Chronicles Of A Runs Girl - S01 E19

2 years ago

Chronicles Of A Runs Girl - S01 E19

Read Story: SEASON 1 EPISODE 19

Useful somebody

In a room in a house in VGC, Kike, Janet, Mama, and I were sitting on dining table chairs on one side of a wide wooden desk that had three landlines and four mobile phones connected to chargers on top of it.

On the other side of the desk, a short, stout, bald man who had four deep tribal marks running one atop the other along his cheeks and one across his nose on the left side was holding Janet’s phone in both his hands, staring at the tiny screen.

He was in a mostly brown Ankara outfit. He had large coral beads on one wrist and an equally large gold bracelet on the other. Around his neck he wore a slim gold chain, a woman’s chain, pulled down by a white and yellow gold star pendant.

The AC was on and the room was cool but he had sweat beads across his huge shiny forehead.

Behind us, even though I didn’t dare to turn and look but I could hear his heavy breathing, stood a tall muscle builder – for want of a better description, who had shown us into Uncle China’s office.

Uncle China needs explaining.

It had been one week and a few days since Jonny left for Abuja and left me with a new phone, promise of a job, twenty thousand Naira, and instructions to call him the moment the money finished. The money finished the next day.

It was an environmental sanitation Saturday and all the girls were home, as happens on all environmental sanitation days.

NEPA had taken their light as usual but we kept the door and the windows shut to discourage any of the ‘I like to clean’ neighbours from asking us why we weren’t out tidying up the compound. We were all bored to within a few inches of our lives. That was until Janet finally managed to receive the video clip someone had been trying to send to her via BB.

Now, we had all heard of the rape video making the rounds on campus but none of us had seen it, living off-campus as we did. The general gist was that a group of cult boys had taken turns raping a town girl and they had been very studious to film every minute of their crime and to broadcast it freely – in case someone later had the audacity to doubt that they really did it. They had however sloppily managed to not let the camera capture their faces, only their victim’s, the result of which was that other people were being credited for their work.

On a good day, with better things to do other than trying to go back to sleep in a hot crowded room, I would have cursed anyone who wanted to show me the video. But it finished downloading onto Janet’s phone and she played it and the sound of human voices coming out of something that had electricity in it was too much of a temptation right then.

We all crowded round Janet and to watch the video. We watched the girl getting raped – repeatedly, and taunted, and threatened, and mocked, and raped again. And we cursed, and we swore, and Kike cried. Then Mama let out one of her ear-piercing exclamations.

“I know that room! That is them Kaska’s room! That is Banger’s box! It is them!Aye wan to baje! Awan omo-ole!It is them!”

It turned out that Mama had just cracked open a case that still had the entire Nigerian Police Force baffled and confused and clueless. The rape had become something of a national hot-topic, with politicians getting involved and promising heaven and earth, but till date no arrests had been made – because the girl was unknown and her rapist’s faces were not clear and nobody knew where or when the event took place. But Mama, just from watching a few seconds of the sick thing, had identified the location of the crime and possibly, the criminals.

As the rest of us deliberated what to do with this brand new information, Mama was busy calling someone on her phone. She hushed us when she got a connection and in time we all watched her have a strange conversation with someone who, from the sounds of it, put her through to someone else to whom she repeated what she had told the first person: that she was Uncle China’s niece and that Uncle China had given her the number she was calling him on for when she needed to see him urgently.