“Mom, are you saying that you didn’t identify Aba’s body yourself?” Rami asked her mother.
There were a few seconds of silence, and then she responded, “We agreed not to tell anyone. They did it for me. They said her body was more than half burnt and mostly unrecognisable. They initially identified her from her bag at the scene, which contained her ID. And the parts of her clothing that weren’t fully burnt matched the descriptions we sent out on what she was wearing when she went missing. So Hormeku went in there alone to check, and then they ran a DNA test to confirm. The test wasn’t even necessary because as you know, the bag they returned contained Aba’s items, except her phone, which we were told probably got stolen at the accident site.”
Rami’s mind was reeling. Some things were beginning to shape up, even though it still didn’t answer many questions.
“Mr. Homerku has been very helpful,” I said, hoping to distract her from thinking about her daughter’s charred remains.
“Oh, yes. I honestly don’t know what I would have done without his support for the past year. And that day, he took care of everything and allowed me to just grieve. I am glad that Aba got to know him before her death, and he got to redeem himself after everything that happened between us. I was touched when he told me that he would go in and do the hard part for me, and I could just tell everyone that I saw her myself. That way, we could have a closed casket in peace. I wasn’t going to let anyone else see my daughter in that state.”
Rami remembered how much their extended family members had insisted on seeing Aba’s corpse regardless of the state in which it was and how Mr. Hormeku had helped keep them at bay and finally convinced them to allow the closed casket.
Like her mother, Rami had been grateful for his presence in their lives and had seen him as a divine blessing in their lives, but now that some things are getting exposed, she was beginning to wonder if their guardian angel was perhaps a wolf in sheep’s clothing instead.
“Okay, Mom. Thank you for telling me. And I am sorry for bringing this up again when you were just starting to heal. But I feel better now after what you just shared with me. Aba would understand. I love you, Mom.”
“I love you too, Rami.”
When Rami hung up, she and Lilian just sat there silently for a while, thinking about what they had just discovered.
“What the hell is going on?” Lilian finally asked, breaking the silence.
Rami shook her head slowly. “I don’t know, Lilian, I don’t know, but this is crazy. Now the things that Aba told me on the phone call are beginning to make sense. That picture you sent me, which was the last picture she took, has him in it. I didn’t even think it could be him, but now that is how it is shaping up to be.”
Lilian drank some of her bottled Awake water and sighed. “This is the most horrible thing I have ever experienced. What could he possibly want with her? Why would he come into her life again? To what? Kidnap her? For what? And if the body wasn’t Aba, whose body did we bury? Is there a family somewhere searching fruitlessly for their missing daughter or wife? And how did Aba’s bag get recovered from the scene? And most importantly, where is Aba now?”
“I don’t know the answer to most of these questions, but I suspect that Mr. Hormeku got some help from the police to set things up. Remember that the police who contacted us and helped us through the whole process are friends of his. At the time, we thought it was fortunate that he had those contacts to help, but what if they rather helped him to cover up Aba’s disappearance?”
“Where is your notebook? We need to go over everything again. Even if we suspect it is him, what can we do? We can hardly go and accuse him of kidnapping Aba and demand that he return her. We would look crazy. They would probably suspect that we’re drunk,” Lilian joked.
Rami snorted and opened the book for them to look through again. As she was going over the words she remembered from Aba’s call, something Lilian had said earlier clicked.
“We would look crazy. They would probably suspect that we’re drunk.”
And Aba had said something similar, like, ‘Drunkards may sound mad, but sometimes, they speak the truth. Hear them out.”
“The drunkard”, Rami murmured. “I think I know who Aba was talking about,” Rami exclaimed. “Do you remember that drunk man that you thought was kind of funny during Aba’s funeral?”
Lilian frowned, then remembered. “Yes, yes. The one who was dancing with the kids. Didn’t you say he was Aba’s uncle?”
