chapter five: Ghost in records
652 Words
Ghost in the Records
The Port Authority building in Eider’s Reach was a squat, aging structure perched just above the harbor, its walls yellowed by years of salt air and bureaucracy. Inside, the air smelled of mildew, old coffee, and forgotten paperwork.
Isla held up Arben Leka’s passport to the clerk behind the reception window, a bored man with thick glasses and a chipped mug that read “I Brake for Shipwrecks.”
“Have you ever seen this man on any passenger lists? Crew registries?”
The clerk squinted, then typed slowly at a terminal that looked at least two decades old.
“Not in the last ten years,” he said. “Name doesn’t show up in customs, docking records, or employment logs. Could be fake.”
Isla nodded. “Could you run it against older records? From the 1980s?”
He chuckled. “That’s a trip to the archive. Basement level. Hope you brought coffee.”
They did not bring coffee.
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The basement smelled worse—paper rot and salt brine. Rows of filing cabinets and weathered ledger books stretched into dim corners. Rhys ran his fingers along the spines.
“Feel like we’re digging up bones.”
“That’s exactly what we’re doing.”
It took nearly an hour, but Isla finally found something. A manifest from July 1986—two weeks before the storm Elias had mentioned.
A vessel listed as Mira had been flagged for “maintenance repairs” at a private dock. Under crew: A. Leka. Nationality: Albanian. Role: Deckhand.
No notes. No follow-up logs.
“Same time. Right location. But no record of the ship leaving port again,” Isla said, frowning.
Rhys looked over her shoulder. “Or docking anywhere else.”
She turned the page—blank. The next: blank. Then, tucked between pages, a loose slip of paper, hand-written.
> “MIRA – off-record. Transfer completed. Watch the cliff. JM says no bodies.”
“JM,” Rhys murmured. “Your father.”
Isla’s fingers tightened on the slip.
“Looks like he was keeping track of unofficial movements.”
“And trying to cover it afterward.”
A soft beep echoed from Isla’s coat pocket. She pulled out her phone.
A message from the station.
Second body found.
Her eyes flicked to Rhys.
“It was never just one.”
The call had come from a walker along the northern headland—a remote stretch of coast known for its steep drops and salt-burned trees. Isla and Rhys arrived to find the area cordoned off with police tape, gulls circling overhead like anxious sentries.
Detective Malik was already on site, notebook in hand, face pale beneath his scarf.
“You’ll want to see this,” he said.
They led Isla down a narrow footpath where the brambles had been trampled flat. Halfway down, tucked against a tumble of rock and driftwood, lay the body.
Male. Mid-60s. Fully clothed, but the jacket had been removed and folded neatly beside him. The face was slack, lips blue from the cold. His hands were bruised. Defensive wounds.
“No ID,” Malik said. “No phone. No wallet. Just this.”
He handed Isla a torn scrap of paper, stained with something dark.
On it: a name hastily written in smudged ink.
“Arben Leka”
Isla stared at it, heart pounding. “He knew.”
Rhys crouched beside the corpse, inspecting the wrist.
“Tied up at some point,” he said. “Marks still visible. Then dumped.”
Isla looked out toward the sea. Waves slammed the cliffs below with rising violence. The same sea that had kept its secrets for nearly forty years was starting to give them back.
And someone was trying to stop it.
She glanced back at the name.
If Arben Leka had survived the wreck… someone had just made sure he wouldn’t speak about it.
- Writer
