4338.215 · August 3, 2018 AD
Eleven Minutes
A pen is touching paper. The authorisation that will open hearthstones in a room where a man vanished two hundred years ago is one signature away from becoming operational. The forensic evidence is documented. The recommendation is underlined. The word the scientist chose wasn't modified — it was opened. Then a phone rings, and everything that was about to happen in the study of Jeffries Manor stops happening. What follows is the sound of an investigation being folded up and carried out through the front door of a house that has just learned, once again, that some doors stay closed.
Harrison's report is two pages. Handwritten. The modified stonework, the inconsistent tooling marks, the hollow resonance at three separate points. Her recommendation is underlined: full excavation warranted. Below that, in her own hand: This hearth has been opened before. Not modified — opened. Something beneath those hearthstones has been accessed, and the stonework was put back to conceal access rather than prevent it.
Stout has composed the operational justification in his head. His pen is on the form. And then Inspector Woolley's direct line — not the switchboard, not operations, the number used when conversations need to happen without passing through channels — delivers a directive in language that arrives pre-assembled. Operational review. Resource reallocation. Concurrent priorities. The vocabulary organisations use when the real reason can't be spoken aloud.
The withdrawal is too fast. Too clean. Tom Jeffries watches from the sitting room window as the evidence markers come out of his lawn and the tape comes down and the forensic van is loaded, and the satisfaction arrives quietly — until the timing fractures it. His calls were made less than an hour ago. Institutional pressure doesn't move this fast. Something else produced this result, through a channel Tom didn't activate and doesn't control.
And when Stout walks through the front door one last time, heading for the library and the interview that should be in progress — he finds Wilson sitting across from an empty chair. Louise confirmed the time forty minutes ago. She is not in it.
