Scientect

Webnovel Series by A Amankwaa
©2026 A Amankwaa. All rights reserved.

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The harmattan heat in Oda did not just sit on you; it leaned. It precipitated a sticky, heavy sweat on the skin mingled with the fine dust in the air. The Bolga hat provided some shade but all handkerchiefs were soaking wet. Inside the hospital ward, the air was stagnant, stirred only by the incessant, frantic clicking of Nana Ako’s rosary beads.

“I do not like that Inspector’s eyes, Akyere,” Nana whispered, her voice like dry husks of corn. “They move too fast. Like a man trying to find an exit in a burning room. He has seen things… things that have soured his spirit.” She reached out, her skin like parchment against Akyere’s hand. “Go to his boss, Brako. He has the stillness of a deep well. He spoke to me like a son who knows his duty.”

Akyere kissed her mother’s forehead, the salt of the old woman’s skin lingering on her lips. “I am going, Mama. The discharge papers are settled. Do not worry about your care at home. I have hired a nurse from the community clinic who will be there before the sun sets.”

The Oda Divisional Headquarters was a monument to administrative decay. Pale blue and beige paint peeled from the concrete walls like dead skin, and the corridors were a warren of stacked yellowing files and the low hum of ancient fluorescent lights. But DCS Brako’s office was an island.

The moment Akyere stepped inside, the roar of the town died. The air was unnaturally cool, filtered through a high-end unit that whispered behind a mahogany cabinet. Brako did not just stand; he unfolded himself from his chair, a mountain of starched police uniform and quiet authority.

“Sister Akyere,” he said. His voice was a rich, dark honey. He poured water into a glass slowly and deliberately, the ice clinking with a sound like breaking glass. “Drink. The world outside is unkind today. How is our old lady?”

“She is… holding on,” Akyere said, her fingers tightening around the strap of her bag. She did not touch the water. She reached in and pulled out a small, sealed biohazard envelope. “I heard the results from Dr Nhyira’s lab. The DNA did not match.”

She leaned across the desk, the cool air of the room feeling suddenly like a shroud. “My brother and his family… if those are not their remains under the Big Tree, where are they? I have brought a buccal swab. My own DNA. I want it run at the Regional Lab in Accra. I need to know if the science lied, or if my brother is still out there waiting for me to find him.”

Brako’s gaze fell to the envelope. For a second, his stillness felt less like peace and more like a predator waiting for the wind to shift. He placed the envelope on his desk with a scribbled note. “Your strength is a credit to your late father’s name,” he said softly. “I will have my personal courier take this to Accra by nightfall. You have my word as an officer.”

Akyere stepped back out into the hallway, the heat hitting her like a physical blow. She felt a sense of hollow victory until a hand tapped her shoulder and she was pulled into the black throat of the service stairwell. She thrashed, her heel catching a concrete step, but the grip was iron. “Quiet! Please hear me out.”

It was Ansah. But the man she saw was a ghost of the officer she had met before. His uniform was stained with armpit sweat, and his eyes were wild, darting just as Nana had described. “Inspector Ansah?” she gasped as he released her. “You have lost your mind! I shall scream!” “Scream then, but listen first,” he hissed, his breath smelling of harsh kpakpo shito and fear. “What did you give him? The envelope, Akyere. Tell me you did not give him your DNA sample.” “I did! To find my brother! To do the job you could not!”

Ansah let out a strangled, jagged laugh. He stepped closer, the shadows of the stairwell carving deep hollows into his face. “Akyere, the lab in Accra is his playground. Caseline Forensics did not just burn; it was an execution. Nhyira found something in the forensic examination that did not fit the story. If you give Brako your DNA, you are not helping him find your brother. You are giving him the map to the only person left with the right blood to ask questions. You have put a crosshair on your own forehead.” Akyere looked at him, really looked at him. He was trembling. He looked like a man who had broken. She thought of her mother’s warning about shifty eyes and a soured spirit.

