Chapter 5 of 5·6 min read·The evening after Jory’s statement through the following dawn
The Room Beneath the Stable
The police did not search Greenvale that afternoon.
Merrit sat in a small interview room at the station while an officer took the same facts in a different order. Jory’s statement had put the van on an underground ramp. The ramp, according to the estate, did not exist. The visitor register said Merrit had left before she actually had. Maudren Pell had supplied an explanation for every discrepancy, and none of those explanations gave police grounds to walk through a private house and start opening doors.
“Can you tell me where the ramp comes out?” the officer asked.
“Jory can. I only saw the entrance from the road.”
The officer noted it. He had been patient with her, though patience did not mean movement. Merrit watched his pen travel across the page and kept her hands flat on the table.
“What happens now?”
“We’re checking the account and speaking with the estate again.”
“They’ll have time to clear it.”
“We understand the concern.”
The answer landed with the practiced softness of a closed door. Merrit thought of the false departure time beside her name, already written as if her choice had been made for her. She had left the estate. That much was settled. Bethan had gone down the ramp and returned nowhere anyone could see.
Jory sat in another room, giving his statement again. Merrit had glimpsed him through the open doorway when an officer changed shifts. He looked smaller without his work jacket, his hands folded between his knees. He had carried tools across Greenvale grounds for years. Now every detail he supplied would tell the estate exactly how much he knew.
At half past five, the officer returned with a paper cup of tea for Merrit. He set it down without asking whether she wanted it.
“We’ve applied for a warrant,” he said. “The account is specific, and there are grounds to believe evidence connected with a serious offence may be on the property.”
“Will they search tonight?”
“If it’s granted, we’ll go as soon as the team is ready.”
Merrit left the tea untouched. “And Jory?”
“He’s staying with us for now.”
The officer had to go before she could ask what for now meant. She heard the station door open and close somewhere beyond the corridor. Each time it did, she looked up.
The warrant came through after dark. The search began shortly before midnight.
Merrit was not permitted to ride with the officers. She waited at the end of Greenvale’s entrance road in the back of a police vehicle, wrapped in a blanket she hadn’t needed until the cold crept through the doors. Two officers sat with her. A third vehicle had taken Jory and another team onto the estate.
Next
Merrit needs to learn what the record bearing Bethan’s name and Pell’s initials documents before Greenvale can discredit it or make it disappear.
The high brick wall blocked the view. Through the windscreen, the gate stood open beneath its security lights. The estate’s neat lawns were hidden in darkness, but the entrance looked much as it had when Merrit first arrived: composed, guarded, expecting visitors to know when to leave.
At 12:42, the radio crackled.
“Witness confirms the location. Stable block. Ramp access behind the east wall.”
The officer in the passenger seat glanced at Merrit, then leaned toward the radio. “Is it usable?”
“Usable. Vehicle tracks at the lower approach. Search team proceeding.”
Merrit looked down at her hands. She had pressed her thumbnail into the side of her finger until a pale crescent showed. She released it and rubbed the spot once.
More than twenty minutes passed. A second message came through, too broken for her to make out. The officer asked for a repeat. Then he said, “Understood,” and set the radio back in its cradle.
“They’ve found the ramp,” he said.
She looked at him. “And the van?”
“They’re checking the route.”
He did not offer more. Merrit turned toward the dark gate again. The ramp had been a story, then an accusation, and now a place a police officer could stand. It still didn’t tell her where Bethan was.
At 1:26, the search team requested Jory’s assistance below ground. The officer went to the gate to speak with the team lead. When he returned, Jory came with him.
Jory’s face was grey with fatigue. A uniformed constable walked beside him, not touching him, close enough that it was clear he was not free to wander. He stopped by the open vehicle door and looked at Merrit.
“They found the entrance,” he said.
“I heard.”
“They want me to show them where the van turned.” He glanced at the gate. “I can do that.”
Merrit waited. Jory’s mouth tightened as he looked past her toward the road, where no cars were coming. He could still choose the simplest account, one that placed him at the gate and nowhere beneath it. He had already given the police enough to put himself in danger. Going down would give them details that could not be blamed on guesswork.
“They’ll need you to identify the place you saw Bethan,” Merrit said.
“I know.” He rubbed a thumb along a seam in his trousers. “I should have told them all of it sooner.”
The constable gave him time to finish. Jory stepped away from the car and went through the gate.
Merrit was told to stay where she was. She watched the open entrance until the officers disappeared from sight. A few minutes later, Greenvale’s security lights brightened along the stable block. She could see their white glow above the wall.
The estate’s solicitor arrived at 2:10. Merrit recognized him from the previous afternoon, though she did not know his name. He walked through the gate carrying a leather folder and did not look toward the police vehicle. Another car followed him in.
At 3:03, an officer brought Merrit a phone and said Jory had asked to speak to her. The line was rough with distance.
“They’ve got a room below,” Jory said.
“What kind of room?”
“Cleaned out. Steel table. Drain in the floor.” He paused. In the background Merrit heard a door shut. “There were cabinets. The officers are going through them.”
Her grip tightened around the phone. She saw Bethan’s blank space in the register again, the place where a departure time should have been. “Did you see her?”
“No. I saw the van go down. I never went inside.”
“Are they still searching?”
“Yes.” A faint breath, then: “I’m staying with the officers.”
It was a plain statement, almost a report. Merrit heard the effort it took him to make it sound ordinary. She wanted to tell him that he had done enough, that he could stop. The words felt useless. He was the one who knew the route, and she could not make that knowledge smaller for him.
“Keep doing what they ask,” she said. “Tell them what you remember.”
“I will.”
The call ended. Merrit lowered the phone carefully onto the seat.
Near dawn, the first officers came out carrying evidence bags. One was empty. Another held a stack of papers sealed inside plastic. Merrit watched them load the bags into a police car, then saw a third officer emerge with a small metal tray. The tray had been wrapped in cloth. A patch of dark residue showed where the cloth had slipped.
The search team lead came over to the vehicle. He looked tired and kept his voice low.
“We found paperwork in a locked cabinet. Some of it relates to the missing woman.”
“Bethan Pike?”
“Yes.”
Merrit stood. The blanket fell from her shoulders and slid to the floor. “What does it say?”
“We’re still examining it.”
“Did you find her?”
“No.”
The answer left nothing to push against. She swallowed, then looked at the evidence bags. One of the officers held up a sheet through the plastic so the team lead could check its number. Merrit caught a few typed lines and a handwritten entry near the bottom.
B. Pike.
Beneath it, two initials: S. P.
She knew the doctor’s name. She had sat across from him at dinner while he examined her face and hands as though she were an object being considered for use. Now his initials sat in a police evidence bag beside Bethan’s.
“Is that Dr. Pell’s?” she asked.
The team lead studied the page. “We’ll verify it.”
Behind him, the stable door stood open, and beyond it the ramp descended out of sight. Police officers moved between the entrance and their vehicles, carrying photographs and sealed containers into the waking morning.
Bethan had been there. Pell’s mark was beside her name. Merrit had no answer yet for what he had done to her, or where he had taken her afterward.