The Criminal Investigation Department, CID, building had a new coat of sun-yellow paint, but it could not conceal its age. Seven stories high, it had monotonous rows of old style, dusty louver windows with occasional modernized plate glass sliders.

A sentry box and armed guard stood to the left of the front security gate and everyone including senior officers underwent an immediate pat down on entry to the premises. From there, it was on to the lobby of the building accommodating an assortment of people on all kinds of business.

Headed to the second floor, Emma went up the steps, which were so worn they slanted downward. Emma was a true novice with the Ghana Police Service in general and the CID in particular. Twenty-six, she had graduated from the police academy only four months before. She had always dreamed of being a homicide detective. That was what her late father had been. The atmosphere in Daddy’s office milling with detectives, the stacks of folders piled high on desks, the capture of suspects and the questioning of witnesses, a glimpse into this case or that—as a girl, Emma had taken it all in by some unconscious process of osmosis infused with fascination.

“Daddy, how did you catch the bad man?” she would ask him, sitting on his knee.

He had never waved her away with that well-known adult dismissiveness toward a child: “You wouldn’t understand. I’ll tell you when you grow up.” He would explain it all to her in a way that made sense. And when she nodded with understanding and satisfaction, he smiled and gave her a kiss on her forehead. She would laugh and run off to play.

Daddy had been her hero—he still was. His sudden death at the age of only fifty-five had left the two women in his life—Emma and her mother—bereft. He had never taken his hypertension seriously enough. One morning at work, he collapsed—dead almost instantly from an engulfing hemorrhage of the brain.

On graduation, Constable Emma Djan quickly discovered she would be assigned a department at the discretion of the GPS alone. New recruits didn’t get to indicate their preferences, if they had any. Emma’s fervent hope she would join Homicide didn’t materialize: her station was to be the Commercial Crimes Unit (CCU). She and fourteen other officers investigated the acquisition of land or homes through fraudulent transactions, trespass, document forgery, and so on. Land grabs and property theft were rampant in Ghana. Getting to the bottom of it was tedious, mind-numbing work. Most of the cases remained open for months to years.

Emma’s heart was not in it. She wasn’t under any illusion that homicide investigations didn’t involve monotonous paperwork, but the motives behind commercial crimes didn’t grab her the way murder did.

She pushed the CCU door open and went in with a flat, unenthusiastic feeling that meant she would rather be somewhere else. She was more than on time. Only two other workers were already there. The rest would straggle in over the next hour or two. Stolen property wasn’t going anywhere. There was no pressure to get to a crime scene before evidence was destroyed.