Chapter 28: DE-WORMING

The air was static now. The hum of the ceiling fan felt louder than words, slicing through the tension that hung over the room. The two sisters — bound by blood, scarred by justice — had told the larger part of their story. Karim sat motionless, pen idle in his hand, staring at them as if the truth might rearrange itself if he looked hard enough.

He wasn’t sure what he felt anymore. Disgust? Admiration? Pity? The detective in him wanted to document, to dissect, but the man in him — the one who had believed in laws and courts and procedure

— was unraveling quietly.

He cleared his throat. “So that was the first. What about the others?” His tone was controlled, but the fatigue in his eyes betrayed him. “How did you kill the rest?”

Jemima exhaled slowly, her fingers tracing the edge of the metal table. “The next was Jude Ogbonna — Commissioner for Agriculture.”

Karim raised his brows faintly. “The one found hanging from Third Mainland Bridge?”

She nodded. “It was relatively easy to infiltrate

Jude’s circle. His world revolved around greed — businessmen, politicians, and mistresses who’d sell

loyalty for a decent meal. We posed as

representatives of a non-governmental organization seeking agricultural funding. All we needed was an appointment on his schedule.”

Aisha cut in, her voice sharp with sarcasm. “When you play the game of corruption, you should always keep your closest people extremely comfortable.

Jude didn’t. That was his undoing.”

Jemima took over, speaking quietly, gracefully as she always did. Karim found it hard to imagine her complicit in murder. “We neutralized his driver ..”

Karim leaned forward slightly, interrupting . “You

said you replaced his driver. What does that mean

exactly?”

Aisha laughed — low, humorless, almost bitter. “Be at ease, detective. He’s vacating in Katsina with his sweetheart.”

For a moment, Karim almost smiled, but it never

reached his eyes. He gestured lightly. “Go on.”

—

Jemima continued, her voice quiet but steady.

“Jude had attended a late-night funding event — one of those lavish, empty gatherings where contracts are traded under the table. He was drunk and tired when he left. He never noticed that the man who opened

the car door for him wasn’t his driver.”

She paused. “It was Samuel.”

The room seemed to tilt slightly in Karim’s mind. He wrote the name but didn’t look up.

—

The moon had bathed the asphalt, spilling silver light across the windscreen . Jude stumbled into the backseat, his phone pressed to his ear, his laughter slurred.

“Take me home, Salisu,” he said, waving lazily. Samuel’s voice was even, low. “Of course, sir.”

They drove in silence for several minutes before Jude noticed the wrong route.

He frowned, his intoxicated voice rising. “Hey — where the h£ll are you going?”

Samuel didn’t respond. He kept driving, eyes fixed on the shimmering stretch of the bridge ahead. The hum of the car engine intensified. The wind howled against the windows like a warning.

Jude leaned forward, anger beginning to cut through

his drunken haze. “Do you know who I am?”

Samuel’s hand moved smoothly to the glove

compartment. The syringe gleamed briefly in the dashboard light before he pressed it against the

commissioner’s neck. Jude jerked once, confusion

flooding his eyes — and then he slumped.

The car rolled to a stop near the edge of the bridge. The city lights glimmered in the water below.

Samuel stepped out, opened the back door, and

dragged Jude’s body out with calm precision. When the commissioner stirred weakly, Samuel crouched beside him.

“You don’t remember me,” he said quietly, “but I remember you. You came into that small dank cell everyday and hit me with your baton until my breath came in unearthly gasps, every hit a request to

confess to a crime I didn’t do. You forced me to sign

the confession I didn’t write.

Jude’s eyelids fluttered. He tried to speak, but his

throat was dry and heavy with the drug.

Samuel continued, his tone almost tender. “This city forgets too easily. But I don’t.”

He pulled the knife from his coat pocket — the same kind Aisha had used — and carved the number 4 into the commissioner’s chest. The man’s breath hitched in pain, weak, animalistic. Then Samuel tied a rope around his neck, the other end fixed to the bridge railing.

Jude struggled as Samuel kicked the stool from beneath him. For a moment, his body twisted in the

rain, feet scraping desperately against the air. Then there was only the sound of the waves below and the soft creak of the rope.

Samuel stood there for a moment, watching the body sway against the skyline, then stepped back into the car and drove into the night.

—

When Jemima finished, the room fell silent again. Karim’s jaw clenched, and for a long time, he didn’t look up. The story was sinking into him like poison.

Finally, he said quietly, “And Musa Yahya?”

Aisha’s expression didn’t change, but Jemima shifted uncomfortably. Karim’s voice was low now — personal.

“I was there,” he said. “At the party. I was with Jemima all through the night. I know she didn’t do it.”

He turned to Aisha. “So who did?”

Aisha tilted her head slightly, almost smiling. “You were very observant, detective. But not enough.”

—

It had been Musa Yahya’s housewarming party —

the retired superintendent turned businessman. The

kind of event that glittered with excess. Expensive suits, champagne, and fake laughter. Karim remembered it too well — the choking crowd, the flashbulbs, the unbearable heat.

He had sat with Jemima that night, unaware that death was already among them.

“I was there too,” Aisha said, her tone steady. “Not

as myself, of course. As staff. They called us

servers.”

She let the word linger. “Uniform. Mask. Invisible. That’s how you walk through the powerful — unseen.”

Jemima’s voice trembled slightly. “Yua came as my plus one. That was the plan.”

Karim blinked, realization dawning too slowly.

“Yua… was there?”

“Yes,” Aisha said. “He moved through the room like smoke. Nobody noticed him. When the tear gas went off, everyone panicked. People ran, screaming. That was when Yua and I made our move.”

—

In the chaos, the lights flickered. Musa had been trying to find his way in the smoke.

Yua appeared to him first,holding a gas mask to his face . The superintendent spun around, coughing from the gas, eyes watering.

“Who the h£ll—” he began, but Aisha stepped from

the shadows before he could finish.

“Musa Yahya,” she said evenly. “Hero of the force.Olówó èkó.”

He froze, blinking through the tears. “What—what do you want?”

She smiled faintly. “Closure.”

They rushed him simultaneously— suppressed and stabbed before he could react . The blood pooled beneath his desk, dark and final. They left the number carved on his palm .

By the time the lights came back and the chaos subsided, Aisha was gone. Yua too. Karim had searched the premises himself that night, unaware he was already chasing ghosts.

—

Back in the room, Karim’s breathing had changed. He wasn’t writing anymore. He just stared at the sisters, as if trying to measure the weight of their

souls.

He finally spoke, his voice low. “You killed four men. And you justify it all as justice?”

Aisha looked straight at him. “No, detective. Justice would have required that someone cared enough to stop them while they still breathed. What we gave them was consequence.”

Karim sat back, his throat dry. Jemima’s eyes glistened, but she said nothing. Outside the room, the world still went on — cars, voices, sirens — unaware that a story unholy and broken had just been told inside that room.

The silence stretched until Aisha added softly, “Four

down. One more to go