She called Ronke once more, not to accuse her but to clarify whether she recognized an archive label that appeared in the latest file. Ronke answered from a lawyer's office and said she had already provided every password and device she knew her father had used. She recognized the style of the folder name but not the exact label, and she insisted she had not sent the new message. Nkiru asked whether Kunle's associates might have retained copies after his office computers were seized. Ronke said it was possible; her father had treated information as a form of insurance for so long that even she did not know how many policies he had arranged.
"I know what my father did," Ronke said. "And I know what I did to you. But I don't know who is still opening those files."
"Then don't pretend you can solve this for me," Nkiru replied. "Give the investigators whatever you have and let them do their work."
"I will."
Nkiru ended the call and opened the window. Evening traffic moved along the road below, noisy and ordinary, while somewhere nearby a radio played a song she had once heard at her wedding. She let the music pass without trying to turn it into a sign about her marriage. For months she had lived as though every object contained another secret that would force her to reconsider her life. She was beginning to reclaim the right to let an ordinary evening remain ordinary, even while difficult questions remained unanswered.
The following morning she met Amina in a small conference room away from the executive offices. The investigator had placed a modest stack of documents on the table, not the dramatic mountain of files Nkiru had come to associate with the Akinwale family. She explained that several archived records had been accessed after Kunle lost his credentials, but the identities attached to those accesses required further verification. Tunde's team had preserved the relevant logs and agreed to allow independent analysis. Amina was concerned that the sender of the latest message might have access to material that had not yet been assessed, including private records whose release could hurt innocent people.
"Does that mean the new message is authentic?" Nkiru asked.
"Not necessarily. It means somebody knows enough about the archive to make the message worth checking. We are still separating reliable records from things designed to provoke a reaction."
"And you're still not sure who sent it."
"No."
Nkiru leaned back and considered how little certainty she would once have accepted from a person hired to investigate a problem. The family she had met through a bowl of pepper soup had spent years offering confident explanations that concealed inconvenient facts. Amina's willingness to say she did not know felt more trustworthy than those polished assurances. Nkiru asked that the child and her marriage be kept out of any public account unless disclosure became strictly necessary and lawful. The investigator agreed, and they spent the rest of the meeting documenting the chain of messages rather than speculating about motives.