The Reckoning on Cane Hill: A Novel (38 page)

Now, though, that man was looking off towards a large building to one side, with an expression of horror on his face.
That
was where the shots had come from, Groves realised. Something had happened in there. There was shouting coming from that direction now, and when the younger man turned back towards him, he looked terrified.

‘David,’ he said. ‘Please. Don’t forget who you are.’

Groves stared at him for a moment, at the panic and desperation on his face. He looked back at the man kneeling before him, then up into the sky, closing his eyes. He held the trigger firm. The rain struck him hard – constant solid taps on his face – and Groves allowed himself to become lost in it for a moment ...

He opened his eyes, and instead of rain filling the world above him, all he saw was snow: beautiful bright white crystal shapes floating down through the black sky towards him. One of them kissed him coldly on his cheek. Another landed on his forehead.
Let’s never forget this moment
, he thought.
Let’s not forget who we are right now
...

And suddenly, the world
thumped
, and the rain started up again. Groves stared down at the gun in his hand, still pressed against the neck of the man cowering on the ground, then up at the man standing metres away from him, his hands out now.

‘David,
please
.’

‘I’m not a killer,’ he said.

‘I know.’

Groves lowered the gun. Dropped it. He thought of all the things that had been taken from him – his son, his career, his faith – and he stared at the wretched man on the ground before him and whispered:

‘You’re under arrest.’

And then he closed his eyes again, feeling an inexplicable and
giddy flood of love in his heart. He felt the summer sun on his face, as though God Himself was smiling at him.

I love you, Jamie
, he thought.
I’m coming now
.

I’ve earned it
.

Breathe
, Sasha thought.

It was like her chest was encased in rock.

Breathe
.

‘You okay?’ Killingbeck said.

‘Yes, sir.’

‘You did good. We’re clear.’

The adrenalin was still coursing through her, the insidious poison of it doing everything to convince her otherwise, but he was right, and she forced herself to nod – acknowledge the simple praise. The man in the corner of the room was lying on his stomach, hands cuffed behind him, gun safely removed from the scene. Officers were attending to him, just as others were to the two children who had been in the centre of the room when Barnes had battered the door down and she had started to step inside.

She could still see it clearly. The boy had been staring at her, his eyes wide in fear and confusion, and something had made her stop just before she cleared the busted door. The boy and the baby were in the middle of the room, just as the young girl had been in the raid yesterday, and that memory had immediately come back to her.
Clear the corner
. Maybe without yesterday she would have attempted that mechanically, but the positioning of the children, the look on the kid’s face, had made her think
bait
. She had crouched down low, aiming the Taser as she cleared the door.

The first shot had gone high, just above her head.

The second had been hers. The electricity suddenly running through the man’s body had jolted his hand up, and the two quick shots he managed before dropping the gun had blown chunks of plaster from the ceiling.

All over in seconds.

Breathe
.

She did, slowly. Then she walked across to the boy and the baby. The baby was screaming, which Sasha figured was fairly understandable, and the boy was doing his best to rock and reassure the child. However frightened he’d been when they had burst in, the kid seemed much calmer now. Almost unnaturally so.

‘It’ll be okay,’ she said.

He didn’t seem to acknowledge her words, too intent on soothing the child in his arms. Sasha looked to one side and saw Mark entering the room at the far side. He was moving too quickly –
it’s lucky we cleared it
, she thought – but he pulled up short when he saw her standing there, her visor flicked up. In all her years, Sasha didn’t think she’d ever seen such relief on someone’s face before. She could still feel the whisper of that bullet above her head, and that strange pressure wrapped around her chest –
breathe; just breathe
– and she smiled at him before turning back to the little boy and the baby.

‘It’s going to be okay,’ she said.

Part Six

And in life, She had named Him the Devil, for He was a wicked child with evil in His heart. And He had wanted Her to love Him, but She could not. And in life, She had named His brother God, for His virtue and goodness had been apparent. And when He came to Her in Heaven, She could not be sure which He was, and on some days She spat on Him, and on others She loved Him dearly, just as He had always desired, and so it came to pass that He became They
.

