First of all, I would really want to start by apologizing for not creating a stronger reader-writer interface by unconsciously omitting Author's note which was intended to thank everyone who have deemed it fit to click on my story, read it and vote even leaving comments.
I am very grateful! Thank you so much!
This chapter is dedicated to my very faithful reader and a huge source of encouragement OyeludeJomiloju. Your every click and comment is very much appreciated by me. It gives me joy that someone is actually enjoying my book as much as I am. I hope you don't get disappointed.
Enjoy!
The detective remained unhitched, resilient and resolute as she slowly chewed the gum that had been drained of its sweetness, grinding the blob to reshuffle into another anomalous shape with the active work of her molars. Her eyes locked in with Martins' like in the movies, where two love struck individuals meet and there are no words being spat out, just stares. Long deep stares except theirs wasn't love.
The air felt stiff. He could literally feel her breath close to his skin, the gentle in and out breaths she took made his skin feel warm and then cool again within seconds. She had left her seat and sat comfortably on her desk, by his side. Allowing just a fraction of her buttocks grace the wood.
"I swear I didn't do it," he said calmly. The clanging of the handcuff rings against each other seemed like the chains the slave traders mounted on their slaves. It sounded ancient and raw as his skin slid across the silver cuffs. His eyes wore a faint shade of pink. He had cried enough as the possibility of ending up in jail ripped his soul apart. Jail seemed factual, like a place that only existed in movies or in documentaries and never like something he would go to. In a few hours, his response could either take him there or take him back to class.
"You didn't rape Mary or drug her?" The detective asked. She tightened her lips together until the extra skin that bulged out, got sealed back in revealing a tiny spread out rash above her jaw. "Do you realize that you could go to jail if you don't say the truth about this?" She asked again in an almost whisper.
He said nothing, but narrowed his eyes towards the black mug cup that held an even blacker shade of coffee. It appeared to be void of sugar or any additive whatsoever.
"I drugged her, but I didn't rape her," he said.
She sank back into her leather chair and stroked her chin with her painted fingers, staring into his eyes and observing his random eye twitching. "Well, are you going to tell me the full story or do I have to ask myself?"
Martins breathed in heavily, his thoughts wandered back into the beginning of the whole story. How he had gotten himself into the whole mess in the first place. Cards of flashbacks relayed in his head and he settled his thoughts on the first time the dare had been mentioned in class.
"It all started with a game of truth or dare," he started. "I had a secret I didn't want to share that Dayo caught on tape and manipulated me with-"
"What secret?" The detective asked.
"My parents consider Dayo a bad influence and Kelvin, a better influence and so I wasn't permitted to go to his birthday party. That night, I ruffled my sheets and placed my pillow where I would have ordinarily slept, covering the soft head rest with my thick blanket. Ashley did same and we escaped together."
"Is that it? Is that really the secret you didn't want to get out?" She asked.
"I wish. Please you have to promise not to tell my parents this," he begged. He clapped his hands together in a way people did when they requested for a favour or begged to be absolved from a punishment. The handcuff made it easier to glue his palms together in a clap.
"I can't make promises, but I'll try to keep this information between us. What is it then? What were you trying to protect?" She asked, her voice seemed refreshing and somewhat compelling, drawing out the truth from him so easily. He suddenly had trust in her.
"I had sex with Ashley that night in Dayo's house." He lowered his face into his palms that seemed blood red. "I was drunk but Dayo said he had caught it on camera. I guess the whole act made me hate Ashley so much because she took advantage of my drunken state." He paused. A quick replay of the deafening music that rushed out from the speakers in a high pitch and hit the walls in an echo shaking the entirety of Dayo's family house clouded his thoughts. "You see, my father is a senior pastor in church. I and my elder sister Sola, who is in the university currently studying Law, are used as models to other youths in church. If a sex video escapade got to my parents, I'll be done for."
The detective remained in her unflinching position for what seemed like a long while. Her face still bore the same untainted expression it had born when she asked him the question. There were no surprised emotions lurking in her face or even a pretence to be in shock at least.
