“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.