The Spider King's Daughter (21 page)

‘He killed my father,’ I finally manage, my lips pushing against the floor and slurring the words.

‘What? Let him speak.’

The pressure on my head is reduced. ‘He killed my father,’ I splutter, ‘and he just said his name. That was what he said just now.’ The effort leaves me coughing blood on to the floor.

‘Is this true?’

One ear is pressed to the ground and I hear Olumide walking away before I feel that he is no longer on top of me. I twist my head to see him standing in front of Abikẹ, his body almost completely blocking her.

I look up and his eyes are hard. ‘Abikẹ, I’m only going to tell you once. This boy was sent by a rival.’

When had he become so sure? A few minutes ago it had only been a possibility. ‘What did you say to him just now?’

When he answers his words are slow and sharp and clear. ‘You either believe me or you believe this boy.’

I see the figure before they do but I cannot tell who it is, blood hazes my vision.

I see him but I do not know who he is. ‘Oh, it’s you,’ my father says.

Who is it?

‘Get out and forget what you’ve seen tonight,’ he paused before adding, ‘for your own good.’

‘I should forget?’ a male voice says in a rasping tone I have heard before.

The stranger steps forward and I recognise him.

‘Did you think we wouldn’t find out?’

‘Get out of this place,’ my father says, turning from my half-brothers and walking towards the hawker.

‘We heard about your new will,’ the voice says, closer now.

My father stops. ‘And so what?

‘You can’t cut us out like that.’

‘And who is to stop me?’

‘Me.’

When the bullet enters my father, he stands up straighter, his shoulders broad and menacing and for a moment it seems he is invincible. The boy shrinks. I wait for my father to deal with him but nothing happens. His raised arm hangs in the air and then he topples into the pool, a thick ribbon of blood swirling from his chest.

The boom of a gun resounds, a heavy object falls, plummets, crashes past my ear and smacks into water.

I want to scream but there is no time for screaming. The empty hole of the gun is staring at my face.

‘Give me a reason not to shoot,’ the voice says. It is male.

‘I’ve read the will. If I die, next in line are two charities and his old university.’

‘You’re lying.’

‘Kill me then but just know you’ll be doing it for charity.’

He smiles when I say this and I see his teeth are like mine, small with his gums drooping lower than normal.

‘Who is that?’ I hear him say.

He points at the hawker.

‘Someone I used to know,’ I say, gathering my clothes, unembarrassed by his stares.

‘Is he the one that did that to you?’

He points at my neck.

‘Go and see what I did to him,’ I say, slipping my dress over my head.

I feel someone standing over me but when I try to look up, his face is covered in moving lights.

‘Why are you looking at him like that? Do you know him?’ I ask the boy who is still staring down at the hawker now that I am dressed and ready to go.

‘He looks like a friend of mine.’

I see the hawker’s gun still lying at the bottom of the pool where I flung it. ‘Please get that.’

‘And if I don’t?’

‘Then shoot me. I am too tired.’

There is another splash.

He comes out of the pool holding the gun.

‘Take off your clothes and wring them,’ I say, ‘or else a trail of water will follow us.’

He strips to a tattered pair of underwear. Now he is the one that looks ridiculous. I scan the room one last time.

‘Let us go and discuss. We’ll go to my living room,’ I say curtly. The tone of our relationship must be set now.

As I slip into unconsciousness it becomes so obvious who the second person is, that the realisation almost pushes me back into consciousness. Almost.

We leave the pool room with his weight between us. When I switch off the light, my father is left floating in the darkness and for a moment I falter but it is only a moment. He would want it this way.

‘Speak to Dosunmu,’ I say for the fifth time today. I worry that I am growing too dependent on him but Dosunmu is the only one who knows anything about the companies and loyalties and factions I have acquired by being my father’s sole heir.

They would not take me seriously at first. I am an eighteen-year-old woman who has chosen to run Johnson Corporations instead of going to university. They did not know that for seven years I had learnt more from playing Frustration than any of them had ever learnt in a textbook.

I studied the picture that had arrived from Dubai. Hassan was rounder now; a small mound was beginning to rise under his shirt and he was smiling with one arm slung round the neck of a camel. He had been superb in the witness box. In monosyllabic answers, he denied everything the prosecution levelled at him but refused to explain how his fingerprints had gotten on the gun, what the gun was doing in his room, why his diary was filled with pages detailing his hatred of his oga.

‘Aunty. Shop is doing well,’ I read off the back before running the photo through a shredder.

It would not do for the wrong person to see this picture of a man supposedly dead by firing squad. Newly promoted Commissioner Julius might want a second bribe for sneaking Hassan out of jail the night before he was meant to be shot. I would have to make sure Hassan stopped sending these.

At first, I considered letting Wale reap the consequences of his actions. I thought of the scandal. Johnson fratricide. Johnson kills Johnson. Father vs Son. So in exchange for him persuading his brothers to give up their claims to my inheritance, I allowed him to walk free. I did not leave them penniless but it is clear that what they have is from my magnanimity. To think the fool believed my father would leave his billions to charity.

I considered making the hawker take the fall. One testimony from me would have damned him but again – the scandal. No doubt he would have brought up the issue of my father having killed his. Perhaps other allegations would have been raised and they might have stuck.
Johnson killer. Killer Johnson. Pimp Johnson.