"How old are you?" She asked instead.
"Seventeen," he replied.
"-and Ashley?"
"Sixteen years old Ma," he replied, weakly. He expected a series of long chained advice regarding proper morals and decency. He expected proper admonition for his wrong doing but she gave none of that. Perhaps it wasn't to appear as a judge over their youthful exorbitance or maybe it was to blend in and seem like a cool adult.
"So, jump right into the part where Mary comes in," she had said.
"The night of the party was when I was supposed to rape her." His eyes darkened now to a deeper shade of red. The shade staggering drunkards had after an evening of lavishing their month's pay on tall bottles of alcohol. It looked like a film had been placed on his eyes, because no matter how tears seemed to appear on it, they never fell off. "I called her out of the party and we talked, while walking towards the Iroko tree beside the convent. The Iroko tree that stood in grace there, was just after few walks from the convent. It's where couples went to at night not necessarily minding that they could be punished by the Reverend sisters for being there at night, alone and after skipping prep. Since the whole school was celebrating, I took her there."
He closed his eyes shut for a while trying to recall all the details as they occurred. Flashes of memories from the near past blinding his thoughts were spat out. He relayed to the detective that they had talked about a lot of things as he tried to weaken her after putting in few drops of the white substance Dayo snuck into his hand, into her drink. Minutes turned to hours and yet the substance wasn't working on her yet. The party was soon being drawn to a close and he hadn't completed his dare.
"As I waited for her to drop heavily on the floor, she said something that made me rethink my whole action. She told me that she trusts me and that was why she was so free with me. I couldn't take the guilt and shame anymore and so I told her everything too. I told her I was supposed to rape her and get it on tape, I showed her the pencam and walking close enough to the incinerator, I threw it into the heap of dirty junk in her presence. You can imagine my surprise realizing you have it with you. If I must ask, how do you have the pencam? Who gave it to you?" He asked, courteously.
"I'm sorry but I can't disclose that information. I keep my sources anonymous."
"Fair enough, but if that be the case, it means that someone was watching us that night. Someone followed us and went after to look for the pen amidst trash. Mary told me she wanted to ease herself and that she'd meet me in the hall and so I left, hoping she was behind me. It was probably when I had left that the person killed her maybe. Whoever it is has something to do with Mary's disappearance," he said.
The detective looked at him closely. As usual, it was almost impossible to know what thought busied her head. He was saying the truth, she could tell. Even though she demanded the presence of a police officer to take him away from her presence.
Martins was grabbed by his belt which was woven through the small strips of his trousers created to keep the belt in position. Students had yet again clustered the Principal's office, watching Martins being led away into a mini police van which deposited criminals into jail. It didn't help that it had been break time and the students clamoured the front of the school buying a thing from the school shop, having enough view to see Martins being led to jail.
Ashley had intended going over to the computer lab with Stella, even though the latter refused given her last encounter there, when the school was stirred into a rustling confusion. They ran towards the front of the school and sighted the police officer pushing Martins' head into the small black car which had the word Police painted in white.
Ashley's cheek grew sore as a wave of dizziness struck her on seeing Martins' poor sight. She quickly combatted that feeling and ran towards the Principal's office, pushing her way through the door that led into the cubicle the detective stayed in.
"He's innocent," she cried, releasing loud sobs. "Martins doesn't have anything to do with Mary's disappearance!" She spoke with a stained face but yet an unshaken confidence.
Uju stood up and tapped her fingers on the hard wood such that it was in synchrony with the wall clock's tick. This act was intended to restrain herself from doing something dreadful.
"Leave my office," she calmly said.
"Dayo gave him the substance! Do you not hear me?!" She screamed. Stella pushed her way into the office releasing light gasps and she held unto Ashley by her arms, bidding her to leave.
