Short story: Detective Hussein’s Promotion
Below is a short story I wrote over a year ago after elections in Kenya led to a great deal of violence, and the death of an opposition politician that seemed typical of numerous untimely deaths of controversial politicians in the past.
Reading this last night, I realised just how far I have yet to go before the quality of my writing is something I can be proud of.
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Detective Hussein’s Promotion
The door was huge, black and solid. It loomed large like the entrance to a cave and cast a shadow over the two chairs in the reception. That door was the gaping mouth of a hungry whale yawning over everything in its path. Detective Apap Pet Hussein pressed the sheaf of papers in his hand close to his chest; if they were a talisman, they might protect him from his worst fears. The secretary to his left continued answering the perpetually ringing phone with mechanical efficiency. Her voice, when it came, was flat and perfunctory; “The Minister will see you shortly,” she said. She didn’t offer Detective Apap a seat. If she had, he wouldn’t have taken it.
The detective was glad that the Minister of Internal Security was busy. It gave him the opportunity to stand and think albeit for a few minutes. It had been a short month ago when he first set foot in these offices, summoned by the newly appointed minister. He had walked in with the shaky anticipation of a virgin bride walking into her matrimonial bedroom for the first time.
On that day, the Minister ushered him into the office and stood while offering the detective a seat. Such royal treatment was beyond Apap’s comprehension. He held his cap in his hand and listened. It was all he could do to keep himself from gushing with platitudes. The Minister spoke with the confidence and dismissive tone of a weathered administrator.
“The situation at hand is beyond appalling. The people demand answers. The donors demand explanations and your government, detective, requires the perception of justice.
“You do understand don’t you. Our young democracy cannot survive if Lady Justice appears to be taking a nap. Of course, you and I are old dogs. We understand that Lady Justice is rather loose. Her thighs are wide open to men with power.
“But the people, detective. They must be given answers and Lady Justice must be seen to be chaste. Are you the man to protect her honour or have I made a mistake in calling you here?”
The detective was baffled. Though he had often tuned his radio to the national broadcaster’s frequency and listened to presidential speeches, he could never understand their bizarre style. When his colleagues clapped and chanted at the end of a speech, Apap would be too afraid to remind them that the president spoke in a manner that was strikingly similar to the inmates at an insane asylum. The words had a superficial resemblance to a common language but the sentences contained so many abstract analogies and jumbled ideas that it was obvious that their source was the mind of a lunatic. What shocked Apap even more was that the entire government, filled to the brim with kowtowing yes-men, seemed to adopt the president’s perverted manner of speech. Still, he wasn’t about to speak out of turn. His career had all but stagnated over the past fifteen years and if he was here, in front of a minister, it must mean that Apap’s luck was changing for the better.
“No sir, you did not make a mistake. I have dedicated my life to the service of justice. Whatever you require, I am sure I can handle it.” Apap’s voice was steady and formal. He hoped the minister heard the forced professionalism he invested into his words.
“We have a problem in our country. Within the first hundred days since our brave president was duly elected, a hundred opposition members of parliament have committed suicide! Today morning the leader of the opposition movement was found dead. We must investigate and prepare a report before the press gets wind of it. If we don’t, the masses will riot.
“We cannot tolerate a protest. The donors cannot tolerate any civil disorder. I need you to carry out your investigation and report to me before the end of the week.
“Begin immediately. You are dismissed.”
It was that meeting that led Detective Apap into a new and terrifying world. The terror he felt was not because of any particular fear he had about the investigation but because this would be the first time he would be involved in an actual investigation. Apap had spent his early years in the force as a traffic policeman. His first ten years were therefore spent on the streets of Nairobi and the highways surrounding the city. He did his job as well as could be expected. Motorists knew that they had to pay certain fees to drive in and out of the city. Like all the other officers, Apap joined in the implementation of this unwritten rule and collection of proceeds thereof.
Apap’s days in traffic were cut short just after the change of guard five years ago. It had been a day after the swearing in of the new president. The country was united in paroxysms of ecstatic joy. Apap, however, was alone, manning a roadblock along the Thika-Nairobi road. Just as he was about to settle for a nap, a brand new Mercedes came hurtling round the bend, swerving all over the road like a bumble-bee in mid-flight. The car came to a screeching halt a few inches from the road block.
