The Reckoning on Cane Hill

by Steve Mosby

  As he did so, the young man turned his head slightly and pulled his hair to one side, showing the whole of his face, and Groves stopped.

  He hadn’t been able to see the side of the boy’s head before, but now that he could, it was obvious that he’d been badly injured. It looked like he’d been in a fire of some kind. A patch of his hair had burned away entirely, leaving him with a half-Mohican and gnarled pink skin. His ear was mostly gone, and white burn scars stretched along his jawline, the layers of damage overlapping like fingers of bleached seaweed on a beach.

  He said, ‘I’ve been through hell, sir.’

  ‘What’s your name?’

  ‘Carl. I’ve been through hell. You look kind.’

  Groves stared at the damage.

  ‘What happened to you, Carl?’

  ‘Burned, sir. Badly burned. I was a prisoner of war.’

  That was obviously a lie; it fitted with his clothes, but not his age. The boy let go of his hair, and it fell back over the wound, covering it. Groves was about to say something – challenge him, maybe – but the boy held out a trembling hand.

  ‘You look like a good person. Please help me.’

  Groves found a fistful of change in his back pocket, extracted a fifty-pence piece and passed it to him.

  ‘God will be with you,’ the boy said quietly. ‘Never forget.’

  Outside the train, the guard was whistling, and waving above his head with one lazy, overfamiliar arm. The homeless boy held Groves’ gaze for a moment, then turned around and stepped calmly off the train. As he did, Groves heard a clatter.

  ‘Wait,’ he called.

  But the doors shushed closed behind him. Through the bleary plastic window, Groves saw the guard attempt to hurry the boy out of the way, as though he were a pigeon that had fluttered into his path.

  Groves moved to the door as the train lurched slightly then juddered off and began crawling away from the platform. He could see the homeless boy standing there, receding. He was staring at Groves, his bright blue eyes following him as the train moved off. The expression on his face was peaceful now. Clear and thankful.

  Groves looked down at the grimy floor.

  A phone.

  The boy had dropped a mobile phone.

  Sasha

  The photograph

  Sasha arrived home before Mark, still annoyed with herself over what had happened that afternoon. The mistake she’d made. It was only a little thing, and nobody else knew about it, but that didn’t make any difference. She knew, and it had been eating at her ever since.

  She dumped her bag down on the settee harder than normal – a pointless little punch at the world that she was glad nobody was around to see – then went through to the kitchen and poured a glass of white wine from the box in the fridge. She leaned on the counter, hands on either side of the glass, and stared down at it.

  It hadn’t been anything serious. It hadn’t really been anything at all. The department was doing its biannual public crackdown on the supply of stolen goods, and Sasha had been involved in one of four coordinated raids across the city. In her case, the team had been helping to search a pub in the centre. The King’s Arms was a dive, and the rumour was that it was a hub for shoplifting: customers would literally bring in a list, then sit with a drink while things were stolen to order from the nearby shops.

  There had been thirty or so customers in when they’d arrived, and the place had been sealed while they were all searched then allowed to leave one by one. The team had recovered a haul of clothes and handbags, including goods stored in the building’s cellar, and made five arrests, including the landlord. A good result.

  Sasha had been on the door, taking names and addresses and checking for outstanding warrants on each person as they left. She should have been keeping an eye on the searches too – a secondary precaution – but twenty minutes in, her attention had started to wander. She’d got distracted: stopped paying attention. And at least one person she’d let out, she couldn’t be sure afterwards that he’d been searched.

  It meant nothing in the grand scheme of things. But you couldn’t afford to make mistakes like that, however small. Just because you got away with one didn’t mean you’d get away with the next. In her line of work, an officer daydreaming could end with someone badly hurt or worse.

  Sasha drank a couple of mouthfuls of wine. It was so cold she felt her breastbone beginning to throb. She put the glass down, then leaned back, closed her eyes and sighed.

