After being accused of rape, Jimi's Coker's friend and attorney tries to save him and clear his name.

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Chapter 6: In Search of Lust Time

“Now you will feel no rain, cos each of you will be a sanctuary to each other,” John Sonekan remembered the joy on his father’s face; the rare joy of being your son’s wedding priest. “Now you will feel no cold, cos each of you will find warmth in each other.”

His face was, by then, a joyed waterway. He remembered the tears in Menorah’s eyes as well. This was ten years ago. Before her death from AIDS.

If only he had known that his bride had been gang-raped by her police superintendent uncle and his drunk friends three years before that wedding, maybe he would have asked that she got tested for HIV. If only Menorah had known that one of those men could have, and did infect her with HIV, maybe she would finally have found the courage to tell her husband that little detail that eventually turned out fatal.

But it was in the past, and John was her future, so it was pointless. Besides, her uncle had since apologized to her. So why risk losing her man over it? Why embarrass her family like that?

“We did not arrest him, ma. He surrendered.”

John heard a sergeant major say to Nadia. He smiled. Something was definitely serpentine about his presence in that cell. His air reeked with devilish calm. And he loved how it felt. He loved how they would never know the death that hovered around till he had taken another life. The last one. The one really wanted.

“Me, I think something is fishy oh. This his alakowe look cannot deceive me ntemi.”

“Enough,” Nadia said. “You may leave now.”

Her gaze met John’s as the sergeant made his way to the Superintendent’s office. He looked too interested in checking her out to be bothered about the soup he was in. It reminded her of the time Milford had first tasted stardom, and all he seemed to think about besides football were girls and sex. It felt like the time she screamed at Milford to “Get a hold on life!” But “All I want to get a hold on right now is a pair of boobs,” was his reply.

She had hated that her younger brother would say that. But she had loved his honesty. Without it, maybe she wouldn’t have been able to guide him to the choices he was making now. Like Gold, his Ghanaian friend, who was teaching him a little of Twi and a lot of how to be a better man. She would gladly offer the same scream-service to John, but the superintendent had insisted on interrogating him himself. Besides, John was no teenager. She would just get on with her own job; bringing Dauda, her mother’s murderer, to justice. She hoped her new witness, the woman who Aliyah’s heart was donated to, would help her do just that. The woman was waiting in Nadia’s office.

“I hope it wasn’t too much of a bother, bringing you here like this?” Nadia said to the woman seated in one of her office’s visitors’ chairs. She had heard the woman was a movie star. One of her favourites, in fact. But she wasn’t exactly doing ‘how stars do’. She looked surprisingly sober. Strikingly patient. Nadia extended her hand for an handshake with the woman. “I apologize for keeping you waiting. I’m a big fan, by the way”

“It’s okay,” Tayo responded. “I was hoping you would let me see my friend too. So, I was glad when I learnt that I could be of help here.”

“Your friend?”

“Coach Olaitan. I just met him, actually, so he not like a friend friend. But he doesn’t come off as someone who would do what you all are accusing him of.”

Nadia smiled wryly. “Looks deceive, ma’am. I’m sure an actress like you would understand that.”
If only life was as simple as those movies, Tayo thought. “Well, can I see him?”

“No, ma’am. I can’t give you that permission.”

Nadia almost couldn’t believe the disappointment on Tayo’s face. She looked out of Dauda’s league by a bit of a mile. How under the heavens did her evil father score so good with this woman? It was a riddle she didn’t even know how to start solving.

“Anyways, you said you have a report of what killed Mrs Aliyah Olaitan?”

“Yes, it was included in the donor documents given to me. I have them here with me.”

Nadia collected the documents from Tayo. The sight of her mother’s name made hot tears gather in her eyes. Her eyes fell on the recorded cause of death. “Piercing Force On The Neck”.

She paused.

Hadn’t it been an accident? An accident that Dauda caused?

There had been no record of this cause of death before now. And from pictures she saw after the accident, the vehicle’s windscreen had cracked. It hadn’t exactly shattered. So it couldn’t have pierced Aliyah in the neck.

Kamoru had said it before, but she hadn’t given it much thought. Now though, even a fool couldn’t deny that something was definitely not right.
The TV in her office came on all of a sudden. Electricity had just been restored. The sound of Lagbaja’s Konko Below coming from it was one she loved to hear. But in this moment, all that mattered was what was happening here.
A loud scream suddenly emanated from somewhere. John’s cell.

Tayo, Nadia, and other police officers rushed to the cell. But the sight they were greeted with was the worst Nadia had witnessed in the past two years she has served as a police officer.

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“Treat as urgent, please,” Tayo said as she dropped the call to her lawyer. There was no way in Chance Heaven she could have guessed that she would be needing Puneet’s services already.

