The Locked Drawer

Zainab's room smelled of antiseptic and lilies.

"You're late," she said, without looking up from her phone.

"Traffic."

"You're always late now. Marriage is making you unreliable."

"Marriage is a very recent development."

"Hmm." Zainab put the phone down and studied her sister with the frank, clinical stare of a seventeen-year-old who had spent most of her life in hospitals. "You look different."

"I look tired."

"No. You look worried. There's a difference. Tired is in the eyes. Worried is in the mouth." She tilted her head. "Is he mean to you?"

"No."

"Is he nice to you?"

Ada hesitated a fraction too long. "He is... complicated."

"That's the answer people give when it's worse than they want to say."

Before Ada could reply, a knock came at the door.

Damian stood in the doorway with a paper bag in one hand and the look of a man who had walked into the wrong building.

"I did not know visitors had hours," he said.

"They don't, for you apparently," Zainab said. "Nobody stopped you at the desk?"

"The nurse recognised me and let me through."

"That's called abuse of privilege."

"I am aware." He came in slowly and held out the bag. "I brought you something. Tobi said you like books."

Zainab eyed him with suspicion, then opened the bag. A thick, battered paperback slid into her lap. Her eyes went wide.

"This is a first edition."

"I was told it was your favourite."

"It is my favourite." She glanced up at Ada. "Did you tell him?"

"No," Ada said slowly.

"Then how—"

"The nurse mentioned it," Damian said. "You read it every night, apparently."

Zainab ran her thumb over the cover, and her face went soft. Then, without lifting her head, she asked in a very small, very direct voice, "Did you hurt my father?"

The room froze.

Ada opened her mouth to intervene. Damian lifted one hand, very slightly. Not stop. Only wait.

"I was not able to save him," he said quietly. "That is not the same thing as hurting him. But it is close enough that I will not pretend otherwise."

Zainab studied his face for a long time.

"That's a weird answer."

"It is an honest one."

"Okay," Zainab said finally, and opened the book. "You can stay if you're quiet."

Ada had to turn her face to the window.

* * *

It was past midnight when she crept down to Damian's study.

She had told herself it was research. A wife was entitled to know her husband. A forensic accountant was entitled to examine anything lying within a hundred metres of a crime.

The room was dark and orderly. Mahogany desk. Shelves of leather-bound books. A single leather chair that looked as if no one had ever sat in it.

She went through the drawers one by one, quickly, quietly, with the hands of a woman who did this for a living. Contracts. Receipts. Old business cards. Nothing.

Except the bottom drawer on the right.

It was locked.

She pressed her palm against the wood and listened to the silence.

"Madam?"

Ada jumped so hard she nearly knocked the lamp over.

Mrs. Bankole stood in the doorway in a dressing gown, a candle in one hand and an expression of tired kindness on her face.

"I am so sorry," Ada said. "I was only—"

"Looking, yes." The old woman came in, set the candle on the desk, and sighed. "Master Damian does not sleep, madam. Not for two years now. He sits in this room until the sun is up."

"Why?"

"I do not know all of it." She smoothed her sleeve. "But I know this. He has not brought a woman into this house since his mother died. Not one. And last night I heard him, through the wall, speaking your name."

"I—" Ada's voice failed. "What did he say?"

"He said, Please let me be in time." Mrs. Bankole looked at her. "I do not know what he meant. But I thought you should hear it from someone who is not afraid of him."

She took her candle and left.

Ada stood in the dark for a long moment.

Then her phone vibrated in her pocket. The same unknown number.

The bottom drawer. The key is under the lamp.

Her skin prickled. Someone knew exactly where she was standing.

She lifted the lamp. A small brass key lay beneath it.

She should not have touched it. She knew that.

She turned the lock.

The drawer slid open without a sound. Inside lay a single manila folder, and on the front, in Damian's neat black handwriting, was her name.

ADANNA BELLO.

Her stomach dropped. She opened it.

Photographs. Dozens. Ada leaving her office. Ada buying groceries. Ada walking beside Zainab at the clinic, her face tired and fierce. All of them taken from a distance, some of them months old.

And pinned to the top, one sheet of paper in the same careful hand.

Protect them.

She did not know whether she was holding evidence of a stalker, or the proof of something much stranger.

She only knew that her hands were shaking, and that nothing in the world would make her put the folder back.