The Secret Beneath Greyfriars University

Nina Shah had expected to get lost on her first day at Greyfriars University in Edinburgh. She had not expected police tape across the Old Library entrance.

She stopped with one hand on her suitcase. Somewhere above her was the roof where her brother had died. The university said Arjun had only been visiting that day. She remembered him leaving home with notebooks that had never come back.

Three weeks earlier, an envelope had arrived at her home without a return address. Inside was a photograph of the library and four words.

YOUR BROTHER DIDN’T FALL.

She had kept the envelope and photograph in a folder between her clothes. Beside them was the newspaper report that called his death an accident. Two years had passed, and she still did not believe it.

“Please tell me this isn’t the queue for registration.”

A boy stood beside her with a cardboard box balanced on his suitcase. A saucepan handle poked through a split in the side.

“I think they’ve closed the building,” Nina said.

“At least I’ve got an excuse if I’m late. Callum Reed.”

She introduced herself and helped him hold the box together. Another student approached with a map of the university flats. She glanced at their luggage and the keys in Nina’s hand.

“Are you in Merchants Court? Flat eight?”

All three were. Her name was Leila Morgan, and she had already found that their kitchen window would not shut. She took the saucepan before it fell out of Callum’s box.

Leila’s phone chimed with a university notice. She read it twice and raised her eyes to the officers at the library door.

“A security officer’s missing. Daniel Harper. He hasn’t been seen since Sunday night. It says to call the police if we know anything.”

“Last night,” Nina said.

Below the notice was a photograph of a man in uniform with a broad face.

“Has someone been hurt?” Callum asked a woman walking towards them.

“We’re doing everything we can to find Daniel.”

She introduced herself as Dr Hester Wren, head of the university.

“The police are also looking into a theft from our archive. An old iron key is missing.”

“The Founder’s Key?” Leila asked, checking the notice.

Wren nodded. “I’m sorry you’ve arrived in the middle of this. Let me show you the quickest way to your flat.”

She helped Callum lift his box and asked what they would be studying. Nina said she was studying history. Wren paused before answering.

“Then you’ll soon know these buildings better than I do.”

Through the library doors, Nina saw a chalk mark on the floor. Three circles were crossed by a single line. She took a photograph before an officer stepped in front of it.

Her phone vibrated.

DELETE THE PHOTO.

Nina scanned the courtyard. Students hurried past her. A man in a dark coat stood beside the library wall, facing her. There was something familiar about the way he stood. A delivery trolley passed between them. When it had gone, so had he.

Another message arrived.

THE TEST HAS STARTED.

It listed Callum Reed and Leila Morgan. Nina read their names twice. They had only just introduced themselves. Below them was a third name, with a red mark beside it. The mark appeared before any of them had answered a question. Nina wondered what they had been chosen for.

NINA SHAH.

By evening, the kitchen window had been wedged shut with a folded takeaway menu. Callum had made tea in three different mugs.

Nina had shown the messages to an officer outside the library. He had recorded the number they came from and their names, then asked whether anyone might want to threaten them. She had told him about the envelope too. He had given her a case number and a number to call.

Now her phone lay between the mugs. Nobody had deleted anything.

“Could someone have got our names from the accommodation list?” Callum asked.

“That would explain the names,” Leila said. “How did they know about the photograph?”

Outside, other students were calling to each other through open windows. Someone dropped a bottle into a recycling bin and shouted an apology.

Callum pulled his teabag wrapper apart. “I have a café interview tomorrow. I thought finding a job would be the hardest part of this week.”

“I need my grant to last until Christmas,” Leila said. “I’d settle for the window staying shut.”

It helped to talk about jobs and rent. Nina had spent so long thinking about Arjun’s death that she had barely planned her own first week.

“We can look up the symbol,” she said. “Then we’ll know whether someone’s playing a stupid game.”

The public university catalogue held old plans, portraits and society photographs. Callum studied the captions while Leila compared the collections. Nina opened her history of Greyfriars at the chapter about the library.