When the light from Apap’s torch swept through the interior of the car, it revealed a drunk, pot-bellied, oafish figure slumped in the drivers seat. The fetid smell of stale alcohol seemed to seep through the car’s body and envelope it in a noxious cloud. A bubbling stream of giggles came from two half-naked girls squashed into the passenger’s seat — they each couldn’t have been more than fifteen years old — their bodies were still nubile and their skin filled with that firm deep-brown freshness of precocious puberty. If it hadn’t been so late and if Apap hadn’t been so tired, he might have felt inclined to investigate. When the driver slurred, “I’m just taking my daughters home,” the girls burst out laughing, shaking uncontrollably within their film-thin dresses that seemed to slip off their bodies in time with their slightest movement. Apap accepted the thousand shilling note from the outstretched hand and waved them on. That, in reality, was his first encounter with the Minister of Internal Security.
Many months later, after that night and then after the formal meeting, Apap found himself at the crime scene in question. The morning was cold and dewy. Apap felt light drops of moisture sweep past his face. It was still drizzling. His leather shoes shined bright as he walked. Green blades of grass whipped around his ankles, polishing his shoes and leaving a dark ring of wetness around the seam of his trousers. In front of him was the torched shell of a wrecked car like a beached whale, overturned, at the bank of the river. Beside it were the still smoking, charred remains of what Apap had been guaranteed was formerly the Opposition leader.
“It seems that the body was deposited here. There are no scorch marks on the ground and grass around the body.” Apap felt proud at his quick deduction. He pushed his chest out, pulled his shoulders back and stretched his body to its full height. He waited for a reply from the officers he had found on the scene.
“No sir. He committed suicide right here. It appears that he doused himself with the alcohol in those bottles there and set himself and the car on fire. He obviously chose this river bank so that he might extinguish the flames if he changed his mind.” That from a charcoal black officer who was squatting beside the body. His face was covered in scars whose scarlet hue was bested only by the red of his blood-shot eyes. Apap had never seen him at the police station.
“He’s right sir. This was a crime of passion.” Another officer he also didn’t recognise spoke.
“I thought your colleague said it was suicide?” Apap was puzzled.
“Yes. That is what he said. A suicidal crime of passion. A passionate suicide sir.”
“What?” Apap felt the cockles of his heart freeze as the fingers of nostalgia wormed their way into him. He felt like he was listening to the government spokesman.
“Exactly so, sir. This man committed suicide after being dumped by his illicit girlfriend, his side salad, dogo dogo, you know.” The two officers laughed in unison. Their eyes were slitted and barely revealed their beady depths. Their huge lips were curled in a licentious smirk and their broad barrel-like chests echoed with the cruelty of hangmen in love with their job.
Apap let his gaze wander from the men to the smouldering remains, to the car and back to the men. He then proceeded with his enquiry.
“And have you located the girlfriend in question?”
“No sir. And we don’t expect to. Such women are never easily found.”
“Then how are we to confirm that this is a crime of passion?”
“Come on sir. It’s obvious. All these Opposition politicians are the same. They can’t keep their snake in its nest and when their wives find out they commit suicide.”
While Apap was looking over the scene, the two men handed him a clean, new, blue spring-file. In it were pictures of the crime scene, the well-typed reports from the two officers and a bundle of statements from various witnesses. Apap didn’t know whether to be impressed or appalled. He had never seen the police force exhibit such efficiency. The dates on the photographs indicated they were taken the day before. But something else was strange. The ground on which the remains appeared to be lying was concrete not grass!
“When did you two arrive here?”
“A few minutes before you did sir.”
Apap looked up. The shock he felt played across his face and made his day-old beard itch. The morning wind stung deep in his nostrils. His sinuses ached in response to the cold. His eyes felt dry. He could feel the morning’s moisture in his shoes. The two men stared at him questioningly. He was about to speak when he noticed that their hands were hidden in their jackets and fumbling right next to the telltale bulge of their pistols. His dry eyeballs burned as he checked his surroundings. They were all alone.
“Congratulations on an excellent job. You two gentlemen have earned yourselves a recommendation. I’ll be sure to let the Minister know of your superior efforts.”
The two men looked like pythons uncoiling and freeing their victim. They walked to their car in silence and drove off.
Apap spent the next two days trying to understand what was going on. Everyone sent to assist him seemed to know so much more than he did. One officer had a detailed log, down to the second, of all of the Opposition leader’s activities for the entire week before his death. Another officer had a complete record of the dead man’s alleged relationship with a prostitute whom Apap was sure never even existed.
On the last night before he was to deliver his report, he got an anonymous phone call that instructed him to check the water closet in a defunct stall in the station toilet. There he found an envelope containing a letter. Right there on a clean thick, white sheet, circumscribed by an “Office of the President” letterhead was a hastily scrawled note that said, “Ensure that the opposition leader is dead within the next twenty-four hours.”