Suggesting Hassan was genius. Not that everything Dosunmu suggests is genius. He thought we should have found the hawker and at least threatened his family. I was not interested. The more I thought of that night, the more I was unsure who to believe. Was he sent? Did my father murder his? Dosunmu thought my questions irrelevant. Either way the hawker knew too much but were he to speak, he would have implicated himself. To save his family, he would remain silent and lose his integrity. It was a gamble but almost a year has passed and my way has proved right.

Dosunmu will find in the coming years that I am not my father, though the more I understand the webs my father wove, the more I respect the man. Sometimes, I wish he were the one explaining the rudiments of a rigging to me instead of his stooge, who after years of double dealings cannot speak in plain English.

Sometimes I think I even miss him. It should have been him standing behind me when I saw my first supplicant. If he had been there, this Bank MD would not have had the temerity to glance past me and ask, ‘Dosunmu, what is going on here?’ Yet, despite this posthumous esteem, I am not my father. There are industries formerly affiliated to Johnson Corporations that I have severed all contact with. As I have explained to my inherited stooge, they tarnish my brand.

That the hawker was right about the trafficking does not mean my father is guilty of murder. There is no record of it, not that he would have been stupid enough to leave one, but Dosunmu denies it.

‘It was fortuitous that Sodipo died in that accident. It put an end to the case he was building.’ That was all he would say. When I pressed he replied, ‘Abikẹ, don’t waste your time on the past. We have more serious issues on our hands now.’

I noted the ‘we’ but I let his slip pass. He was right. I had more serious things to worry about. Some of my father’s companies were trying to force me out of my position as CEO. There was no time for wondering who killed the hawker’s father. Even if he had been telling the truth, what then? Would I drop everything to go back to a boy that had almost strangled me to death?

‘Dosunmu, have you spoken to the Vice Chancellor of UNILAG about my plans for an Olumide Johnson Recreation Centre?’

‘Yes, ma.’

‘Also, Dosunmu, next month I want you to stay in the Delta and see what’s happening on my rigs.’

‘Yes, ma.’

I picked up the phone and dialled the reception.

‘Send in the Minister.’

I leave the flat and turn on to the road. Tonight my street has light and everyone is taking advantage of the electricity. I am invited to play snooker. I decline. I am invited to dinner. I decline. I see two men facing each other in the street. I move closer. They are about to fight. I am not in the mood. There is nothing to do in my area. I return home and go to sleep.

The next afternoon I wake not knowing what to do. It is Sunday. I do not hawk on Sundays. The money I make is too little to hand over 90 per cent.

‘So you are finally awake.’

‘Yes.’

She tells me about her mock exams. She did well. She is on track for engineering. All my savings are for her university. I have heard enough for now. She keeps talking.

‘My teacher thinks that five of us will—’

‘Jọkẹ, please not now.’

It is always like this when I am home. They clamour for my attention because they do not know how worthless I am.

‘Where are you going?’

I turn on to the road walking restlessly. She is everywhere: polished into the black jeep that glides by, reflected in the pupils of a young hawker, ground into the dust of the road. It is Sunday. No one is fighting. I want to run until she is driven from my head.

There was nothing I could do. Had I spoken, it would have been my word against hers. She helped her father’s killer escape; she killed an innocent man in the killer’s place. What could I have done against such forces? You could have spoken. You could have shown yourself your father’s son instead of a bastard coward that even now, is relieved to be alive.

When I get back to our block, the boys have come out for their evening smoke.

‘Boyo, how far?’

‘Rambo I dey. How body?’

‘It cool. You wan smoke?’

‘Not tonight.’

I walk into the apartment and see Jọkẹ and my mother talking by the sink.

‘Hello. Are you hungry? Mummy and I made Mile 12 pottage.’

We came back to Mile 12 for the trial. We had spent three weeks in Ogun State when my mother brought me a newspaper with the headline:
DRIVER ARRESTED FOR JOHNSON MURDER
.

‘I borrowed it from our neighbour when I saw the headline. Is this you?’

‘I didn’t do anything, Mummy. Stop whispering.’

‘It happened the night you came back with your face bruised, didn’t it? You looked like someone returning from a serious battle. Did he put up—’

‘Mummy, I didn’t do anything.’

‘I know you didn’t and if anybody asks that is what I will say, but this man,’ she said, pointing at the picture of Hassam, ‘did he do it too? If two adults plan something and only one escapes, it is nobody’s fault.’

‘I don’t know what—’

‘I’ve heard. You don’t know anything but you did well. You’ve given your mother peace of mind and brought justice for many people.’

I had to go back. Since I was to take part in the trial, I could not leave my mother and Jọkẹ in a strange city, in a flat that was rented for three months. When we got to Mile 12, the landlord had tenants ready to move in. We had paid five years’ rent and lived there only three. After shouting and waving of contracts, he gave us back the keys to our flat. It was then the doubts came.

What if nobody believed me? I would have thrown away everything for nothing. I would come under suspicion. What use would I be to Hassan then? I stayed silent, following the trial, promising I would step in at the next development, and the next, until the man was dead and I was as guilty as she and her half-brother. I am a disgrace to my father.

‘Diogu m,’ my mother says to me. ‘Diogu m, we made yam pottage for you. Please come and eat.’

This has become her name for me since she read those headlines.

‘Mummy, please don’t call me that. I am not a warrior.’

‘Diogu m, you are my warrior.’

I wish I could tell her what really happened that night. I fear the news her
diogu
is a spineless coward would force her into a relapse. She is better now. She teaches at the nursery school, she talks to her daughter, and I will not rob her of this.

‘Mummy, thank you. Let me just wash my hands and I’ll come and join you.’