Chapter 412: The Missing Page

Hask had laid the carrier’s copy beside Yueying’s extract before Ren sat down.

Dole’s message had asked them to check the records returned to her office. Ren set his notebook within reach and took the chair opposite her.

The registry’s search response lay beneath them, its one-page count underlined. Farther along the table were a personnel record, several payment sheets and the copy of the 4118 transfer record Ren had supplied. He recognized his four shapes beside the handling field. Someone had placed a printed key and another drawing next to them.

Yueying pulled out the chair beside Ren, then paused over the carrier’s folder.

"Where did you find this?"

"Their records office," Hask said. "They kept an office copy when the return packet went to the registry. Both pages."

She sat and checked the docket reference, then the attachment reference beneath it. Both matched her extract. Hask turned the carrier’s covering letter toward her; it identified the packet supplied and the file it had come from.

Yueying laid the handling instruction beside her second page and read down the two sheets. Ren leaned closer when she reached the line he remembered.

Meals follow completion of unloading and closure of the passage door.

He had waited in that passage while the officers cleared Mei’s doorway. Beyond it, the heavy door had stood open through the carrying, as the worker had described.

"The wording matches," Yueying said. She finished the last line before moving either sheet.

Dole passed her a reply from the clerk who had authenticated the extract.

"He confirms that he produced the docket and instruction together. His certification covered both. He kept the instruction with the docket."

Yueying read the reply against her notes from the visit. She checked the old file number once more, then put the letter beside the extract.

The carrier’s covering letter used the docket reference, not the registry’s later number. Yueying brought her transfer cross-reference between the two. Ren followed it from the file she had examined before the move to the one produced afterward. The carrier and receiving references agreed throughout. They were comparing the same packet.

"So you’ve recovered the instruction," Ren said. "What happened to the registry’s sheet?"

"We haven’t found it. There’s still no arrival count." Dole drew the search response toward him. "But we’ve established who approved this."

Hask brought out a working sheet used to prepare the registry’s return. The docket’s new number headed the entry, followed by its attachment reference. Beside that, the clerk had written Attachment missing.

Below it, in another hand, was a direction to enter one page and report the packet as complete. Initials followed.

"The clerk referred the discrepancy to his supervisor," Hask said. "This was the decision he received. We checked the initials with him and against the supervisor’s other approvals."

"Orlen Vask," Dole said. "The records supervisor at the new office."

Yueying checked the working sheet’s file number against the response, then followed the clerk’s entry across the page. Vask’s direction had been carried out under the same reference. She drew the dispatch inventory closer. It recorded two pages leaving the old collection; nothing in the returned papers explained the loss of one.

"Did Vask have the file?" Ren asked.

"The access record puts it with him before the response went out," Hask said.

"He knew the attachment was missing when he approved the return," Dole said. "We haven’t established who removed it."

Ren read the direction again. The attachment reference was immediately above it. Vask had been shown the gap and approved the complete mark anyway.

"What happens to him?"

"The registry has removed his access to the collection. An authorized search of his working records and relevant correspondence is underway. We’ve preserved these papers." Dole drew the working sheet back beside the response. "That includes checking whether someone directed him."

"And the other packets?" Yueying asked.

"They’re being checked against their attachment references. We’re using the packets themselves, not the counts copied into this return."

Yueying took out the acknowledgment of her earlier submission. Under it lay her copy of the signed inspection sheet, with the places the registry clerk had searched listed beneath the missing attachment.

"Your inspection fixed what they’d produced by then," Hask said. "It also kept us from repeating those shelf searches."

She opened her notebook at the transfer cross-reference. The old number and the new one already stood together. Beneath them, she added the reference for the working sheet, then noted Vask’s direction between the clerk’s report of the missing attachment and the issued response.

Ren waited until she finished before looking toward the personnel record.

— • —

Hask turned the likeness toward him.

Ren recognized the man from the landing. At Saltmarch, he had held that wrist through the journey to custody, keeping his other hand on the prisoner’s arm when the bindings alone could not stop a working.

"Kerrit Dane," Dole said.

The name appeared beneath the likeness and again on the engagement sheet she placed beside it.

