Borrowed Light, Episode 15: Aunty Funmi

Previously: Mama Bisi confessed that the ₦40 million rebuilt sixty shops after the 2016 Balogun fire, including Mama Ngozi's. Sade, in a Cotonou hospital with burnt hands, withdrew Harbour's money so the traders could be paid, then voted to keep Ada as CEO. But a video showed Emeka tied to a chair, with a message: remove her by noon or he dies. Ada resigned. Tobe became acting CEO. At 12:03, the phone rang. The kidnapper was a woman. "You called me Aunty Funmi."

---

The Kolo Office, Yaba, 12:04 PM

Temi was smiling when she reached Ada's desk.

A small, tired smile. The first one in two days. She held out one of the bottles of water.

"They have cold ones downstairs," she said. "I thought you..."

She stopped. She had seen Ada's face.

Ada held the phone out to her. Not saying anything. Just holding it out, the way you hand someone a thing that is too hot to keep.

Temi took it. Put it to her ear.

"Hello?"

Ada watched her best friend's face change. She watched it the way you watch a building collapse on the news. Slowly, and then all at once.

"Mummy?"

The water bottle slipped out of Temi's other hand and bounced on the floor and rolled under the desk. Nobody picked it up.

"Mummy, what... what are you... no. No. Mummy, what have you done?"

Ada could hear the voice on the other end. Not the words. Just the tone. Calm. Kind. A mother explaining something simple to a child who didn't understand.

"Mummy, where is he? Where is he? Mummy!"

Temi took the phone from her ear and stared at it. The call had ended.

Then she looked up at Ada, and her face was white.

"I didn't know," she said. "Ada. I swear to God. I swear on my father's grave. I didn't know."

"Your father doesn't have a grave," said Ada. "My mother buried him under my father's name."

She hadn't meant to say it. It came out anyway, cold and flat and true.

Temi flinched like she'd been slapped.

Then she sat down on the floor of the Kolo office, right there between the desks, and put her face in her hands.

"I sent her a voice note," she whispered. "Last night. From the church in Badagry. In the toilet, so nobody would hear. I was crying. I told her everything. Daddy didn't run. Daddy was a hero. Daddy died in Emeka Okafor's car. Emeka Okafor is alive in Cotonou. I told her..." She stopped. "I told her the man who let us suffer for ten years is still alive, and he has a workshop, and a new name, and he looks well fed."

"Ibrahim was already in Cotonou yesterday morning," said Ada. "Before you sent anything."

Temi looked up slowly.

"Then how did he know where to go?"

Neither of them had an answer.

Ada's phone buzzed. A text from the same 0803 number.

Come to the house. You and Temi only. 3 PM. Bring the stick. If I see police, or that lawyer, or your mother, you can start planning another funeral. This time a real one.

---

Third Mainland Bridge, 1:50 PM

Tobe drove. He refused to let them go alone, and he refused to come inside. "I'll park at the junction. If you're not out in one hour, I call Hauwa Bello. I don't care what she says."

Ada didn't argue.

They crossed Third Mainland Bridge in the heavy heat of the afternoon. The lagoon on both sides, flat and bright as a sheet of metal. The stilt houses of Makoko floating on their black poles. Sawmill smoke rising from Ebute Metta. Twelve kilometres of concrete over the water. Somewhere along it, ten years ago, a Toyota Corolla had gone through the railing and burned.

Temi sat in the back and stared at the railings as they passed. Ada knew she was looking for the place. Every new piece of railing. Every patch of fresh paint.

"Tell me about her," said Ada. "Your mother. Not the Aunty Funmi who made moi moi. The real one."

Temi was quiet for a long time.

"Before 2016," she said, "we were rich. You know that. You came to the house in Magodo. You saw the Prado. Mummy used to have a lace business too. Not like your mum's. Imported. She sold to wives of governors. She had a driver and a cook. She went to London every summer to buy stock." She watched the water. "She was proud, Ada. Not wicked. Just proud. She had earned it. She came from nothing in Ilesa. Her father was a tailor."

"And after."

"After, Daddy disappeared. Everyone said he ran with the bank's money. The bank came and took the house. They took the cars. Her customers stopped calling. Her friends stopped calling. People she had invited to my seventh birthday party with a live band crossed the road when they saw her at Shoprite." Temi's voice was very quiet. "She sold everything. Her gold. Her lace stock. Her wedding ring. We moved to Ijesha. Two rooms. One toilet for six flats. She started frying akara at the bus stop. Every morning at five. I used to help her before school. In my school uniform. And you never knew."

