Lightseekers Read online

  LIGHT SEEKERS

  For my family and the friends who became a part of it

  CONTENTS

  SOURCE

  ACT ONE THE WHY, NOT THE WHAT

  CHECK

  FIRST CONTACT

  THE SINS OF FATHERS

  RED-HOT ARRIVAL

  THE WELCOME PARTY

  ENTER THE DARKNESS

  A PAST COMES CALLING

  POOR, UNFORTUNATE SOULS

  POLICE IS YOUR FRIEND

  GHOST ROAD

  MADAM LANDLADY

  SMALL TOWN, FAST NEWS

  A SON OF THE SOIL

  BOXFULS OF NOTHING

  THE POWER OF ONE

  THE NARRATIVE

  MOMMY DEAREST

  AT OWNER’S RISK

  THE MOST HATED BOY ON CAMPUS

  ONE PLUS ONE EQUALS THREE

  A BREWING STORM

  MIDNIGHT CALL

  ACT TWO A DISTURBING VIEW

  MURDER, SHE SAW

  WETIN YOU CARRY?

  A MAN OF THE PEOPLE

  BACKTRACK

  A BOY IN HAVANA

  THE CULT OF DISTINGUISHED GENTLEMEN

  A TRIBE APART

  BREAKTHROUGH

  FINGER OF SUSPICION

  NA ME KILL THEM?

  FIGHT OR FLIGHT

  A LADY OF INFLUENCE

  AN EXPECTED ACCIDENT

  ACT THREE SCHEMES AND SIGNS

  THE ORIGIN OF BURN

  SMOKE

  A SURPRISE DEFENCE

  CONFIRMATIONS AND REVELATIONS

  A CURIOUS EXCHANGE

  LITTLE WHITE LIES

  TURNING TABLES

  HIGHER POWERS

  ATTACK OF THE DAMNED

  THE OTHER SON

  ACT FOUR AIR

  RUDE AWAKENING

  AN UNFORESEEN KINDNESS

  REUNIONS

  CONFESSIONS OF AN ASSASSIN

  PILLOW TALK

  TMI

  SAME, NOT SAME

  A SOURCE OF MISCHIEF

  GUN GONE

  RUSH

  LETTING GO

  LIGHT AND DARK

  MERCY, MERCY

  ARROW OF WRATH

  RAGING FIRE

  MAYHEM

  LAST SUPPER

  AFTERMATH

  GETTING TO WHY

  HOME

  ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

  A NOTE ON THE AUTHOR

  SOURCE

  The October sun is as hot as the blood of the angry mob.

  John Paul follows the crowd as they chant and push the three young men. They’ve been stripped naked, their scrotums shrunken from fear as the beatings result in wounds that will never become scars. Sticks. Stones. Bricks. Iron. Bones break, blood flows. Tearing flesh draws short-lived screams from tired lungs. The men fall but are swiftly pulled up and dragged through the streets, towards a place no one picked out, but everyone seems to know.

  It rained the day before, making the red earth muddy in several places. When the young men fall here, they’re kicked further into the ground; their blood mixing with sludge. By the time tyres are thrown over their heads like oversized necklaces, and the smell of petrol wafts so strong that some in the crowd cover their noses, madness has staked its claim on what is left of the day.

  The strike of a match births flame as a brick crushes the skull of one of the men, leaking brain matter and life, so he doesn’t howl and writhe like the other two, when fire starts to lick their skin and hair.

  The phone thrums in John Paul’s hand. The battery indicator flashes red. He lowers the smartphone and looks around. He’s not the only one bearing digital witness to the execution in progress. He considers using the cell phone he had taken off one of the burning men before the mob pounced, but the irony wouldn’t be worth it. It’s over anyway. Time to go.

  As John Paul walks away, I follow him in the shadows, unable to unsee the nightmare he created behind us.

  And because he doesn’t look back, neither can I.

  ACT ONE

  light reflects in several directions when it bounces off a rough barrier

  THE WHY, NOT THE WHAT

  Unless I’m mistaken, a riot is about to break out in the departure lounge of the Lagos Domestic Airport.

