The Reckoning on Cane Hill

by Steve Mosby

  ‘Right then,’ he said. ‘What’s going on?’

  It was an elderly woman nearest him who answered. ‘I don’t know. She was coming along, and then she just sat down. The way she was walking, I could tell that something wasn’t right.’ A man behind them said, ‘I’ve just phoned for an ambulance.’

  ‘Good. Can everyone move back, please? Thank you.’

  They did as they were told, revealing a woman sitting on the ground outside the shop. She was half leaning against a rack of fruit, head bowed so that a tumble of curly brown hair obscured her face. Her knees were raised in front of her, with both arms wrapped around her shins, hugging them. Even without being able to see her face, it was obvious that she was much younger than he’d been expecting.

  Wilson crouched down in front of her.

  ‘Miss?’

  The woman didn’t react to him in any way. She was dressed strangely, he noticed then: her trousers and short-sleeved blouse were both a brilliant, uniform white. Her bare forearms were thin and pale, a barely distinguishable shade from her clothes. His gaze moved over the criss-crossing scars there. There were so many, and while some looked old, others appeared to have been inflicted much more recently. With that and the outfit ... he wondered, was she a patient somewhere? There was nowhere nearby that he could think of.

  ‘Miss?’ he said again. ‘Are you okay?’

  Again there was no response. She was gripping her legs so hard that her knuckles seemed to be coming through the skin. And breathing very rapidly, he realised, as though trying to control a panic attack.

  Give her room.

  Wilson stood back up and turned to the woman who’d answered him first.

  ‘Where did she come from?’

  ‘Down that way.’ She gestured further along Town Street, in the direction of the field at the far end. ‘I knew something was wrong with her. I could just tell. She seemed a bit out of it. I think she might be drunk.’

  ‘And what happened? She collapsed?’

  ‘She reached here and stopped, and then she just ... sat down.’

  ‘Okay.’

  Wilson didn’t think the woman on the ground was drunk. You could almost always smell it on anyone bad enough to be found in a state like this. Whatever they’d been drinking, the alcohol itself seeped out of their pores. And this woman didn’t smell of booze. Breathing in now, he caught the mixed smell of the fruit stall beside them, and the slightest hint of antiseptic, but nothing more.

  ‘Nobody knows her?’ he asked the gathered crowd. ‘None of you have seen her round here before?’

  Blank faces, a few shakes of the head.

  ‘All right.’ He crouched back down again. ‘Miss? Can you hear me? My name’s Tom. I’m a policeman. It’s going to be okay, I promise. Can you tell me your name?’

  That got him the faintest of replies.

  ‘Sorry, could you say that again?’

  ‘Charlie.’

  ‘Okay. Hello, Charlie.’

  ‘Matheson. That’s my name. Charlie Matheson.’

  ‘That’s really good,’ he said. ‘Now—’

  ‘There was an accident,’ she said suddenly. ‘There was a terrible accident. And I don’t know where I am! I don’t understand. Where is this?’

  He started to answer, but the woman suddenly tilted her head back and looked at him. The people around him receded into the distance, and the noise of the traffic behind disappeared underwater.

  For a moment, Wilson couldn’t say anything. All he could do was look at the woman. Just crouch there in front of her, staring in horror at what had been done to her face.

  Mark

  Back from the dead

  Of course, I didn’t know any of that as I woke up the next day. In fact I didn’t know very much at all. As I lay in that vague state between sleep and consciousness, my eyes still shut scrupulously tight, my thoughts were grey and heavy and distinctly unusual: disjointed jigsaw pieces that, when assembled, I thought would not make for a pleasant picture. I was dimly aware that moving too much would be a bad idea, but at that point I hadn’t quite remembered why.

  You’re massively hung-over, Mark.

  Oh yes. That was it.

  ‘Coffee for you.’

  I felt pressure against the side of my leg as Sasha perched on the bed beside me. She clicked her fingers above my face.

  ‘Come on, Mark. Wakey wakey.’

