Borrowed Light, Episode 10: Green Shutters

Previously: An empty board seat gave Ada one chance to block Sade's warrant, and she filled it with Mama Bisi, chairwoman of the Balogun Traders' Cooperative. Sikirat remembered a woman with glasses on a gold chain counting the market's money in 2019. Inside the EFCC, Kolawole told Temi everything: Sade built Harbour Fund One with the stolen money, and the green ledger is hidden at their father's house with the green shutters. Then Temi was taken. At 11:02 PM, her hoodie appeared on the railing of Third Mainland Bridge.

---

Hour 41. Yaba, 11:58 PM

Nobody in the room was allowed to call the police. That was the first thing Uche said, and she said it in a voice that made even Mama Ngozi go quiet.

"Not yet," she said. "Sade has friends in every station from here to Badagry. The moment a report is filed, she'll know. And then Temi becomes a problem she needs to get rid of, instead of a card she's holding." She looked at Ada. "Right now Temi is leverage. Leverage is alive. We keep her alive by keeping her useful to Sade until we know where she is."

"She sent one word," Ada said. "Greenshutters."

"Kolawole's house," Tobe said. "Old Ikoyi. Their father's house. The one in Sade's photograph."

"It's sealed," Uche said. "EFCC put a seal on it the day he was arrested. Nobody's supposed to be in there."

"Nobody's supposed to be locking women in the boys' quarters either," said a quiet voice from the bed.

Sikirat.

Everybody turned.

She had not said a word since the photo arrived. She had been sitting very still, with Mama Ngozi's arm around her shoulders, staring at the wall. Now she was looking at Ada with something in her eyes that had not been there before. Not fear. Something harder.

"That is where he would put her," Sikirat said. "Because nobody looks there. I know. I was there seven years and nobody looked." She stood up. "And I know the house. Every door. Every window. Every key."

---

Hour 40. A Bukka in Obalende, 1:10 AM

Dapo was already there when Ada arrived, sitting alone at a plastic table under a single fluorescent tube, an untouched plate of amala and gbegiri in front of him.

He looked terrible. Tie gone. Shirt wrinkled. Eyes red.

Ada had messaged him at 12:15 AM: Temi is missing. I think you know who took her. If you are a human being, meet me.

He had replied in four minutes.

"I didn't know," he said before she sat down. "About the girl. I swear I didn't know about that."

"But you knew about the rest."

He was quiet for a long time. The bukka woman was scraping a pot behind the counter. A generator coughed somewhere in the dark.

"I've worked for Mrs Adeyemi-Cole for four years," he said finally. "I joined because she was the only investor in Lagos who seemed to actually believe in Nigerian founders. Not just Lagos boys who went to Stanford. Market traders. Mechanics. Girls from Yaba with laptops." He laughed, without humour. "I believed her speeches. I printed one and put it on my wall."

"And then?"

"And then I noticed things. Small things. Fund One's capital records are the only ones I've never been allowed to see. Every other fund, I have full access. Fund One, she keeps personally." He rubbed his eyes. "When she made me investigate the forged agreement, I thought she was protecting you. Then she made me sit on it. Then she visited her brother twice and came back in a good mood. And then the warrant notice." He looked up. "She wrote clause 3.4 herself, Ada. In August. Weeks before you pitched. I saw the draft history. She knew about your CTO before you did."

Ada felt the floor tilt under her plastic chair.

"Help me," she said. "Not with words. With something real."

Dapo looked at the amala going cold on his plate.

"She keeps a car parked outside her father's house," he said slowly. "Since her brother's arrest. A black jeep. Her driver, Ibrahim, used to be Kolawole's. He switched sides the day of the arrest. He sleeps in the jeep most nights." He hesitated. "And I know the EFCC case officer on Kolawole's file. Her name is Hauwa Bello. She's tough. And she's not on anybody's payroll. I checked."

"Why are you telling me this?"

"Because that speech is still on my wall," Dapo said. "And I'd like to be able to look at it again."

---

Hour 38. Old Ikoyi, 3:20 AM

Lagos is never quiet. But Old Ikoyi at 3 AM comes close.

No danfos. No hawkers. Just the hum of a hundred generators behind a hundred high walls, crickets in the bougainvillea, and somewhere far away, a dog barking at nothing.

They did not use the front gate.

Sikirat led them down a narrow side street, barely wide enough for one car, that ran behind the row of mansions. Ada behind her. Tobe behind Ada, with a torch he was not allowed to switch on. Mama Ngozi had wanted to come. Ada had made her stay in Yaba by the phone, and the argument had been loud enough to wake the whole compound.

The back wall of the house with green shutters was just as tall as the front. But there was a small steel door in it, painted the same cream as the wall, almost invisible in the dark. A service door. The kind used by gardeners and gas delivery men.

Sikirat walked straight past it to the third flowerpot along the wall. A big terracotta pot with a dying hibiscus. She tilted it with both hands.