  ‘Someone should at least tell us what’s going on!’ an irate passenger barks into the face of an unruffled airline staff member, spraying her with spit.

  Good luck with that, I think from where I sit with my meat pie and Coca-Cola. I’m at a table in the Mr Biggs’s restaurant opposite the 9ja Air check-in counter, a position I carefully chose so I won’t be left behind when the delayed airplane finally decides to fly to Port Harcourt.

  ‘Sir, the flight is delayed,’ the staff person repeats. ‘I’ve told you –’

  ‘What’s delaying it?’

  ‘I can’t answer that, sir. If you’ll be patient –’

  ‘For how long?’ This question is from another sweaty passenger who has no right to be this frustrated, considering I saw her come through the entrance less than thirty minutes before the flight was supposed to have departed. ‘We’ve been waiting for …’

  Three hours, seventeen minutes. But if you count how long since the Uber dropped me at the airport, it would be five hours plus. I suppose the other passengers weren’t running away from their homes to avoid a confrontation with their cheating spouse. Okay. Likely cheating spouse. Truth is, the hurried way I packed my bags and left home in the early hours of this morning had little to do with punctuality and everything to do with my unwillingness to ask my wife the question that was uppermost in my mind.

  Are you having an affair?

  It had taken a lot of willpower to tamp down that question this morning, as Folake stood in her light cotton housecoat, arms akimbo. Her long locks were pulled back from her face, so there was no masking her disapproval as she watched me pack.

  ‘You’re really doing this?’

  ‘Yes,’ I grunted and made a show of counting some underpants.

  ‘And it doesn’t matter that I think it’s a bad idea?’

  I placed boxers in my suitcase and responded in what I hoped was a well-crafted, neutral voice. ‘We’ve been through this, Folake.’

  ‘You’re not a detective, Philip.’ She stressed my name in the way she does when she’s trying, unsuccessfully, to hold on to her patience.

  ‘Your faith inspires and motivates,’ I replied ruefully.

  ‘Don’t play that card! No one has shown more faith in you than me.’

  ‘You reckon now’s the time to stop?’

  ‘You can’t go off to some village to solve a case that’s been cold for more than a year and expect me to throw a send-off party.’

  I faced her, finally making eye contact.

  ‘I’m not solving anything. I’m investigating why what happened, happened.’

  ‘How’s that not solving a case? Surely you can’t understand why something happened without knowing what happened?’

  Had I gone into an explanation of my work as an investigative psychologist, I wouldn’t be here waiting on a delayed flight. Despite supporting each other through our respective PhDs, my wife pretends to misunderstand my work when it suits her.

  ‘Folake, this is an opportunity to put my skills to use in the real world –’

  ‘A real and dangerous world,’ she cut in sharply.

  No doubt travelling to Okriki might be considered dangerous for someone like me, who until eight months ago had spent the better part of his adult life in the States, but it would’ve been nice if my wife had said instead: ‘Go, Sweets. If anyone can find out what led to the mobbing and burning to death of three undergraduates, you’re the one. You’ve got this.’

  ‘It’s a foolhardy scheme, and you know it! I don�
��t know what you’re trying to prove.’

  ‘That I’m more than a two-bit academic without tenure,’ I shot back, restraining myself from shouting.

  ‘Leaving your family to go investigate multiple murders isn’t going to get you tenure,’ she said, no less strident.

  But it’ll take my mind off the sad possibility you’re cheating on me.

  Of course, I didn’t say this out loud. I hate fighting, especially when it involves raised voices. Moreover, there aren’t a lot of people who can hold their own in a war of words with Professor Afolake Taiwo, the youngest Professor of Law at the University of Lagos. In almost seventeen years of marriage, I’ve rarely won an argument with my wife.

  ‘Okay, Philip. Let’s say you get there and you find out what really happened, or why it happened. What then? What do you want to do? Write a book?’

  ‘This is Nigeria, Folake,’ I scoffed. ‘You don’t chase down the details of a mob action in the hopes of writing a best-seller.’

  ‘Then in the name of everything holy, tell me what you’re hoping for?’

