Chapter 77

77

Johnson's laboriously photographed the documents. High res, they're too big for one email, so one long chain fills her in-box.

Steed glances over. "Phone data application is a go. Want a hand?"

"Please. I'll forward some." Elin opens the first few attachments: statements from the night Lois Wade went missing. The narrative is uniform: Lois Wade wasn't on the island. Was never meant to be. No one saw her.

She skims the ones taken during the Creacher case. Camp leaders, teachers. The same story: how they woke to screams, what they found when they emerged from their tents. Creacher's briefly mentioned; how they found him odd, noticed him watching the kids.

"Anything useful?"

Elin shakes her head. "Bit of a pattern... similar story. How about you?"

"Same." Steed shakes his head. "Can't get my head around the fact that no one was awake when the killer went for them. A school trip, you'd expect them all to be up."

"Maybe the killer waited until they were sure the kids were all down," she says, opening the teenagers' statements. The narrative is the same as the adults', but there's raw emotion too; none of the contained formality of the adult accounts, somehow subconsciously absorbed from books or TV dramas. How a Statement Should Be Given 101.

"Any arguments mentioned?" Steed looks up. "Nothing in mine."

"Not yet. This is Farrah's," she murmurs, grimacing at what she knows are lies.

"Hard reading?"

She nods, putting Farrah's and Will's documents aside to review the last statement, the boatman's. It begins with his recollection of bringing the group from the mainland, his observations about Creacher. He, too, had found Creacher's behavior odd, had noticed him watching not just this group of teenagers, but others too. Hadn't wanted to say anything before, you know?

Elin's about to close the file when her eye is drawn to the boatman's name; it hadn't registered the first time she looked.

Porter Jackson.

Something pulls up and out from her subconscious. Rolling it about in her head for a few moments, it comes to her: a Porter Jackson was briefly mentioned in the article she'd read about the development of the island, the protester opposing Ronan Delaney's plans.

Elin taps his name into Google together with the words Reaper's Rock .

Several pages of results appear. The first few are versions of the initial story she'd read, local news, then national, the story amplified by the mass-market dailies. locals protest over development of infamous island. No surprise: nationals loved reporting on local infighting, a newcomer upsetting the apple cart.

Elin clicks into the first, adrenaline pulsing through her. She's right : Porter Jackson was the vocal complainant. It can't be a coincidence, but does it actually mean anything? If you'd worked on the island, albeit as a boatman, when it was in its natural state, it wouldn't be a stretch to imagine you'd complain when a development of this scale was proposed.

But as she scans lower in the search results, she pauses, finger hovering over the screen. The only article that isn't connected to the development of the island.

A Reddit thread. She spots Porter Jackson's name mentioned in the subhead directly below a headline that immediately intrigues her: Does anyone remember being on the island at the school between 1963 to 1967?

Surely the thread is referring to Rock House School? Quickly scrolling, she scans the comments below.

Hi, my name is Alain Dunne, I was at Rock House from 1963 to 1967. Looking back, it's clear it was a dumping ground, for local authorities all over the UK to send "maladjusted" children (as we were referred to as) with behavior problems.

Someone else comments:

I like the term "naughty boys" boarding school, I think that the PC phrase would be "educationally challenged" boys boarding school. I know I was.

Several comments down, a photograph appears in the thread of the old school. Elin reads on.

A friend of my father was a Master at Rock House in the sixties and seventies. I was a child at the time, but he scared the life out of me, so goodness knows what those boys went through.

Below that, another comment:

Anyone remember Porter Jackson? He was in my class. The only one I haven't kept in touch with.

Elin stares, her heartbeat now sounding in her ears.

There in black and white: Porter Jackson, boatman at the time of the Creacher murders and vocal complainant about the development, had attended the school.

His connection to the island went even further back than the Creacher murders.

"You found something?" Steed glances up from his phone.

"Yes. The boatman, Porter Jackson." Briefing Steed on the connection to the article she read, she then skims the rest of the thread, reminiscences about teachers and questionable food. Finger over screen, she pauses on a post about halfway down.

Does anyone remember that strange room they used to take us to? It had these odd things on the floor—stones that looked like that rock.

Elin blinks, rereading it with a strange, sickening lurch: the room, surely the same room Michael Zimmerman mentioned.

A room with stones on the floor. Like the cave in the quarry.

It can't be coincidence. She tilts the phone screen toward Steed. "Read this."

He whistles under his breath. "Bloody hell."

Elin's skin prickles as she thinks it through. The rumors she's heard about the school make sense now; the numbed faces of the boys in the photographs, Zimmerman's words about the artist's preoccupation with his time at the school.

Confounded, she continues reading.

Do you remember where it was?

No. They blindfolded us, didn't they? But it wasn't far from the house. I remember going down some steps.

It worked though. Putting us down there on our own all night... a horrible punishment, but I know I never played up again.

I still have nightmares about it now. I've started putting it into my art... it's the only way I can go about processing it.

Let's take this private. I don't think a public forum is the place to discuss.

Elin keeps reading, but that's the last mention of the room.

"I don't know what drives some people." Steed grimaces. "Vulnerable kids..."

"Yeah. The very people who were there to protect them too..." As Elin scrolls back to a particular part of the conversation, her eyes hook on one phrase: I've started putting it into my art . "This bit, about the art, it's got me thinking about the piece in reception with the motifs of the rock woven through it. What if, rather than motifs, they're representations of the stones described in this room?"

"Maybe a way of trying to process it, like this guy says here."

"And perhaps our killer never has. I think we've got pretty substantial motive here; what if our killer is echoing their experience of this room through the murders? Going through this... a massive trauma. If you're delusional as well..."

Steed slowly nods. "But if that is the case, then surely it implies that the killer has to be someone who was at the school, went through it? Or at least has knowledge of it."

"You're right." Elin's mind darts to the one person whose name drew her attention to this thread in the first place . "The only person who fits is Porter Jackson, but the question is whether he was also on the island when Lois Wade went missing. I'll message Johnson."

He replies almost instantly. Elin turns back. "Jackson was the boatman when Lois went missing. Johnson never thought it significant: Jackson apparently dropped the kids and left, and people verified that."

She catches a fleeting light in Steed's eyes. "But just because he left doesn't mean he didn't come back."

"Exactly." It's a theory, but one she can't help stumbling on—while Jackson was on or around the island at the time of the Creacher murders, there's no evidence he is now.

"Let's see if we can get anything on current whereabouts." Elin quickly searches his name on her phone, but it brings up pages of results. "Bad idea. This will take hours to trawl through. Let's call the intel unit, get their help. In the meantime, I want to speak to Michael, get a look at this building he mentioned. He reckons it's been blocked up, but after seeing this, I'm wondering if there's another access point."

"You're thinking somewhere the killer might be holding Farrah?"

"It's a possibility. You keep an eye on things here and I'll find Michael." Reaching for her bag, she feels a sharp prickle of excitement, adrenaline rising in her so fast, she stumbles as she makes her way across the room.

They're getting there. Piece by piece things are pulling together.