Underneath, pressed into the dirt, was a key.

"Seven years," Sikirat whispered. "I stole it from the gardener's ring in my first year. I hid it here. Every night I told myself, tomorrow I will use it. Tomorrow." Her hand was shaking as she picked it up. "Every morning I was too afraid."

She put the key in the lock.

It turned.

---

The compound was dark. The fountain was off. The Rottweilers were gone, taken by the EFCC or by somebody else. An official seal was pasted across the main door of the house in red and white: PROPERTY UNDER INVESTIGATION. DO NOT ENTER.

Over by the front gate, the black jeep sat with its windows fogged. Inside, a dark shape was slumped in the driver's seat.

Ibrahim. Asleep.

Sikirat moved across the garden without a sound, barefoot, the way she had moved through this compound for seven years. She went straight to the boys' quarters at the side. The small door. The same door she had stepped out of two weeks ago.

It was padlocked from the outside. A new padlock. Shiny.

Tobe knelt. He had brought a small bag of tools that he had refused to explain. It took him ninety seconds.

The padlock dropped into his hand.

Ada pushed the door open.

The room was tiny. A foam mattress on the floor. A bucket in the corner. A window with burglary bars, painted shut. And on the mattress, curled into a ball in a borrowed T-shirt, her short uneven hair sticking up, her wrists marked red where something had been tied and then taken off,

Temi.

She sat up so fast she hit her head on the wall.

"Ada?"

Ada did not say anything. She just crossed the room and held her. Hard. The way you hold someone you have been angry at for weeks and suddenly realise you were also afraid for, every single minute.

Temi was shaking.

"I'm fine," she kept saying into Ada's shoulder. "I'm fine. He didn't hurt me. He just kept saying, madam said wait. Madam said wait. Madam said wait."

"We're going," Ada said. "Now."

"No. Wait." Temi pulled back. Her eyes were wild. "The book. Ada, the green book. He said it's here. Kolawole said it's here."

---

"The study," Sikirat said.

They were standing outside the back door of the main house. The EFCC seal was only on the front. The back door was a kitchen door, and Sikirat had a key for that too. Of course she did.

"On Saturdays," she whispered, "after counting, the woman always went into the old man's study. The father's study. Nobody used it. He died in 2014. But she went in with the book, and came out without it." She looked at Ada. "I never saw where she put it. But I cleaned that room every week for seven years. There is one floorboard by the window that makes a different noise."

The study smelled of dust and old cigars and something sweet, like forgotten perfume. Bookshelves floor to ceiling. A heavy wooden desk. On the wall, a faded portrait of a stern man in a three-piece suit, with a girl and a boy standing on either side of his chair.

The girl wore glasses. Even at twelve.

Sikirat crossed to the window and pressed her bare foot down on the boards, one by one. Thud. Thud. Thud.

Hollow.

Tobe was already on his knees with a flat screwdriver.

The board lifted. Underneath, in a space between the joists, wrapped in a supermarket nylon bag against the damp, was a thick hardcover ledger.

Green. Faded. Its spine cracked from use.

Ada lifted it out with both hands like it might burn her.

She opened it to the first page.

The handwriting was neat, slanted, elegant. A woman's hand.

Fund One. Capital Contributions. November 2019.

And below it, line after line after line, in the same elegant hand:

Balogun Coop (via K.A.) ₦4,200,000.
Balogun Coop (via K.A.) ₦3,850,000.
Oshodi Ajo (via K.A.) ₦5,100,000.

And at the bottom of the page, totalled and underlined twice:

₦62,400,000. Mgmt fee to F.A-C: 60%.

---

The kitchen light came on.

They all froze.

Ibrahim was standing in the doorway with a torch in one hand and a phone in the other. His black cap was pushed back. He was breathing hard, like he had run from the jeep.

For a long, terrible moment, nobody moved.

Then Ibrahim looked at the green book in Ada's hands. He looked at Sikirat. Something crossed his face that Ada could not read.

"Mama Sikirat," he said quietly.

"Ibrahim," she said.

"You used to give me food," he said. "When oga didn't pay me. You used to save me rice in a nylon."

"I remember."

He looked at the phone in his hand. Ada could see the screen from where she stood. A contact was open. Madam. His thumb was on the call button.

Then, slowly, from the front of the compound, came a sound that made all of them turn.

Sirens.

Not one. Several. Getting closer.

Blue lights flickered across the ceiling of the old man's study.

"I called them," said a voice behind Ibrahim. Dapo stepped into the kitchen light, pale, his phone in his hand. "Officer Hauwa Bello. EFCC. I told her someone had broken an EFCC seal on Kolawole Adebayo's property and was holding a witness inside." He looked at Ibrahim. "Which is true."

Ibrahim stared at him.

Then he dropped the phone on the kitchen floor, turned, and ran into the dark garden toward the front gate, toward the sirens, toward wherever a man like him runs when he has run out of masters.