Ada turned around in her seat.

"You never told me."

"You were the scholarship girl," said Temi. "Your mother sold lace at Balogun. You had nothing either. But you had nothing honestly. Your father was dead, and people felt sorry for you. My father was a thief, and people laughed at us." She looked at Ada for the first time. "Do you know what it is like to be envious of someone whose father is dead?"

Ada didn't answer. There was nothing to say.

"She never once cried," said Temi. "Not in front of us. Ten years. Not once. She just kept a list."

"A list?"

"You'll see," said Temi. "She'll show you. She shows everyone eventually."

---

Ijesha, Surulere, 3:00 PM

The compound was a two-storey block of flats with peeling yellow paint and a mango tree in the yard. Children were playing football with a plastic bottle. A woman was washing clothes in a big basin by the gate, and she looked up at Temi and smiled, and then looked at Ada and stopped smiling.

Flat 3. Ground floor. The door was open.

The first thing Ada saw was Ibrahim.

He was sitting on a plastic chair just inside the door, in his black cap, with his arms crossed. He looked up at them without expression. A thin new burn mark ran down the side of his right hand.

He did not stand up. He did not speak. He just moved his chair two inches to let them pass.

The parlour was small and very clean. Two old sofas covered in lace. A television on a wooden stand. A standing fan turning slowly from side to side. A calendar from a church, three years old, still hanging on the wall.

And on the shelf above the television, a photograph in a silver frame. A tall, smiling man in a white agbada, with a little girl with braids sitting on his shoulders.

Olumide Bakare. And Temi, aged about six.

Temi stopped in front of it.

"She turned it face down," Temi said. "In 2016. It's been face down on that shelf for ten years. I used to dust around it." She reached out and touched the glass. "She turned it up."

"Last night," said a voice from the kitchen. "After your voice note. First time in ten years I could look at his face."

Funmilayo Bakare came out of the kitchen wiping her hands on a cloth.

She was smaller than Ada remembered. Thinner. Her hair was pressed and neat, tied back. She wore a simple blue Ankara dress. Her face was the same face Ada remembered from those Saturday afternoons in Surulere: high cheekbones, a little gap in her front teeth, and eyes that always looked as if they were about to laugh.

They did not look as if they were about to laugh now.

"Adaeze," she said warmly, as if Ada had come for lunch. "Sit down. There's akara. I fried it fresh. You still like it with pap?"

"Where is my father?"

"Somewhere safe. Eating better than we ate for ten years." Aunty Funmi sat down on the sofa opposite and folded her hands in her lap. "Temi. Sit next to your friend."

Temi did not move.

"Mummy. Please. This isn't you."

"This is exactly me," said Aunty Funmi. "This is the me that ten years made. You just never saw her because I sent you to school every morning before she woke up." She looked at Ada. "You brought the stick?"

Ada did not answer.

"You brought it," said Aunty Funmi. "You're your father's child. You keep important things close." She leaned forward and picked up a piece of folded cardboard from the little glass table between them. "I want to show you something first. Then we'll talk about business."

She unfolded it and laid it on the table.

It was the back of an old church calendar. 2016. The cardboard was soft and grey with handling. And it was covered from top to bottom in neat blue handwriting. Lines and lines of it. Some crossed out. Some underlined. Dates. Amounts.

Ada read it.

The Prado. The Magodo house. The lace stock. The gold set from her mother. The wedding ring. Tolu's school, withdrawn in JSS2. Temi's university fees, paid in instalments, two years late. The landlord. The landlord again. And at the bottom, written in a different, newer pen: Ten years of my husband's name.

"I kept it," said Aunty Funmi, "because I knew that one day somebody would have to pay. I didn't know who. I prayed about it. Every night. Lord, show me who owes me." She smiled a little. "Last night, God answered with a voice note."

"My father didn't take your money," said Ada. "The men on the list did. Okoya. Ibe. Kolawole..."

"Your father was the auditor. He found the fraud. He knew my husband was being used. Did he go to the police? No. Did he come to me? No. He let my husband drive his car to his death and then he hid in Benin for ten years building coffins." Her voice did not rise. It became softer. That was worse. "And he sent me money. Do you know how much? Thirty thousand naira a month. Through a church. Thirty thousand naira for a man's life. I used it to pay for Tolu's bus fare and I said thank you to God for my husband in Houston who had not completely forgotten us."

Temi made a sound in her throat.

