A Good Cop

Corporal Alabi smouldered silently that morning as he prepared for routine stop and search duty. His uniform felt oppressive on his lean, dark-skinned body; the assault rifle looked like an enemy as he went through the motions of inspection and chambered in the customary one round.

“What is the problem?” Duniya asked him. Duniya was his closest friend at the police station. Both of them were thirty-four and had joined the Police Force on the same day as recruit constables.

“Wetin?” Duniya repeated gently, tapping the folding stock of his friend’s AK-47. “No be am cause your problem,” he bantered, trying to draw out Alabi’s lighter side. But Alabi was in no mood for humour.

“What kind of useless work is this? Twelve years on and still a corporal, though I now have a High National Diploma. As I am talking to you, my children are at home because I can’t pay their school fees. Mama cannot be moved to the specialist hospital for proper attention, and I am supposed to be her only son. If not for my sisters, the poor woman would have long joined our father in the other world.” He took a deep breath, and his face furrowed with sorrowful lines as he got a grip on the intensity in his voice.

“Kai, Funke no dey give me show again. When I made another effort last night, she hissed and said she does not open her legs to those the gods sent as escorts to other men on earth. I had to leave the house before the press publishes reports that a policeman strangled his wife.” Tears began to form at the corner of his eyes. He blinked them away.

Duniya looked swiftly around the shabby locker room and sighed with relief that their colleagues were engrossed in their preparations for duties. He expertly guided Alabi into the dirty, smelling toilet with its broken cistern encrusted with hardened shit.

“E don do, old boy. Na so life be,” Duniya consoled him. He too did not find things easy, living on the monthly insult they received as salary. At times the insult even came late, when the brass did not effectively organise the racket they perpetrated with their men’s blood and sweat. Duniya was also married with two children and had upped his educational qualifications from a mere Senior School Certificate to High National Diploma.

But he had learnt remarkable ways of making his burdens light. There were many ways if you were a sharp-eyed cop. He had tried to teach Alabi those ways, but his friend somehow still believed in certain things far suited for the Giberian Police of the 1930s. Things like honesty, diligence and treating people decently in the line of duty. Alabi dared practise them, and the result was a series of endlessly frustrating, unprofitable and increasingly dangerous postings and assignments from irritated superiors. Today he was part of the routine patrol team assigned to do stop and search checkpoint duty along Kiriji Road. Duniya, on the other hand, was a member of the unit assigned to maintain law and order at Oshobota. The two duty posts were as different as chaff and cocaine. Kiriji was a very long stretch of bumpy and untarred road that connected Bompo and Kingstone, two suburbs that together constituted Afoko, one of the outlying quarters of Lagona city. It was not the average cop’s dream duty post: robbers, toting submachine guns straight out of an American action movie, often used the road as an escape route when their operations went awry and they had to make a swift, bloody retreat; the supposedly law-abiding users of the road belonged to that cursed specie who made revenue collection difficult. Those fools whose too much book knowledge left them with too little sense. They usually had all their papers intact and claimed all sorts of rights if an officer told them to park their Toyotas and Kias for stop and search. Commercial bus and tricycle operators were not too busy at the hour Alabi’s team moved in. The early morning rush end would have ended, significantly reducing prospects of revenue collection.

But Oshobota was sweetly different. A rich road racket was perpetrated in this always bustling commercial hub, with the areas around the infamous Akpo Alao Bridge as the headquarters. Woe betides any motorist or pedestrian stopped by the joint patrol team stationed under this massive bridge. It did not matter that you did not commit any traffic infraction. Being hauled in was enough. Oshobota shattered the nationally believed nonsense that Giberia’s security agencies did not get along. The police, the Lagona Road Traffic Agency, the National Road Safety Commission, the Vehicle Inspection Squad, and most important, the gaudily uniformed road touts and urchins with the title “area boys” formed a solid partnership that kept Oshobota safe for designated bank accounts. Every stretch of road was keenly watched. Areas were farmed out in a system of rewards that kept superiors happy and their legmen and, increasingly, legwomen contented. Two months of road duty at Oshobota had enabled Duniya pay off his rent (shortly after he became a sharp-eyed cop, he moved out of the pigsty in the barracks, miscalled living quarters, into a brand new flat with his family), settle his children’s school fees, and most important, buy his missus that expensive Ankara outfit about which she had been dropping subtle hints. Madam’s unalloyed gratitude had been spectacularly expressed in nightly performances that always made Duniya wonder if she was contemplating a career in the adult movie industry. Not that he was complaining, though. His superiors were so impressed with his ability to meet and even surpass targets that his name had been slotted into the special list of favourites earmarked for fast-track promotion. That meant he would become a sergeant in two months, and three months later, he would be selected for the cadet inspector cadre. Life was good.

