On Trial – Episode 7

On Trial – Episode 7
© Onyinyechukwu Mbeledogu
Kaira couldn’t believe her best friend was relocating to Port Harcourt. Online gossip was good but it was sweeter when it was face to face.
Kaira was so excited she almost hugged the man next to her. Fortunately she was able to contain her excitement. The news of Erhus’ transfer to Port Harcourt had the same effect of winning a lottery.
‘You should smile more often,’ Koje told her. ‘Frowning doesn’t fit you one bit.’
She gave him a deep, fierce scowl which had a different effect on him. He laughed as though she had stuck out her tongue and made clown faces at him. He laughed so hærd she began to wonder if she hadn’t got into the car with a lunatic.
‘You, ife mi , are hilarious,’ he told her when he had recovered from his laughter.
‘And I assure you that you will have nothing to laugh about if you use that endearment on me again.
‘Whatever you say, honey,’ he responded unrepentantly.
‘What part of my threat did you not understand?’
‘I understood every part of it perfectly but threats don’t move me.’
‘Oh I see. Well, how about this one? One more endearment from you and I’ll reject your brief.’
He looked at her before returning his attention to the road.
‘That’s hitting below the belt.’
‘Whatever. After all, I haven’t been paid yet.’
‘Well that threat still doesn’t move me.’
‘You want to try it?’
‘Honey mi.’
‘You think I’m joking?’
‘No, but I dare you to do it. You’ll learn first-hand what a desperate man is capable of doing.’
‘You wouldn’t dare!’ she told him, her eyes w¡dening.
‘What exactly do you think I wouldn’t dare do?’ he asked and she realised they were talking about two different things. That was so embarrassing!
‘You should control your thoughts, babe, ’ he told her, ‘before you frighten yourself to death.’
‘Stop calling me that!’ she snapped.
‘What? Babe?’
‘Yes.’
‘Then sue me. I believe you can claim damages for the trauma and mortal fear you experienced as a result of having to deal with an alleged rapist calling you babe and using other endearments on you. That should make a very interesting case. And the good thing is that as a lawyer you don’t need to pay anyone to represent you.’
‘You’re making fun of me!’
‘God forbid that a mere mortal like me should do something like that,’ he said, feigning innocence.
She turned fully on her seat to look at him.
‘You know what, Koje Quadri? You are a major disaster waiting to happen.’
‘That’s a new one,’ he chuckled ‘No one has ever said that about me.’
‘Why tell a man the truth when you can get money out of him by playing the sycophant?’
‘And sarcasm doesn’t become you, ife mi ’.
She did the last thing she expected herself to do – she stuck out her tongue at him and he was actually taken aback.
‘Thirteen years at the Bar and you can still do that!’
‘A gentleman would have pretended not to notice,’ she responded, embarrassed.
‘I saw you, all right. But don’t worry. Your secret is safe with me.’
She glared at him but it didn’t come out right. He laughed so hærd he had to step on the brakes in order to avoid running into the bumper of the taxi in front of him as he turned at an opening and headed towards the coca cola bus stop.
‘You’re something else, ife mi ,’ he told her. ‘The first impression I had of you was that of a starchy, over-prim and proper lawyer but now I know differently. I really should hang out with you more often. I haven’t laughed this much since I was arrested seven months ago.’
‘I’m glad you think I’m a clown. You should pay for my services. I don’t come cheap.’
‘No you don’t. But if you must know, I consider you a beautiful woman who is trying her best to make me loathe her.’
‘You don’t know me.’
‘You’re right I don’t, but first impressions are unforgettable.’
He pulled into the court premises adjacent the police station.
‘Should I wait for you out here or come into the court?’ he asked her.
‘None of the above. Thanks for the ride. I’ll see you at the office by 4pm.’
She reached for her laptop bag and her robe but he was faster than she was. He turned in his seat and grabbed them from her hands. She gasped in surprise even as he unfolded his length from the car, still holding onto her bag and gown. She watched, angrily as he locked the car and then turned to her, saying: ‘After you.’
‘Please don’t.’ she begged.
‘I know you are ashamed of being seen with me but I am your client now and people would have to get used to seeing me around you more often.’
He had a point there but that didn’t make her feel better. She walked ahead of him. The judge didn’t require counsel to be robed during pre-trial conference and so she told Koje to simply hand her the Rules of Court and the case file in the bag he had with him and leave the rest in the car as she wouldn’t be needing them.
