By late afternoon, the Surulere office had emptied.
The phones had become quieter.
The printers had stopped running.
Outside, traffic continued its usual argument with the evening, but inside Adeniran & Associates, Bayo had reduced the investigation to a small collection of documents spread across his desk.
He had arranged them in chronological order.
Or what he believed was chronological order.
That distinction mattered now.
The oldest documents were not necessarily the most useful, and the newest ones did not necessarily explain what had happened before.
He looked at the names again.
CRESTLINE LOGISTICS.
CRESTLINE INDUSTRIAL SERVICES.
M.
A.
ADEYEMI.
HARBOURLINE TRANSPORT COORDINATION SERVICES.
And beneath them, the recurring Ikoyi correspondence address.
Bayo leaned back in his chair.
Tope was still at her desk, comparing two old transportation records.
“How many times have you read that page?” she asked.
“Enough to know I don’t understand it.”
She looked up.
“That’s honest.”
“It’s also irritating.”
Tope smiled.
Bayo turned one of the documents toward her.
“M.
A.
Adeyemi appears in the transportation records.
Harbourline appears in the older correspondence.
But we still don’t know exactly how they connect.”
“Correct.”
“And we don’t know whether Adeyemi worked for Harbourline.”
“Not from what we have.”
“Or whether Harbourline was connected to Crestline.”
“Not yet.”
Bayo nodded.
That was becoming his rule.
Not yet.
The temptation to connect everything was getting stronger.
But the more documents they uncovered, the more dangerous assumptions became.
He picked up another sheet.
“There.”
Tope leaned forward.
It was an old transportation instruction.
The paper was thin and yellowed, with a faint crease running down the middle.
At the bottom, beneath a paragraph about subsequent documentation, was a sentence they had already noticed.
Bayo read it aloud.
“Use updated company details on all subsequent documents.”
He looked at Tope.
“That’s it.”
“That’s it.”
“Nothing before it?”
“No.”
“Nothing explaining what changed?”
“No.”
“Who authorised the change?”
“Not on this copy.”
Bayo placed the document down.
“Then that’s all we know.”
Tope nodded.
“But it tells us something.”
“It tells us somebody wanted the company details changed.”
“Yes.”
“Not why.”
“Correct.”
Bayo looked at the sentence again.
A company name could change.
An address could change.
A director could change.
A document could be corrected.
None of those things automatically meant wrongdoing.
But when the same names kept appearing around transportation records, payment references and old projects, the changes became worth understanding.
He wrote three words on a sheet of paper:
WHAT CHANGED?
Then beneath them:
WHEN?
And:
WHO AUTHORISED IT?
Tope watched him. This chapter was copied from g.com without permission.
“You’ve started another list.”
“I’ve started a list because we don’t have answers.”
“Fair enough.”
Bayo gathered the older documents.
“Let’s go to Marina.”
Tope frowned.
“Why Marina?”
“The old transport records.”
“We’ve already checked the records we have.”
“Exactly.”
He looked at the transportation correspondence again.
“These documents refer to movement and dispatch.
There may have been physical transport records behind them.”
“You’re thinking of delivery logs.”
“Delivery logs.
Route sheets.
Dispatch records.
Anything.”
“From fifteen years ago?”
“If they survived.”
Tope considered that.
“That’s a big if.”
“I know.”
He stood.
“But we’ve reached the point where the paper we’re holding tells us what somebody wanted recorded.”
“And you want to know what actually happened.”
“Exactly.”
The old commercial building on Lagos Island stood behind a row of newer businesses that had gradually swallowed much of the street.
Bayo and Tope had come there because one of the older documents contained a forwarding reference connected to the transport correspondence.
The building caretaker introduced himself as Eze.
He was an elderly man with a careful manner and an excellent memory for faces but considerably less confidence when it came to company names.
When Tope mentioned Harbourline Transport Coordination Services, he paused.
“Harbourline?”
“Yes.”
Eze looked toward the staircase.
“That name sounds familiar.”
“From here?”
“Long time ago.”
“Do you remember M.
A.
Adeyemi?”
The caretaker’s eyes narrowed slightly.
“Adeyemi.”
Bayo waited.
“I think so.”
“You think so?”
“Many people used this building.”
“Did he work here?”
Eze shook his head.
“I cannot say.”
“Did he operate a transport company?”
“Maybe.”
“Harbourline?”
Eze hesitated.
“I remember the name.
I don’t want to tell you something that isn’t correct.”
Bayo appreciated the hesitation.
“That’s fine.”
Eze relaxed.
“There were many transport people around here then.
Dispatchers.
Drivers.
Agents.
People bringing papers.
People collecting papers.”
“Do you remember a man who usually carried a brown folder?”
Eze laughed softly.
“Everybody carried brown folders.”
Tope smiled.
“We know.”
“No, seriously,” Eze said.
“That time, brown folders were everywhere.”
Bayo looked at Tope.
She made a note.
Eze continued.
“I remember Adeyemi’s name more than his face.
Maybe because it appeared on papers.”
“Do you remember which company?”
“No.”
Eze shook his head.
“Not confidently.”
Bayo closed his notebook.
That answer was useful.
Not because it confirmed anything.
Because it prevented them from pretending it did.
Outside, Tope waited until they reached the car.
“He remembered the name.”
“He thinks he remembered the name.”
“Fair.”
“And he didn’t connect him to Crestline.”
“Also fair.”
Bayo opened the driver’s door.
“That’s exactly why we came.”
Back at the office, the city was darkening outside the windows.
Tope opened the transport correspondence again.
“We’ve got one more problem.”
“What?”
She pointed to the instruction.
“Updated company details.”
Bayo nodded.
“We don’t know what the old details were.”
“Or what the updated ones became.”
“Which means the change may be sitting somewhere else.”
“Another document.”
“Another file.”
“Another company.”
Bayo looked at her.
“Or a transport record.”
Tope nodded.
He pulled a clean sheet of paper from the printer.
At the top, he wrote:
M.
A.
ADEYEMI — TRANSPORT COORDINATION
Under it:
HARBOURLINE TRANSPORT COORDINATION SERVICES
Then:
UPDATED COMPANY DETAILS
He stared at the three lines.
They looked connected.
But Bayo deliberately left space between them.
He had learnt that the empty space mattered.
It represented everything they did not yet know.
Tope watched him.
“We’re missing something.”
“Yes.”
“The actual movement records.”
Bayo nodded.
“The documents tell us what was supposed to happen.”
“And the transport records may tell us what actually happened.”
“May.”
She smiled.
“You’re becoming very careful with that word.”
“I need to.”
Bayo gathered the papers and placed them in the investigation file.
He looked once more at the sentence about updated company details.
Somebody had changed something.
Somebody had considered the change important enough to instruct others to use the new information.
But the reason was missing.
The people involved were scattered across old records.
The companies had changed.
Some addresses had disappeared.
And the physical records—the ones that might show where vehicles actually went—were still somewhere in the city’s enormous paper history.
Bayo closed the file.
“Tomorrow, we start with the transport archive.”
Tope picked up her bag.
“And if the records aren’t there?”
“Then we find where they went.”
She nodded.
They switched off the lights.
For a moment, Bayo stood in the darkness of the office.
The investigation had begun with numbers that did not make sense.
Now it was leading him backward through names, companies and records that were old enough to have been forgotten.
But the oldest thread was beginning to pull.
And somewhere in the missing transport records was the next piece.
Bayo opened the door.
Find the physical record.