Extract from the Cane Hill bible

Mark

The boy in the pit

Two weeks after the events at Cane Hill, I parked up outside a house in the south of the city.

The curtains were closed in the front-room window, but I saw them move as I walked up the front path, and I didn’t need to ring the bell. I was expected, of course; by the time I got to the front door, it was already opening, and I was greeted by an attractive woman in her late thirties. She had shoulder-length brown hair, cut neatly, and was wearing jeans and a mohair jumper. She looked tanned and healthy. Having spoken to Detective Sean Robertson again, I’d been led to believe that Caroline Evans had developed problems with alcohol addiction following her son Jamie’s disappearance. If so, there were no obvious signs of it now.

‘Detective Nelson?’

‘Yes.’

I showed her my ID, and she smiled. It was an odd smile. Hard to work out whether it was happy or not.

‘Please come in,’ she said.

Ten minutes later, I was sitting in an armchair in Caroline’s front room. She sat down on the settee opposite me, next to Jamie, and put her arm around her son. For a moment, he didn’t respond to the touch, and the gesture seemed a little
awkward, but then he leaned into her slightly. She gave his shoulder a gentle squeeze, then moved her arm away and rested her hands in her lap.

‘Hello, Jamie,’ I said. ‘My name’s Mark. I’m a police officer. I was hoping to talk about everything that’s happened to you.’

‘I know.’ He glanced sideways. ‘Mum told me.’

‘And is that okay with you?’

‘Yes.’

He looked up at me, and I was startled by the assurance in his eyes. I remembered the photograph of the boy from the file: the one found in Paul Carlisle’s collection. Although over five years had passed since it was taken, the resemblance was clear, and there was that same sense of curiosity and confidence in the way he looked at me now.

In other ways, of course, he had changed. His hair was strawblond and shoulder-length now, and like his mother’s, his face was tanned and freckled. He looked older than his years. Even at eight, his body already seemed lean and strong, as though he’d grown up on a farm, working outside in the sunshine. The only obvious concession to his actual age was the stuffed toy he was clutching tightly in his lap. An old and battered Winnie-the-Pooh.

‘Okay,’ I said. ‘Let’s start at the beginning then. Do you remember what happened to you?’

‘You mean how I died?’

I saw Caroline flinch slightly at that, but I wasn’t surprised by his choice of terminology. It was going to take a long time to deprogramme Jamie of the beliefs that had been instilled in him over the years. His time at Cane Hill represented the majority of his life, and he had been very young when he was taken. Why wouldn’t he have come to believe what he had been told there? That was what children did: believe stories. Regardless, it wasn’t my job to challenge him about it today.

‘Yes. The day you died.’

‘I remember Rebecca.’ He screwed his face up a little. ‘I thought she was good, but she wasn’t.’

Rebecca Lawrence, who had vanished on the same day he had.

‘She worked at your nursery, didn’t she?’

Jamie nodded. ‘She was always lovely to us there. Looking after us. She liked to play. That’s what I was doing: I was outside in the garden playing, and she parked at the bottom near the road and told me she’d come to pick me up. I was really happy to see her, because it was boring being at home. My dad was out. He and Mum were arguing all the time.’

I glanced at Caroline. Understandably, she looked uncomfortable at that. Bad memories. Guilt. Grief. She reached out to put her hand on her son’s leg, but changed her mind at the last moment. I wanted to reassure her. It was highly unlikely that Jamie remembered everything from that age accurately. The chances were that this was a story that had been drilled patiently into him over time. But of course, that didn’t mean parts of it weren’t true.

‘And then what happened?’

‘I went with Rebecca. But we didn’t go to the nursery.’

‘Can you remember where you did go?’

‘An old fire station. There was a big tower, and Rebecca told me it was a game – to see how high we could climb, and who would be the quickest. So I raced her to the top, and I won. She took my photograph so I’d be able to remember.’

I was reluctant to ask the next question, but Jamie still seemed perfectly relaxed and at ease.

‘And what happened to you then?’

