Hotel Room Murder Page 9
“What were you doing at the guest house?” he asked, although he knew the question wasn’t going to get an answer.
Desola Ogunba didn’t respond, as he expected. She didn’t bother looking at him.
“I didn’t think you would answer that, but I do know that you were meeting Doctor Patrick Umanze. The same man you claimed to have never met before today.”
Still nothing from Desola Ogunba.
“You know it’s funny that less than twenty-four hours after your spouses were found dead, you both couldn’t give them some time before jumping back into each other’s arms.”
Desola Ogunba threw Inspector Osbourne a nasty look, then looked away. He had gotten her attention, though half of it, it was still something.
“One way or another,” the inspector continued. “We are going to get to the bottom of the case, but it would be faster if either you or the doctor give up your act and tell us what exactly happened.”
Desola Ogunba still didn’t say a word, and Inspector Osbourne didn’t stop talking.
“It took us some time, but we eventually figured out how you communicate with the doctor. I wonder whose idea it was.” Inspector Osbourne pulled out a folded sheet of paper from his pocket and passed it to Desola Ogunba.
She didn’t collect it.
“Open it,” Inspector Osbourne said.
She didn’t move a muscle, so the inspector unfolded the paper, straightened it, then slid it on the table to her.
“Aren’t you curious to know how we figured it out? How your plan came crashing down?”
The only things that Desola Ogunba moved were her eyeballs. She looked at the unfolded sheet, and simultaneously, her forehead creased. As she scrolled through the content, her expression began to change.
“It didn’t make sense at first when I learnt that you went to Saint Paul at least twice a week, but I got there and was told that the last time you visited was about two years ago. Imagine my confusion.” Inspector Osbourne shook his head, and this time, Desola Ogunba looked up at him. He continued, “Then I also learnt that you go by the name ‘Daisey’. And what do you know? Daisey is the last name on the list before the doctor suddenly fell ill and went home. I can bet that if I go back to the hospital now, I’ll see him there, and his illness would have suddenly vanished, the same way it had suddenly appeared.”
Desola Ogunba moved uncomfortably in her seat, and Inspector Osbourne knew that he had gotten her attention and reaction. But it didn’t stop him from rubbing it in her face.
“You know, I wondered briefly who gave you the name. Daisey.” Inspector Osbourne scoffed. “I thought it could have been your husband, but thinking about it now, I’m certain it was the doctor. Because throughout the time you consulted with him, you went by Desola Ogunba. After then, you went by Daisey, and you were no longer a patient. I can only imagine how your husband would have felt if he knew that he was addressing you by the name another man gave to you.”
“So what?” Desola Ogunba finally said. “What if I go to the hospital, a place where several doctors work. I have seen a lot of doctors, but not this Doctor Whoever you desperately want me to know.”
“At this point, you need to stop playing dumb.”
Desola Ogunba narrowed her eyes and shook her head, realising that something was odd from all she had heard. “By the way, who gave you details of my medical records? It’s against hospital policy and standards to give out any information at all on their patients, and it seems they have given you the book of my life. So rest assured that I’m going to follow up with the hospital on that and do whatever it takes to make whoever told you to pay for it.”
Inspector Osbourne didn’t say anything at first, but he remembered his promise to the nurse. Police investigation or not, he wasn’t going to be able to secure the nurse’s job if she was found guilty of breaking hospital standards of practice. And if at all he could save her from that, he was sure that the hospital would slap something else on her, just to make her pay for the disclosure of confidential and personal information. He thought fast, then replied.
“Whoever told me the information, or what exactly they told me is the least of your problem now. Rather, not spending the rest of your life locked up should be your main worry,” he said, making Desola Ogunba get uncomfortable again. “And for that to happen, tell me what I need to know, and I can help you. If the doctor talks first, I will help him. Maybe the doctor made you get into a relationship with him, thereby breaking the doctor-patient trust between you two. Maybe one of you wanted out, and the other didn’t. Maybe your husband found out and threatened the doctor. Maybe both of you just wanted your significant others gone so that you can be together. Maybe you—”
“I have nothing to say,” Desola Ogunba blurted, interjecting the inspector.
“Then you will be charged with the murders of your husband and Enitan Umanze.”
“I can’t be charged with anything because I didn’t kill anyone. There’s a killer out there, but you won’t find out who that is if you keep wasting your time with me.”
“Do you know who it is, then?” Inspector Osbourne asked. “The killer?”
“How would I know? You are the investigator, do your job.”
“I know you have information concerning those deaths, and we will find it out. But if by any little chance you are implicated, you will go down for it.”
“I’m done talking.”
Inspector Osbourne smiled as he stood up to leave. He wasn’t frustrated or irritated by her reaction. He hadn’t expected her to cooperate, so he wasn’t disappointed. He was going to try his luck with the doctor. One of them was going to break, and he was certain about that.
***
Next Day
Friday, 23rd November 2018
12:30 a.m.
The nurse at Saint Paul Hospital’s front desk looked up when she heard the main door open, then scrunched her eyebrows as she saw Inspector Osbourne approach. “You’re back,” she said, in a low and worried tone.