Done, she walked ahead of him into the court room, stopping to exchange pleasantries with the registrars and other counsel. She checked the cause list and made a mental note of the number of her matter on that list. The court had six matters listed for Pre-trial conference and hers was the fourth one. Unless a Senior Advocate was in the matter, the judge followed his cause list.
The Defendant was represented by an SAN and he was in court with five junior lawyers. Talk about intimidation tactics, but Kaira was equal to the task. The judge came out ten minutes later in his suit and bib. Being an SAN, the defendant’s counsel mentioned the matter out of turn and the motion was argued extensively after which the suit was adjourned to two Tuesdays from that date for Ruling.
Kaira was once more stuck with Koje who had waited patiently for her to conclude her matter. Curious eyes had followed his presence in the courtroom but he had shown no signs of discomfort.
Koje unlocked the car, praising her for how she had stood her ground with the SAN.
‘Wow. If I wasn’t already in love with you, I would have fallen in love with you today,’ he teased. She arched a well carved eyebrow but he continued before she could make a remark. ‘Now I know why you came highly recommended. Remind me never to find myself on the wrong side of you.’
She ignored him but inwardly enjoyed his praise. However, fate had a way of just being unfair to someone. There hadn’t been much traffic along the Eleme road while they were coming to the court but there was serious traffic on the way back. And as though to punish her for ignoring him earlier, Koje made no conversation, his expression not giving away what he was thinking. A Don Moen CD plate was playing and although it would have relaxed her on a normal day, Kaira felt like she would go crazy if she had to just listen to the music and not talk. However, she didn’t want to give Koje the joy of knowing that his silence was affecting her. And so she maintained her silence, to her own detriment.
Half an hour later, they were still on the Eleme-Akpajo axis. Koje was on the speed lane and she hoped he intended to join the road that would take them to Woji and from there hit the Aba Road. The traffic no be here. The road was under construction.
Wike is working, she thought. She was glad she hadn’t driven to court. She hated driving in traffic. As far as she was concerned, the worst place to drive in Port Harcourt with or without traffic was Ikwerre road. The drivers of those buses that plied that route deserved to have their drivers’ licenses revoked for good. Imagine if this traffic was on Ikwerre road! There was a spirit behind driving in traffic. A lot of people seemed to lose their senses, moving in the wrong direction and forming enough lines to prevent the rightful users of the lane from proceeding and thereby making the traffic worse than it should have been. The drivers who remained on their own side of the road, swerved into other people’s lanes without considering whether or not they would dent the other car. And then if they succeeded in denting the car, you would now hear all sorts of grammar like:
‘ Doesn’t you saw me?’
‘Does you know who I am?
‘See how you just come and jam me like that. Are you not seeing road?’
Perhaps in the face of an accident, no one was expected to speak good English, she thought with a light smile before returning her attention to the current traffic and the man who was humming to the music and ignoring her. She wound down a bit and bought kpekere and a plastic bottle of teem without offering him one. And the man didn’t even look in her direction sef!
She hurriedly ate the plantain ch¡ps and drank the Teem without a word from him. She could feel her temperature starting to rise. She had heard that one’s mouth stank if one didn’t talk for a long time and this was why one was advised to brush first thing in the morning before uttering a word to anyone. So she had a good reason for wanting to talk to him. He was still ignoring her and feeling so cool with himself, she thought. Anumpam . She stretched out her left hand and turned off the CD player. That got his attention.
‘What is your problem?’ he enquired. ‘You don’t like Don Moen.’
‘I love Don Moen. But I want to talk.’
The expression on his face was a blend of wry amusement and surprise.
‘You want to talk,’ he repeated.
‘ Bẹẹ ni.’
He smiled. ‘Next time if you want to get my attention just call my name and I’ll turn down the volume of the CD Player and respond to you.’
‘What I did had a better effect,’ she countered.
‘You think so? Well, your action is no different from that of a wife who caught her husband looking at the firm backside of a younger woman in an occasion they had just attended. All right go ahead and chastise me.’
‘What!’ her eyes w¡dened.
‘Just saying,’ he smiled. ‘So what do you want to talk about?’
‘Nothing in particular. I am just bored because of the traffic. I think there’s a conspiracy to drive me nuts.’
He smiled and shook his head.
‘What’s amusing you?’
‘You.’
‘This is the second time today that you are implying that I’m a clown.’
‘That’s something you came up with and not me. And if you must know, what it is about you that amuses me, it’s your choice of words.’
