Musa's printing shop stood beside the bus stop, where the machines whined without rest. Amina came in at midday carrying the blue file and Hamisi's copied page. Musa Kondo was behind the counter, counting paper with ink-stained fingers.
"I am not here to ask you to choose a side," Amina said. "I want to know where each copy came from."
Musa did not answer immediately. When she closed the front door, he pulled out another chair. "Baraka told me not to meet you."
"He also said I resigned. That did not make it true."
Musa took a plastic box from beneath the counter. "I have two copies of the minutes. One was sent to the board, another stayed in the printer. I did not know whether keeping them was wrong."
Amina turned on her phone's recorder, then switched it off. "I will not record anyone. We will list what we inspect. No child information leaves this shop."
Musa looked surprised. "You could have started by frightening me."
"If I frighten a witness, I get a voice, not the truth."
They opened the first copy. One page was numbered four and the next six; page five was missing. In the second copy, page five had been inserted, but the date font was different. Amina placed her lease beside the founders' list.
"My name is here."
"This is the first copy," Musa said. "It was printed on opening day."
"And this one?"
"Printed after last week's meeting."
Amina turned the page. A white line had been used to cover her name, and the new company name had been typed over it. No correction mark identified who had changed it. The page number had been applied with a faint stamp.
"What instructions did you receive?"
Musa breathed out. "Mama Njeri asked that the minutes look clean for the investor. Baraka brought the file. I printed it."
"Were you told to remove my name?"
"I was told the old company had ended. I did not ask you."
Amina closed her eyes for a moment. Musa had two children and depended on the school for his temporary salary. She would not place him before a charge that had not yet been proved.
"You can help me by keeping a chain of custody. We will write when each copy came from, who handed it over, and where it goes."
Musa took a small notebook. As they wrote, the rear printer produced a forgotten sheet. He pulled it out. It was a torn envelope marked *old members register*.
Inside was a scan cropped on the right. Amina could see only three names; the fourth section had been cut away. The file's scan date was two days after the meeting at which Baraka claimed she had resigned.
"This was not made that day," Amina said.
Musa leaned toward the machine screen. "Does the scanner metadata show today's date?"
"No. It preserves the file's creation date, not the date of the paper."
"Then it is not enough evidence."
"That is why we will keep it as a lead, not a verdict."
Musa pulled out a carbon copy bearing the company stamp. One line read: *member notified by phone*. The number ended in 447. Amina recognized it as her old number, disconnected almost a year earlier.
"This number was dead before the meeting."
"Baraka may not have known."
"Possibly. The dates will tell us."
Musa wiped sweat from his neck. "Amina, will I lose my job if I give you this?"
"I do not know. I cannot promise protection I do not have. I can promise one thing: I will not send it to parents or the investor until the source is traced."
Musa copied the scans and minutes onto a flash drive. Amina asked him to put a second copy in a dated envelope bearing both their initials. They sealed it with tape.
"This is the first packet," Amina said. "It is not a weapon. It is a record of what we know and what we do not."
Musa smiled tiredly. "If you continue like this, you may find Baraka was not the only one who made a mistake."
"That is why I am checking records, not my anger."
Musa found a delivery slip in a drawer under the printer. It showed that someone had collected the new register for an investor review on the day Baraka said Amina was away. The slip carried no signature from her. The evidence did not yet name the writer, but it did establish that the file had moved through hands before she saw it.
Before Amina left, she saw that page five had not vanished completely. It was pasted behind page six in a small notebook. A line had been crossed out, but beneath it was the date of an earlier meeting. The line where Amina's signature should have been had been torn away.
They closed the packet. In the carbon copy, the words *member notified by phone* remained clear. Beneath them, Amina's dead number stared back like a message from someone who believed the past could pretend to be alive.
The missing page was now a question that could be carried to an independent review, not a rumour shared online. Musa put his initials on the envelope seal together with the printing date. # End of Chapter
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