“And so is Doctor Patrick Umanze,” Inspector Osbourne replied.
“Doctor Umanze?” the nurse repeated. She wore a puzzled look. “Yes, he is. How did you know that?”
Inspector Osbourne didn’t answer the question. Instead, he shrugged his shoulder, and said, “I want to see him.”
The nurse’s puzzled look remained, she didn’t know what the inspector wanted to say to the doctor, but she knew that any wrong word or indication that she had given out information to him would certainly land her in trouble.
The inspector understood the issue, and reassured her, “Don’t be worried, it’s simply police business. Nothing implicating will come out of me, but I need to see him right now.”
“Yes, of course.”
The nurse immediately got up and took Inspector Osbourne to the doctor’s office. She knocked once, then opened the door for Inspector Osbourne, but she didn’t enter with him.
“Thank you,” Inspector Osbourne said to her, then she nodded and walked away.
Doctor Umanze stood up when he saw Inspector Osbourne. “What are you doing here?”
“You look strong,” Inspector Osbourne said. “And I’m surprised because I thought you were ill.”
“Why would you think that?”
“Because the nurse told me that when I came around earlier. But from the confused look on your face, it was clearly a lie. However, I choose to go with the version of you being ill and recovering from whatever it is you had only after meeting with someone.”
Doctor Umanze looked the more confused. “I don’t understand what you are talking about.”
“You will. I need to take you back to the station to answer a few more questions.”
“I’m not going anywhere. I have work to do, and so do you. If you keep questioning me, you would never find my wife’s killer.”
Inspector Osbourne pulled out his handcuffs and held them up. “You are going back with me to the station. Either voluntarily or in t
hese. You choose.”
“This is harassment.”
“From where I’m standing, it looks nothing like harassment, but more like help. I’m only trying to help find out who killed your wife.” Inspector Osbourne nodded towards the door. “Let’s go.”
The doctor obliged without further complaint, not wanting to be led out in handcuffs or seen in them. And on their way out of the main door, the inspector spoke to the nurse.
“I think you will need to call back the replacement doctor,” the inspector suggested.
The nurse looked at Doctor Umanze, and he nodded in agreement.
***
Same Day
Friday, 23rd November 2018
12:55 a.m.
The traffic was light, as there weren’t a lot of motorists on the road, so it took Inspector Osbourne about twenty minutes to get back to the station. He took a reluctant and annoyed Doctor Umanze to an interrogation room and sat him down.
“So what do you want this time?” Doctor Umanze asked.
“You lied. You said you didn’t know Kamar Ogunba.”
“That’s because I don’t know who that is.”
The inspector smiled. He wanted to take the topic further, but he risked exposing the nurse, so he chose to use another route. “We figured it out, your means of communication with Desola Ogunba,” he said. “Whoever came up with the plan was clever.”
“What means of communication and what plan? You seem to be going aimlessly from point to point, looking for anything to hold me with,” the doctor blurted. “This is getting old.”
“It is getting old, indeed, and that’s why we must put a stop to it,” the inspector concurred, but only to that part of the sentence. “You asked the nurse to call a replacement doctor after you told her that you weren’t feeling too well and that you were going home, but you never went home.”
“That’s because I felt much better before I got home and made a U-turn.”
“No. That’s because you went somewhere else.”
“Where could I have possibly gone?” The doctor scoffed. “And if at all I did go somewhere else, why should that be any concern of yours? What does my movement have to do with anything?”
“Freedom Guest House,” Inspector Osbourne abruptly said. “That’s where you could have gone.”
“What?”
“You heard me correctly. You could have gone to Freedom Guest House.”
“Well, I have never heard of that.”
“That’s not what Desola Ogunba, or should I say ‘Daisey’, told me.”
Doctor Umanze wore a blank look. He opened his mouth, and no words came out, only babbles. The inspector, on the other hand, smiled. That wasn’t the reaction he had expected, but it was a welcome one. Also, it was the only way he could bring up the information he got from the hospital without exposing the nurse as the informant.
“As I said, whoever came up with the plan was clever,” Inspector Osbourne reiterated. “That’s the only thing Desola Ogunba never told me.”
Doctor Umanze’s shocked look was followed by a frightened one.
“Yes, she told me everything,” Inspector Osbourne continued, then paused and waited for a reaction from the doctor, but nothing changed. “She told me that she was your patient. She was trying to have a baby with her husband, and after about an unsuccessful year, you decided to have her instead. She would make you the perfect mistress, and you were never going to have any paternity claims thrown at you. Was that when you named her Daisey? Was it so that whenever she visited, no one would know it was her? Her husband in particular?”
“The feeling was mutual, mind you,” Doctor Umanze shot back. “We had spent a whole year on the fertility programme trying to make things work, and we got attached in the process. There’s nothing illegal or strange about that. And also, it was her husband who named her Daisey. He had mentioned it while consoling her. She broke down after I delivered the news that she would never be able to have a child. It was when she broke down that I realised that I had feelings for her.”
“To be honest, Doctor, I don’t care how you two fell in love or how the name came about,” Inspector Osbourne said. “I just want to know what happened to her husband and your wife in that hotel room.”