‘What’s wrong with my choice of words?’
‘I was informed that lawyers are meant to be fit and proper.’
‘Perhaps you are a bad influence on me.’
He laughed. ‘Don’t you dare put the blame on me. I haven’t uttered any word that is out of place.’
‘And this is not my idea of a conversation.’
‘I didn’t realise we were having one,’ he returned, amused.
She didn’t bother glaring at him because it always bounced back at her.
‘So what do you want to talk about?’ he asked.
‘The weather,’ she replied without thinking, resisting the urge to smack herself on the back of the head for coming up with such a dumb answer.
‘The weather,’ he repeated, incredulously and with a snicker he immediately controlled.
‘What is wrong with discussing the weather?’ she asked, covering up her embarrassment. ‘Abi weather no be topic again?’
‘It’s probably the most boring topic on earth unless you intend to relate it to environmental degradation.’
‘Okay, smart p-nts, come up with a more interesting topic.’
‘I can think of several of them: soccer, movies, business…’
‘Politics?’
‘Please don’t even go there. That’s the last topic I want to talk about because it would boil down to APC v PDP and then Buhari v GEJ. And I have no use for those two.’
‘Soon you’ll tell me that your trial has a political undertone,’ she remarked, crossing her arms over her chest.
‘I’m not that important.’
‘Of course you’re not. That’s why you arrest made front page news,’ she said, her words dripping with sarcasm.
Either he was being annoyingly humble or he just wanted to hear from her l-ips that he was a very important person.
‘Would it be wrong if I said the people from the neighbouring village are at work?’ he asked. And he actually sounded serious.
She looked at him as though he had suddenly taken leave of his senses and then she rolled her eyes.
‘It’s actually meant to be “your village people”.’
‘No. My village people are good. It has to be people from the neighbouring village.’
‘You’re not serious.’
‘I am but on a serious note, the papers just took advantage of my predicament like they do to others. Anything for a good story.’
‘And that’s why you wouldn’t grant interviews especially with respect to the source of your wealth?’
‘I am mainly a transporter.’
‘Before then?’
‘I am entitled to my privacy.’
‘Sorry to burst your bubble but you lost your right to privacy the moment the police arrested you and you were charged to court. People are probably placing large bets on the outcome of your trial.’
‘That’s their problem,’ he told her with a half-smile.
‘Don’t tell me you don’t care about their opinion.’
‘ Ra ra. If I had to concern myself with everything people uttered about me, I probably would have died of depression by now. I choose to surround myself with positive thoughts.’
‘Not even about the fact that most people think that you could be a fraudster, a drug dealer or worse, a ritualist?’
‘Which of those categories do you think I fall under?’ he returned, taking his eyes off the road to look at her.
‘Do you really want to know?’
‘I am curious. I know you are convinced that I am a rapist and you can afford to move a little away from the door because you feel that you can defend yourself from my unwanted attention because you have a brown belt in tae-kwan-doo, but I’d like to know what other opinion you have of me.’
‘You’re making me sound like a very judgmental person. And I am not one,’ she told him evasively.
‘You have already played prosecutor, judge and executioner in my case. You are convinced of my guilt and yet you know absolutely nothing about me. Tell me, do you feel the same way about everyone you are paid to defend or is it just me?’
There was no way she was going to let him make her feel guilty for holding a personal opinion. She wasn’t under cross-examination for crying out loud. There was just something about him that had her thinking he’d actually raped the Prosecutrix when she first read about his arrest in the Vanguard Newspaper.
‘Well?’ he prompted.
‘I am not a mouse you can corner to the wall,’ she told him defensively.’
‘So it’s just me,’ he surmised. ‘And what, if I may ask, makes you so certain that I assaulted and raped that woman?’
‘Why don’t you tell me why you did it? As your counsel I am under obligation not to divulge any secrets you reveal to me concerning your case.’
‘I did not rape her,’ he ground out. ‘I must be insane to hire a counsel who has already adjudged me guilty.’
‘Then you are freeing me from my promise?’ she asked, hope in her big brown eyes. Thank you, Lord, she added quietly.
‘I’m sure you’d like that. But you’re stuck with me, hun,’ he told her shattering the tiny ray of hope. ‘For the duration of my trial, our umbilical cords remain entwined.’
She looked at him but he was looking ahead. ‘Umbilical cord gbakwa oku,’ she muttered under her breath.
To be continued