they laughed her to scorn. What girl went to the university when she would end up in a man’s kitchen? They said. As though to silence her, one uncle promised to obtain the Jamb form for her. On evening, he asked her to come get it. He lured her into his apartment, locked the door, violated her, and gave her a brown envelope filled with blank paper. She was sixteen at the time. She’d cried hard, but in the end, resolved to get what she wanted by all means. She left home and became friends with a general’s son who made her do all sort of things to satisfy his cravings. She didn’t mind, as long as she got the funds she required. Then she lost her mother, and had to double up her hustle to play mother to her siblings.
I thought her eyes glazed over at this point, it turned out to be a play of lights. She stared straight on at the passing traffic outside the busy restaurant in Okpanam where we were having a date and continued her story.
Eventually, she rounded up her education at the Delta State University, Abraka, had her National Youth Service in Ondo State and returned to Asaba to seek a job. In those first few months, she worked as a dish washer, laundry assistant, store keeper, poultry attendant — anything other than being friends with men who constantly used her for their purposes and broke her heart in the end.
Then she applied for the opening at TrustMond and there we met, both interviewed and granted jobs as marketers on the same day. She admitted to having crushed on me for a while, then we got close, became partners, then her heart broke when she perceived my involvement with Kome. And she vowed to not be in a relationship for a long while. Here she was, breaking her own promise. She said this and gave a coy laugh.
“I’m curious though, why did you come back? Why did you try to help me back at TrustMond?” I said.
She nodded and continued. She’d tagged along with some friends to Church one Sunday, but had gotten changed in that service and a few weeks later, dreamt that I was in trouble and that the trouble would lead to death. On discussing with the pastor, he’d advised that she offered assistance.
It had all begun as some form of ‘help.’ Ironic — we both thought and laughed.
This profiling took place a few weeks before I took her to see my family. They’d liked her instantly. And oh, they loved that she was a banker.
I laughed at my luck and glanced at the wall clock. I was to have dinner in her place in two hours, I still had time to kill. I whipped out my phone and commenced a session of Shadow Fight.
A phone call from an unknown number distracted me as I made to finish off my assailant. I ignored it, smirking at the malevolent intent of the fraudster at the other end of the line.
Soon, the phone rang again. I picked up, determined to rain a barrage of insults on the caller.
“Hello bros.”
A million synapses went off in my brain. This was a voice I knew intimately but hadn’t heard in months. A voice thought lost, gone.
“Cletus?”
“Yes bros, na me, your boy.”
“Cletus!”

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