She did not see a whistleblower. She saw a threat to the only well of peace she had left. “You are a thief,” she whispered, as she felt his hands in her bag, backing toward the door. “You are trying to derail the only man actually working this case.” “Akyere, please,” he said, reaching out. His hand brushed against the open zip of her tote bag as he tried to catch her arm. She did not hesitate. She pulled her phone and hit the emergency bypass.

“Sir! Brako! Help! He is in the stairwell! Ansah is attacking me!”

The response was instantaneous. It was too fast, she thought, as if the actors had been waiting in the wings for their cue. The stairwell doors burst open and heavy boots thundered on the stairs.

“I am placing you under arrest, Kwame,” Brako said, his voice dropping to a deadly, official low. “Attempted assault. Harassment of a key witness. Obstruction of a capital murder investigation.” “You are a murderer!” Ansah screamed, blood trickling from his hairline. “You are burying them all!”

“He is delusional,” Brako said to the room, though his eyes remained on Ansah. “The stress has fractured him. Take him to the cells. I want him remanded to the central prison by the morning. I shall sign the charges myself.” Brako turned to Akyere, draping a heavy, paternal arm around her. “I am so sorry you had to see the rot in our own house, Sister. But we have him now. He will not trouble you or your mother again.”

Akyere let him lead her away. She signed the statement. She let him walk her to her car. It felt like safety. It felt like justice. It was not until she reached the outskirts of town, the Big Tree forest looming in the distance like a gallows, that she reached into her bag for a tissue to wipe her tears. Her fingers snagged on a piece of rough, torn paper.

She pulled it out. It was a page torn from a police ledger, damp with Ansah’s sweat. The handwriting was a frantic scrawl, written in the dark:

CALL DR NHYIRA. YOU CAN TRUST HER. 0244-XXXX.

The still well her mother had spoken of was not a source of water. It was a place to hide dark secrets.

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Akyere looked in her rear-view mirror. A grey SUV remained there, a silent shadow draped in tinted glass. It maintained a precise distance, neither gaining nor receding, mirroring her every turn through the winding outskirts of Oda.

Her heart hammered against her ribs as she fumbled for her phone with trembling fingers. She kept one hand on the steering wheel while her eyes darted between the road and the scrap of paper on her lap. She had to call. If Ansah was right, she had just handed the fox the key to the hen house.

She punched in the digits, her breath coming in shallow, jagged hitches. The phone began to ring. One ring. Two.

“Hello?”

The voice on the other end was a whisper, cautious and sharp. It was Dr Nhyira.

“Doctor, it is Akyere. Ansah said …”

Akyere’s words were cut short by a sudden, violent roar of an engine. The grey SUV behind her had not accelerated, but from a hidden logging track to her left, a massive timber truck lunged into the main road. It did not slow down. It did not swerve.

Akyere pulled the wheel hard to the right, her tyres screaming against the hot asphalt. The world tilted. She saw the massive grille of the truck, a wall of rusted steel, filling her windscreen. In that final, frozen second, she saw the driver. He was not looking at the road. He was looking directly at her, his face as still and cold as Brako’s.

The impact was absolute.

The driver’s side of the car crumpled like a discarded tin, the safety glass shattering into a million diamonds that caught the orange glow of the afternoon sun. The phone flew from her hand, bouncing onto the hard road as Nhyira’s voice continued to crackle through the speaker, calling her name into the silence.

The car rolled twice before coming to a rest in the bushes along the verge, a twisted heap of metal beneath the shadow of the forest.

The SUV pulled up slowly beside the wreckage. A man stepped out, his boots crunching on the broken glass. He did not check for a pulse. Instead, he reached through the shattered window, retrieved the scrap of paper with Nhyira’s number, and watched as the light faded from Akyere’s eyes.

The Big Tree forest stood silent in the distance, its roots ready to receive another secret.