Back in police college, we read of the famous case of Bonnie and Clyde, a young couple in America back in the early 30s who went on a spree, robbing a number of banks and killing several people until they fell in a hail of police bullets in 1934. I mean, the mountains people will scale in the name of love.
Actually, it was my wife Sophia (being way more sophisticated than I’ll ever be) who said that next to religion, love is probably the next biggest cause of homicides. I tried to argue in favour of ethnicity but she shut me down with a scathing look and a “Don’t even go there”.
That very Sgt Sophia, the love of my life and hopefully the future mother of my children, stands accused of four murders. At least according to the DCI. As a cop, I’m expected to take every suspect (Christ! I can’t believe I’m thinking of my wife in those terms) as innocent until proven guilty in a court of law.
The question is, how am I supposed to feel when said “individual” (No, I refuse to think of my wife as a perp) is the same person I lay next to in bed every night? Am I expected to be the Clyde to her Bonnie?
For guidance, I turn to my boss Inspector Tembo, who also happens to be Sophia’s father. Fittingly so, because should any of these allegations be true, my professional life is at risk, too.
“Why hasn’t she told me any of this?” Inspector Tembo roars. He’s a big guy too, over six feet tall with a frame to spare, so when I say he roars, the rafters tremble like a broken stereo speaker. “Nobody even cared to inform me the DCI is here?”
If you cared to come to work more often than once every blue moon, you’d know, wouldn’t you? That’s what I want to say but he’s my boss. And more importantly, he’s built like an army tank. Tembo might have lost his zeal for work after reuniting with Sophia’s mother only for her to run away with another man, but I don’t doubt he’s still got it in him to choke the daylight out of me with his bare hands.
“Detective Gundua only just showed up today,” I say instead. “Sir, you must know people in high places. Isn’t there any way you could… you know?”
He burns me with a look that could melt butter. “A way I could do what?”
“You know… make all this disappear?”
This time the venom in his eyes could cut through steel. “Make it go away? Make what, exactly, go away?”
Ever since I could remember, I’ve had this unenviable habit of putting my foot in my mouth, only realising it when it’s too late and a size six boot is lodged in my throat.
Today is no different since I push on the only way my brain (which must be the size of a pea) knows how, and say, “These allegations, sir.”
Tembo flashes a smile as humorous as the one a lion offers a gazelle right before tearing into its dainty neck. “Let me get this straight. You want me to use my influence to make murder accusations against your wife go away?”
Still, I plough on. “She’s also your daughter. Sir.”
“Yet, that’s not the issue, is it? You know what is, Makini? You believing your wife is guilty. What kind of husband are you?”
“The policeman kind that knows all about damning evidence?”
“Wait till my daughter hears this.”
Honestly, now I envy that gazelle.
