Chapter 4 - Clean Hands

PART 4: CLEAN HANDS

Mapule listened to all of it — the audits, the espressos, the storm, Thursday, the parking garage — with her glasses pushed up into her curls and her face doing arithmetic.

When Thandeka finished, the ops room was quiet except for the old fridge.

"Withdraw," Mapule said at last. "I'm serious, sisi. Keep the rest of the book, keep your name, let the snake have the tower. We'll survive."

"My mother survived for thirty years. I didn't build this to survive."

"And I didn't push a trolley next to you in 2011 to watch one man with a clipboard take—" Mapule stopped. Stood. Pulled the complaint file across the table instead, and the rosters, and started laying them side by side, because that was who she was: she argued with paper.

It took her eleven minutes.

"Thandeka." Her voice had changed. "The new complaint. The one that came in Wednesday. 14th floor boardroom not serviced, Tuesday night." She turned the roster around. "Tuesday night. You signed that register. You were ON that floor."

The room went very still.

"He's not even checking anymore," Mapule said softly. "He's filing fiction against a floor with a witness on it. Nights don't complain, sisi. People do." She was already pulling her laptop closer, typing with two flat fingers. "And Royal Shine — let me tell you something about Royal Shine. Sole director, Patrick Mthembu. Sandile Khumalo's brother-in-law. This industry is a village; I've danced at the man's wedding."

Thandeka looked at the register photo Sandile had shown her like a weapon, and felt it change shape in her memory.

Every night he could prove she was in that building was a night his own complaints swore the work wasn't done.