When Kwame Mainu was a student at the University of Warwick in the 1980s, he had helped British authorities interpret messages broadcast in his native language, Twi, between members of a Kumasi-based drug cartel operating in the midlands of England. Now, six years later, having returned from Ghana and taken up an academic post at the university, he hoped to avoid going back to what his friend Tom Arthur called a detective; but when the call came to meet his diminutive countrywoman, Aunt Rose, he couldn’t refuse.
This time the little woman was waiting for him in the same office they had used before. Akos Mary was not present, and Kwame wondered how Aunt Rose had arranged the one-on-one meeting. After the usual greetings, Kwame sat down in the only chair and Aunt Rose sat at her desk with her tiny feet swinging back and forth in an arc that divided the space between the desk and the floor. She noted with relief that her feet actually pointed forward.
‘Leon wants you to help him with one more thing,’ Aunt Rose said.
“You all know I don’t want anything more to do with this,” Kwame replied, annoyed that the hounds wouldn’t leave him alone.
‘But this is related to your old mission.’
‘How can it be, the people here are all in prison?’
That’s what baffled us, but the messages have resumed.
What messages?
Telephone instructions in Twi to drug dealers.
You can tell Leon what is said.
‘Yes, but I don’t know the old Twi like you, and I didn’t listen to the messages you interpreted last time.’
Kwame couldn’t see any problem that would necessarily involve him. It was obvious that some new people had taken over the drug trade and adopted a similar means of communication. ‘Why does Leon want me to get involved again?’ he asked him.
‘Because as far as we know, it’s the same voice.’
“You mean Kofi Adjare’s voice?”
‘Yes.’
As Kwame recovered from the shock of this revelation, he realized that the information gleaned from Comfort’s letter was relevant to the search for Leon after all. So he told Aunt Rose about the possibility that Kofi Adjare, the albino Okyeame, might have put the cocaine snails in Akosua’s suitcase. ‘If it is Kofi Adjare who is sending the messages,’ Kwame said, ‘he is sending them from Ghana. He must be using a mobile phone like I was using before I came here. He can use it anywhere around Accra, Tema and Kumasi and soon the coverage will spread more widely.
‘Leon is interested in who is giving him his instructions,’ said Aunt Rose.
“That could be any of the recently released drug lords in Ghana.”
‘Will you listen to some of the new messages?’
‘OKAY; Am I going to Warwick Police Station?
‘Yes please.’