DEPARTMENT Q-THE ASHES OF MERRITT

By AI-ChatGPT4o-T.Chr.-Human Synthesis-30 May 2025

They said it was an honour—a new division dedicated to solving cold cases. But Morck knew better. After the incident—the shootout that left his partner Hardy paralyzed and a young officer dead—this assignment was a political burial. He’d been arrogant. Detached. Cold.

Department Q. His exile. His punishment.

All his worst qualities had caught up with him, culminating in that single bullet that tore through his neck and changed everything. Now, his days stretched into shadows and silence. The department was just him. No team. No budget. No respect. Until Akram Salim walked in.

Chapter One: The Basement

The buzz of the fluorescent lights overhead hummed like an insult. Carl Morck stood at the bottom of the Edinburgh Police headquarters, the air thick with mildew and neglect. The basement had the damp chill of a crypt. Cardboard boxes stuffed with files lined the shelves. Water-stained walls bore the ghosts of long-forgotten investigations.

Chapter Two: The Case

Akram was tall, quiet, with watchful eyes that missed nothing. A Syrian refugee and former homicide investigator, he brought with him the scent of war and something else—clarity. He placed a file on Morck’s cluttered desk. “This is the one.” Morck raised an eyebrow. “We have a hundred cases down here. What makes this one special?” “Merritt Linguard. Advocate. Last seen four years ago boarding a ferry to the Isle of Mull. No body. No leads. Her disappearance was written off as suicide.”

Morck flipped through the file. A woman with sharp eyes and a tired smile stared back at him. He paused. “This name... it rings a bell.” “She’d just taken on Bercon Industries,” Akram said. “Won a major class-action lawsuit over a failed clinical trial. Dozens of kids dead. Millions in damages.” Morck leaned back, eyes narrowing. “You think someone wanted her gone?” Akram nodded. “I think she uncovered something worse.”

Chapter Three: The Necklace

The ferry records were sparse. CCTV footage had been mysteriously erased. All that remained from Merritt’s belongings were a half-empty purse, a book of poetry, and a necklace. A crude charm in tarnished silver: a single eye, hollow at its centre. Morck had seen that before. In a box of photos from an unsolved rural murder case—five bodies arranged in a circle in an abandoned chapel near Inverness.

Each had worn the same eye. The press had called it a cult suicide. The case was quietly buried. But now, the necklace reappeared, and it hung like a curse from a rusted chain in Morck’s hand. He locked eyes with Akram. “She didn’t kill herself.” “No,” Akram said. “She went looking for them. And they found her.”

Chapter Four: The Girl in the Crypt

Cadet Rose, eager and fragile after her own breakdown, had been combing traffic footage for days. She found it at dawn: a girl in torn clothing limping through an alley near the ferry terminal the night Merritt disappeared. They traced her to a former psychiatric ward on the outskirts of town. The building was derelict, haunted by silence. A janitor remembered “screams from the basement” years ago.

It had been sealed. Behind a rusted steel door, they found her. A young girl, no older than twelve. Buried beneath loose concrete and old floorboards. Her hands were tied. A silver eye hung from her neck. In her mouth, a page from a legal brief. The initials M.L. barely legible. Rose vomited in the hallway. Morck stared at the scene. “They buried her twice. Once under cement. And once in bureaucracy.”

Chapter Five: The Therapist and the Tape

Morck’s therapy sessions with Dr. Irving were supposed to be routine. Instead, they became sparring matches. “You use sarcasm to keep people out,” she told him. “Maybe I just don’t like people.” But she knew something about Merritt. Irving had worked at the same hospital where Merritt’s younger sister, Eloise, had been committed.

She retrieved an old recording. Eloise’s voice crackled through the tape. “The black-eyed ones live underground. They make you drink things. If you scream, they burn you with silver. Merritt told me to be brave.” “She was protecting her,” Irving said softly. “Until someone made her stop.”

Chapter Six: Village of Smoke

They drove north through fog and forgotten hills. The village was barely a dot on the map. Once a mining community, it had been purchased wholesale by Bercon in the 80s. Now it was a ghost town. Old men drank in silence. A chapel stood hollow, its altar scorched. Morck found photos in an abandoned school—children with black marks drawn over their eyes.

One photo showed Merritt. Younger. Smiling. Holding hands with Eloise. They weren’t just victims. They’d grown up here. Akram found medical logs buried in a drawer. Names, dates, injections. Experiments. All signed by Dr. Mark Leyden.

