The taxi pulled up to the gates of the Morrison estate just after midnight.Derek paid the driver and stepped out into the dark. The gates stood open, and Harold was waiting just inside them, alone, a single lamp burning over the gatehouse behind him. He had come out to meet Derek himself. No other staff were in sight."Young Master," Harold said. "No one knows you are here.""Good," Derek said. "Keep it that way."Harold took the case from Derek's hand without being asked. "I will put the plant in the estate safe. No one will touch it."Derek nodded once and followed him up the drive. The house was dark except for a few windows on the ground floor. The night air carried the scent of wet grass and the faint smell of rain that had fallen earlier and not yet dried.Inside, Harold led him to the study and closed the door. He set the case down carefully on the desk, then opened a folder and laid a single printed page on the desk in front of Derek."The name," Harold said. "Samuel Okafor."

"You are in the wrong warehouse, friend," the leader said. "No." Derek stood in the middle of the empty floor and watched them come. Four men in dark jackets. The leader walked in front, and the other three spread out behind him, the way men do when they are used to surrounding someone. The leader stopped a few paces from Derek. He was a broad man, with a scar across one eyebrow and a gold ring on his left hand. His right hand rested near his belt. "This warehouse is private property," the leader said. "You are trespassing. Walk out now, and nothing happens to you." Derek did not walk out. He did not answer at once. He let the silence sit between them, and he watched the leader the way he watched a patient: slowly, from the head down, taking in everything. The leader's left hand trembled. Not much, but enough to see if you knew what to look for. His breathing was shallow, and there was a tightness around his eyes, the kind that comes from pain that never quite goes away. "Who o

At nine o'clock, Derek stood outside the tall iron gate.He had walked the last three streets alone. Harold had driven him as far as the corner and waited there, the way Derek had told him to, and Derek had walked the rest on foot. He had stopped twice, once at a shop window and once at a street corner, and listened for footsteps behind him. There were none. The street was quiet.He passed the warehouse district on the way. Warehouse 7 stood dark and quiet by the river, and the smell of diesel and fish hung in the air. The ledger was still in the office drawer. The wage note was still folded in his pocket. Derek kept walking.The gate did not open. Derek stood outside it and waited. A full minute passed. Then another. The house was dark and quiet behind the iron bars, and no one came. Derek did not knock. He did not call out. He stood still, and he waited, and he thought about the book sitting on Kane's desk, and about the trap he had walked into — or the deal.Then the gate opened, a

Derek walked to the estate in the dark.He did not go home. He did not call Harold. He walked through the quiet streets, past the closed shops and the shuttered stalls, and the key sat heavy in his pocket with every step. The city was asleep. The only sound was his own footsteps, and once, far away, a dog barking. He passed the market, its stalls covered and dark, and the river, black and still under the night sky. A night watchman stood at a corner, half asleep, and did not see him pass.He thought about the key, and about the room under the house, and about Vic, who had days and not weeks. The key had waited fifteen years. Vic could not wait. That was why Derek was walking now, and not tomorrow.The estate gates stood open. Derek walked through them and across the courtyard, and the house rose up in front of him, dark and silent. He had been here before, in the daylight, with Harold waiting at the gate. Now there was no one. The windows were dark. The front door was shut.Derek push

Derek left the old quarter with the sun going down.He'd told Samuel to leave tonight, and Samuel had nodded, slow, like a man agreeing to something he didn't want to agree to, and Harold had put a hand on his shoulder, and that was that. There wasn't anything else to say. Derek walked back through the lane, past the baskets and the cooking fires, and the smoke hung low, and it got in his eyes, and he didn't bother rubbing it out.The market was closing. The stalls were coming down, the traders packing up, and a woman was shouting at a boy who'd knocked over a basket of oranges, and the boy was laughing, and the woman was trying not to laugh, and Derek walked past all of it and thought about what he'd say to Kane at nine o'clock. He'd ask about the house on the hill first. See what he said. If he knew it, then the name in his book — the one that was scratched out — it lived in that house. And if he didn't know it — Derek didn't finish the thought. He never finished that thought. He ju