The Missing Name

By midnight, Emma's notes had become a map of unfinished questions. She drew lines between the trust, the trustees and the scholarship recipients. One name appeared repeatedly at the edge of the page.

Fiona Kerr appeared in three places. There was an invoice for professional services, a reference in the trust's annual report and an unfinished interview request Emma had drafted in October 2011. The message had never been sent.

Emma leaned back in her chair. She had spent years telling herself that the investigation had gone cold because nobody would talk. Yet here was a person she had not even contacted.

She checked the date of the draft. By then the police had already searched the surrounding countryside and reporters had begun repeating rumours about Claire's private life. Emma had been exhausted, inexperienced and eager for a clear account. None of those things excused the shortcut.

She opened her original article. The headline still made her wince. It suggested that a disagreement at home might explain why Claire had vanished. The source behind that suggestion was the anonymous email. There was no independent confirmation in her notes.

Emma checked the article's publication date. It had appeared after Claire was reported missing. She had written as though the disappearance itself made the anonymous allegation credible. The reverse was true: the more serious the claim, the greater the need to verify it. She copied the headline into her new notes and marked it unsupported.

A call from Sarah interrupted her.

'You saw my message?' her editor asked.

'Yes. I'm checking the old material.'

'Good. Because someone called the office this afternoon and asked whether you were working on the Morrison story again.'

Emma straightened. 'Did they give a name?'

'No. They hung up when I asked.'

'Could it have been somebody who saw the old article?'

'Possibly. Its page views have risen today. But that doesn't tell us who read it, and it certainly doesn't tell us who called.'

Emma looked at the letter beside her keyboard. 'I haven't told anyone about this.'

'Then don't start now,' Sarah said. 'And don't mistake a coincidence for evidence.'

Emma briefly considered calling Sarah back to ask how the stranger had sounded. But a remembered voice was not reliable identification, and Sarah had already told her everything she knew. She put the phone down.

After the call, Emma searched for Fiona Kerr's current contact details. She found a professional listing, but it was several years old. She copied the address into her notes rather than sending a message in the middle of the night.

One final document remained unopened on the drive: a scanned page from Emma's old notebook, filed under the unhelpful name miscellaneous. In the margin was a question written so hastily that she could barely decipher it.

Who gave me the story about family pressure?

Below it, another line had been added in darker ink.

Ask Vale directly.

Emma stared at the words. She could not remember whether she had ever done so. She knew only that, the next morning, she would begin with the people who had been promised scholarships—not with another theory about Claire's private life.

She closed the laptop, leaving the letter on the table where she could see it.

For the first time in fifteen years, she had a better question.