“I should have covered him,” he said aloud. “I shouldn’t have left him like that.” He had made so many mistakes. He should have called Ruqaiyyah as soon as he received the text from Seun instead of trying to handle it by himself when he was so consumed by rage. It was her party that had been compromised, and she would have come with him to confront Seun and the boy would still be alive. He shouldn’t have moved alone, unleashed. Was the shame of Ruqaiyyah’s knowing worse than the shame he felt now?
“Father God, Father God,” Aima said, her voice trembling. “What happened, Ahmed? What did you do?”
For a foolish moment, he wondered why she didn’t assume something else—a heart attack, an embolism—but then Ahmed saw how the girls were looking at the purple mottling on Seun’s neck, the clear signature of Ahmed’s hands, and he knew he was damned completely. Aima had nothing to be surprised about. She had always seen him, perhaps never trusted him entirely because of that, and clearly, she had been right not to. Belatedly, Ahmed looked over at her and registered her actual presence with some confusion.
“Aren’t you supposed to be in London?” he said.
She turned a horrified stare at him. “What?”
“Kalu said you left last night.”
She continued staring at him, her eyes wide and incredulous. “There’s a dead man in your parlor and you’re asking me about London?”
Ijendu leaned forward a little and looked at Seun’s face properly. “Wait,” she said. “Isn’t this that actor? The one who just did a documentary on himself?” She clicked her tongue rapidly as she tried to remember his name. “Seun! Eh hehn. That’s his name. It’s him.”
That pulled Ahmed’s attention back to the body. “I should have covered him,” he said again.
Aima looked as well, then covered her mouth with her hand, stifling a sob. Ijendu reached down and closed Seun’s eyes. Ahmed sighed as she did so, spared finally from the emptiness of that lost gaze. She looked at him, then at Aima’s shaking form, then seemed to come to a decision. She left the parlor, returning with a heap of fleeced fabric in her arms. Ijendu flapped out the blanket, the pattern unfurling into the air before it settled slowly over Seun, covering him. She turned to Ahmed and Aima, putting her hands on her hips.
“Both of you need to get your shit together,” she said. “We need to take care of this.”
Aima looked up at her. “We? No, no.” She shook her head, her braids swinging. “Me, I don’t want to be a part of this.” She stood quickly and made to leave the parlor, but Ijendu grabbed her arm and pulled her close.
“We’re already part of this,” Ahmed heard her whisper. “Besides, look at him.” They both turned and he looked away, not wanting to see whatever was in their eyes when they shifted from seeing him as their friend to seeing him as the murderer he was. “He can’t handle this,” Ijendu said.
“What makes you think we can handle this?” Aima hissed.
Ijendu didn’t answer right away. She came over to Ahmed and knelt next to him. “What was he doing here, Ahmed?” she asked, her voice gentle.
He looked at her and said nothing, simply let her see all that was tearing through him, allowed it to swirl up into his eyes and into the air between them. Ijendu nodded, her own eyes heavy with understanding. “It was an accident,” she said. “You didn’t mean to.”
Ahmed was numb. “No. I didn’t.” He wasn’t sure if he was lying or not, but she was giving him an option he seized with both hands. A terrible accident. Manslaughter instead of murder. He’d paid to have this done so many times before, but he’d never done it himself, ended a life with his own hands. He’d been such a coward, a fraud. “I don’t know what to do,” he whispered to her.
“Please, let’s leave this place,” Aima said, raising her voice to catch Ijendu’s attention.
“You want to just leave him like this?” Ijendu answered, an edge entering her words.
“Why do you keep talking as if there’s something we can do? That man is dead! What are we supposed to do about it?”
Ahmed watched Ijendu’s face shift in calculation. She glanced at Aima with some hesitation, then at Ahmed, then bit her lip and stood up, dusting her knees off. Her face slid into a calm surety. “I can help you handle this,” she said. “But that’s only if you want, Ahmed.”
Aima stepped forward, confused. “Ijendu. What are you even saying?”
“Yes,” Ahmed said. “Just tell me what to do.”
“Oh my God, Ahmed, shut up!” Aima spun on him, furious now. “Stop trying to drag her into this mess you’ve made!”
“No one’s dragging me anywhere, Aima, relax.” Ijendu remained unruffled as she looked around the room. “We have to move the body, first of all. Ahmed, stand up.” He obeyed quickly, holding his hands close to his thighs, trying to hide the way they were palsying. He saw Aima’s eyes dart to his trembling fingers, and he curled them into fists. She folded her arms and glared at both him and Ijendu. “Wrap that blanket around him properly,” Ijendu said. “I think it’s big enough that we won’t need to tie it with anything.”
Ahmed faltered and Ijendu touched his arm lightly. “It’s going to be all right,” she said. “Just be doing what I’m saying and we’ll take care of this.”
Aima threw her hands up. “I don’t know what you people are planning to do,” she said. “But this is a bad idea. This is a very bad idea.”
Ahmed started to wrap the blanket more securely around Seun’s body, and Ijendu stepped in to help as Aima looked on with her arms wrapped around herself. Seun was heavy, heavy in a way that seemed particularly inanimate, like a horribly realistic dummy made from someone else’s flesh. The blanket was green, with a pattern of yellow flowers, small and bunched into sprays. It was soft in Ahmed’s hands yet strong enough to hold the weight of Seun’s errant limbs. Ijendu gave instructions, coordinating the way they heaved his body about, and Ahmed followed them obediently, shrouding his victim in a woven garden, guilt chewing away at him like an army of termites let loose on his heart.
Saturday, 4:51 PM
They’d carried the body outside and fitted it into the boot of Ahmed’s car, folding it at the knees. Ijendu had forced Aima to help even though she’d objected at first, then had to vomit in a corner of the compound.
“We’ll be done soon,” Ijendu had said, rubbing her back before giving her some water.
“I can’t believe you’re making me do this,” Aima replied. “We didn’t have to get involved!”
“We got involved as soon as we walked into a house with a dead body in it, Aima.” Ijendu had closed the boot of the car and entered the driver’s seat. “Ahmed, get in the back.”
He had no idea where her calm was coming from or why she felt she knew what to do with a corpse, but Ahmed was spinning wildly inside and her surety was a compass, so he was following it blindly, spared the effort of thinking. The girls continued to argue in lowered voices from the front of the car while Ahmed looked down at his hands, still trembling in his lap as the highland swept past. The car slowed down, and Ijendu’s window whirred as she opened it to speak into an intercom.
“Yes, good evening. It’s Ijendu, Dr. Okoye’s daughter.”
Ahmed raised his head, and the whorled metal of the towering gate they had pulled up in front of filled his eyes. He frowned. “Isn’t this Okinosho’s compound?” he asked, looking around. How had they driven all the way to Cassava Hill without him noticing? He would have been panicking if he didn’t feel so numb and now, so utterly confused. Why would Ijendu bring him here? Did she know what had happened last night?
A staticky voice came back over the intercom, then the gate slid open. Ijendu put up her window and drove forward.
“Wait,” said Aima. “You brought us to your godfather’s house? With a body in the trunk? Are you mad?”
“Relax.” Ijendu turned into the courtyard and pulled up in front of a large white house with faceted columns. It reeked of money carelessly flung around. “I know what I’m doing.”
Ahmed sat up, horror stinging its way through his shock. “He’s your godfather?”