  ‘Ugh.’.

  ‘Is that really all you can manage?’

  ‘It seems so.’

  I heard the tap as she put the cup down on the bedside table. A moment later, I risked opening my eyes. The room seemed oddly angled. As I stared up at the lightshade for a few seconds, it began moving gradually away to one side. My hangover appeared to be slowly stirring the bedroom.

  ‘Something has happened to my head.’

  ‘Indeed.’ Sasha patted one of my legs with exaggerated sympathy. Then she stood up. ‘You can’t say I didn’t warn you.’

  ‘You warned me insufficiently.’

  ‘I warned you extensively. But hey, you’re a grown man.’

  I turned my head slightly to look at her. She was standing at the side of the bed, peering down at me with her head tilted to one side and a slight smile on her face. Her bright blonde ponytail hung over the shoulder of her uniform, contrasting with the black there.

  We were both police. I was a detective, and spent most of my time behind a desk in my office, or at a table in an interrogation suite, or occasionally outside, organising door-to-doors; I wore a suit to work. My fiancée, on the other hand, was a sergeant in the department’s door team. Sasha was one of the officers who got called in when we needed a door opened and didn’t want to knock. It was tough work, even if she shrugged off anything I ever said along those lines, and she dressed accordingly. The body armour was in the boot of her car, but she was already half suited up this morning. I glanced down at the various weapons and implements pouched in what I insisted on calling her utility belt.

  ‘You look like a superhero,’ I said.

  ‘Which I am.’

  ‘Which you are. Yes.’ I sat up, and everything swam slightly. ‘Oh my God. Thanks for the coffee.’

  ‘No worries. And it’s only just after eight. You’ve got time for a few more.’

  ‘Just after eight? I have the morning off, you know.’

  ‘I know. But I took the executive decision that coffee would be better for you than sleep.’ She reached down and ruffled my hair affectionately. ‘Plus, you know, I thought you’d want to say goodbye before I left. You didn’t quite manage to say good night last night.’

  I tried to remember coming to bed, and couldn’t.

  ‘Ah, yes. Sorry.’

  ‘I survived.’ She ruffled my hair again, then stepped away. ‘Anyway, I’ve got to go. Early knock. But you have a good day, Detective Nelson, and I’ll see you tonight.’

  I sipped the coffee. ‘Take care.’

  That got me a sarcastic look. ‘I think you should worry more about yourself.’ She patted the utility belt. ‘And anyway. Superhero, remember? I love you.’

  ‘I love you too. And I’m sorry again. Deeply sorry.’

  ‘Ah, drink your coffee.’

  I did as I was told. Although it might help my head a little, it wasn’t going to do much for the niggling sense of guilt I was feeling. As I heard the front door close and lock, my mind drifted back to last night, and I winced at the blurry memories on display there.

  We’d held the party in the back room of a bar near the department, and the place had been rammed with cops. Our mutual colleagues had been mingling, some of them somewhat awkwardly. There had been celebration banners, and a handful of piss-taking speeches, one of them from Sasha herself. Thank God I’d resisted attempting one; I think I genuinely had been considering it at one point. Beyond that, I couldn’t recall much of what I’d said, or who specifically I’d said it to. I had a sense that might be for the best.

  Way to go, Mark, I tho
ught.

  Royally drunk. In the circumstances, Sasha had been much kinder to me than I deserved. I finished my coffee and then lay back down on the bed and rested my forearm over my eyes.

  Way to go, I thought again. Hell of an engagement party.

  By ten o’clock, I was fed and watered enough to attempt a shower. As I did, I also tried to think.

  I’m an interview man by trade, although that’s somewhat by accident. Before I joined the police, I did a degree in psychology, followed by a PhD in behavioural psychology. When I started, I’d had visions of becoming a criminal profiler, studying crime scenes and reeling off illuminating impressions of the offender like some kind of magician. My studies had put paid to that ambition fairly quickly: it just doesn’t work like that in real life. While you can always see traces of an individual and his past in the crimes he commits, I learned early on that most offender profiles are about as reliable and useful as a horoscope.

