The Absent Record - Richard Ashcombe

A record was never filed.
A decision was never registered.
And for fourteen months... no one noticed.

Until someone did.

When a routine development approval quietly slips through the cracks of a small village system, it should be a clerical fix.

It isn't.

Because the missing record isn't just paperwork.
It's a chain of decisions.
A sequence of assumptions.
A silence that held... until it didn't.

The Absent Record follows Thomas Hale as he reconstructs a failure no one intended-and no one fully understood.

A parish clerk who did everything right.
A planning officer who made one wrong judgment.
An objection that was never heard.
A system that quietly let it all happen.

This isn't a case of who did it.

It's a case of how it happened.

And whether the truth-once found-can actually hold.

Quiet. Precise. Relentless.

For readers who prefer tension without noise...
and mysteries that unfold in what's missing.