The Reckoning on Cane Hill: A Novel (32 page)

‘Look,’ I said. ‘All I can say is that we’re pursuing something that maybe ... casts doubt on the charges back then. Is that enough for now?’

He looked at me, considering. Didn’t answer.

I tried a different tack. ‘Despite all the evidence at the time, you really never thought Groves was guilty?’

‘Not once. He was my partner.’

‘There must be more to it than that.’ I glanced at the file again. ‘Like I said, to an outsider it looks clear-cut. Believe me, I get the loyalty. But you don’t strike me as the kind of guy who’d defend someone to the end like that, not without good reason.’

Robertson shook his head. ‘You didn’t know him.’

‘I’m aware of that.’

‘All you
do
know, assuming you’ve even done your fucking job properly, is what’s in that file. That’s not the whole story.’

He looked away suddenly, clamping down on the anger he still felt. I knew from scanning the file that he’d cooperated with the investigation, but it had also been obvious that he hadn’t remotely agreed with its final conclusions. It was equally apparent that he’d pursued the case, here and there, adding brief notes to the file as he went, none of which had come to anything. He was annoyed and frustrated with himself for that, I thought – for failing his friend – and my presence here reminded him of that.

‘All right,’ I said. ‘No, I don’t know everything. So how about you take me through the details? Because you never know, do you? If we pool resources, maybe we can help each other out.’

He looked back at me for a moment, still considering.

‘Okay,’ he said finally. ‘Let’s see how we go.’

My second impression of Robertson had been correct. Despite his dishevelled outward appearance, he proved sharp and incisive, succinctly summarising the case and giving me a far clearer picture of what had happened than the file ever could, even if I’d studied it for hours. It was obvious from the moment we started talking that not only did the case mean a lot to him, but he knew it inside out.

More to the point, he began relaxing with me. As the conversation progressed, it felt more and more as though we were on the same side. Perhaps we were – although I still wasn’t sure. Whatever Robertson’s own personal doubts, the evidence against David Groves remained compelling, to say the least.

Groves hadn’t started out as a killer, that much was certain. He’d started out as a hero, when eight-year-old Laila Buckingham had been found – badly hurt but alive – chained to a bed in a back room.

‘He saved her life,’ I said.

‘Yes.’ Robertson nodded once. ‘And nearly died doing it. He would have done the same thing again too. Without hesitation. He was a hell of a guy.’

‘I can see that.’

‘And that’s why he felt so guilty about what happened to Jamie. Not that he ever
regretted
saving Laila Buckingham; David wasn’t like that. Even with what happened to Jamie, I don’t think he’d have gone back and changed a single thing about what he did.’

‘He thought the same people took his son?’

‘Yes. To take revenge on him. I think that too.’

At the time, it must have seemed a somewhat far-fetched idea – few gangs would be so bold – but in hindsight there was something to it. The flat had belonged to a man named Simon Chadwick, and the information he had given upon arrest had indicated that a paedophile group was operating locally. They were never caught, and David Groves, the man who had thwarted them, had been paraded through the newspapers as a hero. You could see why he might come to the conclusion that his son had been targeted. More to the point, the photographs in the collection retrieved from Paul Carlisle’s house today contained images of both Laila Buckingham and Jamie Groves.

‘Have you got kids, Detective Nelson?’

I shook my head.

‘Well,’ Robertson said, ‘let me tell you. A lot of people would
probably sympathise with what David’s supposed to have done. A lot of people would say he was
right
to have done it.’

‘I’m sure that’s true.’

‘And that would be my position as well. If he had done it, I’d understand. But that’s the thing. He
wouldn’t
have done it. He wasn’t that kind of person.’

‘What was he, then?’

‘He was a
good
man.’ Robertson leaned back. ‘Despite everything that happened to him, he still believed in God. Can you imagine that?’

I thought about what Rebecca Lawrence’s father, Harold, had said to me.
How could I be religious now? I wouldn’t want to meet the God that took my daughter away from me
.

‘Not really,’ I said.

‘But David had real faith. He believed in justice, sure, but not
that
kind of justice. He was a cop through and through. Following the law meant everything to him, and after Jamie died, it was all he had left. If he’d found the people responsible, he’d never have killed them. It just wasn’t in his nature.’

We talked through the crimes Groves was supposed to have committed. The first murder he’d been convicted of was that of Edward Leland, who was killed on 30 July 2013, just over two years ago. Leland had been tortured and murdered; Groves had tried to cover up his actions by setting fire to the victim and the house around him. As the investigation progressed, there had been a suggestion that Leland was implicated in child pornography, although no direct evidence was ever found to confirm it.

Leland’s laptop was found later in Groves’ home. The working theory was that from either the computer, or Leland himself, Groves had managed to extract information that led him to a young homeless man named Carl Thompson. Thompson’s remains were discovered in the tunnels under the railway arches; he too had been tortured before being killed. A man matching Groves’ description was witnessed leaving the scene shortly before the discovery of the body. Groves later confessed
to phoning the report in anonymously, and Thompson’s phone was discovered in his house.

‘Okay. What about the third victim? The woman in the fire station.’

‘Laura Harrison.’ Robertson nodded. ‘She was a nursery worker.’

‘A nursery worker?’

That made me think about Rebecca Lawrence again. She’d worked in a nursery too.

‘Yes,’ Robertson said. ‘Years before, Harrison worked at the nursery that Jamie Groves used to go to, before he was abducted.’

‘You think Harrison targeted him?’

‘Yes, I think so. She was vetted at the time, obviously, and came back clean. It’s impossible to prove it either way, though, now that she’s dead.’

‘And what about the birthday card?’

‘David got them every year, always on what would have been Jamie’s birthday. You know what sick fucks some people are. He got that one on the thirtieth.’

