It’s a cold, squally night, but there’s a decent sized moon and the clouds, so constant during the day, have unlaced their feathery edges to allow a glimpse of the stars. He angles his head towards the fell. There is dead bracken on the lower slopes of Scafell. In this light it has the appearance of an old bloodstain: coppery splatters upon woollen sheets.
“Right, just get it over with,” mutters Rowan, sliding off the gloves, teeth bared, trying not to squeal as the new skin tugs against the old wounds. He blows on the exposed fingers, turning the livid pink skin this way and that in the cold air. He spares a moment’s thought for the prick who did it. The internet troll who called himself @h8crimez is on remand in a wing of Hull Prison, awaiting trial. So far, nobody has hurt him, though all Rowan has to do it give the word. He knows a couple of the wardens and half a dozen of the inmates and it wouldn’t take more than a phonecall for @h8crimez to get a mug of boiling sugar-water poured slowly over every millimetre of his sensitive parts. Rowan doesn’t know why he’s holding back. He’s hate to think it were some sense of empathy: some whiff of compassion for wannabe who got in over his head and ended up with a terrible choice to make.
For half an hour, Rowan sits in the doorway and drinks his coffee, his fingers hurting less as he dictates a few e-mails to people he has been neglecting. He apologises wholeheartedly to Matti, his agent, and gives him a masterfully vague precis of what he’s working on. He provides a snippet of interview transcript: 30 seconds of Sumaira bitching about poor record-keeping in the bad old days and being pressured by Eve Cater to lose the FoI request. He doesn’t know if he’ll include the snippet in the finished work, because he’s no idea what the finished work will be, but he’s no doubt that Matti will be suitably wooed. Next he contacts the assistant producer on the TV show that dispensed with his services in favour of a soap star. He keeps it light and friendly: dresses it up as an opportunity for them to have first refusal on a ‘global exclusive’ he’s been working on since last they spoke. He copies the text and sends the same exclusive offer to half a dozen other producers and the news desk at ITV, Channel 4 and Sky. He can’t bring himself to offer it to the BBC. They always ask too many questions.
When he’s done, he begins working through his mental checklist. He knows he needs to speak to eve Cater, that much is certain, and he’d like to know a lot more about Derrick Millward. More importantly, he wants the Silver Birch pupils on his side. With Violet on her travels, he has to hope that Catherine will be keen to talk. He’ll get to that at the book group. He doesn’t want to start looking for Freya until he knows a little more and he has yet to truly make up his mind what he hopes will be the outcome of his search. He can’t help thinking it would make for a far better story if she were dead, and while he knows this makes him a good journalist, he accepts that it makes him a somewhat terrible human being. In the meantime, Alan Tunstall has to be worth giving a gentle nudge. He’ll be an old boy by now but he was present when his business partner went missing, when the caretaker vanished from the grounds and when three of his pupils disappeared for a weekend. That makes him more than interesting to Rowan – it makes him positively entrancing.
“Tell me all about yourself,” mutters Rowan, a pen between his teeth, as he settles on the sofa in front of his laptop. Somewhere, he can hear a robin singing. Further on, a herd of chunky Swaledales have drifted into a bare, soggy field. At least two of the sheep appear to have a smoker’s cough and Rowan keeps jumping, abruptly, as he hears the wet hacking sound.
It doesn’t take long for Rowan to get an address for Tunstall. He’s 80 now, and still lives at Bleng Hall, Nether Wasdale. Rowan performs a search on two real estate sites and cross-checks with the Land Registry. He’s lived in the property since 1986, when it was transferred into private ownership by the Whitecross Trust, along with a large parcel of private woodland to the rear of the property that once formed the Silver Birch Academy.
“Nice perks,” mutters Rowan, pleased with the discovery. He puts the address into the search engine and finds several images. Some are in black and white and linked to newspaper archives – others more recent and the captions are full of architectural terms fawned over by readers of magazines delivered free to homes of distinction. He clicks his tongue against the roof of his mouth and selects an image at random. He’s confronted with an image of a large, white-painted manor house: Georgian in origin and style: green paint around the sills and frames and doors. He flicks through the accompanying images. High ceilings, solid oak floors; a ballroom with timbered ceiling and cruise-liner chandeliers. He flicks through the remaining images with a scowl on his face. He’d quite liked the sound of Tunstall from his farewell speech to the papers. He’d sounded genuine in his belief in a new way to educate the masses. There’s something about seeing the excessive luxury of his home that makes Rowan instantly disbelieve his motives. He likes his heroes to suffer.
“…. built by Steadfast Hookson in 1823,” reads Rowan, shivering suddenly, as he realises for the first time that he’s cold, and tired too. “I know that name …,”
Rowan nods as he swallows down the details of the article, which appeared in Country Living Lakeland in 2009. The text made no mention of the occupants but did say that the ‘long-term residents’ had attempted to stay true to the original spirit of the house, which was built as a companion to the larger property at nearby Wast Water.
“Steadfast Hookson,” mutters Rowan, stifling a yawn. “Built Silver Birch Lodge in 1851 having grown wealthy in his native West Yorkshire trading in ores and textiles. Bought in to mining concerns in Eskdale, Wasdale, Borrowdale…helped fund the Ravenglass Railway and pay for the upkeep of three local churches… Victorian philanthropist, died in 1890, leaving the last of his fortune to notable good causes.” Rowan stops, scowling. “Sounds too good to be true.”.
He flicks the cursor over to Facebook and checks whether Violet has left another clue as to her current whereabouts. Sure enough, there’s an image on her timeline – a dainty mandala framing a silhouette of a blissed-out woman in a yoga pose. The accompanying caption states that she’s having the ‘best time ever’ in Rishikhesh, Uttarakhand, in the foothills of the Himalayas. Rowan licks his lips, as he types a simple reply.
I’ve got friends there – message me and I’ll hook you up.
He smiles as he closes the screen.
He reaches out and pulls himself up by the door-jamb, barely heeding the pain in his palm. His head feels suddenly over-full; as if names and dates and addresses are going to start spilling out his ears. He needs to rein himself in – not let things get too big. Three missing girls. That’s the centre of it. Two came back. What the hell happened to the other? Maybe Violet’s looking for her. Maybe she’s found her and they’re busy chatting about the old times, when they were all kidnapped by a serial killer. Maybe she’s presently in mortal danger and his search for her will lead him bank into the good graces of his publishers and his bank account back into the black.