Caleb inclines his head. “I get it, and I’m not trying to make excuses for her, but sometimes I think Bea struggled seeing you like that, with that level of emotion.”
“Did she ever say why?”
“Not explicitly, but I know she was traumatized by the fire, what happened to Sofia. When Liam died, it triggered something, I think. I’m pretty sure that’s why she couldn’t let herself get close to you at the time.”
Behind him a messy circle of insects are flitting around midair, an unruly gang with nowhere to go. Caleb flaps them away with the back of his hand.
Hana nods. “I think we were all traumatized, but when you’re a kid, you don’t really process it. People think you’ve gotten over it, and then something happens as an adult and it all comes back as big and heavy as it was before. People thought Maya coped well, but I can tell she’s struggling, even now. Jo, too, all the frenetic activity . . .”
He looks at her sideways. “How’s she holding up after Seth?”
She shrugs. “Not good, but I suppose that’s to be expected.”
Caleb nods, opening his mouth and then closing it again. He’s summoning up the courage to say something. Finally, he meets her gaze. “So do we know any more about what happened?”
“Not really, the detective didn’t give much detail.”
Another awkward pause. “It’s just that last night, Jo and Seth—they were arguing. My room’s next to theirs. It sounded pretty heated.”
“Could you hear what it was about?”
He pulls at the peak of his cap, clearly reluctant to reveal more.
“You can say, you know,” she interjects. “I’m under no illusions that I’ve got the perfect family.”
“When they were talking, I heard Seth say something about Jo leaving the villa.”
“The night Bea arrived?”
“Yes.” He swallows jerkily. “It sounded like ‘You’ve got to tell them it was you who left the villa. If they find out another way . . .’？”
Hana looks at him, dumbstruck.
It was Jo who left the villa the night Bea died.
All this time, a question mark over it, and it was her.
“You’re sure?”
“Certain.” As Caleb meets her eye, a shared awareness passes between them: they’ve interpreted what he overheard in the same way.
54
Neither of them speak for a moment.
Elin’s breathing is shallow, her heart pounding.
On autopilot, she moves the beam of the flashlight lower, but she already knows what she’s going to find.
Two more stones, positioned beneath Bea’s and Seth’s photographs.
“What the hell do you think this is?” Steed can barely get his words out.
“Well, either someone’s keeping score for fun, some kind of macabre tally of people killed on this island, or the two cases . . . they’re connected. This setup . . . it implies a continuation of what was started when those teenagers were killed . . .” Her voice drops away as her eyes lock, once again, on the stones below the images.
“You think that Bea Leger’s and Delaney’s deaths might be connected to the Creacher case?”
Elin nods, moving the flashlight between the two sets of photographs. A generation apart, but together on the wall. “Yes, and if they are, I’ve called this all wrong.” She fumbles over her words. “I’m pretty sure whatever the motive is, it has nothing to do with drugs.”
It’s about something more profound, she thinks, related to the rock looming large over the island. Had the killer hooked on to the curse, the island’s history—the very topography—and used it to construct some kind of deranged motivation?
Steed shines his flashlight on the images of Bea and Seth. “They look recent.”
She examines them more closely and it becomes clear that they’ve been taken at the retreat. The main lodge is visible in the background, the blurred shapes of the surrounding trees. Like the pictures of the Creacher victims, Bea and Seth hadn’t known that they were being photographed. A zoom lens.
“But I don’t understand how,” Steed continues. “Creacher’s in prison, isn’t he?”
Elin nods. “Put away for life, but . . .” Her mind churns it over, memories of the case, rumors that she never thought of as important until now.
“What is it?” Steed prompts.
“I don’t know many details, but I remember the headlines. All the ‘have they got the right man?’ stuff. Since then I’ve heard more. Talk at work. Creacher’s always maintained his innocence, but people definitely had their doubts about his conviction.” Doubts she’s taking a whole lot more seriously now.