  Her professionalism mattered to her, and a mistake, however small, was intolerable. She was angry with herself. She shouldn’t have been distracted, damn it. But she had been. She still was now.

  Still thinking about Mark.

  It had surprised her, how quickly she’d fallen for him. Throughout her twenties, she’d hardened up and become guarded with the men she dated. She didn’t expect much, and she was generally rewarded with just that. When she was a teenager, her father had told her that when you met the one, you just knew, and even then she’d scoffed at the notion. The idea of the one was ridiculous in itself. Looking back, the men she’d gone out with had generally been interchangeable. But she couldn’t deny that when she’d met Mark, something had clicked immediately, and she’d understood what her father had meant.

  Things had seemed relaxed and natural between them from the start. The passion was there, but they fitted together in other ways too. If they hadn’t been lovers, they would still have been best friends, which wasn’t something she could say in all honesty about her former boyfriends. She had fallen in love with him long before she told him. Rather than being frightening, it had surprised her – again – how strangely freeing saying it had felt.

  The past couple of weeks, though, things hadn’t felt quite the same as they used to. It was difficult to pin down anything in particular. Aside from his behaviour at the engagement party, there was nothing she could point to and say, That! That thing you just said or did right then! Why are you being like that? But there had been some kind of change. All relationships settled down after that initial burst of intensity, of course, but she recognised those subtle ebbs and flows, and this was different. One of the things she’d always loved about him had been his ability to talk to her – presumably a benefit of his interview training – and yet it felt now that there was something he wasn’t telling her.

  Something was going wrong.

  He’s not happy. Not really.

  It felt heartbreaking because it was so very obviously true.

  Sasha drank more wine. The engagement seemed to have changed everything. Had it come too soon? She’d certainly never pressed for the proposal – never thought she’d marry anyone, if she was honest – but she’d been genuinely thrilled when he asked. Any last trace of cynicism inside felt like it had melted away as he got down on one knee and completely messed up the speech he’d been preparing to say. He’d probably been more nervous than she had. She’d said yes without thinking, because it had felt so right she hadn’t needed to think.

  And yet now, barely two weeks later, that had changed.

  Now, she thought, it didn’t feel right at all.

  He was regretting it.

  Upstairs, Sasha walked round to Mark’s side of the bed.

  He had a small cabinet there. In the top drawer she knew that he kept important things like documents, passport and chequebook, but also items that held more personal significance. There were ticket stubs from memorable concerts and films and theatre trips, for example, one of which was from their first proper date last year. There was a ring his grandmother had given him when he was a boy. In terms of them, there were the small number of birthday and Valentine’s cards she’d so far had the chance to give him, along with the little notes and drawings she occasionally left if she was working late. Mark kept everything like that. He was far more sentimental than he sometimes let on.

  She opened the drawer.

  Nothing explicit had ever been said about the privacy or otherwise of
this, but it certainly felt like an invasion, and she was careful to note the arrangement of papers and objects inside so she could leave it exactly as she found it. Would he know how the drawer looked? She wasn’t sure, but it was important he didn’t know she’d gone looking. And she supposed that was deeply wrong, because healthy couples didn’t keep secrets from each other. If you didn’t have mutual and unconditional trust, then what did you have?

  Nevertheless, she worked carefully through the contents, lifting papers so as not to dislodge them from place, keeping everything in line.

  The cards and notes from her were on top. But right at the bottom of the pile, pressed against the base of the drawer, she found a photograph. She slid it out cautiously, allowing the papers to rest back down gently on the space it left.

  The sight of it froze something inside her. They’d call it a selfie these days. There were two people in the shot, with Mark on the right and a woman Sasha presumed was Lise leaning against him, her head angled to one side so as to rest on his bare shoulder. There was what looked like a beach behind them, and they were both tanned and wearing sunglasses that partially reflected the sunset behind the camera. They both looked so young and happy, and obviously very much in love.

