“Inspector Fiti and I didn’t find the bracelet,” he said. “Do you think he’s hidden it somewhere?”

Nunana shook her head. “I don’t think he has it anymore, sir. I think he has sold it.”

“To whom?”

“I don’t know, sir.”

“How do you think he got Gladys’s bracelet?”

“I don’t know, but when Efia came to tell us Gladys was dead, Togbe went to see where the body was, and he went alone.” Nunana dropped her voice even further. “Maybe he stole it at that time.”

“Do you remember what the bracelet looked like?”

“Yes, sir.”

Dawson took his notebook and pen from his top pocket. “I want you to draw it, if you can. Just do your best.”

“All right, let me try.”

She rested the notebook on her knee, and with her tongue sticking out with the effort, she painstakingly drew the bracelet, laughing with both embarrassment and pride as she finished her rendition. It was rudimentary, but it showed clearly enough that the bracelet was a double strand of loops.

“Beautiful,” Dawson said.

She laughed again, pleased.

“Now, Nunana, tell me the truth,” Dawson said. “Think about this carefully and tell me the truth. That evening before Efia discovered Gladys’s body, did Togbe go anywhere? Did he disappear somewhere?”

She looked away for a second. “I… I don’t know. I’m not sure.”

Her voice was stretched tight like a rubber band at its limit. Lying. She knew, or had seen, something.

“You’re afraid,” Dawson said. “Afraid of Togbe, not so?”

Her eyes swung back and forth like a pendulum.

“If you’re so afraid,” Dawson pressed gently, “why come and tell me anything at all? Because, Nunana, you have honor. You can’t just let it be that a man takes a bracelet from the wrist of a dead woman. Is that right?”

Nunana nodded. Dawson waited as she gathered courage.

“After Togbe quarreled with Gladys that evening and she had left Bedome, he was angry and he started to hit all of us. Then one of his friends from Ketanu came and he went with him to have beer.”

“Do you know that friend?”

“No, I don’t know him.”

“Can you describe him?”

Her description was not the best in the world, but Nunana was certain that Togbe’s friend was fat, short, and had speckled, graying hair.

“Do you have anything else?” he asked Nunana.

“No, sir. Please, I beg you, don’t tell him-”

“That you told me about the bracelet? I won’t.”

She was shaking. He touched her shoulder. “Don’t be afraid.”

Dawson went looking for Constable Gyamfi while praying he would not bump into Inspector Fiti. He sidled up to the front entrance of the station and briefly put his head around the door to see who was inside. Bubo was leaning against the counter picking his nails, but Gyamfi wasn’t there. Dawson circled around the side and ducked down below Fiti’s office window. He peeped in from one corner. Gyamfi was standing up talking to the inspector, who was seated with his back toward the window.

Gyamfi spotted him, and Dawson quickly pressed an index finger to his lips. The constable acknowledged him without giving him away, and Dawson went to the rear of the building.

Gyamfi joined him about five minutes later.

“Dawson, how are you?” he said. “What’s happening?”

“I need your help. Here is the situation. I’ve just found out it may have been Togbe Adzima who stole Gladys’s bracelet.”

Gyamfi raised his eyebrows in surprise. “Is that so?”

“After Gladys’s death, someone in Bedome found it in Adzima’s room. What we don’t know is whether he killed Gladys and then took it off her wrist or whether he just took the bracelet after she had been killed by someone else.”

“Yes, I understand. What do you want me to do?”

“I can’t interrogate Togbe anymore. We hate each other so much now, and he’s afraid of me. You’re more charming than I, so I want you to work on him. There are two things: how he got the bracelet, and where he went on the evening before Gladys’s body was found. I have a witness who says he went to Ketanu with a friend, but we need to find out if that’s accurate-who is the friend, was he with the friend all the time, could he have doubled back and accosted Gladys, and so on. You get what I mean?”

“Of course, Dawson. I’m on it.”

“Thank you. One other thing-the bracelet looks something like this.” He showed Nunana’s drawing to the constable. “It’s silver.”

Gyamfi studied it a moment. “All right. I have a half day off, and I can go and see Togbe after I leave here in the afternoon.”

He and Dawson slapped hands. As they parted, Dawson briefly watched Gyamfi walking away with a long, rolling lope. He liked Gyamfi. He was the kind of partner Dawson would like alongside himself at CID.

It was past eleven o’clock in the morning, and a dense crowd of funeral spectators and mourners had collected at the Mensahs’ home. Dawson parked away from the house, closer to Elizabeth’s dress shop.

A dancing and drumming troupe was performing in a courtyard at the side of the house. The collective driving beat of the sogo, kidi, and atsimevu drums was irresistible. A young woman came out and began dancing the Agbadza, her arms rotating rhythmically from her shoulders while her torso swung back and forth in opposing motion. Another two women soon joined, and then a man. They kicked up red dust with their steps.

Dawson saw someone handing out beer to several men at the back of the crowd. Freeloaders. They would be thoroughly drunk by early afternoon.

For the short funeral service, a seating area under a canopy had been set up in front of the Mensahs’ house. There was a long line of people waiting to get inside to view Gladys’s body. Dawson wormed his way to the front and went in. It was packed with people in a sea of black and dark brown mourning cloth. It was oppressive, and Dawson was bothered by the tight space. Gladys lay in state in the front room. The men stood back, but several women were wailing loudly over her casket while the procession of viewers slowly wound its way past her body. In the midst of all this was a videographer filming everything, and a few people were snapping photos of Gladys’s body with their mobile phones and digital cameras, which Dawson found quite bizarre.

A woman in red and black had worked herself into quite a state, sweat pouring off her as if she had been in a rain shower. She was weeping and moving frenetically around the casket like a roaming insect.

“Why have you left us?” she shouted hoarsely, gesticulating at Gladys’s body. “What will we do now?”

Dawson wondered for a moment if she was a professional mourner. Families sometimes hired these, but he doubted the Mensahs would do that.

Gladys had been dressed in iridescent blue and her casket supplied with items she might need for her journey to the other side: makeup, perfume, jewelry, and a large roll of yellow and white fabric embellished with Adinkra symbols. In case she needed a change of outfit, Dawson supposed.

Everyone who entered the room was obligated to pay their respects to Kofi and Dorcas Mensah and the extended family. There was no way for Dawson to avoid it. He had no idea who 99 percent of these people were, but he had to shake hands with every single one of them. After a while he stopped counting.

He stood near Gladys’s casket for a moment. She had been heavily made up, and Dawson felt disturbed by that. A dead body at a crime scene or in the morgue meant something to him, but a decorated corpse in a casket left him cold. Gladys’s body was a shell. The whole person was gone, and no amount of makeup could bring her back. Feeling suffocated by the atmosphere, Dawson went outside to watch the dancing.

A new set of dancers was performing to distorted music blaring from a pair of speakers.

“Did you get some refreshments?”

He turned at the voice. “Hello, Elizabeth. No, I didn’t have anything to drink.”