The Reckoning on Cane Hill: A Novel (26 page)

I moved over to the fireplace now.

My first day. Over a year and a half ago now, of course, and as I’d reminded myself yesterday while scanning through the file, the 50/50 Killer himself was long dead. So when I saw what was above the fireplace, I stopped in my tracks.

Like the injuries to the victim’s face set against those inflicted upon Charlie Matheson, it was rough in comparison to the symbol I remembered from that first day, but the similarities were impossible to ignore. Whoever had killed the man behind me had used his blood to paint an elaborate spiderweb on the wall.

Groves

No matter what

The next morning, the heat had peaked and cracked, the weather had broken, and soft rain was pattering down as Groves made his way through the cemetery.

It was early, so it was quiet, and it felt like the rain was something that might be happening only to him. It reminded him of a time when he and Caroline had been on holiday in France. In the hot centre of a day, the sun had retreated behind a cloud and it had snowed. They had stood in an empty village street, looking at each other in disbelief as the flakes drifted down around them, and then they had laughed. It had lasted for thirty seconds at most, and they were the only people around to see it. It had been as though God had revealed a secret, just to them, in a rare moment of playfulness.
Let’s never forget this moment
, Caroline had said. He had been so much in love with her back then.

A long time ago now.

Despite the rain, it was still warm. As he walked through the cemetery, he could smell the trees at the sides of the path, the misty drizzle bringing out the scent in the glistening leaves. As it settled on him, it was indistinguishable from the sweat he could feel gathering on his back, his face.

Jamie
.

He reached his son’s grave. Whatever toy Caroline had left was gone, but the pale flowers remained. They were wilting already, the petals curling up like small, slowly closing hands.

Groves read the inscription there.

A little boy arid his Bear
...

There had been no further messages on the mobile phone, but he’d had most of the night to think it over, and he now had an idea. One possible explanation for what might be happening. And it bothered him – scared him – because it came down to the card he’d received on Jamie’s birthday.

I know who did it
.

Someone out there had discovered the identities of the gang who had abducted both Laila Buckingham and Jamie Groves, and God knew how many others, and was targeting them. Punishing them.

Who would do such a thing? Groves remembered only too well his own emotions when Jamie had gone missing. He was a good man – or tried to be – but he was only human. In the darker moments, he would have given anything for a chance to tear those people to pieces for what they’d done. He’d waited up that time, hadn’t he, with the door unlocked? That evening he hadn’t felt very much like a policeman, and he wasn’t sure he would have behaved like one if it had come to it.

But a policeman was what he was. He believed in the law and in justice and in doing the right thing; it was an integral part of him. At the same time, he could easily imagine that for another grieving parent, things would look and feel entirely different. That the urge to take the law into their own hands would be very strong indeed.

But that wasn’t what frightened him.

I know who did it
.

The card had been addressed to Jamie, not to him. When he had received it, he’d thought that was just an extra little dab of torture, but now he wondered if it might be something else altogether: that the sender hadn’t seen Groves as being worth corresponding with; that it was a message directed solely to a
murdered child.
I know who did it
. And unlike your worthless father, with his faith and his stupid belief in right and wrong, I’m prepared to do something about it. I’ll avenge you.

Groves wondered whether a parent of a murdered child might resent a man like him – a policeman who had also lost a child, and whose name was in the papers, and who should have done more to stop these people before they struck again. They might even hate him enough to begin what he now suspected was happening as a sideshow to the killings.

Framing him.

Was that melodramatic? Perhaps. But he doubted he had an alibi for the murders of Edward Leland and Carl Thompson. He was in possession of a phone that had belonged to Thompson. He’d gone looking for Thompson and found him dead, and he hadn’t reported it.

In the cold light of a new day, he wanted to kick himself for that last thing. The thought of Jamie had pulled him on – the urge to have that mobile phone ring again – and it was only when he was home that he’d even considered how many of the people he’d talked to over the course of the day would be able to identify him, however vaguely. He’d realised that, at least in other people’s eyes, he had motive. He’d wondered if, just maybe, he had played into someone’s hands.