“Here.”

Six professors stood outside the building in a photograph dated 1902. The same three circles were carved into the wall behind them. One man held a long black key. Beside him was a narrow doorway.

Beyond the kitchen window stood the library wall. She had stood beside that wall while speaking to the officer. There had been no door.

The caption read SOCIETY OF THE LAST BELL.

Callum found a recently restored copy of the photograph in the catalogue. It was much clearer than the one in the book. Six numbers ran around the circles. A tiny arrow pointed clockwise, and there was a short gap in the line between two numbers.

Leila bent over the book. “Those aren’t here.”

Nina checked the date. The book was nearly forty years old. Its photograph was grainy, but that part of the wall was clear and unmarked.

“Someone added them to the computer file,” Callum said.

“When?”

He opened the record of changes. Nina saw him pause at an account name and take his hand off the trackpad.

“Callum?”

“Let me check something.”

He reached for his own laptop. Leila stayed beside Nina. Nobody spoke as the library clock began to strike midnight. Nina counted the strokes. At twelve, Callum glanced towards the window.

Then the bell struck again.

The photograph blurred. Nina leaned closer. The professors now seemed to be facing the doorway. Someone stood behind the man with the key, one shoulder higher than the other.

She knew that shoulder. She had told him to stand straight in family photographs.

“What is it?” Leila asked.

Nina could not answer. Arjun stood among the professors, looking straight at her.

Nina put a finger against Arjun’s face on the screen. He was still there when she moved it.

“There’s another man,” she said. “Behind the one with the key.”

Leila leaned closer. “I can only see six.”

Callum took a screenshot. The saved copy showed six professors, the doorway and the numbers. The catalogue image had changed again. Arjun was gone from it too.

She fetched her folder and laid the envelope and warning on the table. Her hands were shaking.

“My brother died here two years ago. They said he fell from the library roof. Someone sent me this before I came. I’d already applied to Greyfriars. I wanted to find out why he was here.”

Leila read the warning without touching it.

“You think someone put him in the photograph?”

“I don’t know what I saw. But it was him.”

Callum angled his laptop so they could see the screen. “I know something about the numbers.”

The latest change to the photograph had been made using an account called CRRecovery. The job number beside it matched an invoice with Callum’s full name.

“I helped move old records to a new computer system here in spring,” he said. “They paid me and gave me a temporary account.”

“Did you change the photograph?”

“No. I worked on lists and damaged files. That photo was changed on Monday. I haven’t used the account in months. They were supposed to close it.”

Nina studied the numbers. Starting at the top, they read 13, 3, 1, 12, 12, 21. She wrote out the alphabet and matched each number to a letter.

“M, C, A, L, L, U.”

Leila pointed to the gap in the circle. “Start there, before three. Follow the arrow.”

Nina read clockwise from the gap. The order was 3, 1, 12, 12, 21, 13. C, A, L, L, U, M.

Callum stared at his name.

“The numbers are new,” Leila said. “Someone put your name there yesterday.”

“Why your account?” Nina asked.

He rubbed his hands against his jeans. “Some files were marked LAST BELL. Then they asked me to remove names from the new list. I asked where those records would be kept. They wouldn’t tell me. I stopped working.”

“Did you report it?”

“No. I wanted the money. Then I wanted to forget the job.”

He had kept the original files and emails. Nina asked why he had not told them sooner.

“Because it would sound exactly as bad as it sounds now.”

Nina was angry with him, but he had at least begun to tell them what had happened. She asked him to keep everything unchanged. He nodded and made another copy while she photographed the book’s unmarked wall.

The numbers appeared in every screenshot. Arjun did not. Whatever she had seen, it was different from the changes someone had made to the file.

As she reached to close the catalogue, the doorway darkened. Words appeared on the stone above it.

HE FOUND THE DOOR. HE FOUND THE TRUTH. ASK VALE.

She took another screenshot. It showed bare stone.