Everything had been perfect. Dauda had been the perfect human; the perfect gentleman. So what was this news she was seeing on TV about his arrest? And, for murder?!

She wondered if she was being too forward calling up her lawyer to help someone she hardly knew. Wasn’t this the same foolishness that had always left her with a broken heart? Wasn’t this the same easy-trust trust habit that had made her Nollywood’s ‘Miss Always Almost Married’? Or maybe it was just her extending kindness to a man who deserved it.

His kindness had reminded her to find the family of the woman whose heart gave her a new life, just to thank them. However he was, this man had clearly weaved a greater impression on her than she thought. But what if he did kill his wife?
***
Yenegoa United players were distraught. They had refused to board the flight back to Yenegoa. They were requesting that the club apply for their play off match to be postponed. Not until Dauda assured them that the club’s management would get him out on bail, by the next day, did they get on the plane.

Police detention had nothing on the magic in Dauda’s words, it turned out. The man had renewed their purpose, re-ushered their focus, in just five minutes. They still were not sure how well they would cope in that play off match if their coach happened to not be back with them by then, but they knew they would surely fight. For their coach, and for themselves.

Abbey wondered if he would be able to live up to the faith Dauda had placed in him and Effiong. They were supposed to keep the boys’ heads ‘in the game’, but even his own head was in what might happen to this man whose impact on his life had transcended the game by a mile.
***
It was a new day. 11 a.m in the morning. But for Dauda, the day would do well to say its goodbyes already. The club’s lawyer had just left after saying what he was sent to say. However, Dauda was struggling to believe any of it.

He couldn’t believe he was sitting in a police custody room, just a day after his life was finally about to start, at 44. He couldn’t believe he had just been asked to resign ‘by mutual consent’ or be fired. He couldn’t believe that the club would turn their backs on him at the first real chance he gave them. At the same time, he couldn’t deny how good this first chance was. Too good to turn down, maybe.

His eyes fixated on the lawyer’s slim briefcase as he backed the custody room’s door on his way out. His heart sank as he remembered that a resignation letter bearing his signature was sitting somewhere in that briefcase.

Weights. Emotional weights. They never left him, never forsook him. They were always there, especially when he was having it rough. Unlike his club’s management. Former Club’s... They were with him when his father routinely abused his mother. They had were with him when his father sent his mother packing. They were with him when cancer snatched his mother away. They were there when his wife left him, when he nearly forgot how to breathe.

They were there just before a then fourteen-year-old Sadiq became his caregiver. They were there while Sadiq helped him find a reason to live, when he helped him resurrect his cocoa business.

They were there with him in loneliness when Sadiq got married and moved into his own apartment with his wife. They were there when he bathed in a pool of liquor and some ladies. They were there when he used to make those booty calls; to Sally, Thelma or his favourite, Hope, with a ‘p’ that went silent on freaky days.

They were there on that day at Ajibode, when he put overdosed capsules into Aliyah’s medication pack just before she took them. They were there when he heard she had dosed off on the wheels and been involved in a road accident. They were there when she died with Sadiq by her bedside.
They were there when Nadia stormed the airport with a battalion to arrest him.

In a world where emotional baggage were also checked at airports, he knew there was no way he was getting on that plane, anyways. And they were there now, when some unknown Indian-looking man dressed like a lawyer opened the door, looking all pumped.

“Good morning. I’m Puneet Mehra. And I will be your attorney…if you let me, that is.”
It wasn’t a good morning for Dauda. Far from that. But he will respond. “Sadiq sent you?”

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Dauda had seen Jericho fall. It was now time to conquer. His team’s Israelite guts and soldiery obedience to his tactics had brought them here; to the edge of football paradise, as they saw it.

They didn’t now need an extra Achilles heel. They didn’t need the distraction of their coach being detained and tried for murder. They didn’t need the stain of their club being linked with a murder. They didn’t deserve to lose their coach just before the most important game of their season. So, he kept his secret. It would hurt him, but it wouldn’t kill. I’ll be alright, he thought.

Nadia’s car was just in front of them now. He watched with pride as she joked with a sergeant and pressed her car doors open with a remote. He loved seeing how good his daughter was having it. He had never been one for Gender Olympics, but he liked how the male domination in her line of work wasn’t written on her face, or her attitude to work. Clearly not on her pay-check either. At least the jet black Toyota Yaris they were now settling into said so. His precious first fruit was doing just fine, and he loved to see it!
****
Milford’s eyes scanned every corner in the airport. He hid behind his sunshades and face cap, hoping he would find Nadia before football fans could recognize him. He heard that star-struck Nigerians’ requests at airports could be anything. Anything at all. From an autograph, to a selfie, to cash, or even babies. And even though those he met at the Muritala Mohammed Airport had been somewhat civil, he wasn’t ready to stretch his luck.

