René did not waste time on preambles
when French captain Roland Thiraud and his French Camerounian counterpart
Inspector Mahmadou Bello picked him up at the airport baggage claim and then led him to the waiting car
tucked between two military jeeps right in front of the airport terminal.
Instead, he started questioning them about the recent developments in the
territory—the state of security in French Cameroun, the nature of the military
campaign against the UPC insurgents in the towns and cities, and the progress
they had made against the partisan movement’s rustic Maquis counterpart in the
countryside. The news was not good. The Cameroonian Resistance Forces were in
undisputed control of the countryside in the southern half of French Cameroun,
which constituted some seventy percent of the territory, and they were upping
their challenge to French authority in the urban areas as well. The
implications were equally worrying because that meant the vital railway links
between the economic capital city of Douala and the political capital city of
Yaoundé, and between Douala and the agricultural hub of Nkongsamba were at the
mercy of the fighters of the Camerounian Resistance. As a former Maquisard
himself who fought against the German occupation of France, he had a better
idea of the extent of the disruptive role the French Resistance played in
wrecking the transportation network of France, resulting in a major disruption
of the flow of supplies to the occupying German Army.
The serene expression on
René Roccard’s face disappeared right after they left the Douala airport
vicinity and headed to the police station located in the Bonanjoh neighborhood.
With furrowed brows, a slightly held breath and pursed lips, he looked like a
professor grappling with a worrying phenomenon. However, the thoughts racing
through his mind did not involve hypotheses, theories, lab tests or measurable
results. It was all about life and death. And since the death part of the game
had already consumed his kid brother, he was not in a joking mood, to say the
least.
“I know you must be
wondering whether we made any progress on Marc’s case or not,” Roland said,
interrupting René’s thoughts.
René looked furtively at
Mahmadou in the driver’s seat before turning his head to Roland at the other
end of the back seat. “Certainly! It gives me no pleasure knowing that you are
yet to come up with something.”
“Don’t rush to
conclusions, my friend. In case you want to know, we just made tremendous
progress in our investigation that I am sure you would like to look into. We
got our hands on the guy and brought him down here from Mbanga.”
“When was that?”
“Yesterday.”
René regarded him with
dimmed eyes. “You are not kidding me; or are you?”
“Why don’t you see him
for yourself?”
“I want to see him right
away before you take me to my quarters.”
“I will gladly do that.
Mahmadou, we are driving to headquarters instead.”
“D’accord, Mon
Commandant! I am at your service,” Mahmadou responded without darting a
glance behind him.
Roland smiled at René
before giving him a regal nod. “Let’s see what else we can get from the fellow
before I leave for Yaoundé tomorrow or Friday.”
“Bien sûr!”
Roland shrugged uneasily
but said nothing afterwards in response to the remark from his French
counterpart who gave him the creeps.
The two Frenchmen drove
the remaining mile in silence as if they were absolute strangers. René was
apprehensive. He did not consider himself a tight-lipped person or an introvert
at all; all the more reason he could not understand why he was having a hard
time developing the right degree of comfort with Roland. Perhaps he was tired
from the flight, or perhaps it had
something to do with the fact that his compatriot was also attracted to men and
used his position in the force to satisfy his desires in a twisted way. The
second thought brought a suppressed sigh out of his lips. He was sure their
superiors in France knew about Roland’s unsavory activities, so the fact that
nothing had been done to straighten the fellow out intrigued him a lot. He had
also read that Roland felt uplifted with a strange but comforting sense of
power each time he demeaned another human being to the point where his victims
cried for mercy and regretted their actions, promising never to oppose what he
stood for again. That makes him useful,
but not indispensable, René thought.
Mahmadou brought the car
to a gentle stop and then cleared his
throat for a moment as if alerting his passengers of their arrival at the
destination. Then he hurried out of the car and opened the door.
René stepped out of the
vehicle to the welcoming nods of the police officers outside, and he
acknowledged their presence with nods of his own. He took a quick look around him before he walked into the building,
feeling an unfamiliar tightening knob in his chest. It made him wonder if it
was a premonition of some sort or if it was an indication of fear. That was
something he was determined to find out.