Alabi and two other policemen stood listlessly beside the makeshift barrier that demarcated the stretch of road under their watch. At this hour all was quiet and burningly boring. The hot morning sun sent streams of sweat running down their faces. The sweat formed irritating rivulets that stuck in the nether regions under the scrota and dampened the underwear. For the umpteenth time, Alabi silently cursed those brass in charge of outfitting the force. In the name of Sango, how long would it take to phase out this satanic black uniform? The cynical part of his mind smiled calmingly and replied: “Keep giving yourself high blood pressure over change of uniform. You will retire in black.”

“Old boy, I don tire.” It was Chizera, the wizened sergeant whose demeanour, aided by life’s hard blows, made him look as old as the hills. How such a remarkably short man passed the selection test never ceased to amaze Alabi.

“Me too.” That was Joe, the youngest of the trio.

“Sharrap.” Chizera uttered lightly. They grinned wearily. Chizera slung his rifle and stepped off the road into a nearby shack which housed some vagrants at night. Alabi and Joe did not need to be told that he was going there to down a shot or two from the small pack of homemade dry gin he carried in his pocket.

Joe yawned. “Oga, you get kolanut?” he asked Alabi.

Alabi’s face began to take on a malevolent contour, but then he got a grip on himself. The poor boy was not responsible for his problems. He stared at the youthful, almost beardless face, and compassion filled his heart. He searched his breast pocket, found a lone shrivelled nut and passed it to him.

“Thank you, sir.” Joe crunched gratefully.

“What kind of work is this?” he reflected aloud. “No food. You get sent out in the hot sun, forbidden to carry any money. How man go survive?”

Alabi spoke almost abruptly. “Joe, why did you join the Force?”

The rookie constable could not hide his surprise. “Why do you ask?”

Alabi paused reflectively. “Why did I ask?” he wondered. “Is it because I see a younger me in him and wish he does not plunge into the chasm?”

“You are an intelligent young man. I know you have a school cert.”

Joe sighed. “Made only three credits and five passes. No university will admit me with that.”

“Take my advice, Joe. Resit the school cert. Leave this hellhole before it consumes your life. Don’t be like sarge. Or me.” Alabi uttered the last words with obvious pain.

Joe nodded.

“I know,” he said sadly. “But who will foot my bills? My mother is old and sick; my father fell to his death at a construction site when I was in my final year. Three sisters and a brother depend on me to eat.”

Alabi put an understanding, calloused palm on his shoulder.

“I know. All the same, plan to get out as fast as you can. The Giberian police wastes lives.” For emphasis, he nodded towards the shack from where a combo of sounds made them chuckle. Mellowed by the gin, Chizera was fast asleep, shooting out loud snores and farts simultaneously.

The sound of a car in the distance caught their attention. It was a 4x4 Jeep approaching the barrier at a sedate speed. Whoever was behind the wheel was obviously an exception to the rule as far as driving in Lagona was concerned, not taking advantage of the relatively free road at this hour to hurtle along like a mad Formula One speedster.

At once the policemen’s professional antennae swung into action. They peeled off to either side of the barrier. Alabi raised his right arm while Joe casually unslung his AK47 and held it by his side, muzzle down.

The car stopped a few metres before the barrier. The driver wound down the window. She turned out to be a young woman in her early thirties. Alabi ran a practised eye over her. She was endowed with an oval face, big hazel eyes and high cheekbones. The length of her legs encased in cream-coloured trousers, which blended with her suit, indicated that she almost matched Alabi’s 1.85 metres height. Her wristwatch clearly cost more than his annual salary. She oozed class, poise, and cash. Quite a beauty, the cop thought, deliberately ignoring the mischievous fingers of lust that tickled his insides.

“Good morning, officers,” she said calmly. Her accent showed that she had spent a considerable part of her life in Joe Biden’s land.

Joe felt a sudden surge of irrational hatred burn through his lanky frame. He had never met the woman before, but as soon as she opened her mouth, she symbolised his failures and unfulfilled dreams. This bitch, with her oyibo accent, represented the societal oppressors; the stereotypical big men and women who kept him down. His grip on his gun tightened.

“Good morning. Clear to the side of the road,” Alabi answered mildly, his face impassive.