‘Something horrible happened.’ He frowned, as though he didn’t know for sure. ‘And I died. But I can’t remember, and God told me that I didn’t have to.’

‘That’s fine, Jamie.’

‘But I do know that’s when they arrived.’

‘They?’

His face brightened.

‘The angels,’ he said.

*

An hour later, after we’d finished talking, Jamie went up to his room, and I spoke to Caroline a little more downstairs.

‘He’s getting better,’ she said. ‘Already.’

I nodded. ‘On the surface, he seems fine.’

Which was true. But then it was difficult to know how hard the situation really was for him. Throughout our conversation, he’d seemed self-assured, but there had also been a blankness to him. However resilient children might be, it was going to be a long journey back for him, adjusting to real life.

He’d come alive most when talking about Cane Hill. From what he told me, the people there had given him a good life. He’d been looked after and treated well, and had wanted for nothing the whole time. From an earlier physical examination, there was no sign that he’d undergone any harm during his years as a prisoner there, and there was no evidence of torture or mind control. But of course, he had been so young that those things would not have been necessary. And he had been happy. As inexplicable as it might be from the outside, Cane Hill had been his world, and for the most part it had been a good one.

‘Do you recognise this man?’

I’d shown him a photograph of the Cane twin we’d arrested at the scene.

Jamie smiled.

‘That’s God,’ he said.

It was the most emotion he showed until the end of the interview, when he had asked me about Ella. Where was she? How was she? Could he see her? The bond between them was obvious. I could only be honest in answer to his questions. Ella was back with her mother, I told him. They were being supported and cared for, just as he was. And yes, perhaps one day he could see her again.

‘He didn’t recognise me at first.’ Caroline looked like she might be about to cry. ‘But he does now, I think. It’s coming back to him.’

‘He was very young when he went missing,’ I said. ‘Those early memories must be vague for him.’

‘But I think we all know deep down, don’t we? I mean, I recognised him straight away, of course, but that’s different; he hasn’t changed so much. I like to think he does know, in his heart. That I’m his mother. That he
felt
it.’

I smiled. I liked the idea that there was something inside us that was forever connected to those we loved, and that we’d always be able to recognise it, no matter how long the absence between us and no matter how much we changed. I wasn’t sure it was true.

‘He’ll be fine,’ I said. ‘I’m sure.’

She was silent for a moment.

‘They tell me I can’t see David.’

‘I don’t know all the details,’ I said. ‘But the way I understand things, that’s for the best right now. He’s been through a lot. He needs time to recover. He needs quiet and care.’

‘What about the others?’

The others
.

On the evening of our raid, we had found sixteen people at the compound. In addition to Cane himself, there had been six arrests: a man we had subsequently identified as a former soldier named Warren Merritt; and five individuals who had been working illegally at the hospital. We were trying to trace other workers who hadn’t been on site at the time. The other ten we’d found that night had been residents. Jamie Groves and Ella Matheson had been treated well during their stay at Cane Hill, but the other eight all showed signs of extreme torture and deprivation. All were emaciated and facially scarred. Every single one of them was so mentally damaged that we had, so far, failed to even identify four of them.

‘Some are doing better than others,’ I said.

‘I just don’t understand
why
. Why they did that to them. And David especially.’

‘We don’t know,’ I said, although that wasn’t quite true.

There was still a lot we didn’t know, and the men we had arrested were not being helpful in that regard. In interviews, Warren Merritt had spoken only to confirm his name. We knew
that, a long time ago, he had been a soldier and a mercenary, and that he’d then moved into enforcement work for the city’s underworld. But he’d disappeared nearly two decades ago, which was presumably the point at which he had been recruited to work for Cane. I imagined his skills and criminal connections had proved invaluable in researching sinners, following underground rumours and making connections, but beyond that, we could only guess. Either loyal to his employer to the last, or perhaps out of self-preservation, Merritt wouldn’t talk to us. The five assistants arrested at the scene had been paid to do menial jobs – cooking and cleaning, for the most part – and seemed to know nothing of the wider purpose of Cane Hill.