Doctor Umanze shook his head, as he lowered his face. It looked as if he was going to cry.
“What?” The inspector also lowered his head, getting a glimpse of the doctor’s face.
The doctor raised his head, and there was no atom of remorse written on his face. Crying was the last thing he was going to do. He sighed, then said, “I don’t know.”
“You don’t know?” the inspector repeated, frustrated.
The doctor shook his head again. “I don’t know what else you want me to say, but I have no idea of what happened to my wife and Kamar Ogunba.”
“That’s not what Desola Ogunba said.”
“What did she say? It’s either she’s lying, or you are because I don’t know what happened to them. If she says anything happened, then that’s not true.”
“Why don’t you tell me what happened?” Inspector Osbourne pushed. “Because the way I see it, you risk losing your license and going to prison.”
“Why is that? I haven’t done anything wrong.”
“Maybe because you had an affair with your patient, for which there’s proof, and then her husband ends up dead in a hotel where both of you had been to earlier, and for the last two weeks.”
“It doesn’t mean that I know what happened to him or my wife. So I can’t help you out with anything.”
Inspector Osbourne rubbed his chin. He was exhausted but unsatisfied at the impasse he was facing. He wanted to revisit all the evidence and information he had gathered since he got the call from the hotel, but he needed to rest as well. He was going to call it a night and go home, then start afresh in the morning. He absentmindedly got up to leave, and the doctor spoke.
“What are you doing? You’re not going to leave me here. I have work. I need to get back to the hospital.”
Inspector Osbourne thought about what the doctor had said for a few seconds, then went to remove the handcuffs. “You are free to get back to work.”
The doctor looked at him sceptically.
“What? Have you changed your mind and decided to stay back?” the inspector spat, and it was obvious that he was pissed off.
The doctor didn’t respond. He simply massaged his wrists and left the interrogation room. Inspector Osbourne turned off the light, then went to where Desola Ogunba was being held. Once he opened the door, she sat up.
“So what’s the plan?” she asked, sounding aggressive. “Am I supposed to spend the whole night here? Because I have nothing else to say to you.”
“On the contrary, you are free to go,” the inspector responded.
Just like the doctor, Desola Ogunba looked askance at the invitation to leave without an issue. “So you are done with all your questions?”
“For now, yes.” The inspector stretched his hand to the door. “If I have any more questions for you, I will let you know.”
Desola Ogunba sighed, then got up and headed for the door, as she said, “I hope it doesn’t get to that because I am tired of being your suspect.”
The inspector didn’t say any other thing. He stood by the door as she walked past him and disappeared into the night.
***
Inspector Osbourne returned to his office dragging his feet. His phone rang at that instant, and he looked at it. His boss was calling. Speaking with his boss was the last thing he wanted, but ignoring the call was worse than answering it.
He cleared his throat, swallowed, and answered, “Commissioner.”
“Tunde, I passed by your office and noticed that you were still at the station.”
“I am, sir. I was just rounding up with my interrogations for the day.”
“So, any update?”
Inspector Osbourne scrunched his face, although his boss couldn’t see him.
“Tunde?”
“I’m here, sir.” The inspector sounded sluggish. “But we agreed that you would give me three days to—”
“Yes, three days to solve the case and give me your report,” the commissioner completed, cutting the inspector off. “And today is another day, but what I’m asking from you now is different. I want to know if there are any updates from the interrogations.”
“Yes, sir, there are.” This time, the inspector sounded exasperated. He breathed difficultly, then continued, “We found a link between the spouses of the victims. They indeed are the real lovers. It has now been confirmed.”
“So, in conclusion, they are the killers? What are you waiting for to officially arrest them?” The commissioner smiled, and Inspector Osbourne could sense it from over the phone.
“We can’t say for now if they are the killers,” the inspector replied, disappointing his boss, before adding, “But I will surely get to the bottom of the case before the deadline. With what I have so far, I can say I’m close enough.”
The commissioner was quiet for a few seconds, then sighed, and said, “Okay, because you know what happens if you don’t meet the deadline.”
“I do.”
“The whole government will be on my neck, and my phone won’t stop ringing, which means that yours won’t stop ringing either,” the commissioner still said, deciding to remind the inspector.
“I know.”
“Okay, then. Get home and get some rest. You sound half-asleep.”
The commissioner hung up immediately after, and Inspector Osbourne looked at his phone and shook his head. The inspector knew that his boss needed answers, and fast, so his boss telling him to get some rest wasn’t really what he meant. In truth, the commissioner didn’t mind if the inspector worked back-to-back without a second of sleep if it would get him the desired result at the earliest time possible.
So instead of calling it a night and going home as he had initially intended, the inspector decided to go through all the details of the case one more time. He sank into his seat and eyeballed the tons of documents and boxes of evidence at a corner of his desk, and didn’t know from where to start. After contemplating briefly, he went for the crime scene report, and the first thing that caught his attention was the statement from Titilayo Lawrence, the cleaner who discovered the bodies. That was where it all started, from the discovered bodies, from her.