The registered address of Kisiwa Heritage Services led Amina to a small hair salon with a wide mirror, three plastic chairs, and a radio playing old taarab.
The salon owner, her hair wrapped in a yellow scarf, read the company name on Amina's phone and frowned.
“Kisiwa Heritage? Here?”
“This is their registered address.”
“I've been here five years. Before me it was a phone shop. I've never seen any heritage company.”
Amina photographed the building number, not the people inside. Back in her car, she opened the registration extract she had requested. Kisiwa Heritage Services had been incorporated four years earlier—two months before “emergency management” expenses began climbing in Nyumba ya Taa's books.
One director: Hamza Salim Dato.
The other shareholder was a small company using a post-office-box address. The extract she had did not identify a beneficial owner.
Amina called Yusuf.
“I found the director.”
“Who?”
“Hamza.”
A short silence. “Does he know?”
“That's the next question.”
She found Hamza an hour later at a café near Treasury Square, sitting with headphones around his neck and pretending to be absorbed in his laptop.
Amina placed the registration extract on the table.
“Help me understand this.”
Hamza did not look at it at once. “What now?”
“Why are you a director of Kisiwa Heritage Services?”
His face changed. Not with complete surprise. With the fear of something badly hidden.
“It's Dad's company.”
“The registry says it's yours too.”
“He told me it was for tenders. I'd just finished campus. He needed another director.”
“You signed documents?”
“Some forms.”
“Bank mandate?”
Hamza frowned. “I don't remember.”
“Tax returns?”
“I don't know.”
“Invoices?”
“Amina, you're questioning me like the police.”
“No. Police would ask different questions. I'm asking about a company that has received millions from property I'm auditing.”
Hamza pushed the extract back toward her. “You want to put my father in prison.”
“I don't want to put anyone anywhere. I want to know who was paid, for what work, and who approved it.”
“You know Dad held everything together while Grandma was sick.”
“I know. That doesn't answer the question.”
“You know the roof leaked? Pipes burst? Tenants complained every day?”
“Yes. And some of them contributed toward those repairs too. That's the problem.”
Hamza went quiet.
Amina softened her voice. “I'm not trying to parade you in front of the family. But I need the company bank statements and invoice register. If this really was a shortcut for legitimate repairs, the records will help everyone.”
“And if there aren't records?”
“Then there is a much bigger question.”
Hamza stared out the window. “Dad will kill me.”
“For bringing documents from a company where you're legally a director?”
“You don't know him when he's cornered.”
Amina almost said, *I know him better than you think*. She stopped herself. Hamza was Salim's son before he was evidence in anyone's case.
“You have twenty-four hours,” she said. “If you decide not to provide them, I'll record that the request went unanswered. I won't call you a thief because your name appears on a form.”
Hamza met her eyes at last. “Why give me that chance?”
“Because I was your age when I learned adults can put you inside something, then tell you it's family honor.”
That landed. Amina saw it, even though Hamza said nothing.
She returned to Nyumba ya Taa in the evening. Salim sat in the courtyard speaking to a mason about the back wall. When he saw Amina, his smile was almost too casual.
“You visited a salon today?”
Amina stopped.
The news had already reached him.
“Your company has an excellent hair-care address,” she said.
Salim laughed once. “Old address. The accountants used it during registration. Small matter.”
“Hamza is a director.”
“He's my son. Is that a crime?”
“The problem is that this company was paid by the estate, and no one can give me a scope of work.”
“You'll get the documents.”
“When?”
“Nighttime isn't for audits.”
“Money moved during the day. Records can be read at night.”
Before Salim could answer, Mariam appeared in the doorway. “Amina, eat first.”
Amina saw the exhaustion in her mother's face. She agreed to go inside, not because the argument was over, but because her body reminded her she had survived the day on coffee and one samosa.
Later, she opened her laptop in the bedroom. No email from Hamza. No statements.
At 11:14 p.m., her phone vibrated.
An unsaved number had sent one WhatsApp image.
An invoice from Kisiwa Heritage Services. **Emergency drainage repair — KSh 680,000.** No contract attached. No itemized materials. No tender reference.
At the bottom, in the approval box, was a signature.
Amina enlarged it with two fingers.
She had known that hand since childhood—the M that began with a long stroke and ended like a hook.
Mariam's signature.
Amina sat still on the edge of the bed. Then she opened her notebook and wrote one line:
**Tomorrow: not Uncle first. Mama.**
Before meeting Hamza, Amina had spent an hour separating what the company record actually proved from what rumor wanted it to prove. She confirmed the incorporation date, one late annual return, and a change of registered address that still did not match the address printed on later invoices. She could not yet see the beneficial owner behind every entity, so she wrote *unknown* rather than filling the blank with Salim's name because it felt likely.
That was the part of her profession she hated most: truth was full of blanks. People liked to fill them quickly with the name of someone they loved or someone they despised. A good auditor had to live with the blanks until evidence arrived.
After their café conversation, Hamza had followed her outside before she reached her car.
“Amina.”
“Yes?”
“If you find out I signed something bad without knowing what it was, what does that mean?”
“It depends what you signed, what authority you had, and how you benefited.”
“So you can't tell me I'm safe.”
“No.”
Hamza gave a bitter laugh. “You really don't know how to comfort people.”
“If I told you that you were safe and tomorrow I discovered you weren't, how would that help?”
He had no answer.
Amina added, “Not knowing everything is not the same as planning everything. Don't let anyone confuse those two things for you.”
Hamza nodded.
Watching him walk away, Amina understood exactly why Salim might have put his son's name on the company. Hamza's presence could make Kisiwa Heritage look like a respectable next-generation family venture. It could also spread responsibility when questions came.
That was not proof of wrongdoing.
It was one more reason to demand statements instead of confessions.