by Steve Mosby
To Lynn and Zack
THE
RECKONING
ON CANE HILL
Groves
The boy in the pit
It was nearly midnight when they finally took David Groves out to the woods. On the surface, he was very calm. Afterwards he would remember that more clearly than anything else that happened. He would remember thinking: It must seem strange to them, how calm I am.
They drove north along the ring road that circled the city. Traffic was sparse at this time of night, and became more so the further they went. To the south, this same road fed tributaries into housing estates and shopping centres, and was always packed with vehicles, but the northern fringe of the city was decaying, and there was little worth driving to here. The industrial estates they passed on the left were mostly abandoned and dead. Many of the factory roofs had fallen in without anyone noticing or caring.
And there were the woods, of course. They stretched away to the right of the vehicle, dark and impenetrable. There were occasional footpaths into them, but none went in more than a half-mile or so before curling back out again. Every year, a few people, strangers to the city for the most part, got lost by venturing off trail. Many of the old wells and mineshafts were overgrown and not marked on official maps, and it was strangely easy to lose your bearings out there, as though the area had its own magnetic field that began disrupting your mental compass. The woods were sprawling, dangerous territory.
That was where they were going.
Groves stared out of the car window as the trees flashed past. The distant mountains were pitch-black peaks against the night sky, and the stars stood out above: a bright spill of dust and diamonds. You couldn’t see them in the city centre, but there was less artificial light this far north. The heavens only ever appear obliquely, he thought; they disappear when we shine our torches at them. And that was certainly the approach he’d been forced to take towards his own faith of late.
He looked away again.
There were three of them in the car. Groves was in the back by himself, his body rocking passively with the movement of the vehicle. The occasional street lights they passed under filled the car with a quick sweep of orange light before leaving them in darkness again. It was raining slightly, and the wipers squeaked intermittently, but otherwise they drove in silence. None of them had made any attempt at conversation. It would have been impossible to talk about where they were going, and why, but any other topic would have been trivial – an insult, almost – so it was safer to stay quiet, and to pretend that the silence was dignified rather than awkward. But the longer the journey went on, the more it felt as though the air in the vehicle was under pressure, growing so tight that the windows might eventually shatter from the force of it.
He wondered what the officers in front were thinking.
I can’t imagine what he must be going through, perhaps.
I wouldn’t be able to do this.
He actually didn’t know if he could. But then someone had to, didn’t they, and in this case it could hardly be Caroline. Even if it could wait, it felt as though it was his duty to do this as soon as possible. Obviously Groves wasn’t attached to the investigation himself, but this little trip was a professional favour he’d not had to fight hard to receive. DCI Reeves had expressed concern, asking him twice if he was sure, but the look on Groves’ face had been enough. However hard it was going to be, it was the right thing to do, and Groves was universally regarded as a man who always did the right thing. Everybody knew he was a good man. There had been no further questions after that.
The driver slowed and indicated, and they pulled into a lay-by. There were two police vans here, dark, lumpy shapes with the overhanging branches pushed sideways across their roofs. A single officer guarded the entrance to the footpath. The headlights turned his jacket a bright lemon yellow in the seconds before they clicked off.
‘We’re here,’ the driver said.
‘Thank you.’
It was a shock to him how strong his voice sounded, almost as though it belonged to someone else, and he wondered again what the other officers were thinking.
It must seem strange to them, he thought, how calm I am.
Perhaps they thought he was being brave and stoical in the circumstances, or that he was gathering strength and resolve to face the horrors ahead. But he didn’t feel strong or brave, and if the last two years had taught him anything, it was that an appearance of calm was meaningless. Calm told you nothing at all about what might happen next. Before it exploded, a bomb was calm.
Because of the rain, a tent had been constructed in the woods. It was bright white, illuminated by the spotlights positioned awkwardly between the trees, and seemed to hang over the clearing like a ghost. Groves knew that the tent was simply to protect the integrity of the crime scene rather than out of respect for what had been found here, but still, he was glad.
Respect did come into it, though. As he arrived, stepping into the small, brightly lit clearing, the officers and SOCOs present all fell silent, but every single one of them met his eye, the ones he knew nodding in solidarity. The message was clear. We are your brothers and sisters, they were telling him. Although we can’t imagine your loss, we are doing everything we can, and we will try to do more.
In the centre, beneath the tent, the ground had been disturbed: leaves pushed carefully to the edges; soil scraped away and bagged for future analysis. The result was a small pit below the apex of the tent, a few feet deep.
To reach this place, Groves had needed to walk almost a mile through the pitch-black woods, along marked routes at first, and then down barely worn makeshift footpaths. The officers accompanying him had swept their torches back and forth over the ground. He had barely looked. And yet now that he was here, he found himself hesitating. Even though the ground was clear of physical dangers, it was almost impossible to move forward.
Please help me, God.