He looked down from the quote on the gravestone to the words inscribed below.

Jamie Groves. Loved and missed
.

The rain picked up a little.

You know I loved you, Groves thought. Don’t you?

Despite everything he’d done, and everything he hadn’t, that much was true. Surely it was. Just because he wanted to do the right thing, that didn’t mean he hadn’t loved his son. So very much. More than he could bear.

Surely Jamie would know that?

And you know I always will
, Groves thought, preparing himself once again to do the right thing, the difficult thing,
however belatedly. Trusting that this was all happening for a reason, even if his fallible human mind couldn’t fathom it.

No
matter what
.

There was no choice but to carry out the interview in one of the standard rooms. It needed to be officially recorded and notated. After all, Groves had confessed to a crime: perverting the course of justice by hiding from the department his role in the discovery of Carl Thompson’s body. Although he hadn’t been arrested, it was more than possible, DCI Reeves advised him, that charges would be brought. He would certainly be suspended from duty.

Reeves had then shaken his head in disbelief.

‘What on earth were you thinking, David?’ The DCI hadn’t sounded unfriendly, or even angry. ‘
Were
you even thinking?’

He couldn’t answer.
Jamie
. That was all he’d been thinking, but he couldn’t bring himself to try to explain the ache inside him. In his boss’s office, he would have felt weak.

The interview room was tiny: little more than a cupboard. The desk protruded directly from one of the walls, leaving only a metre of space free, and there was hardly room to draw back the chairs on either side of it before they touched the walls behind. The floorboards were bare, and the pale green paint on the walls was flecked and peeling. In one corner of the ceiling a camera was angled down at the desk and chairs. The only other fitting, aside from the bare light bulb humming above him, was the digital recorder bolted to the table by the wall.

They trusted him to wait by himself, at least. Groves kept glancing at the door, wondering if Reeves had stationed someone outside in case he ran, but he didn’t think he would have.
Too straight
. That was what they thought of him. He could almost have laughed. He had no idea what he’d been expecting to happen, but this outcome – being treated like a criminal -had already left a bitter taste in his mouth. It felt like he’d tried to do the right thing and deserved something better as a result.
But then where had doing the right thing ever got him? What had it ever achieved?

The door opened.

It was Sean who came in. He was breathing heavily, and he didn’t look at Groves as he shut the door behind him. The thick sheaf of papers he was holding whapped down on the table between them.

‘Sean—’

‘Don’t talk to me for a second, David. Don’t fucking talk.’

Sean sat down opposite him, landing heavily in the seat, then rested his elbows on the table and rubbed his eyes. Groves just watched him. When Sean took his hands away, he could see the disappointment on his partner’s face. He looked almost heartbroken. Immediately Groves felt the sensation mirrored inside himself. It was obvious how badly he’d let his partner down. His
former
partner most likely.

‘Before we get started,’ Sean said, ‘I need to know something.’

‘Go on.’

‘You didn’t do it, did you? Kill these two people?’

For a second, Groves thought he was joking.

‘God, Sean. You know the answer to—’

‘Because honestly? If it
was
you, and if everything Reeves just told me is true, then I’d understand. I want you to know that I’d completely get it. But if it’s true, it’s better to admit it now. I’m your friend, and I want to help you, so please don’t fuck me around.’

Despite himself, Groves felt a flush of anger.

You, Sean? You of all people?

‘I didn’t kill them.’

He heard the resentment in his own voice, the sense of betrayal going both ways now. Sean just stared at him for a few seconds, evaluating him.

‘You’d better not be lying to me, David.’

‘I’m not.’

‘But you realise that the focus of the investigation is going
to turn your way now, don’t you? It has to. You’re prepared for that?’

Groves nodded. ‘Yes.’