It was indeed true that Dayo had handed the poison to Martins and should as well be punished for possessing evidence of drugs in school, but a different thought ran through the detective's mind. She had a different suspect in mind, one she had so blindly chosen to ignore and something in Martins' statement further confirmed her suspicion.
*****
After the competition had ended, Ashley walked hurriedly towards her class. She didn't want someone to tell her 'Sorry' for losing or 'Bad times happen' like Stella often said. She wished people knew that she failed intentionally for Mary's sake. She wished everyone praised her inwardly for being so brave and stepping down. She wished people would know that ordinarily, without her intentional loss, Mary would have never beaten her.
Getting very close to her sun roasted seat, she reached for her school bag which she had left there. The wood felt hot as though the sun had poured its beams directly towards her chair and to Thelma's, which was behind hers. She could hear faint slaps of a shoe against the tiled flooring behind her and wished inwardly it was Martins.
She wished he would reach very close to her and strap his athletic arms round her waist. Congratulating her for doing a great act and telling her he was proud of her like other couples on television did. They were the model couple that everyone tried so hard to be like. She could still vividly recall the night Thelma told her that she wished the on and off complication she had with Dayo, which she cloaked under the guise of a relationship, was a lot more stable and perfect like what Ashley had with Martins.
She said this when Ashley had requested for her help to put on a gold pendant, which had a butterfly stoned with actual small cut diamonds on each wing, over her neck. Thelma screeched excitedly when she held it in her moist hands. She hadn't known it was real diamond and real gold else she would have exclaimed louder and more enthusiastically.
Using her thumb to keep the knotted end in place, she passed the thin chain round Ashley's neck with Ashley packing up her bulky lustrous hair in one hand. The red glow on her neck had died down and the marks were healing then. It was either that, or Thelma had unintentionally chosen not to pay attention to the little details on Ashley's skin.
"He bought you a gift?" She had asked, grinning so largely that her ivory coloured teeth glimmered. She was also in Saint Rita's house, pink house, just like Ashley, except that the checked gown she had on that day, was light and thin, a product of repeated starching like papers from a book beaten by rain.
Ashley wanted to say that the pendant wasn't from Martins but from her mum. She wanted to say that the jewelry was given to her to make her feel happy after the sour breakup, but she said instead, "Yes. Yes he did."
Thelma had locked in the jewelry and she handed Ashley a partly cracked mirror which had its ends chipped off to see how good her reflection looked. Ashley took the mirror and placed her polished fingers on the butterfly, staring deeply into the screen.
"You guys are the best couple!" Thelma exclaimed. "Is it Ash-ins or-"
"Mashley," Ashley said quickly, smiling to how grand it sounded.
"Mashley," Thelma repeated. "I wish my relationship with Dayo was like yours," she had said.
"Ashley?" The voice behind her spoke. It sounded nothing like Martins and for once she wished her dream would come true.
Ashley sighed, turning reluctantly towards the slender delicate figure of Mary behind her. It seemed like the winds would pull her away to disperse her remains into the air. Her checked gowns were slightly bogus and even more bogus was the jacket she had over her uniform.
"Thank you," Mary said. "I know you lost that competition on purpose," she added.
Fiddling with the straps of her bag, Ashley replied after a weak sigh, "Don't think too much about it. You said you wanted to leave our house, I've provided an opportunity for you to leave."
Holding greedily to the amber coloured Understanding Chemistry textbook with a very fat content bound together by thick wax like glue, she made to leave the class when Mary clutched her wrist and the trinket on her wrist whistled at her touch.
"I've warned you to never grab me by the wrist like that again," Ashley snapped, wriggling free.
"Why do you want me to leave?" Mary asked. A faint stiffness of underarm sweat floated in between them. It had to be from Mary because Ashley was sure hers still scented with blossoming rose whose buds were ground evenly with strawberry.
"You were the one who wanted to leave."
"-and that's why you let me win." Mary felt a prick on her chest. She was very wrong to have thought Ashley's surrender did not have stains of selfishness in it. "Let me stay. With me in the house, I can help you with all the house chores." Her lips carved up to a smile. "You have a perfect life Ashley; you have wonderful parents who love you so much, a boyfriend everyone wishes they had, perfect grades-" she paused as though trying to recall all her perfections.