He forced himself, the other officers moving back, allowing him space. A few twigs crunched underfoot, the sound soft in the night. The contents of the pit revealed themselves by increments. When he could see everything that was there, it took a few more seconds before the sight resolved into something his mind could process.
A sudden memory. He and Caroline had never succeeded in establishing a bedtime for Jamie, and at the age of nearly three, the little boy had still kept his own hours. It hurt them both too much to hear the sound of him suffering if they left him in his cot. Neither of them could face controlled crying, especially when they spent so much of the time alone together controlling their own. So they had given up. Every night Jamie would eventually lie down on the settee, say Night night, Mummy and Daddy, and half an hour later one of them would carry his snuffling, sleeping weight up to the bedroom. The little boy always went to sleep on his side, hands clasped in front of his slightly open mouth, feet crossed at the ankle, soft blond hair swept back behind his ear.
The absolute peace on his face had often stunned Groves. A child drifting off to sleep. Everything else was worthwhile; the day had been won.
The boy in the pit appeared to be lying in that exact same position, and it was that, more than anything else, that brought the first shock of recognition – and then the clothes, of course. The baggy blue jeans. The remaining shreds of that orange T-shirt with the purple shark on it. He remembered Caroline holding that and another one up on the morning Jamie had gone missing. Shark? Or monkey? She’d repeated the questions, asking them quicker and quicker, moving the T-shirts backwards and forwards, until Jamie collapsed into giggles. Shark, Mummy! Shark!
A few strands of his hair remained, swept back in that achingly familiar way, but as dirty and wiry now as the roots in
the ground around him. The small skull was grey and cracked, like an old light bulb stained by smoke. There was a kind of peace here, yes, but it was an emptiness.
The rain pattered on the tent above.
Groves stared down at the remains.
He wasn’t calm, he realised. The reality was that he was totally outside himself – that in fact he had barely been in his body the whole afternoon. Since the phone call, he might as well have been hovering above himself, watching his own thoughts and movements without feeling a thing. Right now, he came back into himself – into this moment, here in the woods – with a thump as solid as the heartbeat after the one that skips.
He looked at what else was in the pit, buried alongside the body of the little boy. A toy, slightly to one side. Even more than the clothes, the hair and the position, it was the sight of the toy that finally sealed it.
Winnie-the-Pooh. The soil had dulled the colour, but it was still immediately familiar. That stuffed Pooh toy had been Jamie’s favourite thing in the world. Every morning in his cot he gave it a cuddle, and it rarely left his hand afterwards until he fell asleep with it hugged close to his small chest on the settee.
‘Yes.’
Nobody in the clearing replied. His voice didn’t sound as strong as it had back at the car. In the silence that followed, he could hear the rain on the canvas above, slow and steady as drumming fingers, and then, finally, Detective David Groves tried again.
‘Yes,’ he said. ‘This is my son.’
Part One
And when their Mother was said to have passed over, They were brought before Her in Heaven. And She bid Them sit with Her, and They listened with wonder as She told Them secrets of life and death, and of the true nature of good and evil, and of how the dead are never truly gone, and of ways the dead may remain with us still.
Extract from the Cane Hill bible
Mark
A horrible truth
I’m happy now. My life is a good one. But if you were to excavate it, you would find something terrible in the foundations.
It feels strange to look back on what happened from the present day. It all felt so intense at the time – each sight and sound vivid and indelible; every emotion sharp and heightened – and I’d never have believed there’d come a day when I would forget. When I would have a new life in a different place. A job with a respected team in the police. A relationship with a woman I love more than I can say. Back then, it would have been impossible to imagine it could ever feel as distant from me as it does now.
I was on a backpacking holiday when it happened, with a different woman. My girlfriend at the time. One evening Lise and I pitched our tent at a small campsite on the coast, and then we went down to the beach and swam together in the sea. The setting sun was a beautiful sight, lowering itself towards the water and filling the horizon in front of us with a spread of orange flame. I can imagine our shadows, cast back over the beach as we ran down to the edge of the surf, and the soft sand pushing against our feet.
There was nobody else around; we had the beach entirely to ourselves. Which seemed like a blessing at the time. We were young and in love, after all, and couldn’t keep our hands off each other. We went into the sea and floated out a little way, buoyed by the slight waves. When we were pushed together by the current, we embraced and kissed. When it pulled us apart again, we linked hands and allowed our lower bodies to swing slowly up to the surface, then lay on our backs and kicked our toes out, watching the sunlight turn the water into burning pearls. It was beautiful.
I wasn’t a strong swimmer and wanted to stay within my depth, so I kept reaching down with my feet to find the seabed, feeling the silt between my toes. It gave me a sense of security. But then at one point I tried to touch down and the bottom wasn’t there any more. The water went over my nose, unexpectedly, and I came back up again coughing. I craned my neck to look back towards the shore; it suddenly looked a lot further away than it should have done.
Just relax, Lise told me. I can’t remember the exact words, but it was something like that. She could tell I was nervous, but at that point she was still calm. Let’s head back in.
