"Are you the one they call Enugu Tintin?" she gasped, her fingers trembling around a beaded purse.
Before she could finish, the steel bulkhead exploded inward. Chief Pocket Nwosu stood there, flanked by three thugs with machetes. "You see," Pocket growled, "I don't care about songs or artifacts. I care about copper and bronze. Give me the tape, Tintin, or I’ll bury you in the coal tailings."
"Tintin!" Phono wheezed. "Pocket didn't take the tape. He was hired muscle. The real thief is a ghost. A white woman. They call her 'The Albino Marmoset.' She wears a mask of a laughing monkey. She moves through the city's underground drainage tunnels." enugu tintin
Her father, the late Chief Mbadinuju Eze, was a legendary highlife musician from the 1970s. Months before his death, he had recorded his final, unreleased song—a haunting melody titled “The Ebony Coal.” It was said to contain the coordinates of a secret, illegal mine his band had discovered, a cavern filled not just with coal, but with ancient, pre-colonial bronze artifacts.
It began on a Tuesday, during a torrential downpour that turned Ogui Road into a red river. Tintin was nursing a warm Star Lager at the "Coal Camp Buka" when a woman in a dripping, expensive agbada collapsed into the chair opposite him. "Are you the one they call Enugu Tintin
The woman paled further. "That wasn't me. That was Pocket, acting on his own. He wanted the bronze artifacts to melt down for foreign buyers."
Inside was a makeshift studio. Reel-to-reel tapes lined the walls. And in the center, on a vintage Revox machine, spooled “The Ebony Coal.” But the Albino Marmoset was there. She was not a ghost. She was a pale, gaunt woman in a raincoat, her monkey mask resting beside her as she spliced tape. "You see," Pocket growled, "I don't care about
Tintin took the button, drew it in his notepad, and smiled. "Madam, the beautiful game just got ugly."