  ‘I told you the father of one of victims hired me to –’

  ‘Yes, yes, I know.’ She threw her hands in the air and rolled her eyes. ‘He wants you to write some report because he doesn’t believe his son was a thief, even though it’s all there on social media.’

  ‘Have you seen the video?’

  Folake shuddered.

  ‘I’ve watched it a hundred times at least,’ I continued, to stop her from recounting what she must have seen on any of the several sites where the deaths of the Okriki Three were posted. ‘And you know what? Every time the same thought goes through my mind – people can’t be so crazy as to burn three boys in broad daylight just because they are caught stealing.’

  Folake sat on the bed, shoulders slumped, and I wasn’t sure if it was from our argument or my reference to the distressing video.

  ‘Nothing makes sense in this country,’ she said, shaking her head.

  ‘Everything makes sense when you know why people do what they do.’

  ‘Psychobabble nonsense,’ she snapped and her hand rose quickly to her mouth as if to take back her words. She’d crossed a line and she knew it.

  I made a production of zipping my suitcase till I was sure I could keep my face impassive. When I looked at her, my voice was as neutral as when we started the conversation.

  ‘Thank you. Now I’ll go apply my psychobabble on a matter for which I’m going to be well rewarded. Excuse me.’

  I lifted the suitcase and walked out quickly before she gathered her wits.

  Another passenger’s angry voice breaks through my reverie.

  ‘This is unacceptable! Only in Nigeria is this kind of –’

  I give it another hour or so before irate passengers and rude airline ground crew exchange blows. For now, I turn my attention to the one thing I am trained to understand.

  A crime scene.

  CHECK

  Crime scenes can range from orderly to maddeningly chaotic.

  I try to drown out the noise of the airport and reflect on the words of my old teacher and mentor, Professor Albert Cook.

  ‘Death is messy, Philip, but dying is a shithouse.’

  Prof, as I still fondly call him, never subscribed to the idea that a crime scene could fit into a given set of typologies. He used to say: ‘People fuck up, and therein lies the clue to what really happened.’

  Prof was my PhD thesis supervisor at the University of Southern California, my first boss and the person who introduced me to the then evolving field of investigative psychology. Although retired now, Prof remains active by ‘butting into other people’s shithouses’, as he calls it. Perhaps I should send him the YouTube link to the Okriki Three’s execution. It would be interesting to hear the old man’s thoughts on this particular shithouse.

  I look at my notes. Under the section where I had written: Organised crime scene, I draw a large question mark.

  When one considers how the mob’s rage seemed so focused on the three young men they were killing – murdering – at least some of the conditions of a staged crime scene could apply. Take the aggression directed at the victims before they were burnt. Classic premeditation. And the tyres. Surely they couldn’t have just appeared. Someone, or some people, had to have gone out of their way to bring them to the crime scene, which for this exercise I should limit to where the boys were finally killed.

  Personalisation of victim(s). Theoretically, it’s safe to assume a mob killing is not personal and would, therefore, present the characteristics of a disorganised crime scene. Practically, given the intensity with which the Okriki Three were killed, a collective displacement can’t be ruled out. If the young men were suspected thieves, a significant number of their attackers may have been victims of past robberies that went unpunished. But is that argument tenable for almost a hundred angry people?

  I place several question marks against ‘personalisation’ and write: Get data on the rate of robberies in the neighbourhood before or during the month of the killing.

  There are other indications of an organised crime scene; the demand for the victims to be submissive and the use of restraints at some point during the whole heart-breaking exercise are classic indicators. But this is where the staged crime scene typology ends.

  I look up to see whether any of the frustrated passengers has resorted to violence. Not yet. Then, back to my notes where I had listed the characteristics of a disorganised crime scene.

  Bodies left at the scene of the crime. Check.

  Bodies left in full view for anyone to see. Check.

  Depersonalisation of victims. Check.

  I doodle around this. Can one be sure? Is it possible that no one knew the boys? What about the person who claimed he was being robbed?

  I write: Interview alarm raiser.

  Minimal conversation. Mobs don’t engage in discussions or negotiations with their victims. So, Check.

