Lena — Wednesday, November 18, 2026, 7:45–10:15 p.m.
Beth Farrell was carrying the bag Lena had told her she could bring. She had it over one shoulder and a smaller bag in her hand, her own things. From the doorway of the assembly room it looked as though she had been waiting for somebody to ask which one was which.
The liaison officer brought Lena over. Beth stood before the introduction was finished.
“You're the one who spoke to her.”
“I spoke to Nadia. Yes.”
“Will you sit down?”
Lena gave her name anyway. The woman took her hand with the quick hard grasp of someone who had already shaken enough hands that day. She was wearing a coat over a neat gray sweater, a scarf still tucked into its neck. Her hair had been pressed flat by rain.
“They said she'd been hurt,” Beth said.
“Her ankle. She could move a little when Nadia saw her. She was awake this morning.”
“Was she alone when they went?”
“Yes. Nadia last saw her in the utility room before they drove away.”
The liaison officer drew a chair back. Beth didn't sit. He had brought her to the room in the fire hall where relatives and people waiting for rides could be out of the way without being sent away altogether. Through the open door Lena could hear somebody asking where the next vehicle was going. A man in a wet jacket came past with a crate of bottles, looking for the table where he'd left the rest. Beth moved her bag out of his path.
“Can I get nearer?” she asked.
“To the cabin?”
“To where you're looking.”
Lena could have told her how much of the ground wasn't beside a road. She had spent part of the afternoon being told it herself. Instead she asked what Beth hoped to do there.
“Wait,” Beth said. “That's what I'm doing here.”
“Let me ask where there's room. We need to be able to reach you.”
“You can reach me.” She held up the phone in her free hand. “Everybody's reached me today except her.”
Lena stepped aside with the liaison officer. He had already discussed the field assembly with command. There was a place she could sit in a vehicle, but no room for her friend to remain indefinitely on the track. The friend who had driven her needed to go home. Beth had not wanted to discuss that with him in front of her.
“She can stay here,” he said. “We can get her to the other place if there's a reason. I haven't told her she has to go home.”
He showed Lena the waiting arrangement he'd made. Beth called him by his name while they were speaking, asking whether her friend could leave her bag in the car a little longer. He said she could.
She went back. “You can wait here. If we move you to the field assembly, there'll be someone taking you. You don't have to make the decision about going home this minute.”
“My friend's got work tomorrow.”
The friend, a woman in a green coat, looked up from the far end of the table. Beth had been speaking to her as much as to Lena.
“I can come back,” the woman said.
“I know you can.”
Beth pulled out her chair at last. She set the larger bag beneath it and the smaller one on the table. She asked Lena to sit too.
“What did she say about June? The woman.”
Lena gave what she could: June had wanted to leave, had tried, had been injured and was still insisting on help. At dawn she had been awake, with her coat and water. She had not been seen after that. There was no account of a person collecting her and no known place she had gone.
“What did he say?”
“He says he last saw her alive in the cabin this morning too.”
Beth looked up quickly. “So he could be lying.”
“About when he last saw her?”
“About everything.”
“We don't use his word by itself.”
“I wouldn't use it at all.”
The woman in the green coat put a hand on the back of Beth's chair. Beth reached up and held it for a moment without looking. Lena waited while the two women said goodbye. There was an argument, brief and low, about whether she had eaten, then the friend agreed to answer if Beth called. She asked the liaison officer whether somebody would actually be there all night. He told her who would take over. She made him write it down before she left.
Beth watched the door close.
“I made her bring me early,” she said. “Now I don't know what to do with her gone.”
Beth unzipped the bag on the table and found tissues, pushed them aside and brought out a folded piece of paper. It was a list of phone numbers, some written over the top of numbers that were no longer right. She asked whether Lena wanted it. The liaison had the useful contacts already. Beth put the paper away.
“She was coming to me,” she said. “I've told people that so many times. It sounds like I'm trying to prove something.”
“You were expecting her Sunday.”
“I was. I had the room ready.”
She began explaining where June would have slept. Not a guest room exactly; she used it herself for things she'd never found another place for. She had moved them out. June had said she didn't mind a mess, but Beth had wanted it done before she arrived. She had been irritated that her niece hadn't given a better time. She said this with a sudden resentment that made Lena stop nodding.
“I wanted to go out,” Beth said. “On Sunday. I said tell me when, so I know. That's the sort of thing I was saying to her.”
Lena could offer no memory of June arriving late and making the annoyance harmless. Beth looked at the bag beneath her chair.
“She has a key to my place. If she's gone there, somebody needs to be there.”
The liaison officer heard her and came closer. That possibility had been checked earlier. Beth knew; she wanted it checked again. He made the call rather than ask her to believe the last one. The neighbor who had been helping was still nearby. No one had arrived. She would look in again.
Beth took the phone when it was offered. Lena heard her ask about the room, then the heat. There was no rush in the neighbor's answer. Beth listened, asked for the lamp by the bed to be left on and then changed her mind.
“No, she'll think I'm in there. Leave the hall one. She's got a key.”
She closed her eyes while the other woman spoke. “Yes. I know. Just the hall.”
Afterward she gave the phone back carefully. Lena wondered whether she would now be asked to leave. She had stayed long enough to hear things Beth would not have chosen to tell a stranger on an ordinary evening. The woman leaned toward her instead.
“Why isn't Nadia here?”
“She's been helping us today. She's with her daughter tonight.”
“Has June got to have a daughter?”
The liaison officer looked down. Beth kept her eyes on Lena.
“No,” Lena said.
Beth put both hands flat on the table. “Is she going back tomorrow? Nadia?”