---

Hour 0. Harbour Capital, Tuesday, 10:00 AM

Mama Bisi arrived at Harbour Capital in a new aso oke, deep wine with gold threads, and a gele so tall and so sharp it had to tilt to fit through the boardroom door.

She sat down in the third chair. She placed her handbag on the glass table. She folded her hands on top of it.

Across from her, at the head of the table, sat Folasade Adeyemi-Cole.

She looked exactly the same as always. Silver locs. Straight back. Glasses on their gold chain. If she had heard what happened at her father's house at 4 AM, nothing on her face said so.

"Good morning, Madam Chairwoman," she said pleasantly. "Welcome to the board. I'm afraid you won't be on it for very long."

"Good morning," Mama Bisi said. "We shall see."

Uche sat behind Ada with three files. Tobe was by the door. Temi sat in the corner in a borrowed blouse, with fresh bandages on her wrists. She had refused to go to the hospital until after the vote.

Dapo was not in his usual seat beside Sade.

He was standing by the window. And Sade had noticed.

"Shall we?" Sade said. "The only item on the agenda is the ratification of Kayode-Bello Holdings' exercise of its warrant under clause 12. I vote in favour."

"Against," Ada said.

Every head turned to the third chair.

Mama Bisi did not vote.

Instead, she opened her handbag and took out a thick green ledger, and laid it on the glass table between them, and opened it to the first page.

"Before I vote," she said, "I want to read something. I am a market woman. I cannot read English as fast as you. So please be patient."

And she read. Slowly. Line by line. Every name. Every amount. Balogun Coop. Oshodi Ajo. Mile 12 Traders. Via K.A. Her finger moving under each line like a schoolgirl's.

Halfway down, she stopped.

"Balogun Coop. Four million, two hundred thousand naira," she read. "November 2019." She looked up. "I know this money. It was the money I saved for my daughter's wedding. Sikirat said she would keep it safe for me." Her voice did not rise. That was what made the room go so cold. "My daughter married in a borrowed dress."

She turned to the bottom of the page.

"Management fee to F.A-C. Sixty percent," she read. She put her finger on the initials. Then she looked across the table. "F.A-C. Is that you, madam?"

Sade did not answer.

For the first time since Ada had met her, Folasade Adeyemi-Cole did not have a sentence ready.

"I vote against," Mama Bisi said. And closed the book.

"The warrant is not ratified," Uche said from behind Ada, very clearly, for the minutes. "Two votes to one."

The door opened.

A woman in a dark blue suit stepped in, with two men behind her. She was small and sharp-eyed and did not smile.

"Mrs Folasade Adeyemi-Cole," she said. "My name is Hauwa Bello, Economic and Financial Crimes Commission. You are invited to accompany us to assist with investigations into Harbour Capital Fund One. Now, please."

Sade stood up slowly.

She smoothed her skirt. She took off her glasses and let them hang on their gold chain. She looked at Ada down the length of the table.

"You've won a vote, Miss Okafor," she said softly. "Congratulations. Now go and look at your company's bank account."

Then she walked out between the officers without looking back.

---

Kolo Office, Yaba, 2:40 PM

Tobe was the one who found it.

He was staring at the screen when Ada came back from Harbour. He did not turn around.

"They froze it," he said.

"Froze what?"

"Everything Harbour sent us. The ₦150 million. EFCC put a hold on it at 1:15 PM. Proceeds of a fund under investigation." He finally turned. "And Ada. Because the money landed in the same settlement account as the traders' savings, the bank froze the whole account while they sort out which naira is which."

Ada went cold from the top of her head to her feet.

"The traders' money is frozen."

"All of it. Four hundred and twelve million." He swallowed. "Withdrawals are failing. The agents in Balogun have been getting declined since two o'clock."

As if it had been waiting for him to say it, Ada's phone began to ring. Then the office line. Then Tobe's phone. Then the office line again.

Ada looked at her screen. Seven missed calls. Mama Bisi. Mama Ngozi. Three agents. Two numbers she did not know.

And one unread email, sitting quietly at the top of her inbox, from a law firm she had never heard of.

Re: Kolawole Adebayo. Request for meeting. Strictly confidential.

She opened it. It was short.

Dear Miss Okafor, our client Mr Kolawole Adebayo requests a private meeting with you at the EFCC Lagos Directorate at your earliest convenience. He has instructed us to tell you only this: he has information regarding the death of your father, the late Mr Emeka Okafor, formerly of Crestline Bank, Marina branch, in March 2016.

Ada read it twice.

Formerly of Crestline Bank.

Her father had never worked at a bank. Her father was a civil servant. Her mother had told her that her whole life.

Hadn't she?

The phone was still ringing in her hand. Mummy.

Ada stared at the name on the screen and, for the first time in her life, did not know whether she wanted to hear what her mother was going to say.

---

To be continued in Episode 11.