By Robert Egbe
It was the tall, dark Corporal seated on the backless chair on my left who saw them first.
I do not recall what we were talking about, but he halted in mid-sentence and stared towards the door.
My eyes followed his. So did the others’: – policemen, lawyers, claimants, defendants – we watched the plainclothes female detective usher two persons into the prosecutors’ office.
Three others – a man and two women, probably friends or relatives – followed quietly in their wake.
In about three steps, the two persons passed the big wooden file cabinet beside the door and approached the long desk around which we sat or stood.
They were an unlikely pair, but it was not the man on the right that held the Corporal’s gaze. It was the woman, tall, fair and not unattractive, even without make-up.
Her eyes slanted a little, but she was neither Asian nor biracial.
Her black jumpsuit clung, everywhere, rendering the nearly freckle-faced man of slightly below average height on her right irrelevant in our eyes.
He could have been a gnome for all every man in the large room cared.
“There,” the detective said, pointing at a spot near the other cabinet beside the photocopier.
Her voice was surprisingly soft and her manner unassuming. You could not have guessed she was a cop.
I heard a low whisper from another seat to my left.
It sounded like my name, so I turned.
It was the ‘Prince of Biafra’, that intelligent, good-natured Sergeant, whose soul pined for a prosperous, equitable Nigeria and, paradoxically, an independent Igbo homeland.
There seemed to be something in his left eye; it kept blinking. I looked away, but he whispered my name again.
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When our eyes met this time, I realised his blink was actually a wink, and then he did a subtle Indian head bobble to his left.
But I didn’t get his drift at once, so he bobbled again, again and again, until, confused, I looked at the visitors one more time: freckle face stood too close to the woman, almost as if, as if they were joined at the arm.
That’s when I caught on.
I nodded and mouthed my thanks as I slipped out my phone and opened the camera.
But they were just two steps opposite where I stood and I could not surreptitiously get a clean shot.
The woman was fidgety and, one time when she moved the lime handbag in her right hand, the shiny handcuff binding her left wrist to freckle face’s right wrist was exposed.
The detective beckoned on a girl in a dark hijab. She brought a white plastic chair and stood behind it holding up a large blue cloth.
The detective motioned both suspects to the chair.
They made for the seat at the same time.
Freckle face was nimbler and jarred his fellow prisoner’s arm as he moved, but the chair was right by her side, so she dropped her lean frame on it and shot him a bad look.
When she opened her mouth, you could tell that this was no lady.
Her language, if not her voice, was harsh, pompous and her attitude ungraceful.
If she were a queen, she would be of the gutter variety.
A woman with a camera pulled up a seat opposite her but had difficulty getting a mugshot because the queen was still ranting.
Exasperated, the detective offered soothing words, but she turned on her too.
“Don’t disrespect me!” the queen snapped, “Didn’t you see what he did? My job is on the line. I’ll wait for my lawyer. After all, it is a bailable offence.”
I found out later that she was a bank worker facing a phone theft charge.
Nevertheless, didn’t she realise she was in a lion’s den? Perhaps she thought she was a Daniel?
The detective backed off and apologised.
The other policemen, irked by the conciliatory approach, turned on the detective.
“Why did you bring her here?”
“Don’t you know she does not belong here?”
“How can you arrest a fine girl just like that?”
“Please wait for her lawyer to come before you take her picture.”
And on and on they went, barely straight-faced.
The detective, getting the joke, put a hand to her mouth to stifle a giggle.
It was fun, and, overcome by a sudden spirit of mischief, I joined in the mockery.
“Officer, please, don’t bring this kind of beautiful woman here again,” I added.
The Corporal chuckled quietly at me.
“If only she knows she will sleep in detention this night,” he whispered.
But the queen was, blissfully, unaware.
Buoyed by the fictitious groundswell of male support, she ranted on until freckle face’s mugshot was also taken and the detective led both of them to the temporary cell on the court’s ground floor.
