Chapter 9: Market Outrage

I was shocked.

What kind of tangle is this? I wrote in my notepad, making sure to underline it twice.

“What about Nnenna? Could she have known Baba Tunde?”

“Impossible. We never let Nnenna do any housework. She can’t even tell goat meat from beef—how would she know Baba Tunde?”

The father laughed, a little too loud. 'That girl? If you send her to buy meat, she will bring back bones. She doesn’t know anything about market.'

I was confused.

Logic told me Baba Tunde was not likely to lie; he showed almost no sign of deception during questioning.

In this job, you learn to read faces like newspapers. Baba Tunde’s was blank, not like a man twisting stories to escape rope or prison.

So why would Nnenna’s parents lie? Even if they had wronged Baba Tunde somehow, they were the victims now—the law wouldn’t blame them.

Yet, I could not shake the feeling that something rotten was festering beneath the surface.

I realised this case might not be as simple as murder and dismemberment.

I remembered my grandmother’s words: 'If fish dey rot, na from head e dey start.'

Nnenna’s parents weren’t suspects. If they didn’t want to talk, there was nothing I could do except hope my colleagues would find new clues.

Sometimes, the law feels powerless in the face of family secrets. All we could do was wait and pray.