“She's arranging to. With an officer.”
“Will you be with her?”
“For part of it, if I can.”
Beth nodded at the bag of muddy shoes Lena had brought in. “Are those from up there?”
“Yes.”
“You'd better get back,” Beth said. “Can he stay here with me a bit?”
The liaison officer took the chair Lena left. Beth began asking him where she could keep the larger bag if she stayed the night. Lena waited until she'd got the answer, then went out.
At the field assembly Owen was on the phone beside a vehicle with its interior light on. He lifted a hand when he saw her. The rain was getting onto his page despite the open rear door above him. He asked the person on the phone to repeat a name, then wrote it on his hand instead.
He was speaking about the old feed-place account. Lena heard a former business name, a question about the road.
When Owen ended the call he asked about Beth.
“At the hall. The friend's gone, but there's somebody staying in contact.”
“Is she all right there?”
“She wants to be nearer. She doesn't know whether she wants to leave.”
He nodded. Lena held the light while he copied the name from his hand. The last letter wasn't clear. She asked him whether it was an n or an r. He looked, swore quietly and called back to check before putting it on the message. While he waited he asked what had happened at Alma's.
She gave him the correction Nadia had recorded. He listened and asked one question about the sequence. Lena answered and gave him the recorded account.
“Before he tried to sell it,” Owen said.
“Yes.”
“He'll still try.”
“He did.”
The other investigator answered. Owen finished checking the name. Lena went to find Moss.
A woman at the shelter put a hot container in her hands before she could ask about the returning team. Lena ate standing up. There was a seat beside an officer who was working a knot out of his bootlace, but he had put his dry socks on it and she didn't ask him to move them. He had been through a length of wet ground since the afternoon. When Moss came over the man put the boot aside and stood to give his report.
He showed where he and his partner had come off the same-side folds. His partner joined him, holding her wet sleeve closed where its fastening had broken. She laid her photograph beside the task sheet and pointed to the last stretch they had inspected.
The relief leader was following the marks on his print. “This is where we meet you?”
“Lower,” the returning officer said. “We've come off here.”
The two marks didn't quite join. Lena turned the print toward him and held it while he found his last point.
“Could they begin at your actual last mark?” she asked Moss. “Instead of the line on this copy.”
The pair agreed where they could take the relief crew. Moss crossed out the earlier start and gave them that handover, then the adjoining ground on the cabin side of the hollow. Lena passed over the afternoon views. The farm approach was across the drop; tonight's work continued along this bank.
“Has she picked which bend out of the cabin?” the leader asked.
“Not from the pictures. She's been offered a return. She isn't coming tonight.”
He asked Moss which approach to use and wrote down the answer.
Lena followed the next part of the assignment, then pointed to a second, broader patch on their side. “Could we put another pair in from here too?”
“Not this handover,” Moss said. “The people down there haven't finished with their section. They've got to be met before I can move them.”
“When they come off?”
“I'll see what we've got and how they're doing. This pair goes from the new point first.”
Moss turned to the returning pair. Lena had wanted both tasks going before the night grew any older. The woman was holding her wet sleeve away from her body. Lena asked where to get her something dry, fetched the spare coat and helped settle it over her shoulders. It was the wrong size. The officer pulled it closer and went on describing the drop beside the return point before she left to change.
The relief vehicle could take them as far as the usable meeting place. Lena had been there with the afternoon officers. Moss asked her to go and show it while the two returning people came off. A person who knew the route would go on with the crew. Lena said yes. She gave the empty food container to the woman collecting them and got into the passenger seat.
Inside the vehicle the windshield clouded. The driver waited for the fan to clear it. Behind Lena the crew checked what they carried, one asking the other to move a bag so he could get his foot down.
She showed the driver the stopping place and got out. The officer who would lead the crew onward met them there. The leader read back the changed start; he checked it, then took them to the handover. Lena went as far as the part she knew.
Below them the lights at the vehicles had drawn closer together. She could see the roof of one, not the people beneath it. A voice farther off called June's name. The man beside her waited. The relief crew stopped moving behind them, the small noises of bags and clothing falling quiet one by one.
Lena listened until she could hear a separate sound of water in the low ground. She had a moment of wanting to call too, to send a different voice out there. She asked the officer where the other team was working. He told her. When he called the position back, the reply came from well beyond where she'd put it by ear.
The crew went on with him. She stayed where she was while they got clear, then returned to the vehicle with the driver. Her left foot had begun to hurt where the wet shoe rubbed. She could move it, change into the pair she'd brought, be indoors. June had been outside since the morning. She asked the driver to wait a moment before starting, then saw he was waiting for her to put the belt on.
At the assembly the wet-sleeved officer was in a dry coat, both hands around a cup. She asked somebody to tell her if they found June after she went. Moss said they had her contact. She finished the drink and got up.
Lena gave the completed handover to the recorder. The relief crew were out. She changed her shoes and put the wet pair in the bag.
After ten the liaison called. Beth was still at the hall. She had decided not to go closer in a vehicle. She wanted to hear the phone and use a bathroom without asking anyone to move. The neighbor had checked the house again and put June's things in the room as Beth asked.
“She wanted me to tell you,” he said.
“Thank you.”
“She says she'll be here.”
Lena said she understood. When the call ended she went outside the shelter. In her father's house the old chair would be facing the television. She had not asked which day he wanted her to drive. She sent the question, short enough for him to answer in the morning.
On the phone the marked photograph was still next to the message she'd sent Nadia that afternoon. She could ask how Tessa was, or say the night crew were using the result. It was late. She put the phone away and went to the recorder to find out which team had called in next.