JIJI NDOGO: Day Sophia said, ‘We need to talk’

Granted, the article was only a few inches of print hidden deep between the “Obituaries” and “Want” ads, but that wasn’t unusual. I am a cop. I’m expected to solve crimes.

However, my remote shot at fame isn’t sitting too well with my wife and colleague Sgt Sophia, who thinks I’ve only been playing dumb all along. At first, it was merely a bit of nagging here and there and small innuendoes dropped within otherwise normal conversations.

“Nyaguthii, the gossip,” Sophia would say. “You know her, right? She says there’s been lots of dead rats in her compound. Yet she hasn’t poisoned them. Maybe this is a mystery right up your alley, don’t you think, Mr Detective?”

Mostly, I’ve been ignoring her jabs. Now, she wants a proper, serious, sit-down.

“Makini,” she says, her face like Justice Philomena Mwilu’s while passing a sentence, “we seriously need to talk. I feel like I don’t know my husband anymore.”

“Why?” I ask, because I sincerely don’t know. “I’m still the same Makini.”

“You might be now, but it wasn’t the old Makini reading clues better than a DCI detective at a crime scene.”

Now that I’m clued in, I say, “Why is this still bothering you? Are you still hung up on the story in the paper?”

“No, silly. You have some serious crime-solving skills. What are you doing in Jiji Ndogo pretending to be just another run-of-the-mill village cop?”

I pretend to busy myself with some paperwork. “You heard what Detective Gundua said. I got lucky this one time.”

She squints at me. Then she grabs the pen out of my hand. “Makini, you and I and Gundua, we all know that had nothing to do with luck. You know why I am here. Why are you here?”

She’s referencing a certain recent revelation that she, Sgt Sophia, ended up in Jiji Ndogo because she was in the DCI Witness Protection Programme. Come to think of it, her question does make sense.

“I was transferred here from Nakuru,” I say. “There’s no mystery to it. I was brought here because of ‘excess staff’ in the Nakuru precinct. But we all know I was deemed too useless for the metro police.”

Sophia squints some more. “Metro police? What’s that?”

“Metro police,” I say seriously. “It means a large city.”

Sophia bursts out laughing. “You mean metropolis?”

I take offence. “Isn’t that what I just said? You’re only smashing the two words together.”

“Jesus Christ!” She slaps her forehead. “A large city is called a metropolis. It has nothing to do with its police.

“See? This is what I’m talking about, man. The Makini I know can’t tell between ‘principal’ and ‘principle’. Or ‘stationary’ and ‘stationery’. Then all of a sudden, you’re solving murder cases? You’re hiding something from me, and as your colleague and wife, I don’t appreciate it.”

I give it a think for a second. “Uhm… Nope. Nothing hiding here. Oh, wait! I bet you didn’t know I can lick the tip of my nose. You want to see it?”

Sophia slams shut the Occurrence Book on the desk and walks towards the door. “Seems to me you won’t take this seriously. Until you do, don’t come home.”

“What do you mean by that?”

“I mean, find another place to crash until you decide to be honest with me.”