The Unanswered Question

Emma had imagined police archives as rooms full of old files, where a helpful officer could find almost anything. The reality was much slower. It took her three days to discover which records she could request and which were restricted.

At last she received part of an incident log from 2011. Several names had been removed, and two pages had been withheld. It was not the complete police file, so she reminded herself not to treat it as one.

The entry for 22 September described a report from Claire Morrison's family. Another line mentioned a possible sighting on the road to Inverness. Beside it were the words D. Reid — follow-up pending. There was no completed report in the pages Emma had received.

That was interesting, but it proved very little. Perhaps Reid had never written a report. Perhaps it existed somewhere else. Emma checked the reference number against her old notebook and noticed that she had copied two digits in the wrong order fifteen years earlier. She corrected the mistake and wrote down the date.

Later, an administrator explained that witness statements and basic incident logs were kept in different systems. The two withheld pages might not be missing at all. Emma submitted a more specific request for the follow-up reference.

She searched her old notes and found Daniel Reid's name on a list of officers who had spoken to reporters. She thought she remembered a tall man outside the police station, but she could not be certain. Reid was now retired and worked for a charity that organised transport for local people. Emma called the charity office and left a message.

Sarah rang that afternoon.

"You've found the old log?" she asked.

"Only part of it. Two pages are withheld."

"Then don't call them 'missing pages'. You know what readers will imagine."

"I haven't written a headline yet."

"That's a first. Shall I tell the whole newsroom?"

Emma laughed. Then she looked again at Reid's name. "I'm going to ask him what happened."

"Good," Sarah said. "Just let him answer before you decide what his answer means."

Emma went back to the old newspaper archive. She found a photograph of a police officer speaking to reporters outside the station. The caption named Daniel Reid, but it did not say whether he had investigated the sighting. She printed the picture and placed it beside the report. In 2011 she had kept the photograph because it looked good on the page. Now she was interested in the words underneath it. She called the newspaper's picture desk to check the date. The employee could confirm when the photograph was taken, but not what Reid knew. Emma added that answer to her notes.