The Draftsman Who Would Not Be Named

He picked the laundromat. It was his one condition, and in hindsight it was a good one: the machines are loud enough to cover a conversation, and nobody looks twice at a person with a bag of paper.

I'll call him the draftsman, because that's what he does for a living and because it narrows nothing. There are two hundred draftsmen in Marrowgate.

What he brought

A tube. Inside it, three sheets of site plan for the Harbourside, carrying his professional stamp and the engineering office's received-stamp, both dated a week before the Planning Board's March vote. The plans already showed the rezoned footprint. The board, in other words, had not yet decided what the drawings assumed it would decide.

He was careful to say he wasn't accusing anyone. He said he'd been asked to produce a set of drawings from a brief that arrived without a covering letter, from a company called Tern & Sable Holdings, and that when he asked what the drawings were for, the answer was "the project."

I asked why he was telling us. He took a long time to answer. A dryer behind him finished its cycle and buzzed, and an old woman came to empty it, and he waited for her to leave.

"Because I stamped it," he said.

What we promised

We promised him that his name would not appear in print, in any draft, or in any file that leaves the building. We promised that only the editor would know who he is. We said we would tell him before publication if anything we wrote could identify him by process of elimination, which is how most sources are caught.

What we refused to promise

We refused to promise that we would print what he gave us. A source does not get to buy a story by being brave. Everything he handed over has to be confirmed against something he didn't hand over.

We also refused to promise that he would not be found out. Nobody can promise that. What we can promise is that if it happens, it won't be because of our mistake.

How we are checking

The stamped date on the plans can be tested against the engineering office's own filing register, which is a public document. The company name can be tested against the property record. The brief he describes can be tested, if it exists, against an email that someone else will have kept. If three independent checks agree, the plans are a story. If one fails, they are a rumour in a tube.

He left before the cycle on his own washing had finished. He didn't come back for it.

Names, places and events in this demo are fictional.