The excitement Rebecca felt made her hands really shaky but she had to steady them in order to drive as fast as she could. Mali drive was almost an hour away from where she lived and it gave her a good amount of time to think about everything that would happen if the killer was caught on tape going into Bishop Chukwu’s residence.
She thought about how happy Inspector Dele would feel and every good thing this find would bring to his dwindling reputation as the inspector of the year. She thought about how she was going to stick it to Onu, who all of a sudden was out to get her and render every piece of evidence she brought in unusable “I call this doing my due diligence” he would say “I call you a suspect” she said to herself but there was nothing she could use to make him a suspect so she never said those words aloud to anyone but herself.
She arrived at Bishop Chukwu’s residence and rang the doorbell twice but there was no answer; there was no way she was going to leave without getting what she wanted so she went around the house to the kitchen door and knocked again. As she waited, she noticed an empty can of beer partially buried in the ground. She picked it up and examined it, it had a good number of finger prints on it; it was not there the day she and her team searched Bishop’s house but she decided to take it anyway because it could have been an oversight.
The door opened and it was Blessing “Madam is asleep, she had a very long day” she announced
“That’s fine; I don’t need her to do anything. I just need the security tapes from the week he was murdered and I’ll be on my way” Rebecca replied letting herself in
“Let me go and tell her” Blessing left Rebecca in the kitchen; who looked around like she had never been there before.
“There is no security tape from the week my husband was killed” Rita said to Rebecca from the door frame of the kitchen. Rebecca was very upset to hear those words; her heart burned as Rita explained to her that a week before his death the CCTV cameras stopped working. Bishop wanted to fix them but he kept procrastinating until his death “If he kept procrastinating. Why didn’t you call them to come and fix it yourself?” “Because was husband was a controlling man and everything had to be done when he wanted it, if not… kicks and blows for me” she said casually
Rebecca couldn’t believe the unfortunate coincidence; her drive back home felt like the shortest drive of her life because of how absent minded she was on the journey, thinking about what to do next.
When she went to work the next day, there was more bad news. The lap assistant that was supposed to test the particles of blood on the knife found in John Bull’s study made a mistake and mixed the particle with the wrong component; thereby rendering yet another piece of evidence inadmissible in court.
Inspector Dele was furious and refused to release John Bull from prison even though they had nothing on him “sir I checked out all his alibi and everything checks out. He is telling the truth” Rebecca explained
“Yes, he says he was with his mistress but don’t you think his mistress; the mother of his children will lie for him? What about the other woman… Blessing? I want you to check her out again” Dele was not ready to look like he didn’t know what he was doing and releasing another suspect without finding the true killer would do exactly that.
She gave him the empty beer can that she found at Bishop Chukwu’s residence; it was in a zip lock bag. She proposed that they send it to finger print specialists abroad to extract the finger prints on it and help them match it to the finger prints of all the persons of interest on the case
“Rebecca, what you are proposing is very expensive” Inspector Dele retorted but she made him understand that if another week passed by the case was going to start getting cold and they would be forced to release John Bull from their custody
“Sir, it is time to start taking extreme measures if we want to crack this case” Rebecca was always calm when she wanted Inspector Dele to follow her advice and so he did “But this must be between you and I alone, this is very delicate. We may have a mole in this office” she said and he concurred immediately.
Nkechi laid on her hospital bed still in a coma; the machines connected to her body still beeping. One of the machines helped her to breathe while the other monitored her heart rate. A man walked in, he looked around and there was no one in sight but an intern who passed by unaware of his presence.
The man walked to the socket and switched it off, Nkechi struggle for breath but her lungs where not strong enough to get oxygen on their own. The man watched her closely until she breathed her last breath.
“She was going to die anyway, the doctors said there was nothing else they could do for her” Rebecca had been watching him the whole time “I have just been waiting for the person who wanted her dead to appear and finish the job so welc…” The sound of a gun interrupted her sentence and she could feel a bullet pass through her body.
Her sight faded quickly, she knew she was falling but when her body hit the ground she felt nothing. It was complete darkness and silence.
