He indicated the logo on the back of the pamphlet. A stylized S, made to look like two mirrored figures, linking hands, with this year’s date printed underneath. I knew that logo. I’d seen it before, on collecting tins and posters.

“Survivors.” The organization to which Dr. Blakely, aka Thing One, aka the Abuse Guru, has links. Until now I’d only thought of him as another cutout soldier, to go with Johnny Harrington’s growing fortress of paperwork. But to see that little pamphlet again, published by Survivors—

“What does it mean?” I asked Winter.

“I’ve been looking into Survivors,” he said. “It was formed in ’88, soon after Harry Clarke’s arrest. Initially a phone hotline, staffed by a handful of volunteers. It was called—”

“Survivors Speak Out.” I remembered it vaguely now: its public face had been Liz McRae, David Spikely’s therapist. During the trial, she had been called as an expert witness. A young thing, I remembered now; surely no older than twenty-five, with a sensible honey-brown bob and a crowd-pleasing earnestness. It was she who had instigated the initial investigation, alerting the social services following a series of conversations with her charge, during which he had mentioned a member of St. Oswald’s staff, and certain unsavory events. The fact that Spikely had never actually named Harry as his abuser was seized upon by Harry’s counsel, but Miss McRae had kept her calm, pointing out that survivors of traumatic events were often unable to speak out, or even to articulate apparently trivial details relating to the experience.

“Survivors.” That was where I’d first heard the word spoken in that context. And here, once again, was a link to the Church of the Omega Rose, the organization that had victimized Nutter, brainwashed Spikely, and encouraged Johnny Harrington to speak out against Harry. Now that I looked at it again, I realized why the style of that nasty little pamphlet now seemed so oddly familiar: I’d heard it just the other day, in the Headmaster’s Assembly—

“Harrington wrote it? Harrington?”

Winter nodded. “It looks that way. And certainly, he was always around. After the trial, the hotline expanded, shortened its name to Survivors. Liz McRae stayed active for several more years as a counselor, specializing in recovered memory. In 1993, she was awarded an MBE for her charity work. She married in 1991, and is no longer an active part of the group. She has no children, in spite of having had several rounds of fertility treatment, and now runs a support group for childless couples in Harrogate. Friends Reunited confirms all this. Her name is Elizabeth Harrington.”

Chapter 5

5

Michaelmas Term, 2005

Dear Mousey,