‘I hope so. Right. Let’s get this shit started then. And let’s get it finished.’

He reached out to set the recorder going, and began to run through the preliminaries.

They went through the cases in detail, but out of order, beginning with the specifics of Groves finding Thompson’s body. Sean rubbed his jaw, looking even more tired than before.

‘Why didn’t you report what you’d found?’

‘I did.’

‘No, you made an anonymous call. Why didn’t you report it properly, as an officer? You were on duty after all.’

‘Because I had no official reason to be there.’ Groves felt helpless. ‘I don’t know. Something odd is happening, something to do with Jamie, and it felt like I needed to figure out what before I came forward.’

‘You say Thompson
gave
you this phone?’

‘Yes.’

He knew how it looked. He was in possession of Carl Thompson’s phone, and there was only his word that he had received it in the strange manner he claimed. For all anyone else knew, he could have simply taken it off the boy’s body.

‘Why do you think he did that?’

Because I gave him some change
.

That was the truth, as far as he could tell, but it was ridiculous.

‘I don’t know. It was made to look accidental, but it wasn’t. I gave him some money first, and then he deliberately dropped the phone. I went looking for him because I wanted to know why.’

‘And you think he was specifically targeting you?’

‘Yes. I told you. Someone phoned me on it later. It was obviously a message for me. It wouldn’t have made sense to anyone else.’

‘What did they say?’

‘It was about Jamie. Somebody was reading the inscription from his gravestone. Then they told me that God would be with me.’

‘Where is this phone now?’

‘It’s at my house. In the front room.’

He hadn’t brought it with him because he was worried that if he had it in his pocket, he’d feel compelled to keep checking it – that it might have stopped him from reporting what had happened. Relieved of possession, it was easier to distance himself. To surrender it all to the right people.

‘Okay. Well, that’s something.’

Sean bit his lip slightly. They both knew he shouldn’t have said that when the recorder was on – that he needed to remain impartial. Groves realised that for all his anger, his partner was at least partly still on his side.

‘Right. Tell me about Simon Chadwick.’

Sean knew it all, of course, but it was necessary to go through it again for the official record.

‘Simon Chadwick is in prison,’ Groves said, ‘for his part in the abduction and imprisonment of a girl called Laila Buckingham. He also had some drug offences on his sheet. Edward Leland and Carl Thompson were both associates of his, way back. They both also appear to have committed child-abuse-related offences. Thompson was charged as a juvenile. It’s only suspected in Leland’s case.’

‘So you found the connection between the two victims – their link to Chadwick – but you didn’t report it?’

‘I reported it on Leland. That’s why I asked to be taken off the case.’

‘But not Thompson.’

‘No. It was only just before I found him.’

Sean just stared at him then, and the expression on his face was clear enough.
You know how this looks
, he was telling him silently.
This all has to come out eventually, so let’s lay it on the table now
.

‘All right,’ Groves said. ‘I didn’t report the link with Thompson because of the connection to Jamie.’

His son’s name seemed to startle the air in the interview room, and for a moment they were both silent. By rights, Sean should have clarified the name – asked Groves to confirm who Jamie was – but he didn’t, and his voice was quieter when he spoke next.

‘And what do you think that connection is?’

‘I think someone out there is killing people who were involved in my son’s murder. And you
know
what the connection is, Sean. Most of the people who abducted Laila Buckingham were never caught. It’s not a huge leap to imagine them doing it again, and again.’

‘Not a huge leap, no. But not an established fact either.’ Sean sighed. ‘You understand that, don’t you, David? And there’s only the vaguest of circumstantial evidence that Leland or Thompson were ever involved. They were friends with Chadwick. That’s it.’

‘There’s the abuse angle too.’

‘Which is all buried in police files. Join-the-dots stuff. Which means that right now, you’re the only person with a motive to kill them who knew about that connection. There’s not a shred of evidence that anybody else does.’