In Roland’s office, René
rested his hand on the back of the chair he offered him to sit down in and then
asked languidly, “What do I need to know about the fellow.”
Roland ferreted among the
papers on his desk. “Not much. We have only had him here for a day. But I came
up with something.”
“What are you talking
about?”
"Take a look at the
information we have on him,” Roland said, as he handed René a sheet of paper
with a brief profile of the prisoner on it.
René read it in silence and
with a clenched fist. “Where is he?” he asked finally.
"He is in the
chamber.”
That was enough. Roland
did not have to go any further. He was in French Indochina before and knew the
exact meaning of the word chamber when associated with a security facility.
That was where the different branches of the security service carried out sadistic
and inhuman aspects of interrogations in wartime, especially in a pacifying war
where it was convenient to ignore the rules of the Geneva Convention. Roland
walked in front of him as they descended the stairs. He took note of Roland’s
buffed shoes that shone like they just came out of a shoe factory and wandered
who took care of his well-ironed uniform as well.
Roland opened the door
without knocking, startling the three police officers inside who jumped up from
their seats and saluted, their berets resting awkwardly on their heads, the
result of their scrambled efforts to be fully uniformed. He saluted back; a
ritual René replicated without batting an eye.
“Has he spilled the beans
yet?” Roland asked, taking off his beret.
“Non, Mon commandant,”
replied an inspector who did not look more than twenty.
Roland ignored his reply
and turned to the tallest of the three, who looked down as if he just
remembered something about his shoes. “Is that true, Jacques?” he asked
pointedly.
Jacques nodded, averting
his eyes still. “He might have been telling the truth. If not, then he must be
the tightest-lipped prisoner we have had so far.”
“How far did you go?”
“As far as we could
without making him have a cardiac arrest,” Jacques replied with pursed lips.
“What exactly do you
mean?”
Jacques looked at the
young inspector with disgust in his eyes. “Georges used the gégène to the point where I think it
would be a miracle if the prisoner ever gets a hard-on again. His penis must be
roasted by now. I wouldn't be surprised at all if his testes aren’t already as
hard as cooked eggs.”
Roland nodded and sucked
his lips. Here is one difficult nut to crack, he thought.
“Jacques, come with us; I
want you two to stay here,” he said to the other two men, beckoned Jacques over
and then turned to René, “Let’s find out what the prisoner is still holding
back from telling us!” He added and then started walking away towards the door
to the room made of concrete walls, trailed by the two men.
Situated at the far end
of the basement chamber and pivoted to the cement floor were two vertical
posts, which were supporting a transversal crossbar. Called Le balancoir
in French or roughly translated as a seesaw
in English, this device was Roland’s favorite method of torture. Hanging from
the horizontal crossbar was a young man of about nineteen. He was groaning in
pain. René overtook Roland with hurried steps, edged closer and gave a gasp of
horror. Despite his awareness of the nature of the place beforehand, the degree
of deformation the suspect had undergone shocked him. The fellow was athletic and
was strung up to the crossbar by his wrists and ankles which were tied in pairs
behind his back so that he was in a flying posture facing the floor. René
wondered whether his shoulders were still intact. That and the fact that they
used the electric generator called the gégène
in torturing the prisoner by attaching it to his genitals and then switching it
on, filled René with deep compassion.
In an instant, the sight
in front of him brought flashbacks to the days he spent in captivity in
Indochina. He understood the hell the prisoner had been put through and knew
that the young fellow was still in a lot of pain because he appeared in far
worse shape than he ever imagined himself in from the tortures he suffered at
the hands of the communist guerillas. Also, the smell of urine and feces in the
air hit him hard, sure enough signs that
the rubber whips lying on the floor and the other torture devices the police
officers used caused substantial damage. There was a bump on the boy’s head
too. His nose was broken, and his eyes and lips were swollen so much that he
thought they could explode at any moment. The boy’s eyelids barely parted when
he called his name.
“I didn’t kill them,”
Peter Ndepkeu responded in English.
“He pretends he doesn’t
speak French,” Roland interjected.
“S'il vous plaît, soyez
tranquille!” René
gritted at Roland. Satisfied that he got the junior officer’s attention to stay
quiet, he turned around again and faced the prisoner, “I am not talking about
the others. I mean Marc, my brother. Why did you kill him?” he asked in
English.
