The Recipient Column

By midmorning, the police had moved the cordon from the stable to the house. Two officers stood at the front steps while another carried sealed boxes through the side entrance. The lawns were still cut in straight lines. A gardener had left a wheelbarrow beside the rose beds, its handles turned neatly toward the path.

Merrit waited outside the tape with her hands in her coat pockets. She had been asked to come back and identify a few names in the papers recovered beneath the stable. She had expected a room at the station, not the sight of Greenvale going on around the search as if it were a scheduled inconvenience.

An officer approached, holding a clipboard against his chest. “Miss Shaw? We’ve got a question about a document. You may recognize the handwriting.”

“Is it Bethan’s?”

“We can talk inside the boundary.”

He led her to a portable interview room set up near the service drive. The door stood open. On a folding table, beneath a clear evidence sleeve, lay a photocopied sheet. The original was elsewhere, the officer explained; the copy was for identification only. He asked Merrit to look at the names and say whether she knew them.

The page was ruled into columns. Its headings were small and precise: SOURCE, CONDITION, RECIPIENT, TRANSFER. She read them once, then again, slower.

Bethan Pike’s name appeared near the top. Beside it, in the condition column, someone had written: “full-thickness excision, one piece; response retained.” The recipient column contained two words: “M. Pell.” The last column said the transfer had been completed.

Merrit’s thumb pressed into the seam of her pocket. She could hear the paper sleeve crackle when the officer shifted it on the table.

“What does that mean?”

“The forensic examiner believes this is a surgical register. The language suggests skin was removed and transferred. We’re still establishing what the terms mean in context.”

“Skin,” Merrit said. “It says skin.”

The officer glanced down at the page. “Yes.”

She had wanted a location. A room, a vehicle, a grave. Something that could be searched. Instead, the paper offered a tidy column for the part of Bethan that had been taken and another for the person who received it. Merrit looked at the line again, as if the letters might shift into a more ordinary arrangement.

“Did she survive?”

“We don’t know.”

“And M. Pell?”

“We’re investigating the initials. Dr. Swithin Pell is already part of that investigation.”