"So," said Aunty Funmi. "Business."

She held up one finger.

"There is a buyer for the stick. A serious one. Ibrahim has made the arrangements. The people whose names are on it will pay two hundred and fifty million naira to make sure it disappears. Not to me. To my children. To Tolu, who is twenty-two and sells phone accessories at Computer Village because he never finished school. To Temi, who lost her job because she tried to steal your company to pay her debts." She looked at her daughter with a love so naked it was hard to watch. "Two hundred and fifty million. Ten years. That's what my husband was worth. I've done the arithmetic."

A second finger.

"Tonight, eleven o'clock, you hand the stick to the buyer. Not to me. To him. With your own hand. Then your father walks to you. Nobody gets hurt."

"And if I don't?"

Aunty Funmi didn't answer. She looked toward the door, where Ibrahim sat with his arms crossed. Ibrahim looked at nothing.

"Why did you make me resign?" Ada asked. "What does Kolo have to do with any of this?"

Aunty Funmi tilted her head.

"Nothing," she said. "That was for me."

"For you?"

"Temi was there from the beginning, Adaeze. She sat in your one room in Yaba with you every night for a year. She named it. Did you know that? Kolo. Like the clay pot every Yoruba child saves coins in. That was her idea." Aunty Funmi's mouth tightened. "Then you went on the cover of TechCabal. Alone. You were the founder. Temi was the friend who helped." She shrugged. "I wanted to see what it felt like for you. To lose the thing with your name on it. That's all. A small thing. A mother's small thing."

Ada looked at Temi.

Temi was staring at the floor. She did not deny it. She did not confirm it. She just stared at the floor.

"Where is the exchange?" said Ada.

"Third Mainland Bridge," said Aunty Funmi. "The Oworonshoki end. Where the railing was replaced in 2016. Ibrahim knows the exact place." She stood up and smoothed her dress. "I want the man who let my husband burn to stand on the spot where it happened. I want him to stand there and watch his daughter pay."

She held out her hand.

"Temi's phone, please. The one with the files. I know you made copies. I'm not a fool."

Temi took it out of her pocket. Handed it to her mother without a word.

Aunty Funmi put it on the floor and stood on it with her heel until the screen cracked into a spider's web. Then she bent and picked up the pieces and dropped them into a bucket of water by the kitchen door.

"Now," she said. "Eat some akara before you go. It's getting cold."

Nobody ate the akara.

But as Ada stood to leave, Aunty Funmi said one more thing. Gently. Almost as an afterthought.

"He made a video for you. Your father. This morning. Ibrahim recorded it."

She held out her own phone and pressed play.

Emeka, in the same white plastic chair. The cut over his eye cleaned now. Someone had given him a clean shirt.

"Olumide Bakare," he said into the camera, slowly, "was not a thief. He was not a coward. He was the bravest man I ever knew. He died in my place. I let his family believe a lie for ten years because I was afraid. I am sorry. Funmi, I am sorry." He paused. He looked down. Then he looked up again, and this time he was looking for someone else. "Adaeze. Give them the stick. Please. It's not worth it. It was never worth it. Give it to them."

The video ended.

Ada walked out past Ibrahim. He didn't look at her.

Temi stayed. At the door, Ada turned back.

Temi was standing in the middle of the small clean parlour, between her mother and her father's photograph, and she would not meet Ada's eyes.

"I'm staying with her," she said. "Somebody has to."

---

Kolo Office, Yaba, 4:40 PM

The office was loud.

At 2:11 PM, the settlement account had come back to life. Four hundred and twelve million naira, released by the EFCC. Tobe had pushed the withdrawal button for every frozen account at once, and the system had held. Three thousand four hundred traders had their money back.

The support girls had their headphones on, answering calls from Balogun, Oshodi, Mile 12. Somebody had brought puff-puff. Somebody had turned the music back on. Through Tobe's laptop speaker, a voice note was playing on loop, sent from Mama Ngozi's shop: thirty women singing a church song in Igbo and banging on a metal table.

It should have been the best day of Kolo's life.

Ada sat in the glass meeting room with the door closed and the blinds down. Tobe sat opposite. Between them on the table, a laptop with the USB plugged into it.

"It's done," said Tobe. "Full copy. Two copies. One on this encrypted drive." He held up a small silver stick. "One on a server in Frankfurt that nobody but you and me knows exists. Even if they search you tonight, even if they take everything, the files survive."

"And if they check the original? To see if it's been copied?"