His heart kicked when he found his petite sister waving at him from the Arrival Lounge. She looked every bit the police inspector she was. So much that it almost startled him. Maybe that was why he hadn’t recognized her immediately he got to the Arrivals. But then again, he hadn’t guessed she was into elderly men. Who’s the old hunk? He thought.
.
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Twenty-eight years back, sixteen-year-old Dauda Olaitan boogied through King Sunny Ade’s Motimo. He found an extra voice whenever “Iwaju loloko yi nwa mi lo, eyin ko l’oloko yi na mi lo…” filled the air.

Maybe because it spoke of progress. Progress. Exactly what he was making. His WAEC result had just been released, and it was a stock of distinctions. His head was complete after all, as his mother would often tell him in Yoruba whenever he made her feel proud of her ovaries.

He wasn’t planning to become a professor or anything. He would rather be a dean of soccer, like Rashidi Yekini. But he had seen enough of the woes of illiteracy to convince him that education was a basic requirement for existence.

He had seen his father surrender his five acres of land to swindlers who had posed as bankers. They conned him into sign a transfer ownership agreement on the land in place of the five hundred thousand Naira loan contract he thought he signed, using the land as collateral. He would do all he could to avoid such “e don happen” stories.

He would further his education. Sheen on marbles; he would attend night classes at the University of Ibadan while trying out at Oluyole Warriors. Their coach had seen him play and had loved him already. His life was set!

He dropped the news off with his mother at Oke-Ado market on his way from school before heading home. He was expecting the ‘special-day-usual’ once she returned from the market. Amala and Abula. Just the thought of its taste sent delight through his insides.

Thinking about it now, he marveled at how oblivious he was to his mother’s plight at the time. It suddenly struck him how nerve-racking it must have been for his mother to go from a busy day at the market to concocting such strenuous meals.

He remembered that day so vividly because it was the day his once imperfect but steady-paced life started becoming irregular. That was the day his parents’ turbulent marriage finally gave in to father’s darker tendencies. That was the day his father came home with his mistress and sent him and his mother packing.

His father had been convinced that a woman who would rather keep her landed property, hoping to finance her son’s university education with it, rather than sell it to finance her husband’s ward councilor ambition didn’t deserve the husband. His mother tried to appeal to her husband, but her only reward was the usual bout of poundings. Body and soul.

Looking just in front of him now at the woman being detained for beating her husband to pulp, he could only wonder what a wonder-full world it was. As he strung the police station lobby with Inspector Nadia, he thought to himself near disbelief: This life… It is what it is!

“Thanks for letting me trouble you to this, Mr. Olaitan.”

Dauda noticed her British accent. It was the best type. Not the one some Nigerians used to announce their residence in, or even visit to the UK. She looked too Asian to be British though.

And then there was her Nigerian surname, Uwaifo. One sharp Edo man must’ve played his cards like a pro to have ended up with the mother of this Asian piece of beauty. He must have settled in the UK, he thought. The thought brought back fonder memories of his own once-upon-a-time Asian beauty. His ex-wife, Aliyah.

“It’s nothing” he would eventually reply. “Where do I write the statement?”

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Tayo Alfred gave a broad smile.

“Bye bye, my dear. Make sure say you chop oh” one of Omotayo’s favourite voices greeted back as she took her medications across the pharmacy counter. The voice had come into her life out of curative necessity; he was the hospital’s chief pharmacist. It was husky and soaked in an Anambra-bred Igbo accent, but for Tayo, Baba Ibo’s voice had become the sound of fatherly love.

She never managed to shake off the fact that this man deferred his retirement by a year, just to buy himself a little more time to continue bullying her to comply with her doctor’s prescriptions. Even though he would never admit it.

That smile would vanish quickly though. The sight of several injured people being rushed into the hospital sucked out the cool, hopeful air in the reception. The hospital’s stretchers wouldn’t be enough to carry the battalion of injured victims to the hospital’s Emergency Ward. Those less-critically wounded were rolled into treatment rooms on wheelchairs.

A group of sport athletes and a gorgeous middle-aged man carried most of the victims to the stretchers and wheelchairs. The middle-aged man even carried one victim directly to a treatment room to augment the hospital’s strained facilities. Nurses seemed to fly in and out of every corner. Doctors swarmed out of their offices. About four of them.

Tayo looked on, knowing she couldn’t possibly be one of the Messiahs on this rescue mission. All that blood. All that horror. All that running and gasping. Not for her. Not for her heart. If at all her heart needed any adventures, a gym treadmill and her job were enough, she thought.