Chapter Seven: The Return

They tracked Leyden to a sleek rehabilitation centre in Edinburgh, now going by a new name. His voice was calm, rehearsed. “I help troubled youth,” he said. “I’ve moved on from the past.” But he slipped. “She thought she could stop us. She thought fire was enough.” Fire. Merritt’s flat had burned days after her disappearance. Ruled accidental. “She faked it,” Morck said after they left. “Faked her death to bring them down.” Akram stared at him. “And now she’s running out of time.”

Chapter Eight: The Trial

Merritt emerged from the fog like a myth reborn. She handed herself in. Brought evidence: USB drives, court transcripts, photos, videos of experiments, names of officers on the take. Enough to bury Bercon and its enablers. Public outcry erupted. But the night before her testimony, she vanished again. Her safehouse empty.

Her phone destroyed. All she left behind was the necklace, and a note: “The truth lives. I can’t. Morck stared out the window. Rain smeared the city in grey. “She sacrificed herself,” Rose whispered. “No,” Morck replied. “She gave us a weapon. Now we use it.”

Chapter 9: Echoes in the Ashes

The fragments of Merritt Linguard’s journal—found hidden beneath a floorboard in the abandoned cottage—offered cryptic lines, torn emotions, and one clear indication: she had feared someone within her legal circle. A half-burned page read, “Trust is thinner than parchment in this place.” Morck, growing increasingly gaunt and distant, obsessed over the line.

The team pored over Linguard’s legal firm’s old cases. Hardy, still in his hospital bed, cross-referenced the names. Rose found the name “V. Rivenhall” circled thrice in one court docket. Akram connected the dots: Rivenhall, once a rising star in the city’s legal system, vanished from public view shortly after Linguard’s disappearance. He now lived as a reclusive benefactor in a Highland estate, shrouded in charity and silence.

Chapter 10: The Man in the Hills

The trek to Rivenhall’s estate brought Morck and Akram through rain-soaked roads and bracken-choked paths. Rivenhall was polite, even warm—but too polished. In his study hung a photograph of Merritt at a charity gala. She was standing next to him, visibly tense. “I hadn’t seen her in years,” he claimed.

But Morck noticed the broken wristwatch on the mantel. The same one described in Merritt’s journal as a gift she returned in fury. That night, Morck stood outside the estate, watching candlelight flicker through Rivenhall’s window. He had a sinking feeling: this man wasn’t a killer, but he was hiding someone.

Chapter 11: The Girl Who Didn’t Fall

A forensic review of the cliff site where Merritt supposedly fell revealed something crucial: no impact. The erosion pattern, Akram noted, indicated no one had disturbed the edge. The body—never found—may have never been there. Rose uncovered CCTV from a railway station five days after Merritt’s disappearance. Grainy footage. But there she was: Merritt, hair cut short, stepping onto a northbound train.

“She ran,” Rose whispered. “But from what?” Hardy, decoding files from his hospital bed, found that Linguard had prepared a deposition implicating a judge, a high-ranking officer, and a corporate leader—all of whom had worked together on land seizures in low-income areas. If true, it would collapse reputations and foundations alike.

Chapter 12: Ashes of the Past

The breakthrough came when Morck discovered a matchbook from a closed-down roadside diner in one of Merritt’s storage boxes. It bore initials: “P.K.” Investigating the diner’s old staff revealed one Paul Kenney, a former investigator turned whistleblower—gone underground after threats. Kenney met them in a church basement in Dundee.

He confirmed it all: Merritt had been compiling evidence. The judge, the officer, the corporate head—Rivenhall had ties to all three. They had created a “cleansing ring,” acquiring property and silencing resisters. Kenney feared Merritt was dead. But Morck wasn’t convinced anymore.

Chapter 13: The Vanishing Point

Rose cracked an encrypted drive from Merritt’s files. It revealed detailed logs of her meetings, fears, and a flight reservation to Norway under a false name. The date? Two days after the CCTV sighting. Meanwhile, a body surfaced in a river near the Scottish border—badly decomposed, but a necklace around the neck matched the one Merritt always wore.

A DNA test began. While they waited, Morck spiraled. The guilt of his past—his partner’s paralysis, the officer’s death—kept him from sleep. He stood in the rain one night, whispering apologies to no one.

Chapter 14: Blood in the Water

The DNA result: not Merritt.

Morck, reinvigorated, believed she was alive. Hardy, his voice trembling through the phone, said, “She’s the last card they couldn’t play. They need her to stay buried—alive or not.” Then came the break. Akram traced financial movements of Rivenhall’s estate. Hidden payments led to an offshore account in Merritt’s name, and a final transfer: a clinic in Tromsø, Norway. Morck booked a flight, dragging Rose and Akram into the ice-bound north.

