Webnovel Series by A Amankwaa
©2025 A Amankwaa. All rights reserved.
The air at the “Pit” was thick with the smell of diesel and stagnant water. Deep in the forest, far beyond the Big Tree, the earth had been torn open. Abudu stood at the edge of a jagged trench, surrounded by felled cocoa trees, watching the young boys and elderly women, barefoot and caked in yellow clay, descend into the unstable tunnels.
The roar of the water pumps drowned out the birdsong, a mechanical heartbeat for a landscape being bled dry. Ntow stood beside him, his hands trembling as he gripped a rusted shovel. “The soil is too wet, Abudu,” he shouted over the engines. “The walls are weeping. If we go deeper today, the earth will swallow them.”
Abudu didn’t look at him. He spat into the pit, his eyes fixed on the muddy slurry. “Gold and diamonds no dey care about the rain, Ntow. Make them dig. We for recover the lost time.” He thought of the tools Ato had failed to bury, the weight of the secret pressing heavier than the forest canopy above.
Suddenly, the mechanical roar of the pumps was cut short. A new sound tore through the trees, the high-pitched whine of sirens and the heavy, pounding thud of boots on the forest floor. “Police! Nobody move! Stay where you are!”
Panick erupted. Ntow dropped his shovel, his knees hitting the mud as he raised his hands. But Abudu bolted. He crashed through the thicket, his lungs burning, the mud sucking at his boots. He didn’t see the officer flanking him until a heavy weight slammed into his back, driving his face into the dirt.
“Abudu Karim?” a voice boomed over him. “You’re under arrest for illegal mining operations and environmental destruction.” As the handcuffs bit into his wrists, Abudu tasted copper and earth. He wasn’t thinking about the gold or the mining fines. He was thinking about the shovel by the stream, the fight at the mining site, and the five families of bones waiting for a name.
The news of the arrest spread like wildfire across social media, the digital space exploding with images of Abudu, two other locals, four Nigerians, and three Chinese nationals being led away in handcuffs. The comments sections were a battlefield: some demanded immediate prosecution of the foreigners, while others turned their anger toward the local “gatekeepers” who had allowed the land to be destroyed for gold.
On the road back from the stadium, the atmosphere inside a crowded trotro van was electric. The high of a Hearts of Oak victory over Asante Kotoko was quickly drowned out by the radio report. “The government is just pruning the leaves,” Makafui shouted over the engine’s rattle, gesturing wildly with his hands. “They don’t want to touch the roots. Our brothers are in the mud because they are hungry. Tell me, how can a National Service person survive on 715 Ghana cedis a month? It is an insult!”
“You’re right, Maka,” Kwame added, leaning forward from the back seat. “Even the cocoa farmers are giving up. Why wait for a harvest price that never comes when you can dig the land once and see more money than a decade of farming? The system is broken.”
Amina shook her head, her eyes fixed on the passing trees. “The system is failing, yes, but the law is the law. If we don’t jail them, we have no country left. But watch, by tomorrow there will be a new story, and these men will be forgotten.”
While the public debated the politics of galamsey, the investigation moved into the brutal, silent world of the police station. In Oda, Inspector Ansah stood in the observation room, staring through the one-way glass at Abudu. The suspect looked smaller in the grey light of the precinct, his clothes still stained with the yellow clay of the mines.
Ansah held a folder tightly against his chest. Inside was the report from Dr. Nhyira’s team: a partial DNA match. The trace DNA samples harvested from the inner lining of the knitted hat, the handle, shaft and blade of the shovel, and the palm of the work gloves had found a possible partial match to the DNA of Abudu and two of the deceased individuals.
Abudu was currently in custody for the mines, but the DNA on the recovered items connected him to something far more permanent. Ansah took a deep breath, adjusted his collar, and stepped into the interrogation room.
Inspector Ansah placed the heavy manila folder on the metal table. He didn’t open it immediately. He let it sit there, a silent weight between them, until Abudu’s eyes began to drift toward it with a mixture of dread and curiosity. Slowly, Ansah flipped the cover back. He slid a high-resolution, glossy photograph across the table. In the harsh light of the flash, the knitted hat looked slumped and hollow, like a discarded skin. Beside it, he placed a second image: the work glove, its fabric still molded into the curved, ghostly shape of a hand that had spent too many hours gripping a shovel.
