The Correction

Emma began with the trust’s published accounts. The caller's instruction had sounded specific—find out who authorised the payments—but the annual report offered only aggregated figures. A line for student support showed how much the foundation had spent across the year. It did not identify individual recipients or the people who had approved each transfer.

Sarah joined her on the phone.

“Is the information deliberately missing?” Sarah asked.

“We can't tell. These are summary accounts, not a list of transactions. They're doing a different job.”

They agreed to keep separate notes: what the report stated, what the anonymous caller alleged and what they still needed to request.

Then Fiona Bell replied to Emma's earlier email. According to Fiona, the board had met in September 2011. Some paper minutes might remain in storage, but she had not inspected the boxes and could not guarantee that the relevant records survived. The public index, she confirmed, was not a complete record of every meeting.

Fiona also explained that the annual figures grouped several grants together. She offered to contact the records team and check what material could be located. There was no promise of access, and no suggestion that she had seen evidence of improper payments.

“That's more helpful than it sounds,” Emma told Sarah. “At least we know which questions are still open.”

Emma went to the city library to consult an old local newspaper that had been only partly digitised. In a report about the foundation's 2011 fundraising event, she found a photograph showing Claire Morrison with a group of students. Malcolm Vale stood near the edge of the frame. The caption described a public pledge to help local students pay for travel to courses outside Glenarraidh.

She recorded the date and photographed both the image and caption. The article established that the promise had been publicised. It could not establish how many grants had actually been awarded, still less whether the reported total had been spent as intended.

As she worked through the next issue, a brief correction caught her eye. The newspaper stated that an earlier report had given an incorrect number of students involved in the travel scheme. It did not print the correct number in the correction itself.

Emma resisted the easy interpretation. A newspaper error might be nothing more than a newspaper error. Yet it gave her a precise task: locate the original article, check the figures against later reports and ask what records could establish the actual awards.

Her phone lit up with a message from Sarah: Anything solid?

Emma replied: One public promise. One corrected figure. Still no transaction-level evidence.

Outside, evening traffic filled the street. The anonymous caller had wanted her to focus on payments. She was doing so, but not in the order he had demanded. For once, the documents—not the voice on the phone—would determine her next question.