I read the message three times before calling Helen. The words were brief, but they unsettled me more than the earlier warnings because they referred to something we had only just discovered: the file Patricia Wells had preserved was a copy, and someone believed the original still existed.
Helen answered on the second ring. I read the message aloud and sent her a screenshot. She asked me not to respond, not to contact Richard, and not to attempt to locate the original myself.
“We now have several documents whose authenticity and completeness need to be established,” she said. “An anonymous message may be useful, but we cannot know who sent it or whether the sender is telling the truth. We will approach this through the evidence we already have.”
I agreed, although the instruction to wait felt almost unbearable. For weeks, I had been finding pieces of my father's investigation, each one raising questions that should have been answered while he was alive. Now we had a possible original document somewhere outside the ordinary company archive, and I feared it might disappear before anyone could examine it.
That morning, Helen contacted Patricia's solicitor to ask whether Patricia had any knowledge of the original file's whereabouts. Patricia replied that she had not seen the documents since Richard instructed her to move the working file to storage. She had retained her copies because she was worried that the papers might be discarded, but she did not know whether the original remained in the company's possession.
She did remember one detail.
Richard had once referred to a locked records cabinet at a storage facility used by Northbridge's former finance department. The cabinet contained files that had not been transferred to the company's new office when its administration team moved. Patricia had never been given a key, and she could not confirm whether the cabinet still existed.
Helen wrote to Northbridge's solicitor requesting confirmation of the company's archived records and the location of any original financing documents. The request specifically included the supplementary instrument, the payment instructions, and the original accounting ledger associated with the Mercer Street project.
Northbridge responded that it was conducting an internal review and would provide an answer when the review was complete. It did not confirm the existence of a separate cabinet or the whereabouts of the original file.
The response frustrated Helen, but she cautioned me against assuming that the delay meant the company was deliberately concealing evidence. Records could be stored under old project numbers, transferred to external archives, or misplaced during a change of management. The only way to distinguish an administrative failure from intentional concealment was to establish what records existed and who had access to them.
I understood the logic. I also remembered Patricia's account of being told to remove the documents from the ordinary archive, and I found it difficult to believe that the original had simply vanished.
At home, Daniel had become unusually cooperative. He had given his solicitor permission to preserve his old emails and had agreed to provide a more complete account of the transfers. He no longer asked me whether I would accept Northbridge's settlement offer. Instead, he spent hours sorting through bank statements and trying to identify the accounts he had used during the project.
I did not help him.
When he asked me to check a date on one of the statements, I told him to direct the question to his solicitor. He looked disappointed, but he did not argue. Whatever cooperation he was now offering had to come from him, without the comfort of assuming I would share the work of repairing his mistakes.
One evening, I found him sitting at the dining table with a list of payments. He had drawn a line through several entries and written question marks beside others.
“I can't account for all of them,” he said.
“Then make that clear in your statement.”
“I thought I could reconstruct everything.”
“You can only report what you know.”
He nodded and returned to the list.
For the first time, I saw him confronting the full extent of the choices he had made rather than rushing toward another promise of repayment. It did not restore my trust, but it gave me a small measure of confidence that the investigation might finally proceed without another invented explanation.
Two days later, Helen received a letter from Northbridge's solicitor confirming that the company had located a set of archived records associated with the Mercer Street project. The records were held at an external storage facility, and the company was arranging an inventory before determining which documents could be disclosed.
The letter did not mention the original supplementary instrument.
Helen replied that the company should preserve the entire archive and that no relevant documents should be destroyed, moved, or altered while the dispute remained unresolved. She also requested an inventory of the files and the names of the individuals who had accessed them during the previous year.
I asked whether we could inspect the archive ourselves.
“Not without the company's agreement or an appropriate legal process,” she said. “But we can insist that the records be preserved and seek access through the proper channels if necessary.”
