Nkiru began calling customers who had agreed to further contact. Some were surprised. One elderly man asked why anyone cared now when he hadn't been heard six months earlier. She explained that the company was reviewing its procedures and that she wouldn't claim to understand his experience unless she listened. Another customer told her he had stopped visiting Meridian after a security employee questioned his right to enter because he arrived by motorcycle. Nkiru wrote down the details without making promises she couldn't keep. Slowly, she understood why Folarin had refused to fire Sola and call the problem solved.
Then the finance investigation interrupted her work. Tunde requested a meeting with Nkiru and her husband, explaining that new information might affect their household but that they could attend with independent counsel. Nkiru called Tobi. He was reluctant, but he came. They sat at opposite ends of a conference table while a forensic accountant named Amaka Okoye explained the original transaction. A vendor request for four point two million had been entered at 3:18 p.m. on a Tuesday. Tobi's approval token authorized that amount at 4:02. Later, an executive session changed the payment instruction to forty-two million before release.
Tobi leaned forward. "Can you prove I never approved the larger amount?" Amaka was careful. "The audit trail presently shows your initial approval attached to the lower figure. It also shows the later alteration from a different level of access. We're still checking whether the later transaction was fraudulently substituted into the authorization record." Tobi closed his eyes. Nkiru looked at his hands. The relief he felt was real, but it did not settle what he'd confessed about Temi. It did not explain why the relationship had remained secret.
"Whose session made the change?" Nkiru asked. Tunde answered. "The session originated from Temilade Akinwale's assigned terminal." Tobi raised his head sharply. "She wouldn't do that." Nkiru looked at him. "You said you hadn't spoken to her in years outside work." He swallowed. "I didn't say I knew what she would do. I said it doesn't fit what I know of her." Amaka closed the file. "Neither affection nor suspicion is proof. The logs will determine what we can establish."
Temi learned of the new audit the following morning. She was thirty-six, immaculately dressed, and accustomed to seeing her name in business magazines as an example of modern Nigerian executive leadership. Her office occupied a corner of the tower with a broad view of the lagoon. The walls held framed photographs from charity events and business awards. On her desk sat a photograph of an eight-year-old boy holding a school football trophy. She had placed it there after her husband Deji died two years earlier.
When Tunde asked her about the transaction, she admitted the original four-point-two-million request had been hers. She said the vendor urgently needed an advance related to a regional supply project. She had asked Tobi to approve before routine verification finished because she believed the supplier was established. "That was wrong," she said. "I accept it. But I didn't change the amount to forty-two million." Tunde asked who had access to her terminal. She began listing assistants, administrators, and executives who occasionally used the office during meetings. Then she stopped.