“Exactly! Uncle Peter is Mr Hormeku’s younger brother. Apparently, he took up drinking in his early twenties and hasn’t been the same since. I pity his lungs. But the point is that he kept saying some things about the devil, but nobody paid attention to him. Also, my mother doesn’t like him because every time he sees her, he tells her that she has invited the devil into her life and that she should free herself from the devil before he ruins her.”
“Do you think he knows something about his brother? If he was calling him the devil, he must know something, right?”
“Do you have his number? Can you call him?”
Rami frowned. “I don’t have his number.
“Is there anyone you can get it from?”
Rami’s mind raced. “I can’t take it from Mr. Hormeku or any of his sons. I couldn’t ask my mother even if she had it, and I doubt she does.”
“Perhaps we go to his house and look for him there?” Lilian suggested.
“Yes, I think that may be our only choice.” Then she remembered something. “Wait, wait. I might have his number. Last Christmas, I think Aba asked me to send him some money on her behalf via Mobile Money. I remember telling her that he would only use it to buy alcohol, but she said he needed it to buy medication. I didn’t believe he would, but I sent it anyway. I think I saved his contact on my expresspay to make any future transactions easier.”
As she was talking, Rami opened her expresspay app and scrolled through the list of saved Telecel contacts. “Yes!” she exclaimed when she found what she was looking for.
“Save the number on your phone so that I can get it when I close the app,” she told Lilian, calling out the numbers to her.
Without wasting time, she dialled the number and exhaled in relief when the phone rang. Peter picked up the phone and said, “Hello,” in his usual slightly slurred voice.
“Uncle Peter, this is Rami, Aba’s sister.”
“Oh, Rami! Rami, how are you? Poor girl. The devil took your sister.”
Rami and Lilian glanced at each other, hearts beating faster.
“The devil? Who is the devil?” Rami asked cautiously.
“The big, bad, devil! I tried to tell everyone, but nobody would listen! I know he took her; he took her. And she’s lost forever, poor girl. Trapped forever to save the devil.”
“Tell him to meet us somewhere, or we can go to him,” Lilian whispered.
“Uncle Peter, can you meet me? I want to talk to you.”
“I warned her. I warned them. But nobody listens to Peter when he calls. Nobody listens to the words of a drunkard.”
I felt a chill. “I want to listen to you, Uncle Peter. Are you at home? I can come to you–”
“No!” he cut in loudly, startling Lilian and me. “The devil can never know that you came to see me. Someone might tell him.”
“Okay, okay. But can you come here? I am at home. I can order a ride to come and pick you up.”
He was silent for a while, then said, “Your mother doesn’t like to see me. She hates me.”
He was right. Rami’s mother didn’t like him at all. Her dislike of him had been almost as strong as his brother’s, but the brother had redeemed himself; Peter hadn’t. My mother never said why she didn’t like Peter, but maybe now, Rami would get some answers.
“My mother is at work. She won’t be here until very late,” Rami assured him.
“Do you have gin?” he demanded. “I can’t talk without gin.”
Lilian and Rami stared at each other.
“Do you have any alcohol at home?” Lilian whispered.
“No,” Rami whispered back.
“We could go and get some before he arrives,” Lilian suggested.
Rami couldn’t believe that she was so stressed that she hadn’t thought of that.
“Yes, there’s gin,” she responded. “I will order the ride now and call you again when the driver arrives, okay?”
“Okay, I will come and see you. Just don’t tell anyone. Don’t tell the devil I’m coming.”
His voice sounded less slurred now.
“I won’t tell anyone,” Rami assured him. “See you soon.”
She cut the call and immediately swiped across her screen to find the Uber app. Lilian didn’t speak, watching quietly as Rami ordered the ride to go and pick up her step-uncle from his family house in Adabraka, where he lived.
“The ride is 10 minutes away,” Rami said to no one in particular after Uber assigned a driver for the trip. Ten minutes was not too long, but at this point, every minute felt like an hour. She couldn’t wait to hear what the man had to say and if it could help her find her sister.
“Let me go and check the nearby bar for the gin,” Lilian told her while Rami waited for her uncle.
