The explosion brought him back to reality. He was already half asleep when the sound interrupted the peace of the night. It was the sound of a bomb explosion.Muhammad heard footsteps heading towards his front door. He brought out his pistol with adrenaline already at work. He left the bedroom and within some seconds he was standing beside the front door with his pistol ready to unleash hell.Muhammad heard someone pounding on the door and calling out to him. Muhammad recognized the voice; it was the officer in charge of his surveillance team. He concealed his weapon and opened the door. The officer was already speaking before the door was completely open.“Sir, the National Assembly had just been hit by a bomb explosion. All field officers had been ordered to report to the site of the explosion ASAP. I just wanted to let you know that we’ll be gone for some few hours,” the officer said breathlessly.“Good luck officer,” Muhammad replied.“In case anything goes wrong or i
The First One was sitting at the top of one of the tallest buildings in Abuja and clutching a pair of binoculars as he watched the drama unfolding at the national assembly.The whole place was overflowing with various law enforcement agencies and health organizations. The Air Force was patrolling the sky and ambulances were all over the national assembly.The First One smiled. Before tonight, the fools might have bet their lives that the national assembly was a fortress. The fact remains no security system was impenetrable.Planting the bomb inside the national assembly had been a child’s play. Words and diplomacy could get you what money couldn’t buy. It was just a matter of how good you were in the art of using them as a weapon.It was now 8:53pm. Any moment the final piece of puzzle will be completed with the arrival of Officer Muhammad. Intuition was his indispensable weapon and his intuition tell him Officer Muhammad was smart enough to smell the real deal and separate
When Muhammad walked into the reception hall of the hospital, the nurse behind the counter was terrified when she spotted his shotgun. Muhammad showed the nurse his ID card and she directed him to Room 1212 where Maryam was recuperating on the 12th floor of the building. Muhammad boarded one of the elevators in the reception hall.When Muhammad arrived at the 12th floor, he searched for Room 1212 in the long corridor which had blinding lights. The nurse at the counter had told him Room 1212 was the last room on the left wing of the floor. When Muhammad got to Room 1210, he noticed that the rest of the corridor leading to the remaining rooms at the left wing was dark.Muhammad slowly approached the dark end of the corridor with his shotgun aimed ahead as he searched the walls for light switches that he never found.Muhammad brought out his cell phone and switched on its flashlight. He was now holding the phone with his left hand and the shotgun with his right. The tag on the
The water was bright, you could drop a pin in it and still find it. The brightness of the moon illuminated the beauty of the water. Nature was the most beautiful thing on earth. He had both his legs dipped inside the water. The water was constantly warm throughout the year. Muhammad was sitting at the edge of the Wikki spring at Yankari Game Reserve. The time was 1:30am and the place was just the way he loved it, quiet and deserted. This was the third time in the course of his life that he was visiting the Yankari Game Reserve in Bauchi State. He always visited the Wikki spring at odd hours because he needed privacy and the only company he craved was that of nature. He had been hospitalized for seven weeks. He spent the first four weeks unconscious at the hospital. Prior to the case of The First One he had never been shot or hospitalized in his whole life but during the case, he had been hospitalized twice within a month. Just like the first time Muhammad had been hospitalize
It was 9:30 pm and she couldn’t understand why the traffic was outrageous tonight. She recalled that people went shopping on Friday nights. This was the reality of Abuja, the Federal Capital Territory (FCT) of Nigeria. Most of the workers who couldn’t afford living within the city resided on the outskirts of town. Janet Adeniran was a banker and a widow with two children. She was 41 years old and well paid because she was an accountant at one of the leading banks in the country. She was blessed with a boy and girl. Caroline was the youngest and a dazzling beauty. Kevin was studying Civil Engineering at Federal University of Technology (FUT) Minna. Janet Adeniran was the daughter of a Nigerian diplomat who had gone to work in Ethiopia and ended up marrying her mother, an Ethiopian. Janet was widowed during a bank robbery at the bank where her husband worked. Janet will be arriving home soon and the digital clock in her car told her the time was 10:18pm. She was comp
The moment he stepped out of his SUV, the first breath he took in told him the atmosphere around the house had recently been visited by death. There were more than half a dozen police cars parked around the Adeniran’s residence and the forensic team were already turning the house upside down looking for any clues left behind. He knew the corpse of Caroline Adeniran was still lying where her mother had found it, because he had phoned ahead instructing the lead inspector at the murder scene to leave the body the way it had been found.Officer Muhammad Guni of the States Security Service (SSS) shut the door of his car and dragged his 6ft2 inch stature towards the entrance of the house. Muhammad was dark in complexion and built like a boxer with a bearded square face, protruding eyes and an upturned nose. He was a widower who had lost his wife to cancer five years ago. He was 40 years old and an indigene of Niger State. All he had after the death of his wife was his job and fami
It was now three weeks after the murder of Caroline and he had been staring up at the ceiling in his office for hours. Muhammad was seated behind his desk with his brain and mind at work. It was a Monday morning. He had gone back to the Adeniran’s residence a day after Caroline was murdered. Luckily, he had met Caroline’s brother. He also met both Mrs. Adeniran’s parents and the parents of the late Mr. Adeniran. He had personally questioned them but ended up leaving the house with nothing substantial.From what he had seen and found out about Caroline’s family, none of them had anything to do with her death, either directly or indirectly. Time was his enemy because the longer he took in solving the case, the more the possibility of another family experiencing what the Adenirans are currently going through. Caroline’s death was the first murder The First One has committed since he took over the case. Muhammad stood up; he needed to visit the previous crime scenes. He needed
The moment Muhammad stepped into the forensic department, he saw the head of the department shutting the door of his office. Muhammad knew he was lucky because Mr. Jackson Olabode was a very busy man. “One day you’ll drop dead and the autopsy result will be workaholism,” Muhammad said standing behind Jackson.“Better than dying by a bomb or a bullet to the head,” Jackson replied with a smile. Jackson was a smallish man. At the age of 55 he had never been married and most people believe he was a bachelor for life. Jackson was simply a careerist.Muhammad had first met Jackson at the academy where he had delivered a lecture on forensic pathology. Unlike the other officers, Muhammad had a good relationship with Jackson because the elderly man had a natural fondness for him.“I need to see the car in which the first victim was found,” Muhammad said.“I personally delivered my report on the first victim to your department. Everything you need is in that report,” Jackson repl