I nodded, and we both struck out for shore. I probably swam a little harder than I needed to. Even though there was no immediate danger, I felt out of control and I wanted that reassuring feeling of ground beneath my feet once more. A minute later, half exhausted, I looked up at the beach again, and it was further away than before.
Treading water for a moment, I could feel the sea pulling gently at me. Lise was a little way off to the side by then, and I could see that she wasn’t calm any more. That frightened me more than anything, because she was a much better swimmer than me. She never panicked about anything.
Scream, she told me.
I did – we both did – but the noise was small and didn’t go anywhere, and there would have been nobody around to hear it if it had. I struck off again, clawing at the water now. In a single moment, it felt like the sea around me had changed from settled and serene to choppy and dangerous. It happened as quickly as the sun can sometimes pass behind a cloud. I heard Lise scream, some distance away from me now, and then a wave knocked me under. I came up coughing and choking. The beach ahead was smeared by the water in my eyes, and appeared to be above me somehow, as unreachable as the top of a cliff face. Then I was pushed under again.
Somehow I kept swimming. I understood very clearly that I was going to die, and it felt ridiculous and unfair. I’d never been a strong swimmer, but now something animalistic and primal took over, and every time my body flagged, I found strength from somewhere. I kept swimming. There was nothing more to it than that. Some time later – surely no more than a minute – I realised my feet could touch the bottom again, and then I found myself stumbling out of the sea, my body waterlogged with exhaustion. For a moment, I couldn’t understand that I was alive. But I was. I made it out of the sea that evening, and Lise did not.
The last image I have of her is from the beach, standing at the edge of the water and shouting out to her. Swim! Breathe! It’s going to be okay! I remember her face screaming back at me for help, just before she disappeared amongst the black waves, and then I never saw her again.
For a long time afterwards, it felt like I’d died that evening too. I remember that the days that followed were as dark as the nights, and that the grief and sadness were physical sensations – literally there in my chest, like a muscular pain that couldn’t be relieved by stretching into a new position. I ached from the absence of her in a way that seemed impossible to bear. My life had received an injury that didn’t feel survivable. And yet I kept living. Because that’s what happens.
Over time, it got easier. Knowing what Lise would have wanted for me, I eventually took my life by the scruff of the neck and applied for a new job – a new start – on the other side of the country. I mourned, but I also tidied away. After a time, I met somebody new and fell in love with them. I gradually put distance between the now and the then, until what had hurt so badly had finally scarred over, and pressing on it produced little aside from the dullest throb. I built a new life, and it’s a happy one. Somehow I had kept swimming.
But there is a horrible truth underlying that, and a question I avoid asking myself. The truth is this: Lise died, and my life changed irrevocably and awfully. But in the end, not all of those changes were for the worse. My happy life now is a structure built on the foundations of that tragedy, and to remove it would remove me. As much as I loved her back then, if I were given an impossible opportunity to wind the clock back – to have Lise survive that evening and my life now to become something else entirely – would I take it?
Impossible, of course, which makes the question easy to set aside. In the end, whatever the junctions open to it, your life can only ever follow one track. You can’t turn back time, and the people who are taken from you are gone for ever.
That was what I thought, anyway. But that was before a woman called Charlie Matheson came back fr
om the dead.
Charlie
What had been done to her face
Constable Tom Wilson was driving at a leisurely pace down Town Street when he found her.
He was heading back to the department from a routine domestic call-out: a couple rowing. Today, like the days before it, had been far too hot, and he found the temperature always seemed to bring out the worst in some people. They burned, and they got hot and angry and difficult. The pavements outside every pub he passed were teeming with groups of men, many of them already red-chested and drunk. He didn’t envy their partners. He certainly didn’t envy the evening shifts.
Wilson checked his watch as he idled along. An hour left of his own shift, barring further incidents, and although he knew that anything could happen, in his head he was already counting down the minutes. A cold beer in the garden. That would do it, he thought – a few drops of peace to dilute the day. He drove along steadily, the window down and his arm resting on the sill, already tasting it.
And then he saw the crowd.
It was more a gathering, really – several people clustered together outside a grocer’s up ahead on the right – but he could tell immediately from their body language that something was wrong. They were all focused on the same spot, some of them leaning forward, and one man was crouched right down as though talking to someone on the ground.
Wilson imagined an old lady, fallen down. If so, it was likely that someone had already called an ambulance, but still. He indicated, then pulled in and parked up directly opposite.
As he waited for a break in the traffic, a couple of people in the small crowd turned and saw him, and looked grateful as he finally trotted across the road. A uniform always gave reassurance. In Wilson’s experience, and despite the events of this hot afternoon, most people were generally good, and when someone was in distress in public, they rallied round to help. But it was always a little tentative, a little I don’t know quite what to do, as though the person they wanted to help was a bird that had fallen out of a nest, and they weren’t sure whether they were allowed to touch it or not.
