Borrowed Light, Episode 6: Tea in Old Ikoyi
Ada walks into Kolawole's house with a laptop full of traps. Her mother is calmly drinking tea. And someone has been hidden in that house for seven years.
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Previously: Tobe confessed: Kolawole threatened his mother's house in Enugu, so he gave up a password. Ada made him build a trap, a fake Kolo for K. to walk into. Then Mama Ngozi vanished from Balogun in a black jeep, and Kolawole called from her phone: come alone to Old Ikoyi, and bring the laptop.
A Keke on Lewis Street, 12:31 PM
"It's not ready," Tobe said on the phone. "Ada, I said Thursday NIGHT. It's half built."
"Then finish it in the next forty minutes."
"That's not how code works!"
"That's how mothers work." The keke hit a pothole and her teeth knocked together. "When I open that laptop in his house, whatever he logs into must be your fake Kolo. Not the real one. If he touches the real one, everything is finished. The traders, the deal, all of it."
Silence. Then the furious clatter of his keyboard.
"Leave the laptop connected to your hotspot," he said. "Don't close the lid. Whatever happens, don't let it sleep."
Old Ikoyi, 1:20 PM
The gate was taller than her whole building in Yaba.
Black iron, gold tips, a camera on each pillar. Behind it, a white house with green shutters sat in a garden so quiet you could forget that Lagos existed. Bougainvillea. A fountain. Two Rottweilers lying in the shade like expensive furniture.
Two houses down, Ada noticed a blue gate with a brass plaque. Adeyemi-Cole.
She did not have time to think about what that meant.
The man in the black cap opened the gate. He searched her bag. He took her phone. He left the laptop.
"He wants that," was all he said.
They were in the sitting room. Cream leather sofas. A chandelier like frozen rain. On the wall, a huge framed photo of Kolawole shaking hands with a former governor.
And under the photo, on a cream sofa, in her best blue lace, holding a china cup with both hands, sat Mama Ngozi.
She looked up when Ada came in.
She did not look frightened. She looked like a woman at a christening, waiting for the rice.
"Ada," she said. "You came quickly. Good."
"Mummy, are you..."
"I am fine. Sit down. The tea is not bad."
Kolawole sat across from her in a white kaftan, prayer beads in his fingers, legs crossed. He smiled at Ada like a host welcoming a niece.
"Please," he said. "Sit."
Ada sat. She put the laptop on the glass table between them and opened it. The screen glowed. The little hotspot icon showed one bar.
"Let me save us time," Kolawole said. "Miss Bakare's forty-seven point five percent already belongs to Kayode-Bello Holdings. On Friday, Harbour pays you one hundred and fifty million naira. On Saturday, you will sign your own shares to me as well. Quietly. You will remain CEO. You will be well paid. You will make your little app grow." He sipped his tea. "And your mother's shop will remain standing. And the traders' money will mysteriously return, with interest. Everybody wins."
"And if I say no?"
He smiled at Mama Ngozi.
"Your mother came to my bank once," he said. "In 2019. She also said no. Ask her how that went."
"Open it," he said, nodding at the laptop. "Log in. Show me the master keys. Tobenna was supposed to send them tonight, but since you are here, we can save the boy some stress."
Ada typed slowly. Her fingers felt like someone else's.
Somewhere far away, in Yaba, Tobe was either a genius or a failure. She would find out in the next ten seconds.
The dashboard loaded.
3,400 traders. ₦410 million. The little green dot.
It looked exactly like Kolo. Exactly.
Kolawole leaned forward. He took the laptop from her, turned it toward himself, and began to click. Settings. Server. Bank API. He was not a young man, but he moved through it like he had done this before. Many times.
"Good," he murmured. "Very good."
He copied something. He pasted it into his own phone. He logged in again from his phone to check.
Ada did not breathe.
On the laptop screen, in the very bottom corner where only someone looking for it would see, a tiny grey line of text appeared for one second and vanished.
session captured.
Mama Ngozi set down her cup.
"Kolawole," she said, in the same voice she used to price lace. "Before my daughter signs anything, I want to show you something."
She opened her handbag and took out the thin blue exercise book.
Kolawole laughed, gently. "Mama. That book is from 2019. Nobody cares about a market woman's exercise book."
"You are right," she said. "Nobody cares about the book."
She turned to the back cover. The account number in faded blue biro. And next to it, taped flat, a small square of paper Ada had never seen before. Old. Yellowed. Folded many times.
A deposit slip. Crestline Bank. 2019. Sikirat's name as depositor.
And on the line for Received by, a signature and a stamp.
K. Adebayo, Branch Manager.
"She gave it to me," Mama Ngozi said quietly. "Sikirat. The week before she disappeared. She came to my shop at night and pressed it into my hand and said, Ngozi, if anything happens to me, this is the man. I was too afraid to use it. For seven years I was too afraid." She looked at him with no fear at all. "I am not afraid this afternoon."
For the first time, Kolawole Adebayo did not smile.
Things happened very fast after that.
Kolawole's phone buzzed. He looked down. His face changed.
Ada did not need to see the screen to know. Tobe had warned her: the moment K. logged into the fake system from his own phone, it would send a message back. A message designed for one person.
Thank you for logging in, Mr Adebayo. Your device, location and session have been recorded and shared.
Kolawole stood up.
"Ibrahim," he called, very calmly. The man in the black cap appeared at the door.
Ada grabbed her mother's arm.
And then Kolawole did the strangest thing. He sat back down. He picked up his tea. He waved one hand.
"Let them go," he said.
Ibrahim blinked. "Sir?"
"Let them go. I have lawyers. They have an exercise book." He smiled again, but it did not reach anywhere. "Friday is a long way away, Miss Okafor. A lot can happen to an old shop between now and Friday."
The Driveway, 2:05 PM
They walked to the gate without running. Mama Ngozi held Ada's hand like Ada was five years old again, crossing Western Avenue.
The Rottweilers lifted their heads and watched them pass.
They were ten steps from the gate when a door opened on the right. A small door. The boys' quarters at the side of the compound, where drivers and cleaners usually slept.
A woman stepped out.
She was thin. Very thin. In a faded Ankara dress washed so many times the pattern had almost disappeared. Grey hair cut short. Bare feet on the hot interlock stones.
She was staring at Mama Ngozi like she was seeing a ghost.
Mama Ngozi stopped walking.
Her hand went so tight around Ada's fingers that it hurt.
"Ngozi?" the woman whispered. Her voice cracked like something not used in years. "Ngozi, they told me you were dead. They told me all of you were dead."
Mama Ngozi's lips moved, but no sound came out.
Then, finally, barely louder than breath:
"Sikirat."
To be continued in Episode 7.