  Spontaneity –

  Apparently, the mob had descended on the boys after an alarm was raised that they were robbing another student off campus. Since there was no way a hundred angry people were lying in wait to be summoned to participate in a necklace killing, this is also a check.

  Indeed, dying is a shithouse. The mix of typologies in this crime scene is infuriating but can present unique possibilities for the task at hand. I must remember to keep an open mind until I get more data beyond the still images grabbed off YouTube videos and interviews with the victims’ parents.

  I write: A singular motive masked by a collective purpose or bias? This might explain the mixed typology, the most telling characteristic of a disorganised crime scene.

  Unexpected and sudden violence against victims. Check.

  I pause here. How unexpected and sudden was the violence, though? The human stories about a crime are as important as the crime scene itself. The motivations of the narrator – perpetrator, victim or witness – can shed considerable light on what really happened.

  I flip my notes to where I wrote: Emeka Nwamadi.

  FIRST CONTACT

  ‘Chiemeka Nwamadi,’ he said as he shook my hand.

  ‘Good to meet you, Mr Nwamadi.’

  ‘Emeka, please. Let’s not stand on formalities.’

  ‘Let’s not stand at all,’ said Abubakar Tukur, who’d have been my boss if my contract at the Police College was permanent rather than that of a guest lecturer whose services are procured strictly upon the availability of a budget. He ushered – more like ordered – us to sit on the front row of chairs that faced the desk from where I’d just delivered a lecture on crowd control. Abubakar is old school; the 32nd Commandant of the Police College who still harbours illusions of restoring the glory days of the Nigerian Police Force.

  As we made ourselves comfortable on the sturdy chairs, I couldn’t shake the feeling that the name ‘Nwamadi’ was familiar.

  ‘Emeka is the MD of National Bank,’ Abubakar said, and it clicked.
The man is the head of the country’s third-largest commercial bank. As soon as that registered, another hazy detail hovered on the fringes of my mind and, again, Abubakar came to the rescue.

  ‘I’m not sure if you know of the Okriki Three case …’ he began.

  Shock was my first reaction, then compassion. Three weeks into my first lecture series on crowd psychology at the college, I had asked the cadets to present case studies of crimes committed by crowds. More than half of the papers were about an incident in the south-eastern part of the country, which the media had dubbed the ‘Okriki Three’. Since most of the papers were disjointed – as most student presentations tend to be – I had taken the time to read up on the case in the media. That’s how I knew Emeka Nwamadi was the father of one of the three undergraduate boys beaten and burnt to death over a year ago in the university town of Okriki. His fight, along with the other parents, to bring the people who killed their sons to some kind of justice had been the stuff of headlines months before I left the States to follow my wife on her sabbatical at the University of Lagos.

  What does one say to a parent who lost a child in such an unspeakably cruel manner?

  ‘I’m so sorry, sir,’ I offered awkwardly.

  Emeka Nwamadi nodded, his face unreadable.

  ‘This is why we’re here, Philip. Everyone knows what haffened.’ When Abubakar is excited, his Hausa heritage betrays him. His p’s turn to f’s and r’s roll into l’s.

  Actually, I didn’t know enough. Not then. After reading enough to get context for grading the cadets’ papers, I tried to shut it all out of my mind. My twin sons have just turned sixteen and it’s not hard to picture them at university, away from home and finding themselves in the wrong place at the wrong time. Self-preservation prevented me from researching about the Okriki Three or even watching the video on YouTube.

  ‘I’m not sure where I come in, sir?’ I responded.

  ‘Tell him.’ Abubakar nodded at Emeka.

  Emeka didn’t speak. Instead, he reached into his leather briefcase and brought out two bound documents. He placed them on the table between us, and I immediately knew what they were. The first was my masters’ thesis, poetically titled: ‘Strange Fruit: Understanding the Psychology of Lynch Mobs in the South’. The second was my PhD thesis, a continuation of sorts: ‘Strange Harvest: How Crowds Get Away with Murder’. Both printouts must have been downloaded from the online library of the university where I had researched and written them. I had also presented them as part of my résumé when I applied to the Police College.