The detective knew that this was all that was needed to bring the investigation to a hasty and publicly satisfactory conclusion. However, the evidence’s amenability toward this end came with strings attached and these strings tugged at Apap’s conscience and weighed him down like a millstone. He quelled his doubts with a recollection of the minister’s words. The minister had insisted that justice was to be done. Surely this was what the minister meant. He leaped from his desk and raced out of the building. He had to report this immediately. This was the chance he had waited for all these years; the chance to do his country the ultimate patriotic service.
The door’s shadow loomed across the lounge like a portal to the underworld. Looking at it, Apap did not see the dark mahogany but an endless abyss from whose depths he was sure he could hear the screams of those tormented by Hades. Even as he stood, the shadow appeared to grow larger and engulf the room. He walked in slowly and vanished into its dark depths.
When he emerged on the other side he felt renewed in his conviction. He felt that he understood why the Minister had called on him in the first place. Honest, good, diligent men of integrity were hard to find. The minister had searched and found him. The minister obviously wanted to see a drastic and dramatic change in the country’s policing. In Detective Apap Pet Hussein he had found the one and only man for the job.
Apap was breathless by the time he finished narrating the story of the investigation that culminated in his amazing find. He was ready to go to the Attorney General, he said. He had prepared his statement and was ready to do what his country required of him. His cheeks were flushed with the red heat of his determination. He felt claustrophobic in the windowless room. The Minister of Internal Security was stiff and pensive in his massive leather chair. Then he smiled and spoke;
“You’ve done a wonderful job detective. I’m very impressed by how thoroughly you’ve carried this out.”
“Yes sir. Thank you sir. I would like to conclude by saying that my investigations have led me to discover other written orders directly from the office of the president. These documents which have been filed as memos, show a list of opposition MPs and states that they are a threat to national security and should be eliminated. There is also a letter from the President to a local militia group. Sir, I am convinced that the Office of the President is behind a murderous conspiracy and would like to reiterate that the Attorney General should be informed immediately.”
“Please, detective, leave the issues of protocol to me. The Attorney General isn’t necessary in this. But let me ask you, detective, have you looked at these alleged memos carefully?”
“Yes sir. I have sir.”
“Then, let me ask you this. To whom are memos involving national security addressed to?”
“They are… To the Minister of Internal Security, sir.
“And who are they copied to?”
Apap suddenly felt uncomfortable. He looked behind him to get his bearings and ensure that, if necessary, he could make a hasty exit but he couldn’t seem to locate the door. The walls were uniformly black and unyielding.
“They are copied to the Attorney General’s Office sir.”
“So are you accusing us, your superiors, of being involved in a government conspiracy to wipe out the opposition? I believe the government spokesman is about to give a speech saying that these members of parliament are committing suicide in record numbers. Are you also calling him a liar?”
Apap wanted to tear of his hot khaki jacket. He felt the words of a nervous reply climb up his throat before turning into a ball of phlegm that promptly retreated back into his belly.
“Clearly, you don’t value the integrity of the police force. What would happen if the police force were to falsely accuse the president and his government?”
Finally, the besieged detective found his voice. It was curled up in the far corner of the room, paralysed with worry. “Well. No. Yes. But no sir. I mean. It’s. I don’t know sir. No sir. Obviously neither you nor the AG ever read these memos or knew of their existence.”
“Obviously.”
“It seems clear, sir, also, that these documents have some error.”
“Faulty documents are an unfortunately common thing in a busy government. I suggest you do what the Electoral Commission does when faulty documents are discovered.”
“Are you saying that I should destroy them sir?”
“Good God No! Don’t do anything illegal. Just do what you feel is right.”
“Yes sir. Now, sir, I’ve taken up enough of your time. I’ve got a press conference in five minutes.”
With that, he dumped Apap’s folder in the bin beside the desk.
“Before you leave, I’d like to give you your Letter of Promotion. Instead of promoting you to Chief Detective, we want you to be the new Police Commissioner. This is how we reward hard workers like yourself.”
“I don’t know what to say sir, I’m honoured. Thank you so very much sir.”
Apap reached over the massive table and took a small brown envelope from the minister’s hands. The letter stuck to his sweaty fingers as he pulled it out. He unfolded it leaving large oily smudges and shapeless wet, brown patches all over the white sheet. He read the words with a mixture of despondence and pure animal fear. A bead of sweat dripped off his nose and onto the centre of the document, blotting out all the letters in its path. He tried not to look up as he spoke.
“I’m not sure I understand sir. This isn’t a letter of promotion.”
“Isn’t it? I’m sure I gave you the right letter.”
“No sir. This says “Police Commissioner’s Speech in Conclusion of Opposition Suicide Investigations”
“But aren’t you the Police Commissioner?”
“But sir…”
“Then that is your promotion letter. Congratulations Mr. Hussein.”
THE END