  Even so, my studies left me with a taste for the subject, and I discovered that I was good at talking to people. I liked figuring out what made them tick, and what I needed to say to get the information I wanted. After my postgrad, I joined the police as a grunt pool officer, specialising mostly in door-to-doors; after Lise died, I transferred across the country to my current assignment here. And I was good at what I did. I enjoyed analysing people.

  Much harder to analyse yourself, of course.

  What had I been thinking, for example, getting that drunk? From memory, it hadn’t been happy drunk either. Christ, it had been my engagement party, and yet to everyone there it must have looked like I was drowning my sorrows.

  How must Sasha feel about that?

  The hot water spattered my chest as I rubbed a foam of soap into my face.

  Sasha knew what had happened to Lise, of course. Which meant she also knew that if Lise hadn’t drowned, we would probably have got married, and I would never have moved to the city at all. Sasha and I wouldn’t ever have met, never mind fallen in love. It was probably a difficult subject for her to think about, and yet she’d never given the impression of being bothered by it; she’d simply accepted that I had baggage, and trusted me to carry it. And I’d repaid that by spending our engagement party getting drunk, acting as though it wasn’t a celebration so much as a fucking wake.

  But why? I still occasionally thought about what had happened, of course, but the memories were numb now. For a while, there had been a recurring nightmare – the soft sand of a beach; the flat expanse of an empty sea stretching out in front of me – but not for months now. As far as I could remember, Lise hadn’t been on my mind at all last night.

  Thinking about her now, though, I felt a knot in my chest.

  Ridiculous.

  I washed my hair, spitting away the water that ran over my face, then turned off the shower. I loved Sasha with all my heart, and I wanted to marry her. So yes, it was ridiculous. But the sensation was there. I remembered the look on Sasha’s face this morning – smiling, kind, but also slightly inquisitive and unsure – and realised that for some reason I didn’t even understand myself, I’d fucked things up. Just a little, perhaps, but still. Not great.

  I towelled myself dry roughly, angry with myself.

  You can make it up to her.

  I could, and I would. By eleven o’clock, another coffee on the go, I was feeling almost human again. But below the surface, I was still worried that I could hear the plaintive rush of that faraway sea. And the knot in my chest remained.

  I arrived at work for midday.

  Even after a year and a half in the city, the new department building still seemed alien to me. That was strange on one level, as I’d only spent a couple of weeks in the old premises before the team moved. Then again, that brief period had been taken up by an intense investigation, so perhaps it was understandable that the events of those first few days had imprinted the old place so firmly on my mind.

  It had been a ramshackle, run-down building, with our small team crammed into an office barely large enough to contain us. The new department was different in every way: sleek and gleaming from the outside, all glass and steel, while the interior was lavish and spacious. Everything was state-of-the-art and scrupulously maintained: newly painted white walls and ceilings; plush carpets underfoot; even fake potted plants by the lifts and abstract art hanging on the walls. The corridors smelled of the tree-shaped air-fresheners that were plugged in at various points along the skirting boards. Pine or something.

  ‘Good afternoon.’

  I greeted the camera at reception as breezily as I could manage. The facial recognition system behind it hesitated long enough for me to wonder exactly how rough I still looked, and to feel slightly judged, before the red light by the door handle turned green and there was a gentle click.

  Unlike in the old place, my team and I had a small suite of offices all to ourselves. I made my way up to the third floor, then through the door that led to our corridor.

  My office was first, but I wandered past to check who else was in. Greg Martin, our IT specialist, was clearly out somewhere, because his door was closed and locked. Even though people were hardly likely to go snooping, and there wouldn’t be much to see if they did, Greg liked to maintain the illusion that the security of his work was paramount. From his manner, you would imagine that gaining access to his office could allow a potential hacker to bring down the whole department.