She had wanted to include a perfect body because indeed, Ashley possessed the right fat clustering at the right points in her body, when Ashley quipped.
"You think my life is perfect? My parents love me, but they don't love themselves that much. They quarrel all the time about the most unnecessary things, my mum is always pushing me to do things I don't want to, I study so hard to become something I'm not even interested in- Medicine. I just want to make my parents happy and since you came, that has been proving difficult. My dad compares me with you all the time. He wished I were a little more hardworking or a little more prompt so if you leave, I might be able to prove I can be just that and Martins? Yeah! You were right, he has been hitting me. I love him so much still and I know he'll love me right back someday."
Mary was stunned. She had not seen the sheath Ashley wore on and never had time to notice the scars she constantly covered. She had intending asking questions to keep their conversation going. She wanted to ask what Ashley really wanted to be in future and hoped to pitch in an advice about abusive relationships but when Ashley spoke, she poured out her words in one drag like okro soup- you can't pour a little without the many other cut green vegetable and white seed in a dense mass with extra ingredients following suite.
Ashley had stopped talking after a while as she had stylishly rested all her weight on one leg. She picked her book to leave again as she had unconsciously dropped it while attempting to spell out the many ways her perfect life was imperfect. Walking towards the front door, she stopped halfway, "Congratulations Mary, I don't think I've said it before or that I'll actually say it again, but you did good."
*****
The detective had locked herself into her desk, sniffing in old crisp books and a now stale, untouched coffee. The words of Martins kept replaying in her foggy head as she jotted in a loosened writing, Mary's name and rewrote it so it glared largely in the middle of her notepad. Beside, above and around it, every other student she had questioned were written.
There was a single knock on her door and a slight push as Sister May pushed her interracial robust self in. She tried so hard to blend into the diversity of Nigerian culture like when she spoke poorly constructed Igbo at PTA meetings or when she had worn Iro and Buba with a perfectly mounted Gele for cultural day. She went the extra mile to prove her grandmother was of a Nigerian descent especially when the controversial topic as raised by a parent, of how having a white principal in a black school was not such a great idea. Just as she did when she opened the cubicle.
"Kedu?" She asked in her half baked Igbo, misapplying the intonation and with so much nasal constraint.
Uju smiled, muttering an Adinma to mean she was OK. The principal came to inform that she had intended parading for her usual evening walks around the convent and since shadows being cast by sunlight could not be seen anymore, she could call it a night inadvertently advising the detective to do same.
"You walk around the convent every night?" Uju asked.
"I don't think I've missed it for once since the six years of the inception of this school," Sister May replied. "It's good for my rickety bones," she added, bursting into a short laughter.
Uju chimed in, glimmering her chalk white teeth on red dried lipstick, the color of poster colour except darker. The Reverend sister left, closing the door behind her.
Martins had led Mary towards the convent's end and had denied involving himself in any sexual act with Mary but then there were many other twists surrounding that report. That night, at the party, Sister May had been absent as reported by another student and had only appeared on a white apparel when Mary had been reported missing. The whole job of chaperoning was pushed unto the sturdy hands of Father Joseph as well others like Miss Evelyn an Mr. John who had graced the event.
If Sister May walked around and about the convent every night, she must have seen them together that night. If so, why didn't she admonish them? Why didn't she tell them to return back to the hall? If Mary's body wasn't found yet, could it possibly mean that she had been kidnapped? It seemed easier to sneak in a kidnapped body into a convent than into a hostel.
"It can't be," Uju muttered, fighting to battle the thoughts that sprang up in her head. Mary's drawings bore on most pages, a Reverend sister with blood of which one of them undoubtedly resembles Sister May. Uju brought the diary out so she could be sure her instincts weren't messing with her. "Could it be?" She asked no one in particular.