The Counterfeit Map of the Murder

How it begins

Mina found the murder in a street that would not exist until October.

Someone had drawn a red cross beside the proposed corner shop. Under it, in neat surveying script, were a man's initials and Tuesday's date.

Today was Thursday.

She held the tracing paper against the office window. The street lay beneath the new railway viaduct, beyond three houses scheduled for demolition. On the current plan, it was a clay pit.

On this plan, it had a name.

She had designed neither.

Edmund Vale came in carrying a lunch tin and the damp smell of the works.

“Who has been using my desk?” Mina asked.

“Everyone. You have the good ruler.”

She showed him the map.

He stopped opening his lunch.

“Where did you get that?”

“Between the drainage schedule and your request for more fencing.”

“It should have been destroyed.”

“The map or the place?”

He looked toward the door.

Mina had spent five years converting other people's decisions into clean black lines. The lines made the decisions look inevitable. Houses became blank space. A footpath became railway property. A man's objection became a note in a margin.

“What happened on Tuesday?” she asked.

Edmund put his lunch tin down.

“A worker failed to report.”

“Those are his initials?”

“Yes.”

“Did anyone look in the clay pit?”

“There isn't a clay pit anymore.”

Mina crossed to the cabinet and took out the approved survey. The ground levels differed by six feet. Beneath the red cross, one version showed solid earth; the other showed a passage.

From the yard came the whistle announcing the next blasting shift.

Edmund moved toward the window.

Mina rolled both maps together.

“Tell them to stop.”

“They won't stop for a missing laborer.”

“Then tell them I have found a mistake in the foundations.”

For once, the clean lines would have to wait.