Found It In The Canal

The night our mother died, her bracelet watch was gone from her wrist. It was a thin gold band with a cracked clasp that she fixed with a bent paperclip. She engraved on the back the date we arrived Lagos from our village after our father died. She wore it everyday.

Titus and I were sixteen and at a sleepover the night she was murdered. The police called it a break-in gone wrong until they arrested Mr. Okafor, the landlord’s nephew who was also the caretaker of the residential building.

He had been seen near the building that night and had scratches on his forearm. He had a motive since our mother had threatened to report him for taking money from the other tenants.

None of it was enough though. The judge said “insufficient evidence” in a voice so bored it sounded like weather. Okafor walked out of the court buttoning his coat and he nodded at us as he passed with a strange smile.

My twin brother and I would not let the matter rest or the detective. “Find me your mother's watch and if we can prove it was in his possession, I'll reopen the case immediately,” the detective promised. So we searched for the bracelet watch for eleven years.

Meanwhile, Okafor prospered, got married and had two children. Every time we saw him, Titus’ jaw tightened in exactly the way mine did, a twin thing, a mirrored grief.

Then one October, the city dug up the old canal behind the residential building. It had been choked with silt and plastic for decades and the local government council finally sent in dredgers. Titus led the construction crew.

I was at my desk when he called. He didn't say hello. “Steve, come now.”

I found him standing by one of their tow trucks with a crumpled paper cup in his hand, his face solemn. Inside the cup was something small and gold, green with age and wrapped in a scrap of tattered black cloth. Titus held our mother's bracelet up, the clasp still held together with a bent paperclip that was rusted.

“Found it in the canal,” he said, his voice tight and hoarse. I turned the watch over with trembling fingers. The engraving was still there, worn but readable: Lagos, 1996. We made it.

“This proves nothing,” I whispered, afraid of my own hope. “Anyone could have thrown it into the canal.”

“Look.” He turned the cloth and in one corner, stitched with gold thread were two initials: J.O. Julius Okafor. “The detective will run tests and let us know.”

We had seen that handkerchief before, I remembered suddenly. He used to wipe his hands on it while he waited at every door to collect rent and other charges from tenants. Did he assume the canal would keep his secret forever?

The detective was retired but he came, held the cloth and bracelet with gloves hands for a long moment. Then he said, “This reopens it.”

Julius Okafor was arrested two days later before his confused wife and children after tests revealed his DNA was found on the cloth and bracelet watch.

Titus and I sat in our mother's old neighbourhood, on a wall facing the cleared canal, passing the cleaned watch back and forth between us.

“I miss her so much,” I whispered.

Titus nodded and said, “She'd laugh at the paperclip.”

“She'd say it still keeps time.”

It didn't of course but for the first time in eleven years, it felt like something had started again.

I hope you enjoyed reading this short piece. It's inspired by the Freewrite #dailyprompt phrase "found it in the canal”.

Thank you for visiting my blog.

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