“May I ask why?” There was a slight tinge of testiness in the lady’s smooth voice.

“Madam, do as you are told.” Joe’s voice barked his hatred as his blazing eyes burned the woman. Alabi gave him a significantly cold look. The younger cop got a grip on himself and cursed silently. That was why most of the guys hated working with Alabi. “Whether the man think say e be Los Angeles police I no know,” Joe thought angrily.

The lady’s countenance had darkened at Joe’s bark. Anger and alarm filled her eyes. She opened her mouth to reply, but Alabi smiled reassuringly.

“No offence meant, Madam. Just routine checks. Sorry about the inconvenience.”

Alabi’s words were water poured on rising embers. She shut her mouth and switched on the ignition.

None of them paid attention to the shack. So they were not aware that Chizera had emerged and was watching the drama, weaving unsteadily as he latched onto his rifle for support. He must have taken more than his customary dose of the gin. A man needs occasional double sustenance, especially when responsibilities weigh him down. The snooze in the shack had not totally cleared his brain, but he could perceive the scene being played out.

There was absolutely no need for him to utter the words he spoke. When the woman obeyed Alabi, the sergeant came forward with the careful steps of a boozer who knew that some proportion of the unholy brew still had a hold on him. Fresh alarm flickered in the lady’s eyes. Alabi frowned.

“Who the fuck you be, ashawo? If you are told to park you bloody well park. Na so you go de run around with car you get from giving your toto to another woman’s husband.” Chizera’s eyes must have been personally lit up by Beelzebub; they were totally devoid of humanity and sanity at that moment. Only the gods knew what concoctions had been mixed with his gin before it was dispensed. It was customary for many of the guzzling cops to demand such concoctions from their suppliers.

“What!” the woman screamed.

Alabi instantly knew at that moment that all the legions of the underworld had relocated to their section of Kiriji Road. He yelled at Joe, “Leave her. Let her go now.” The authority in his voice made Joe take a quick step backwards.

Chizera’s gun was coming up drunkenly. Frightened out of her wits at the prospect of red murder looming before her, the woman wildly jerked at her car keys and slammed her foot down on the accelerator. She would have made it; there was ample room to reverse and flee. But when the legions really go to work, they mean business. The car engine, which had fired up, mysteriously spluttered and died.

“Jesus, no!” she screamed, almost wetting herself.

Alabi was already diving for Chizera’s legs, but at that moment, the wizened policeman’s gun arm was up. As Alabi tackled him, the rifle spoke. Chizera had forgotten to set the safety catch after downing his special tonic.

The shot was not accurate. It was not even aimed at the woman. But her scream indicated that the bullet struck home, ramming into the left side of her face.

III

The woman died instantly. Documents found on her identified her as Hanatu Jasper Koyo, a senior manager with Ackermann and Nobles, one of Lagona’s leading financial consultancies. She had been driving to keep an appointment with the fashion designer who would outfit her and her bridal train for her wedding in two months.

Alabi and Joe were dismissed from the force without any entitlement. Chizera, after an orderly room trial, was summarily dismissed and handed over to the courts.

“Why am I being sacked?” Alabi asked Deputy Commissioner of Police Gbenga Falodun. Falodun was the secretary of the high-powered police panel that investigated the shooting and dispenser of the termination letters. They were in Falodun’s office.

Falodun’s eyes flickered briefly before settling into their customary coldness.

“At times doing the right thing is not the right thing, Alabi Buraimoh.” His voice was quiet.

The former cop opened his mouth and then closed it as the thunderbolt struck home. The police hierarchy found him guilty of allowing the stink Chizera’s action had brought upon the force’s already rotten reputation. The media had gone into hysterics; civil society groups had foamed at the mouth; the president had called the national chief of police and demanded prompt action or his resignation letter. It was a crazy orgy that totally ignored the elements at the heart of the bloody matter.

“But what could I have done?” Alabi wondered for at least the ten thousandth time since the tragedy occurred. Somehow he had not lost his wits after the fatal shot. He had subdued Chizera and fired a warning shot to restrain Joe, who totally lost his head and tried to bolt. Mercifully, the OC in charge of their team had quickly arrived on the spot, attracted by the shots and uproar and taken charge. He had been absolutely honest with the investigators.

He looked Falodun straight in the eyes.

“I understand, sir. You need scapegoats.” He turned and left, leaving a visibly worried Falodun staring after him.

Five months later, a highly professional and ruthless gang of robbers and hitmen who rivalled the record of the legendary Murder Incorporated began business. Top on their list of targets were senior police officers.