  Is that it, Mark?

  Sasha looked at Lise. Her rival in some ways, although not one she’d ever have to compete with. Or at least not directly. Lise had shoulder-length brown hair that had been slightly curled and tousled by the sea and sun. Trying to be objective – and why not, because it was hardly this dead woman’s fault, was it – Sasha thought that she had also been very pretty. Beside her, Mark looked happier than she could remember seeing him. Happier than she herself made him, perhaps.

  Is that it?

  Deep down, do you wish you were still with her, not me?

  It was stupid to think like that, but then what other explanation was there for his behaviour? Second best, she thought. Maybe that was all she could ever be. It left her feeling numb. The worst thing about it was that it didn’t mean he didn’t love her now. It just meant that she was a decent enough option in a timeline that had skewed irreversibly away from what he really wanted.

  And yet he kept the photograph here, didn’t he? Right beside where he slept. Where they slept. She knew that Mark used to have a recurring nightmare of some kind about Lise drowning. It was small wonder, wasn’t it? He kept her close enough for his mind to touch each night. As close to him as Sasha.

  For a moment, she considered taking the photograph away, destroying it somewhere. An exorcism. I’m sorry, she would silently tell Lise. I’m not glad you’re dead; not really. But you are, and you had your life, and now it’s time to let us have ours. She wouldn’t, of course, but still: she wondered how long it would take Mark to notice. Would it be one day in the distant future, by which point he might convince himself he’d misplaced it himself, or did he check frequently? She pictured him taking it out and staring at it every day, remembering what he’d lost, comparing it constantly to what he had now. But if that were the case, wouldn’t it be on top of the pile? Maybe he never looked at it at all.

  Faced with the unknowable, Sasha was aware her mind had a tendency to burrow along the various possibilities until it arrived at the bleakest outcome. She also knew that people often saw her as a bit of a soft touch, like Pete telling Mark it had fallen to him to punish Mark because he had known she wouldn’t. That was true, but only to a point. The reality was more that she didn’t show any hurt she felt. She had always treated her relationships like rooms. There was a slight emotional danger in being in them at all, and if that risk increased – if there was the slightest hint of hurt to come – she would take a step closer to the door, detaching herself by increments. By the time many of her past relationships ended, she’d been able to step out without feeling a thing, leaving her former partner in the centre of the room, bewildered by how suddenly this apparently soft and forgiving woman had disappeared.

  And this hurt. There was no point denying it, and she could hardly be angry at the dead woman in the photo. The solution was an unhappy one, but obvious.

  Make sure it doesn’t end up hurting more than this.

  Yes, she could do that. She was good at that. A step away from Mark. It might not come to leaving entirely – and God, she didn’t want it to, not this time – but she would be ready if it did. Especially if it was going to distract her like it had today ...

  A car in the driveway.

  Sasha replaced the picture at the bottom of the pile – the right way round – then closed the drawer and made her way downstairs. But as she poured another glass of wine and took it through, there were two images she couldn’t get out of her head. How sad Mark had seemed at the engagement party.

  How guilty.

  And how happy he looked in that photograph.

  Mark

  If they don’t let you go

  When I got home that night, Sasha was sitting on the settee, a glass of wine on the table in front of her already. Rough day, I guessed. She didn’t look up at me as I walked into the room, which also felt like a bad sign.

  ‘Hey there,’ I said.

  ‘Hey.’

  She was watching the television. Local news. I stared at the screen for a moment, watching officers leading a couple of people out of a pub I vaguely recognised in the city centre. The camera followed them towards a waiting police van.

  ‘Wait, was that you?’ I said.

  ‘It was.’

  ‘On the door?’

  ‘We got seconded to Operation Viper for the day.’ She still hadn’t looked up at me. ‘Stolen goods sweep.’

  ‘You’re a movie star.’ I shrugged my jacket off. ‘Any joy?’

