The Reckoning on Cane Hill: A Novel

The Reckoning on Cane Hill: A Novel

Steve Mosby

Pegasus Books (2016)

Rating: ★★★★★

Tags: Fiction, Mystery & Detective, General, Police Procedural, Thrillers

Fictionttt Mystery & Detectivettt Generalttt Police Proceduralttt Thrillersttt

A terrifying and heartbreaking new novel of guilt and innocence, from CWA Dagger-winner Steve Mosby.

The hardest crimes to acknowledge are your own.

Charlie Matheson died two years ago in a car accident. So how is a woman bearing a startling resemblance to her claiming to be back from the dead? Detective Mark Nelson is called in to investigate and hear her terrifying account of what she's been through in the afterlife.

Every year, Detective David Groves receives a birthday card for his son―even though he buried him years ago. His son's murder took everything from him, apart from his belief in the law, even though the killers were never found. This year, though, the card bears a different message:
I know who did it.

Uncovering the facts will lead them all on a dark journey, where they must face their own wrongs as well as those done to those they love. It will take them to a place where justice is a game, and punishments are severe. Nelson and Groves know the answers lie with the kind of people you want to turn and run from. But if they're to get to the truth, they must face their own wrongs, as well as those inflicted on the ones they love.

**

Review

“A stunning, intricately plotted police procedural. Readers will be blown away.” (Publishers Weekly (starred review))

“The psychological torture in this book is as disturbing as any anatomical pain described in other thrillers. Mosby masterfully keeps readers off balance. Recommend this superb crime novel to fans of Val McDermid and Michael Robotham, but be sure to apologize for the sleepless nights to come.” (Booklist (starred))

“An exceptionally evil cadre of villains. A powerfully haunting tale.” (Kirkus Reviews)

“Thriller readers who yearn for intrigue, swift pacing, and surreal happenings will enjoy every word of Steve Mosby’s
The Reckoning on Cane Hill.
” (New York Journal of Books)

“Steve Mosby has become one of a handful of writers who make me excited about crime fiction.” (Val McDermid)

About the Author

Steve Mosby is the author of six previous novels, including The Murder Code, also available from Pegasus Crime. His crime novels have been translated into nine languages around the world and have landed in the top ten on bestseller lists in France, Germany, and Holland. He lives in England. 

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.