The file on Elena Cole said she was a murderer, and it said so with fingerprints and blood and testimony, in the flat authoritative language of evidence, and everyone who read that file came away convinced, because the file was designed to convince and it did its job.

But a file only ever contains what was put into it.

It cannot tell you what was left out, or what was faked, or who benefited from its conclusions.

It presents itself as the whole truth while being, sometimes, an assembled lie, and the more professional and complete it looks, the more completely it can deceive.

Everyone in Elena’s story who trusted the file was betrayed by it, not because they were foolish, but because the file had been built, with great care, by someone who understood exactly how much people trust such things.

The only person who never trusted it was Elena, and the reason she never trusted it was simple: she had been there, and she knew it was false, and no amount of official authority could make a lie into a memory she did not have.