Wanjiru crossed out the first sentence of his summary.
“You have written that your brother disappeared after discovering a falsified report.”
“The report was changed.”
“And he disappeared. You have joined them with a word that does work you haven’t done.”
The lawyer placed the page between them. Amina had introduced her through the colleague helping Daniel’s family. This meeting concerned the Lin family’s questions; Daniel’s medical and employment matters would remain separate. Wanjiru made the separation clear before asking anything about the money.
Yanchuan had paid for an initial consultation. An attended by video from her kitchen. Amina sat beside the door with a notebook balanced on her knee.
They spent the first twenty minutes identifying who held what. Original messages with An. The archive Yansheng sent, preserved by both relatives. Authorized review copies with the operator. An attendance acknowledgment whose later use had not been explained. A transport record linked to an envelope, not a confirmed passenger.
When Wanjiru read the list aloud, Yanchuan felt how little it resembled the story he had carried to Kenya.
“What can you do with it?” he asked.
“Ask better questions of the people already responsible for the case. Request preservation where appropriate. Advise you before you circulate something you cannot retrieve.”
“Can you get into the service office?”
“No. I can help you explain why a particular record matters. I cannot turn your interest into authority to enter a building.”
She asked him to describe the envelope again. He recited the invoice reference. An interrupted with the dispatcher entry and the distinction between the accounting description and the trip sheet. Wanjiru turned toward the phone.
“Please send that correction with the summary.”
Yanchuan sat back. He had traveled thousands of kilometres to become the man at the table with the least complete answer.
Outside, Amina found him studying a bus route on his phone.
“Where are you going?”
“The hotel.”
“That route doesn’t go there.”
He turned the screen off. For a moment he considered lying. The service office appeared on a public business listing. He had thought he might at least see its gate before leaving.
“I wanted to know what it looked like.”
“Then ask for a photograph of the outside. You don’t need to arrive unannounced.”
He said nothing. Amina leaned against the wall, waiting rather than filling the silence for him.
“Everyone keeps telling me to wait.”
“I have spent my day getting you someone to speak to.”
The words were flat. He looked at her and saw the anger he had earned.
“You’re right.”
“I know. That’s why it isn’t an apology yet.”
He put the phone in his pocket. “I’m sorry. You have done more than I had any right to expect.”
She nodded after a while. They took the bus back together. He did not open the map again.
That evening a maintenance colleague sent Amina a permitted extract in response to the open technical question. A service entry referred to a generator run that did not appear in the test summary. The colleague asked for their request number before sending it and retained the original in the maintenance system.
Yanchuan wanted to stay up with it. Instead he added it to the index and sent the reference to Wanjiru, the designated technical reviewer, and An through the agreed channels. He could compare it properly after the flight. It would still exist when he was not staring at it.
At the airport the next morning, he called An before boarding. She asked who would contact whom if another message arrived from Yansheng’s account. They had written that down too.
“It feels like leaving him,” he said.
“I know.”
Through the glass he could see workers loading bags, each person moving around another person’s task. A suitcase slipped on the conveyor. Someone stopped the belt, shifted it, and signalled to start again.
When boarding began, Yanchuan put the document index in the same pocket as his passport. The others could continue the search while he crossed the sky. He was almost grateful for that, and ashamed that he had ever thought he needed to be indispensable. He called Amina once more, simply to say thank you, before he switched off his phone.