“I didn’t kill them or
anybody.”
“Why did you kill Marc?”
René snapped.
“What are you talking
about?”
“I am talking about Marc,
my brother. Why did you shoot him last October?”
When the boy failed to
respond, René stepped closer and opened his swollen left eye so that he could at
least see him. “Tell me why you shot my brother?”
“Sir, I swear to God and
my grandparents that I have nothing to do with the crimes they are accusing me
of committing.”
“Where were you last
October?”
“I was at school last
October,” the prisoner whimpered and then started
sobbing.
“It is a trick. He speaks
French. He is only pretending,” Roland interjected.
“S'il vous plaît, soyez
tranquille!”René repeated.
“D’accord!”
“Unhinge him!”
“What?” Roland asked with
an agape mouth.
“You heard me well. I
said, unhinge him. I don’t intend to continue talking to him while he is in
that position.”
“What do you think you
are doing?”
René approached Roland so
that they were eyeball to eyeball, so close that they could feel each other’s
breaths. He even thought of pulling Roland’s handlebar moustache.
“Your rigorous oversight
is pathetic. Your desire to close the case on Marc before I got here has landed
you with the wrong suspect. Your prisoner is an Anglophone.”
“He is Bamileké.”
“Do as I say. You will
also find Bamileké people in British Cameroons. That’s where he is from. Didn’t
you get it from his accent?”
“He was speaking Pidgin
English just like they do here and in Mbanga where we got him. He spoke some
French too.”
“Uneducated French, I
guess. His English is spot perfect. Cut him loose.”
“D’accord!”
Roland turned around and
faced Jacques “Dépêches toi! Allez faire ça!” he gritted.
René watched Jacques as
he responded to the order by stepping forward hurriedly. Then he started
undoing the ropes around the prisoner’s ankles with trembling hands, only
stopping when the prisoner’s legs dropped down suddenly. Peter dangled a little
before settling into a half-standing position, his hands held above his head
with the bonded wrists perched on opposite sides of the crossbar.
“Free his hands too,”
René said in an undertone.
“Pour quoi?” Roland
asked with an incredulous expression on his face.
“Don’t ask me why. Just
do it,” René snapped.
Roland cocked his head in
acknowledgement, looked at René for a moment and then nodded to Jacques who
went about executing the order, tossing his head from side to side in a
petulant manner. He did not give the prisoner a helping hand after he freed his
hands so that Peter fell to the floor with
a thud and then curled up like a fetus in a womb as if the crouching posture
that he was forced to endure over the several hours he was hanging up there
suddenly became a comfortable position to maintain.
“Could we step aside for
a moment? I need a word with you,” Roland said in an agitated manner.
“Later, Roland!”
“You might not know this,
but Peter Ndepkeu is the relation of a man Marc shot not long before he too was
killed,” Roland blurted out, throwing his hands in the air as if he had just
been treated so badly that he could not stand it anymore.
René stared at his French
counterpart so hard that Jacques thought he was going to hit him. “Why didn’t
you tell me that before?” he seethed.
“Could we step aside so
that we can talk about this, please?” Roland said in a controlled voice.
“D’accord!” René said, indicating a hand.
He followed Roland back
into the office, doing so in less than a minute. In fact, they walked so fast
that a police officer they ran into in the corridor thought they were
race-walking.
“Tell me what is going on
here!” René roared the moment he banged the door close behind them.
Roland slumped into the
seat behind his desk and buried his face in his hands. “Where do I start?” he
whined.
“Where it got Marc
involved.”
Roland raised his head
and sighed. “The riots back in May 1955. We blamed the UPC for instigating
everything, but you and I know that we overreacted. Our young soldiers, police
officers and gendarmes in Douala had never seen anything like that before, so
they panicked and opened fire in situations where they could have acted
otherwise. We massacred them.”
“Marc was still in France
when it all happened. He wasn’t involved.”
“Yes, he wasn’t involved.