  It was in sharp contrast to Simon Duncan’s thoroughly cavalier open-door policy. Simon was our forensics liaison; although frequently absent, he barely ever closed his door, never mind locked it. His room was empty too, the computer humming away oblivious on the desk. The walls were bare, aside from a calendar that hadn’t been changed since February. Simon was a climber, and he’d settled on a photograph of a mountain range. He’d told me a while back, in his usual arch and dismissive way, that he’d found a picture he liked and left it at that. He didn’t need a piece of paper to remind him what day it was.

  Past the operations room, I saw that Pete Dwyer’s door was slightly ajar, and as I approached, I could hear the gentle clack of his typing. Slow and steady. A two-finger typist, Pete. He was a genial bear of a man who seemed perpetually baffled by the changing technology around him. The impression he often gave was of a man standing in place, looking this way and that in confusion, unable to keep up with what was happening. My boss.

  I tapped on the door, pushing it a little wider.

  ‘Afternoon, Pete.’

  ‘Mark.’ He looked up from the screen and his face creased into a grin, wrinkles forming around eyes that seemed to shrink back into his face. ‘You look like death.’

  ‘I actually wasn’t sure the computer downstairs was going to let me in.’

  ‘It probably thought you were a vagrant. Come in. How’s your head, young man?’

  ‘It’s been worse.’ I closed the door behind me. ‘Not often, mind you.’

  ‘I’m not surprised. You were knocking them back last night. A machine. Do you remember the conversation we had?’

  I winced. No, I couldn’t. And while the team was generally fairly relaxed, Pete was still my boss.

  ‘Not as such.’

  ‘Not as such. It was actually about you knocking them back, and how your head was going to be this morning. And let me tell you, you were having none of it. You’re a bit more argumentative out of work, aren’t you?’

  A memory of it started to come back: Pete asking me, with much the same amusement with which he was looking at me now, if I was sure everything was all right – making it funny, but also not funny at the same time. He had two teenage girls at home, and was used to being fatherly. For similar reasons, he was presumably also used to having his concerns brushed aside. I dimly remembered doing the latter, before drawing him into an embrace and slapping his back in a drunken approximation of friendship.

  ‘I’m also a lot more affectionate,’ I said.

  He laughed.

  ‘You and Sasha get h
ome safe?’

  ‘So I’m told.’

  ‘And everything’s okay?’

  ‘She’s still talking to me. She even made me coffee before she left.’

  ‘You know you don’t deserve her.’ Pete settled back in his chair. ‘She’s far too forgiving.’

  ‘That’s true.’

  ‘And that means it falls to me to punish you for your drunken transgressions. Not that I wasn’t going to anyway. What have you got on at the moment?’

  I shrugged. ‘There’s some stuff I need to prepare for court but no date set. It’s nothing that can’t wait.’

  ‘Good.’ He reached over the desk, holding out a file. ‘Have a look at this for me, will you?’

  I took it: a slim brown folder with some printouts inside. Everything we dealt with was accessible online from the department’s intranet, but rather than supply a case number, Pete had gone old-school and pulled out a hard copy. I flicked through the details and frowned.

  ‘Accident report,’ I said. ‘Charlotte Matheson.’

  ‘Uh-huh. Fatality.’

  ‘From two years ago. Car crash, just off the ring road. No suspicious circumstances. Case closed.’ I looked up. ‘Which is very sad, of course, but what do you want me to do about it?’

  ‘No idea.’ Pete sounded even more cheerful now. ‘But take it and have a read anyway. Then get yourself to the hospital.’

  ‘I’m not that hung-over.’

  He laughed again.

  ‘A young woman was picked up on Town Street. Yesterday, late afternoon. She was obviously in distress, and apparently she’d suffered some injuries to her face. I’m not sure what. When she was taken to hospital, she gave her name as Charlotte Matheson.’

  ‘This Charlotte Matheson?’

  ‘Uh-huh. Along with the same address, personal details, everything. Apparently she’s adamant. She is Charlotte Matheson.’

  I looked down at the file, then back up at Pete.