  ‘A few arrests. Nothing to write home about.’

  ‘No drama?’

  ‘Of course not.’

  ‘Just asking,’ I said.

  She was annoyed with me. I wasn’t sure why. Things had been lovely last night, and everything had seemed normal between us this morning. I had no idea what I could have done to irritate her in my absence. Even I’m not that annoying.

  I nodded at the wine. ‘Mind if I join you?’

  ‘Be my guest.’

  I went through to the kitchen and poured myself a glass of my own, then sat down on the settee beside her. By now, the news had moved on to something about hospital cuts.

  ‘I was there today,’ I said.

  ‘The hospital?’

  ‘Yeah. Interviewing a patient.’

  ‘Some kind of assault?’

  ‘Not exactly. Bit weirder than that.’

  ‘Well, now you’ve got me interested.’ The way Sasha said it, that was only half true. ‘Tell all.’

  I sipped the wine, hesitating for a moment. It was obvious that the Matheson case mirrored my own life to an extent – or rather, that it casually reflected the difficulty that seemed to have arisen between Sasha and me. Sooner or later we were going to have to talk about that, weren’t we? And while it all felt too awkward to delve into directly, perhaps this would give us a roundabout way of addressing it.

  So I explained about Charlie Matheson, and the story she was telling us, along with the basics of the investigation. And yes, by the end, it was fairly clear that it was Lise bothering Sasha – or at least that she was worried that Lise was still bothering me. Her face was blank.

  ‘Right,’ she said. ‘A woman’s come back from the dead.’

  ‘In a manner of speaking.’

  She was silent for a moment.

  ‘Well, her husband must be pleased.’

  I sipped the wine again, remembering Paul Carlisle’s reaction this afternoon, and shook my head.

  ‘No, he’s pretty upset about it. Understandably, I guess. He’s moved on, after all. He’s with someone else now, and they’ve built a new life together. It’s about the worst thing that could have happened to him.’

  ‘Awkward.’

  I shrugged.

  ‘People move on, don’t they?’ />
  Sasha was looking at me, and I supposed it would be a good time – if we were going to talk about it directly – to mention Lise. I could try to explain how I wasn’t glad she was dead, exactly, but that I’d moved on too. I could say that I loved Sasha very much, and wanted to marry her now at least as much as I had when I’d asked. That I knew something was slightly off between us right now, but it wasn’t that.

  Somehow, though, it all felt too much to say out loud. People move on. For now, it would have to be enough.

  ‘Yes,’ Sasha said finally. ‘I guess they do.’

  And to an extent, she seemed satisfied by that. As the evening went on, she opened up a little more, and whatever cold there had been when I arrived home began to thaw. We ate dinner together, then relaxed in front of the television, her legs curled up underneath her and her head resting on my shoulder. There was more wine. There was even some easy laughter.

  ‘I love you,’ I said. ‘I really love you.’

  She smiled at me. ‘I love you just the same.’

  It was closing in on bedtime. I was about to suggest an early one when Sasha broke the short silence that had developed.

  ‘You know, I keep thinking about my grandad.’

  ‘Your grandad?’

  ‘Yeah. My real one, I mean. He died when I was young, and I actually don’t remember him at all. My gran remarried. He was nice, but I always called him Gerald. Because he wasn’t my real grandad, you know?’

  ‘Sure.’

  ‘And I remember asking my mum, because she was religious, and that was how I was raised: what would happen when they all got to Heaven? Gran had been with my real grandad for decades, and he’d died, so presumably he was up there waiting for her. But then she’d gone and fallen in love with someone else.’

  I smiled. ‘There’d be a punch-up at the Pearly Gates.’

  ‘Well, yeah.’ Sasha smiled back. ‘And my mum couldn’t really answer. She said it wouldn’t be like that, but she couldn’t say why or how. I think that’s when I started to not believe. Because it doesn’t make any sense, does it?’