‘I’m demented, Finn, trying to get on to someone in TV3, they’re supposed to be running an item in tomorrow evening’s news and I’m organising the meeting time and about a hundred other things simultaneously – sure you know, yourself. If you’re looking for Alice, she’s gone – she was in since half five this morning and she was dead on her feet.’

‘I kinda was looking for her,’ I lied. ‘But maybe you could give me a hand if you have a minute? It’s just that I’m supposed to be meeting Jeremy Gill on Wednesday for the workshop as board representative, I was in this morning talking to Alice about it, and I realised afterwards that I really needed to look at the records of his 1998 visit to the festival so that I’d be fully up to speed. I was wondering if you had the archive handy?’

‘Em, sure, yeah,’ Sarah-Jane said, staring at her computer screen. ‘I’m a bit busy right now, I …’

‘Just point me in the right direction and I’ll take it from there,’ I said.

My conscience itched with the knowledge that I was using my position on the board and my friendship with Alice to worm my way in. But, as I cleared a corner for myself and sat with the five box files that comprised the 1998 archive, I pushed all squeamishness aside. It would be worth it if I found something.

The first three boxes yielded nothing of interest: posters, flyers, guest attendances, audience records, copies of the catalogue and publicity materials. The fourth one was all Jeremy Gill. Somebody had realised early on that Gill was going places and had preserved everything they could about his time at the 1998 festival, including his original handwritten entry form for the short film competition, the original videotape that he’d submitted, a thank-you card that he’d sent afterwards, numerous press clippings, many of which I had seen online, as well as a note of the prizes he’d won and the judges’ comments. There was a bundle of photos, too, mostly duplicates or alternate versions of the prize-giving ones that had appeared in the Examiner.

But wrapped separately in a white page were two other photographs. The top photo showed Gill standing in a posed shot with a group of teenagers in various school uniforms. I took a closer look. The teenagers were wearing white name tags. I would need an enlargement to confirm that the tags were exactly the same as the one I had found at the Carney house, but they looked similar.