Too Close

The thought wouldn’t leave her alone.

She tried to push it down the way you push down things that are too heavy to carry while you’re still standing. She told herself she was reaching. That grief did this — made you look for someone to blame, made accidents feel like conspiracies, made a tired heart look like a murder.

Her father had been sick. High blood pressure, diabetes, the kind of body that had worked too hard for too long. The doctors had said cardiac arrest. Sudden but not surprising given his history.

She had believed them.

She had stood in that hospital corridor and believed them because the alternative was something she didn’t have the strength to hold.

But now there was a man with a forged document. A signature studied closely enough to replicate. A plan executed so cleanly it had to have started before her father was even admitted to the hospital.

Someone had known he was going to die.

Or someone had made sure he would.

Funke sat with that thought on a Tuesday morning while her mother made tea in the kitchen and Tunde got ready for school, and she felt the world she thought she understood shift slightly under her feet.

She needed to know who Okonkwo Emmanuel was.

It took her two days and three different people to find out.

The first lead came from Aunty Bisi, who recognised the name when Funke said it carefully over the phone — casual, like she was just asking.

“Okonkwo Emmanuel?” Aunty Bisi repeated. “Why are you asking about him?”

“I saw the name somewhere. Connected to Daddy’s things.”

A pause. Long enough to mean something. “He was your father’s business partner. Years ago. Before you were old enough to remember. They had a transport business together in the east. It didn’t end well.” Another pause. “Your father never talked about him?”

“No,” Funke said.

“He wouldn’t. It was a painful thing. Emmanuel claimed your father cheated him out of his share when the business collapsed. Your father denied it. They stopped speaking. That was — twenty, twenty-two years ago.”

Funke’s pen was moving fast. “Did they ever see each other again?”

“Not that I know of.” Aunty Bisi’s voice dropped. “Funke. Why are you really asking?”

“I’ll explain soon,” Funke said. “Thank you, Aunty.”

She hung up and stared at what she had written.

Twenty-year-old grudge. A man who believed her father had stolen from him. A forged document. A death that came at exactly the right time.

She called Bello.

“I have a name,” she said. “Okonkwo Emmanuel. Former business partner of my father. Bad blood going back twenty years. He’s the one who filed the land claim.”

She could hear Bello writing. “Okay. This helps. If we can establish motive and prior relationship it strengthens the forgery argument — shows this wasn’t random. Do you know where he is based?”

“Not yet.”

“Find out if you can. Quietly. Don’t approach him. Don’t let him know you’re looking.” A pause. “And Funke — if this man went this far for land, be careful how much noise you make before we’re ready.”

She understood what he wasn’t saying. Be careful. This man had planned for years. He wasn’t someone who left loose ends.

The second thing happened that evening and she wasn’t looking for it.

She was going through her father’s old phone, a battered Android her mother had kept in a drawer, uncharged since the funeral. Funke had found a charger that fit and plugged it in without really knowing what she was looking for. Just looking. The way grief makes you reach for anything that still smells like the person.

The phone came back to life slowly. Notifications flooded in, old messages, missed calls, WhatsApp pings from people who hadn’t heard yet.

She scrolled without direction. Her father’s voice notes. Photos of the land in the village. A video of Tunde at his last school prize-giving that made her have to put the phone down for a moment.

Then she saw a WhatsApp conversation she almost scrolled past.

The contact name was saved as E.O.

The last message was sent three weeks before her father died.

I told you I would collect what is mine. You had twenty years to do the right thing. You chose wrong.

Her father’s reply, two days later:

Emmanuel I have nothing to say to you. Do not contact me again.

Then nothing. The conversation ended there.

But above it — weeks of messages. Arguments going back months. Emmanuel claiming her father owed him. Her father denying it, then warning him, then going quiet.

And one message from Emmanuel, four months before her father’s death, that made Funke’s hands go cold.

Men who cheat other men do not die peaceful deaths. Remember that.

She screenshot everything. All of it. Hands steady, breathing careful.

Then she called Bello again.

“I found something,” she said. “WhatsApp messages. Threats. Going back months before he died.”

Bello was quiet for a moment. When he spoke his voice had changed, tighter, more serious. “Funke. This is no longer just a land case.”

“I know.”

“This needs to go to the police.”

“The police won’t—”

“I know what the police are. But we need a record. We need this documented before we do anything else.” Another pause. “There’s something else you need to consider.”

“What?”

“If this man threatened your father and your father died shortly after, and now he’s filed a fraudulent land claim — someone needs to look at how your father actually died.”

The words sat in the air between them.

“I’ll send you the screenshots,” Funke said quietly.

She hung up and sat in the dark of her father’s room, his old phone warm in her hands, the smell of him still faint on his pillow.

She had one vision left.

One.

She had been saving it, turning the decision over, waiting for the right moment.

She thought she had been saving it for the land.

Now she understood what she had really been saving it for.

She needed to see how her father died.

But she was terrified of what the ring would show her.

And she was terrified of what it would take from her when it did.

To be continued…