‘The same day Leland was killed?’

‘That’s what he told me. But it had been added to since then. He said that when he opened the card, the only thing there was the first line. Like a taunt:
I know who did it
. But when I found it, someone had turned it into a confession, naming the victims.’

I opened the file I’d brought with me, turning to the page close to the end that contained a photograph of the birthday card. The message inside had been written very carefully, and while the handwriting was never conclusively matched to Groves’, the implication was obvious. Groves had written the birthday card to his son, apologising for what he was about to do, and then started delivering the boy a special birthday present by killing the people responsible for his murder.

‘The thing is,’ Robertson said, ‘why would David have lied to me about that? Why would he
bother
at that point? He didn’t
even need to mention the card. No – I think someone got into the house and set the scene.’

‘Playing devil’s advocate,’ I said, aware of how appropriate the phrase was right now, ‘that
someone
could have set a better scene.’

‘Yeah, but it was good enough. And without David around to defend himself ... ’

Robertson leaned back, the look of frustration on his face allowing me to finish the thought for him.
Without David around, it was left to me. And I wasn’t good enough, was I?

Not when he’d come up against Mercer, anyway.

I turned to the last few pages of the report, which dealt with the disappearance of David Groves. His vehicle was discovered, apparently abandoned, on the ring road to the north of the city, with empty bottles of vodka in the passenger footwell. The woods were combed without success, and nobody had seen anything of David Groves since that day. Suicide was the presumption, and certainly the woods contained a multitude of places where a body might lie undiscovered.

The evidence had been compelling back then. On the surface, it remained so now.

‘You think Groves was framed?’ I said.

Robertson didn’t even hesitate. ‘Yes. He thought so too. He thought it was maybe another parent – someone else who’d lost a child to the same people – but I don’t know if I ever bought that idea.’

‘Why not?’

‘I don’t know. It all felt too organised for that.’

Organised
. I nodded to myself. Yes, it did. And everything about the recent case spoke to that too. The planning and execution had spanned years. We were dealing with patient, resourceful individuals, and right now, I was sure we were only seeing a small fraction of their activities. Based on what we knew so far, I imagined they’d be more than capable of framing David Groves. And of course, suicide was only a presumption. His body had never been found.

‘I believed him, though.’ Robertson turned his head to look out of the window. From where I was sitting, all I could see was the sky, full of dark grey cloud. ‘But I can’t work out
why
anyone would do that to him. Because it’s true what I told you earlier, you know. I realise you never met him, but it’s true.’

‘What is?’

‘That David Groves was a good man. A decent man.’ Robertson turned away from the sky and looked at me again. ‘Maybe the best man I’ve ever known.’

And thinking again about the lack of a body, and the way the people behind this could orchestrate disappearances and fake deaths, I began wondering.

David Groves was a good man
.

I began wondering about that use of the past tense.

Groves

Now

There was little past any more.

There was certainly no future. Groves had given up attempting to keep track of time; it had ceased to have any meaning down here. There was just the darkness, the dripping noises, the blaring bursts of television that seemed to come at random. Only the
now
.

You got used to everything eventually, and the
now
no longer caused him the pain it had done back at the beginning, immediately after his death. His grave was just large enough for him to stand in, but not long enough to lie down, so he’d become used to half sleeping in a bent and awkward curl on the hard ground, or else leaning in the corner, trusting the exhaustion to keep him under for a time. The aches in his body remained, but he’d become accustomed to them, so that what had once been extreme discomfort – agony, even – was now only a background hum of pain. The boredom had become normal and everyday. He no longer thought much. Even his dreams, which had been as bright and shocking as the television to start with, had dulled and flattened. However hard the path it has to tread, your life finds a way to continue.

Not life, of course.

Just as there had once been pain, Groves knew there had
also been a time when he had questioned the fact of his suicide – railed and fought against it, even as the Devil had patiently explained it to him, time and time again. Again, that was so distant now as to feel meaningless and alien. How could he ever have doubted it? It was ridiculous. He had killed himself, and now here he was. In Hell. When he tried, he could even remember what had happened, and the memories were as vivid as any from before his death.

I saved a little girl, and so my son was murdered
.

I failed to catch his killers, and so someone else did it for me
.

They took everything I had left from me
.

And there was nothing left to live for
.

The words came easily; he had repeated them often enough. Thinking back now, Groves was sure he could remember parking his car by the path that led to the clearing where Jamie’s body had been found. In the afternoon light, the rain pattering down, he had retraced the steps that had taken him there on that dark night two years before, and had stood for a while looking down at what had once been a grave and was now simply an anonymous patch of land. There was no sign his boy had ever been buried there.

After a short time, he had moved on, deeper into the woods, ever deeper, until he had found a ravine that was high and isolated enough. He had been completely calm when he jumped. He remembered thinking that.
It would surprise anyone who could see me
, he’d thought, looking up, the individual drops of rain visible against the sky as they fell.
It would seem strange to them, how calm I am
.

He had jumped. And then he had been here.

In Hell.

This was his reward. All through life, despite everything that had happened to him, he had kept his faith and tried to be a good man – always trusting that God had a plan, and that the terrible things that happened to him were taking place for a reason. Always attempting to do the right thing. And look how it had turned out for him. The realisation brought a surge of
bitterness. One by one, all the things that had ever mattered to him had been taken away, and now he was here, being punished still. His behaviour and his faith – it had all apparently counted for nothing in God’s eyes. If he felt anything at all in the darkness now, it was hate.

As if on cue, the television came to life, filling the cell with sharp blue light. Once, Groves would have winced from the contrast, but his eyes barely registered the sudden burst of pain. Now, rather than turning away from it, as he had sometimes done, he sat down cross-legged before it.