Page 156 of Slack Tide Kill

When they were done, Gemmell nodded. "Wish us luck."

He and Mercer strode off to find Mayhew. Sally sat down at the desk, looking at the whiteboard while the hubbub of the bullpen rang around her. It was their whiteboard from before, she realized, building on the earliest division of the suspect pool into different flavors of Rook-adjacent people.

Now more than ever, that seemed the key to the killer.

Simms brought her and Liam sandwiches. They ate and looked at the list of 65 names, all now fully parsed by age (late 50s) and occupation (emergency services-adjacent).

"It's got to be one of these," Liam said. "Looks like 23 names that fully fit the profile."

Sally studied them. A few, she recognized. Anthony Lean, the drifter who'd vanished. Trevor Gibbs, apparently disappeared by Bledd for killing a fox. Suspects from the original killing. There were case files dating back to interviews from that period. A fisherman, an RNLI man, a local grocer. She gazed at the list until it defocused, meaning less the longer she looked.

It just didn't make sense. If it was any of these, there'd have to be some sign, either back then or now.

"What if the killer's not on this board," she said.

Liam grunted. "Possible. Why do you say that?"

"All these people, we've been over them countless times. For years, they've been getting hauled over the coals. The original case, the podcast crew, the media, this case. We must have knocked on their doors half a dozen times. Taken depositions. Taken alibis. Gotten right in their face. How are they getting away with building bombs? Killing and transporting bodies? Stealing Bledd's boat, killing him and his girlfriend?"

Liam sipped his coffee, restraining a sour face. "I hear you. We didn't have tabs on any of them 24/7, though."

"No, but this whole place, Dungeness, Romney Marsh, it's like one big village, right? Everybody's in each other's business; people keep saying that to me. I just think someone would see."

"So you think our killer's off the graph?" He stood up, holding his coffee in two hands against his chest. The shaking was still there, symptom of withdrawal. "Out of left field."

"But still linked to Reg Rook. Close. Trusted. What if it's somebody even Spate didn't know?" She scratched her cheek. "I think we need to go back."

Liam frowned. "Further back than 30 years?"

"Yeah. Remember the Fates talked about a formative event, 50 years ago? 20 years prior to the first killing. Something that twisted the killer? Maybe we're looking at this wrong. Maybe it twisted both Reg and the killer together?"

Liam ruminated. "Shared trauma. A bond that held fast, but never showed up in Rook's everyday life. Under the surface."

"A secret at the slack tide line," Sally said softly. "Nobody saw it, nobody knew it, but it was still there. Maybe years went by, and Rook and this killer, they didn't see each other. But the connection was there, underneath everything." She gestured at the board. "Under all this."

"Before Spate and Meeks," Liam said. "So, back in the 70s?"

"Sure. Even into the late 60s. Rook was 72 when he died, right?"

"All right." Liam straightened up. "So how do we go that far back?"

Sally sipped her coffee. There was something there. Something niggling at her thoughts. Fifty years back. Even 60. Not something they'd find in the paper records. If there was any actual record, they'd already have it.

They needed the oral histories. The memories of this place. Wasn't there somebody who'd said–

She snapped her fingers and the sound rang through the bullpen.

"Edwin Pike!" Thoughts flooded back in. "Remember what he said, when we first went to see him? He schooled the Rook boys, but he almost schooled Reg too."

Liam's eyes narrowed slowly. "OK. Yeah, he did say that. He didn't school Reg, but maybe he heard stories?"

"Or he knows someone who did teach him. I bet he has all his old records. Any teacher from back then, 10 or 20 years older than Reg, they'll be in their 80s or 90s now. They might still remember."

Liam leaned in. "We can try and get his school records, too. Full list of everyone."

"I can do that," Hawlin said.

Sally and Liam looked to him. "You can?"