He arrived here in July as part of Roland Pré’s reinforcement to beef up our
defenses in response to the deteriorating situation. Then Roland Pré banned
them. We banned the UPC, René. That is when everything started falling apart
here in French Cameroun. Our job was to pacify them, but your brother thought
otherwise. He thought he could talk some sense into the heads of some of those
he knew in the party. He talked to former Free French fighters he knew or who
were friends with your father. He talked to Bruno Ndepkeu whom he played with
as a child here in Douala. Most of them listened, but Bruno did not. When he
found out that Bruno led a team in the New Bell neighborhood that masterminded
the derailment of elections for seats to the new Assemblée Législative du
Cameroun, he was not happy about it. He said he would talk to the fellow
for as long as it would take to convince him that Bruno was after all a soldier
who fought with us during the Second World War. I tried to talk him out of it,
but he would not listen to me or anybody else for that matter, even his
superiors. Luckily for him, Bruno was among those who escaped with most of the
UPC leadership to British Southern Cameroons after someone tipped them off about
our plans to arrest them for their roles in disrupting the elections. I thought
that was all about it with the Bruno issue until last October. I remember the
day like it was only yesterday. It was a peculiarly cool Monday morning when
Marc arrived in the office looking very excited, if not agitated. He told us he
was privy to Bruno’s whereabouts and then scrambled a squad and left with two
jeeps. He found Bruno’s location all right and
then convinced him to come out of the house with his hands in the air.
“The Camerounian was
doing so when one of our men panicked and shot him. He claimed he was aiming at
a man who suddenly appeared behind Bruno, a man he claimed looked threatening.
All the same, he wounded Bruno in the shoulder. Bruno reacted after the shot by
diving behind a half wall. He pulled out a pistol right after he found cover
and then exchanged shots with Marc and his men for a couple of minutes before attempting
to slip away. That was when Marc shot him. He said he wanted to wound him in
the leg, but he took the shot just when Bruno was crouching and just when he
was turning around to look back. Your brother was distraught about the whole
tragedy, but the damage was already done. Bruno died while Marc was rushing him
to the hospital.”
René heaved a sigh. “How
does that involve your prisoner?”
“He was caught in Mbanga
last week without identification papers. Said he was going to Nkongsamba to see
his mother. Georges, who happened to be in Mbanga last week, saw him at the
police station there and made the connection. So, I asked them to transfer him
over to us for further investigation. Georges brought him here yesterday. It
turned out that one of our recruits recognized him and remembered he was at
Bruno Ndepkeu’s funeral. Everything points to the irrefutable fact that Marc
was killed in revenge. The shot was taken from a distance, which tells us that
the killer is a good marksman.”
René sighed. He knew he
was dealing with a man who got the kick out of demeaning other human beings,
especially by inflicting so much pain on his victims that they cried out for
mercy and regretted their actions, promising never to oppose his line again. He
had experienced Roland’s types before in Indochina. “Peter is a student,” René
said in a monotone.
“So says the fake student
identification card he carries.”
“Where is it?”
Roland pulled his drawer open
and brought out a file. “Here it is.” He said, handing René a photo ID.”
“Good God! The young man
just graduated from Saint Joseph Secondary School, the first and most
prestigious higher institution of learning in British Cameroons. It is situated
in Sasse, a rural settlement off Buea.”
“Saint Joseph quoi?”
“It is a Lycée, and it is
situated at the foot of the mountain, a couple of miles from the town of Buea.”
“I don’t think so,”
Roland said, sounding doubtful for the first time that day.
“For God’s sake, he speaks
refined English. Is that all you have got against him—this ID and the claim
that he was at Bruno’s funeral?”
Roland’s eyes dropped,
and for a moment, he was quiet before he sighed. “Yes,” he replied in a
tortured voice and with a nod.
“Meet me down there in
thirty minutes,” René said with a sigh of his own and then left the office, the
image of the bewildered look on Roland’s face etched in his memory.
He found the three police
officers in the torture room with curious expressions on their faces. Peter was
holding a metal cup with water in it and was cupping something in his other
hand. He looked at the cup, then at the three officers and then at the cup
again before fixing his eyes on Jacques who shrugged like a child caught
stealing candies with one still in his hand. “What did you give him?”
“Water and tablets for
the pain,” Jacques stuttered.
“Why?”
Jacques shrugged. “I
thought you would want that.”