Chapter 15: The Room of Silence

In Tromsø, the clinic resisted entry. But Akram, bluffing as an Interpol liaison, got them in. They found her. Merritt, pale, altered by surgery, recovering from trauma-induced catatonia. The doctors confirmed: she had checked herself in using a pseudonym, months after her escape.

She hadn’t spoken for weeks. But when Morck entered, Merritt whispered: “Did you burn the file?” He shook his head. “No. We’re going to finish this.”

Chapter 16: Fire and Testimony

Merritt’s voice grew stronger by the hour. In quiet tones, she recounted the night she vanished. The threats, the planted evidence, the staged suicide. The people she trusted had turned into monsters when she dared to expose their network. Her only choice had been to disappear. But now, with Department Q behind her, she chose to return—not just to clear her name, but to testify. Morck organized her protection through international authorities.

Rose and Akram worked round the clock digitizing the contents of Merritt’s hidden dossier. Hardy, still confined to a wheelchair, recorded a legal brief that would serve as a prelude to a public tribunal. The day before they flew home, Merritt took a walk on the frozen coast with Morck. “You believed I was dead,” she said. He nodded. “But that’s the trick about ghosts. Sometimes, they’re just waiting for the right moment to come back.”

Chapter 17: Wolves in Suits

Back in Edinburgh, the truth detonated. The names in Merritt’s deposition read like a who’s who of Scottish respectability: Sir Edward Halloran, Judge MacAllister, and development mogul Clive Bertram. Their scheme had uprooted dozens of families, funneled funds through fake charities, and used the police as enforcers. As the tribunal opened, protests ignited. Evidence streamed across media networks.

Department Q, once mocked as a bureaucratic exile, was hailed as a force for justice. But with the public exposure came danger. Bertram sent armed men after Akram, who barely escaped with his life. Rose’s flat was broken into. A bomb threat emptied the tribunal hall. Morck, increasingly paranoid, refused protection. “Let them come,” he growled. “I’ll be waiting.”

Chapter 18: Judgment Night

On the eve of the final hearing, a fire broke out in the police archives. Department Q’s basement office was reduced to ash. But Morck had expected it. The files had been duplicated, the evidence scattered among trusted sources. He stood in the smoldering ruins, eyes reflecting the flames. “They still think fire erases truth,” he said to Rose. “But this time, we’re the phoenix.”

The next morning, Merritt testified. Her words were calm, unwavering. Cameras rolled as she named every participant, every document, every victim. The court exploded. Halloran collapsed mid-hearing. Bertram tried to flee—captured at the airport. MacAllister resigned in disgrace before he was disbarred. Justice, decades overdue, came crashing down like a storm.

Chapter 19: The Long Silence Ends

Spring arrived in Edinburgh. The cold that once mirrored Morck’s soul had begun to thaw. Rose had returned to full duty. Akram was offered a permanent post. Hardy, slowly recovering, joked about painting the new office in “vengeance red.” And Merritt?

She chose to disappear again—but this time, not in fear. She sent a postcard from an unnamed coast: “Tell Carl thank you. And tell him the necklace is where it belongs.” Morck found it in a sealed envelope—Merritt’s sapphire pendant, returned to him like a piece of completed history. He stood by the waterside that evening, alone. The wind pushed against his coat. The ferry horn echoed in the distance. For the first time in years, he wept.

But not in grief.

Epilogue: The Weight of Ashes

Justice is not clean.

It rarely arrives with clarity or applause. It comes limping through back doors, cloaked in burned files and broken bodies. And yet, when it comes, it matters. It changes the air. It restores—if only a little—what was lost.Carl Morck had spent his career chasing ghosts. Some were of the murdered. Some were the living. The most elusive, he came to learn, were the parts of himself he buried long ago: guilt, compassion, belief in redemption.

Department Q was never meant to succeed. It was created to fail quietly, to waste time and talent in the dark corners of a crumbling system. But in that darkness, a light was kindled—flickering, yes, and nearly extinguished many times, but ultimately unstoppable. Akram Salim taught Morck that exile is often the birthplace of courage. Rose taught him that even the fractured heart has rhythm. Hardy reminded him that pain, when shared, is softened.

And Merritt Linguard—long thought dead—proved that silence is not surrender. It is strategy. And that even when the world forgets your name, truth remembers. Morck did not become a better man by finding the solution. He became a better man by enduring the questions. And in doing so, he passed through fire and emerged—scarred, yes—but real. In the end, it wasn’t the case that was solved. It was himself.

And that is the most difficult mystery of all.