Besides, one can only do so much with a borrowed heart.
Okay, maybe not ‘borrowed’; the heart was hers now. It had even made itself at home in her within the two years it had lived in her chest, but anxiety won’t let her trust and just breathe. She’d stick with the gym. It was how come she looked twenty-eight even though she was already approaching her thirty eighth birthday, anyways.

Groans of hurting patients rasped through the reception. Patient-carrying stretchers screech-wheeled past the tilled reception floor, destined for the Emergency Ward lobby. Doctors and nurses spoke in Medical Jargon. Treatment room doors squeaked open and shut. But somehow, the quixotic sight of the man that blurted “Road accident. Their brake failed… Is he still breathing?” stood out to her.

It was the man who led the group of athletes that carried the victims to stretchers and wheelchairs. It was Dauda.

A female doctor came over to thank him for rushing the victims down to the hospital. “Only God knows what would’ve happened if you weren’t so kind,” she said. “Please send our regards to your players.” “They’ll hear. All the best with the patients” Dauda managed, his face pale with fatigue.
“Thank you. Would you mind waiting here at the reception for a few minutes?” The doctor continued. “I have a few questions for you, but my patients really need me at the moment.”

Dauda watched as Effiong approached from afar with a ragamuffin trudge and a smile that looked like a pinch of awe. “Like how many minutes?” He replied, scanning the reception for a comfy chair to snug in.
“Thirty minutes?”
A whole thirty minutes! He thought. “Sure. I’ll be here,” he responded nonetheless.

It just wasn’t his style to refuse a lady. And that was why he didn’t refuse Tayo either, when she requested that he adjust to make room for her on the bench. They both knew she could have easily moved to the other bench. But Dauda had lived long enough to know that trying to out-drama-queen a woman was an extreme sport.

So, Tayo sat there, curious as to what caused the accident, and quite frankly, how fascinating the man beside her might be.

Relief washed through Dauda’s soul. He had feared the worst when Affiong seemed to lose control of the wheels.

Eventually, the breaks and the wheels listened to Effiong and the accident stopped with three vehicles in front of their bus. A motorist’s brakes failed while his car was in fair speed and collided with another car transporting a group of five friends entering the highway from the mall. A third motorist didn’t get a quick enough grip on his wheels and sped into the collided pair. It was later learnt that the third motorist had been texting on his smartphone leading up to the accident.

Goosebumps clasped Dauda’s skin as the scenes flashed through his mind. Thankfully, Effiong arrived just in time to bail him out of the horror.

“Oga, if we no commot now, we fit miss our flight oh,” he advised.

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“And on the Sport Scene,’’ the newscaster’s rich feminine voice billowed through the bus radio into Dauda’s tingly ears. “Nigerian National League surprise package, Yenegoa United have defeated Ibadan giants, Oluyole Rangers 2 nil on home soil to seal their promotion to the Nigerian Professional Football League and go level on points with log leaders, Berger FC. This takes the battle for the NNL championship title to the final day of the season.’’

Dauda let his heart bathe in the joy of his players’ cheers. It felt as though they all needed to hear about their just-concluded feat in the news to be sure they weren’t dreaming. It all felt like a dream. A dream too good to be true. But by some stroke of a miracle, it was true.

Pundits had predicted that they didn’t even have the quality to finish in the top half of the table. But here they were, promoted to the Nigeria Professional Football League and in with a shout for the NNL title. It was a truly surreal moment. Their surreal moment. And they weren’t going to let anyone live in it for them.

Even Effiong, the team’s chauffeur, who seemed to have been cursed with an immovable stone-face, complemented the players’ cheers with slight rhythmic honk sounds as he drove the team’s bus along MKO Abiola Way. The newscaster was still speaking, but no one cared. There was just one bit of news that mattered in that moment. And they already heard it.

Several congratulatory text messages had been flooding in for the past half-hour, but the one that just popped unto Dauda’s smartphone screen was particularly heartwarming. It was nothing special, actually. It simply read “Congratulations, Bros D. You deserve this!’’. But it was special. It was from Sadiq; the one man who was there for him when his wife took their child and absconded without warning; the one man who was there for him in his recently won battle against alcohol addiction; the man who enrolled him in his first professional coaching course.

He would reply, but just not yet. He was still busy soaking in the joy of his latest victory.

He remembered how the media had turned on him mercilessly, how he had wondered what devil possessed him to pursue a career as a football coach after the the crushing 6–0 defeat his team suffered on the opening day of the season. It was all the more satisfying to think they had just defeated the same opponent.

“And this is where we wrap up the Mid-day News on Splash 105.5 FM. Thanks for joining us. I am Ronke Giwa Onafuwa. Don’t touch that dial!”

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