René closed his eyes for
a moment, shaking his head as he did so. “Do you speak any English?”
“A little.”
“How little?”
“I comprehend it well
enough.”
“Good! Where did you
learn the language?”
“I picked it up from my
father who learned it while with General De Gaulle in England.”
“And what about you
Georges and…?”
“Nicolas!” the third policeman
said and then added, “I don’t understand the language at all.”
“Georges?”
“I don’t understand the
language, just like Nicolas. English is like classical music to my ears!”
René stifled a laugh and
shook his head again. “I want you boys to stay here while I have a chat with
him.
The three officers stood
back as he took charge. First, he made
Peter sit in a chair, propped up by a
pillow. Then he offered him a banana and a cup of orange juice, freshly
squeezed from two orange fruits.
“Feeling better?” he
asked Peter.
“Yes, Sir!”
“I want you to be candid
with me. Whose school ID is this?” he asked, brandishing the photo ID he got
from Roland close enough so that Peter did not have to squint at all to take a
closer look at it.
“It is mine.”
“Are you a student?”
“Oui Monsieur! I am in my final year.”
“Are you going to the
final year, or have you just completed it?”
“We are still awaiting
the results of the final year GCE Ordinary Level exams.”
“And you wrote as a
candidate from?”
“Saint Joseph College, Sasse.”
“What do you know about
Marc Roccard?”
“Nothing. I told the
interpreter so.”
“Who was Bruno Ndepkeu to
you?”
“He was my uncle.”
“How come you are an
Anglophone while he was a Francophone for all I know?”
“He grew up here, while I
was born and raised in British Southern Cameroons.”
“How did that come
about?”
“He was too young when my
grandfather died, so he stayed with my grandmother here in Douala. My
grandfather’s younger brother in Victoria took my father with him and sent him
to a primary school there where they study in English. My father never moved
back this way after he completed his primary education.”
“Your granduncle raised
your father, you mean?”
“Oui Monsieur! I called him grandfather. He too was taken to Victoria
during the times of the Germans by his uncle working in one of the coastal
plantations.”
“Let’s focus on your
father. Does he speak French?”
“Non, Monsieur! Only simple words like oui, je m'en fou.”
René caught himself from
laughing. “Why?”
“He stayed there just
like his uncle and started a family. That’s how I came to be born in British
Southern Cameroons; that’s why I am an Anglophone.”
“What were you doing in
Mbanga?”
“Nothing they accused me
of doing. I was passing through the town. I only stopped there on transit, on
my way to catch the next train to Nkongsamba to see my mother.”
“Does your mother live in
Nkongsamba?”
“Yes, Officer.”
“Why does she live there
when you said you are from British Southern Cameroons?”
“She divorced my father
fifteen years ago and married another man who has his roots in the Mbohland.
They both live in Nkongsamba with my five half-siblings.”
“Why did she divorce your
father?”
“I don’t know. Nobody
ever really talked to me about it.”
“Where is your father?”
“He is in Kumba.”
“I thought you said he
lives in Victoria.”
“He moved to Kumba after
he married his second wife.”
“When was that?”
“1946.”
“What does he do for a
living?”
“He is a businessman.”
“What sort of business
are you talking about?”
“He owns a grocery store
and an off-license. He also trades in agricultural produce between Nigeria and
British Southern Cameroons.”
“What type of produces
are you talking about?”
“Cocoa, coffee, bush
mango seeds and egusi seeds.”
“Did he ever mention my
brother Marc?”
“He never talked about
him.”
“Did he know Marc?”
“I don’t think so.”
“Where does your
grandmother live here in Douala?”
“She is dead. She died
seven years ago.”
“Oh, sorry! Accept my
condolences. Do you have uncles or aunts here?”
“My mother’s brothers and
sisters are in Loum, Manjo, and
Banganté.”
“What about other
relatives here in Douala you can live with until you are fully recovered?”
Peter was quiet for a
moment before he said in a hesitant
voice. “My father’s cousin has a house close to where my grandmother used to
live.”
“You mean his home?”
“Yes,” Peter said with a
nod.
“What’s his name?”
“Paul Simou.”
“Good. We will make sure
you get some treatment and then we shall take you to your father’s cousin,”
René said in a level voice.
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