"Custody matched the personnel record to the prisoner. His employment is corroborated by these payments."

"Who hired him?"

"Mereward Receiving. The firm operating the Saltmarch premises. Escort and enforcement work."

Ren read the entries. The wagon leader’s name remained in the first escort position on the separate carriage booking; Dane’s name came from the operator’s own personnel and payment records. Hask kept those papers together while Ren checked them.

"Has he said anything?"

"No. We identified him without his account."

Ren remembered the strike across his glass guard and the numbness reaching his fingers. He looked back at the likeness before Dole moved it aside.

"We’re following the payments into Mereward as well," she said. "The employer is established. Who was funding it is still being checked."

"And the second meal guard?"

Hask found the duty sheet. A name had been added to the note beside it, with a reference to an interview.

"Located with another crew," Dole said. "His assignment places him at the hatch during the spill. He says he stood back while the other guard handled the tray."

She put the incident entry alongside it.

"His account agrees with this: the cart was held, and the remaining load was carried through by hand. He heard the order to carry it, but says he didn’t see who gave it."

"What did he think was in the room?"

"He says he was told he was guarding a debtor. We’ve recorded that as his account. His duty at the locked room is established."

Ren remembered Mei tilting her hand to show him how she had done it. She had wanted a view past the guard. The incident entry and his account agreed on what followed.

Hask moved the duty sheet back into the Saltmarch folder and brought Ren’s copied handling field beside the printed key.

"This came from the carrier’s records. We checked that it was in use for the consignments we’re comparing."

Ren followed the symbols down the card.

The first directed handlers to present the load at the receiving desk named on its papers. The second sent it through the designated transfer route. The third called for onward handling to the receiving point’s inner freight store.

He stopped at the closed, tilted hook.

Keep the seals intact until inner-store receipt. No opening in the yard.

"The labels in the freight store carried that too," he said.

"On some of the crates," Dole said. "The officers recorded the whole sequence. It matches your copy."

Hask laid a receiving entry beside the key and showed him the reference that linked them. Ren checked it against the corresponding field on the copied record.

His next-station designation was still legible, copied in full beneath the consignment reference. Hask found its register entry for him. Ren read the location, then returned to the handling field. He had copied both at the junction without knowing what either would lead to.

"The written references identify the places," Hask said. "The key tells the handlers what to do there. We’ve checked those destinations against the registers."

"And different loads used the same instructions."

"Yes."

Ren looked at the other drawing. Four shapes had been copied onto post paper, with the hook a little larger than the rest.

"Mei drew those," Dole said. "When she spoke to me again before leaving. She’d seen the label on a crate passing her hatch."

He remembered her packing for home, leaving one garment unfolded while she told him she had asked Dole to come back. She had wanted to decide how much more to say when they talked.

Dole placed the drawing beside the key. The hook’s closed curve and tilt agreed with it, as did Ren’s copy from the weather box.

He brought his page closer. His station references surrounded the four shapes; Mei’s drawing stood alone on the sheet. He checked her hook against his, then the other three marks.

"I’ll send her the meaning through the contact she gave us," Dole said.

"Does this tell you what the loads were?"

"No. It establishes the handling instructions. We still have to account for the contents of each consignment separately."

Ren returned his copy to the table. The key explained why the labels matched across the records. Nothing on it identified a person inside the cargo.

"Do you need us to identify anything else before we leave?"

"These comparisons are finished. If something else needs your account, I’ll send word." Dole looked to Yueying. "I’ve kept your request about any further filing references with the clerk’s reply."

Yueying nodded and checked the references she had added to her notes. Hask waited while she finished, then put Mei’s drawing away with her statement.

Dole gathered the carrier’s counterpart into its buff folder and placed it in the evidence box. Hask entered its return while she secured the lid. The certified comparison copy remained on the table beside Yueying’s two authenticated pages.

Yueying collected her notebook and loose research notes. Dole opened the case folder in which she had kept the extract since its submission and passed the two pages across.

Yueying laid them inside, with the clerk’s certification unobscured. Hask handed her the comparison copy of the recovered instruction. She checked its reference.

Yueying tucked the recovered instruction beside her extract and closed the folder.