Abudu’s gaze locked onto the images. His throat hitched, the prominent bob of his Adam’s apple jumping as he swallowed hard. The yellow clay on his jumpsuit seemed to vibrate with the subtle tremor in his legs.
“Do you recognise these, Abudu?” Ansah’s voice was a low, steady hum, devoid of accusation, yet it filled the small room. The answer tumbled out of Abudu’s mouth before his brain could catch it. “Yes.” He reached a hand out as if to touch the photographs, then jerked his fingers back as if the pictures were white-hot. “Those are mine. I… I lost them. Some time ago.” He tried to force a laugh, but it came out as a dry rattle. He wiped a palm against his thigh, leaving a streak of yellow clay on his jumpsuit. “Why are you asking about these items? We are here to talk about the pit, no?”
Ansah leaned forward, his shadow stretching across the table until it covered Abudu’s shaking hands. “We found them near the stream. The one that feeds the Birim river.” Abudu’s gaze flickered to the corner of the room, anywhere but the Inspector’s eyes. He began to pick at a hangnail on his thumb, his breathing turning shallow and fast. “The stream? Yes. I must have dropped them there. It was weeks ago. Or months. I don’t remember.”
“Try to remember, Abudu,” Ansah whispered, sliding the folder with the photographs an inch closer. “Because the DNA inside this hat tells a very specific story about where you were, and who you were with.” “Eish… what be DNA?” Abudu wondered.
Behind the one-way glass, the observation room was dim, illuminated only by the glow of a small monitor. Dr. Nhyira stood with her arms tightly folded across her chest, her posture as rigid as the concrete walls.
She watched Ansah lean into Abudu’s space, his voice dripping with theatrical weight. When he mentioned the “DNA story,” Nhyira’s jaw tightened. She didn’t look impressed; she looked pained. The DNA tells a story? she thought, a sharp spark of irritation flickering in her eyes. No, Inspector. The DNA tells us that a specific part of the profile generated from that hat matches the reference sample. That is all. She shifted her weight, the fabric of her dress rustling in the quiet room. To her, Ansah was overplaying a weak hand.
A partial match on a discarded item found kilometres from a primary site was a bridge, not a destination. It proved Abudu could have possibly worn the hat, held the shovel, but it didn’t put a shovel in his hand at the Big Tree, and it certainly didn’t explain the five bound skeletons.
She watched Abudu’s frantic fidgeting and Ansah’s aggressive posturing. “This isn’t an interrogation”, she noted, her thumb nervously tapping against her elbow. “It’s a gamble. And if Abudu has a competent lawyer, the house is going to lose.”
“He’s pushing too hard,” she whispered to the empty room, her breath fogging the glass for a split second. “The science is a scalpel, Inspector, not a sledgehammer. You’re going to break the witness before you get the truth.”
Ansah leaned in so close that his shadow swallowed Abudu’s face. “Do you have anything to do with the remains discovered at the Big Tree?” The question hung in the air like a heavy mist. Abudu’s feet began to drum against the floor, a frantic, rhythmic tapping that sounded like a heart beating too fast. He stared at a scratch on the metal table, his jaw locked.
“No comment,” he whispered, the words barely escaping his throat. “Do you have any information at all pertaining to those remains?” Ansah pressed, his voice rising a fraction. “The family found in the earth? The children?” Abudu’s eyes darted toward the exit, then back to the floor. He swallowed, but his mouth had gone dry. “No comment.”
“When did you lose these items? Does anyone else have access to them?” Abudu pulled his shoulders in, making himself small. He seemed to be shrinking into his muddy jumpsuit, retreating into a shell of silence. “No comment.”
The repetition hit Ansah like a physical wall. He stared at the suspect for a long, silent minute, waiting for a crack, a tremor, or a slip of the tongue. But Abudu remained a statue of yellow clay and stubborn fear.
With a sharp exhale that sounded like a tire losing air, Ansah stood up. The screech of his chair against the concrete floor echoed through the room like a scream. He gathered his files with a violent snap and logged the record with trembling hands.
He didn’t look back as he exited the room, the heavy iron door clanging shut with a finality that left the room, and the investigation, in total darkness.
Scientect 