"There's no way to tell from the stick itself. Not unless whoever made the files set a trap. And this was made in 2016 on a bank computer by an auditor." Tobe hesitated. "Unless your father was smarter than he looks."

"He was," said Ada. "He hid for ten years."

Her phone buzzed. Uche.

FYI. Federal High Court granted Kolawole bail this afternoon. ₦50m, two sureties. He walked out at 3:15. I don't like the timing. Call me.

Ada read it. Put the phone face down.

She didn't have room in her head for Kolawole. Not today.

"Are you going to call Hauwa Bello?" Tobe asked.

"No."

"Ada..."

"You heard her. Police and he dies. You saw the video." She stood up. "I'm going to the bridge. I'm going to give them the stick. My father walks home. Then, tomorrow, we take the copy to the EFCC, and the whole thing goes public, and Aunty Funmi's buyer loses his money, and that's his problem."

"And Aunty Funmi?"

Ada didn't answer.

"And Temi?" said Tobe more quietly.

Ada still didn't answer.

Tobe looked at his phone for a long time. Then he put it in his pocket and said nothing more.

Mama Bisi was waiting outside the meeting room when Ada came out. She had not gone home. She had been sitting on a plastic chair by the water dispenser for four hours.

"I am calling a meeting of the cooperative on Saturday," she said. "All three hundred. I am going to stand up and tell them about the forty million. All of it." She held Ada's hand in both of hers. "Whatever they decide to do to me, I will accept."

"They'll forgive you," said Ada.

"Maybe," said Mama Bisi. "Maybe not. That's not the point. The point is I tell them."

---

Yaba, 9:52 PM

Ada was in the car outside her building when Sade called.

Tobe was in the driver's seat. Mama Ngozi was in the back. She had refused to stay at home. "I buried that man once," she had said, tying her headtie with sharp, angry movements. "I will not sit in a room while he dies a second time." Nobody had been brave enough to argue.

Ada put the call on speaker.

"Adaeze." Sade's voice sounded stronger. "The doctors say I can travel on Friday. Tell me what's happening."

Ada told her. All of it. The call. The house in Ijesha. The list on the calendar. The buyer. The bridge at eleven.

When she said the name Funmilayo Bakare, the line went completely silent.

"Sade?"

"Say that again," Sade said. "Who has your father?"

"Temi's mother. Funmi Bakare. Ibrahim's working for her. He's been sitting in her house like a guard dog."

Silence again. So long Ada thought the call had dropped.

Then Sade spoke, and her voice had changed completely. It was the voice of someone standing at the edge of something very high.

"Adaeze. I told you yesterday I called the wrong people in March 2016. When Sikirat told me what your father was planning."

"I know. You called your brother."

"I called my brother. And my brother made one phone call. Just one. He didn't call the senator. He didn't call a hit man. He called his driver." A breath, shaking. "A young man. Twenty-two years old. Quiet. Loyal. He'd do anything for Kola, because Kola paid his mother's hospital bills in Kano. Kola told him: the auditor's car will be on Third Mainland at midnight. A grey Corolla. Take the water tanker from the depot at Oworonshoki. Make it look like an accident."

In the back seat, Mama Ngozi had stopped breathing.

"Ibrahim drove the tanker," said Sade. "Ibrahim pushed that car through the railing. He thought he was killing your father. He killed Olumide Bakare instead." Her voice broke. "And now he is sleeping in the widow's parlour. Eating her akara. Calling her Mummy, I'm sure. She doesn't know. She can't know. Nobody would do that if they knew."

Ada stared through the windscreen at the dark street.

"Then why?" she whispered. "Why would he go to her? Why would he help her?"

"I don't know," said Sade. "Guilt. Madness. A plan of his own. I don't know what is inside that man. I never did. Nobody ever did."

The clock on the dashboard said 10:01.

Ada hung up and dialled Temi.

The number you are trying to call is switched off.

Of course it was. It was in a bucket of water in Ijesha.

She dialled the 0803 number. Aunty Funmi.

The number you are trying to call is not reachable at the moment.

"Drive," she said to Tobe.

"Ada..."

"Drive. Temi is in a car right now with the man who killed her father. Her mother is in that car. My father is in that car. And in one hour, he is going to drive them all onto Third Mainland Bridge, to the exact spot where he did it the first time."

Tobe started the engine.

In the back, Mama Ngozi took her rosary out of her handbag and began to pray in Igbo, very fast and very low.

---

To be continued in Episode 16.