That afternoon, Martin Shaw contacted Helen with another discovery. While reviewing the accounting firm's retained correspondence, he had found a note referring to a document delivery made shortly before my father's death. The delivery record identified a sealed package sent from Northbridge to an external storage facility, but the description of its contents was incomplete.
The date matched the period when my father had written to the notary and instructed that no new agreement concerning the property should be witnessed without his presence.
Martin could not establish what the package contained, but he believed it might have included the supplementary instrument or related financing documents.
Helen requested a copy of the delivery record and asked Martin to prepare a statement explaining how he had found it. The evidence was still circumstantial, but it gave us a specific date and a location to investigate.
When I returned home that evening, Daniel was waiting by the front door.
“Richard called me,” he said.
I put down my bag. “What did he want?”
“He asked whether I had spoken to Patricia.”
“Did you?”
“No. I told him I had given my records to my solicitor and wouldn't discuss the investigation privately.”
I studied his face.
“What did he say?”
“He told me that Patricia had no right to keep company documents. He said the copies could be challenged and that anyone relying on them would regret it.”
“Did he threaten you?”
“Not directly. He said I was making a mistake by cooperating.”
Daniel took a folded piece of paper from his pocket. It was a short message Richard had sent after the call, telling him to stop communicating with anyone involved in the review until the company had completed its internal assessment.
I photographed the message and sent it to Helen.
She replied that we should preserve it but not treat it as proof of wrongdoing. The message could be an attempt to control communications, or it could reflect a legitimate instruction from the company's legal representatives. Its significance would depend on the broader evidence.
I asked Daniel whether Richard had ever mentioned the original file.
He hesitated.
“Once. He said the company had kept a complete set of documents in storage because the original office files were no longer reliable.”
“Did he say where?”
“No. But he mentioned that the archive was organized by project code, not by the names of the people involved.”
I thought of the reference numbers in my father's notebook. One of them might correspond to the project code used for the archive.
I went to the study and retrieved the green notebook from the document case where Helen had instructed me to preserve it. I did not remove any pages. Instead, I photographed the entries again and compared the numbers with the documents Patricia had provided.
Several references matched the payment schedules. One appeared beside a date that corresponded to the delivery record Martin had found.
I sent the image to Helen.
She examined it the next morning and said the reference might help identify the relevant archive box. She included it in a further request to Northbridge, asking the company to search the records under both the project code and the supplementary agreement.
The company's response arrived late that afternoon.
It confirmed that a file bearing the project code existed in storage, but the inventory listed it as incomplete. The company could not confirm whether the original agreement was among the contents.
Helen asked for the inventory and the names of the people who had handled the file. Northbridge agreed to provide the information after its internal review.
I sat at my kitchen table, reading the letter while the evening light faded across the floor. For the first time, we had confirmation that the file existed somewhere beyond the ordinary office archive. Yet the company still could not tell us whether the most important document was inside it.
My phone vibrated.
Another message had arrived from an unknown number.
This time, it contained a photograph of a plain cardboard archive box. A handwritten project code was visible on the label, and beneath it someone had written the words Mercer—Originals.
The photograph was grainy, but the code matched the number in my father's notebook.
There was no explanation and no signature.
I forwarded the image to Helen immediately.
She called me within minutes.
“Do not try to identify the location from the photograph or contact the sender,” she said. “We need to preserve the image and establish whether it corresponds to the archive Northbridge has acknowledged.”
I agreed.
Then she added something that made the room feel suddenly colder.
“The label suggests someone has identified a box of original documents. If the photograph is genuine, we need to find out who took it and when.”
I looked at the screen again.
The original might still exist, but whoever had photographed the box had chosen to contact me anonymously rather than provide the information through a solicitor.
And if that person had access to the archive, they might know something about the missing agreement that no one had yet been willing to say aloud.
Click here to continue reading: PART 18: The Archive Photograph Matched My Father’s Notes, but the Missing Agreement Had Already Become a Battle Over Who Controlled the Evidence
Three Days After the Funeral, My Husband Quit His Job and Made a Decision That Changed Everything
Part 17 of 35
