The Reckoning on Cane Hill: A Novel (33 page)

It was a recording of a news report. There were a handful of different ones played to him, but this was the most familiar. The red banner at the bottom read: REVENGE MURDERS: COP SUSPECT STILL MISSING. The main screen was taken up by a head-and-shoulders shot of another policeman, standing outside the department building. He was old, his hair receding, and he looked very tired and serious. Groves recognised him, of course. John Mercer was a legend in the force.

‘Detective David Groves is currently the main suspect in the murder of three individuals,’ Mercer told the off-camera reporter.

The screen split to include three photographs on the right-hand side. Edward Leland, Carl Thompson and Laura Harrison.

Mercer said, ‘We are investigating links these individuals may have had to the abduction and murder of Detective Groves’ son, Jamie, along with a number of other children. We are currently requesting that anyone who may have information come forward. We are also appealing to David Groves.’ He turned to face the camera directly. ‘David. Your colleagues and family are extremely concerned for your safety. We urge you to get in contact with us.’

Groves stared at Mercer’s face. There wasn’t an ounce of compassion or concern in it. The man had already made up his mind, just as they all had. There would have been no chance of fair treatment. If he hadn’t been dead already by the time this broadcast aired, there was no way he would have come forward.

The reporter said, ‘Can you comment on rumours that Detective Groves’ car has been found in the northern area of the city?’

Mercer turned back to the reporter. He was nodding along to the question, but said, ‘No, I’m afraid I can’t comment on that. All I can repeat is that we remain concerned for Detective Groves’ safety and well-being, and ask for him to get in touch with us at the earliest opportunity.’

‘And are you looking for anyone else in connection to these deaths?’

Onscreen, Mercer hesitated slightly, and the action gave him away.
Cut and dried
, Groves thought. Already. Despite everything he’d done, and tried to do, they had all immediately decided that he’d done it. Judged him. His deeds, his character – none of that had mattered at all.

‘I can’t comment on that either, I’m afraid.’

The camera remained on him for a moment, and then the television flicked off, plunging Groves back into darkness again. A ghostly pale blue after-image of Mercer’s face hung in the air for a moment, gradually fading.

Groves stood up slowly, his atrophied muscles finding the movement hard. He wondered what he looked like. He hadn’t seen himself in ... well, what did time matter down here in Hell? But he knew his hair was long and matted, his beard overgrown, his body thin and filthy. There was no sunlight here. His skin was probably the colour of teeth.

Not that it mattered.

He became aware that someone was outside his cell door. He could hear them breathing. When he looked towards the slot there, he saw what looked like a pair of eyes peering in at him. That didn’t matter either. He was too exhausted to care.

He backed into the corner of the cell and leaned there.

It counted for nothing
.

And with that thought echoing through his empty mind, he closed his eyes and slept.

Mark

The long game

Fifteen minutes until the briefing.

Back on our corridor, Pete’s door was open, and I could hear him talking quietly to Mercer. I ignored them for now, heading instead into my own office and closing the door. I cleared piles of paperwork from my desk, then checked an update from the hospital.

Paul Carlisle’s partner, Jenny Cantrell, remained distressed, and was being cared for under guard. She had managed to give a brief account of events at the house. She had been in the front room with Carlisle when three individuals had appeared in the living room; she had no idea how they’d got in. They were dressed in black, including face masks, and she described them as
feeling
like soldiers, but she hadn’t had much of a chance to see before a panicked Carlisle told her to get upstairs.

Cantrell had hidden in the bedroom, where she could hear the sounds of the disturbance below and her partner screaming, and then two of the men had entered the bedroom. One began arranging the material on the bed, while the other worked on the wall. She had sat still throughout, closing her eyes and holding her hands over her ears. When the men left, she had seen what was on the bed and collapsed again in shock.

I put the report down, then spread my various files on the
desk and opened up a blank document on my main computer, keeping a tablet to one side of me as well. I wanted all the information at my fingertips, because I needed to make sense of it – to place it into some kind of order and context, even if the ultimate meaning remained unclear. I hit the option for the tablet to feed through to the plasma screen I had mounted on the opposite wall, because I also wanted the details writ large.

I typed in the additional dates from the Groves case.

Provisional timeline

15 March 2008 David Groves rescues Laila Buckingham

14 June 2010 Jamie Groves abducted

19 June 2010 Rebecca Lawrence reported missing (14th?)

8 September 2012 Body of Jamie Groves discovered

30 July 2013 Edward Leland found murdered (home)

1 August 2013 Carl Thompson found murdered (arches)

2 August 2013 Laura Harrison found murdered (fire station); last known sighting of David Groves

3 August 2013 Charlie Matheson’s car crash

4 December 2013 Death of the 50/50 Killer

28 July 2015 Charlie Matheson reappears

1 August 2015 Gordon Peters murdered; Paul Carlisle abducted

There were some obvious correlations there.

Start at the beginning, though
.

It began with Groves saving Laila Buckingham on 15 March 2008, over seven years ago now. I looked through the initial reports, reading how he’d fought with Simon Chadwick and saved the little girl. She was eight at the time of the abduction. Groves’ own son, Jamie, was less than a year old. I knew this additional detail because for some reason the file contained a clipping of a newspaper interview Groves had given shortly afterwards. Perhaps Sean Robertson had included it. The profile of a hero, added in to counter the accusations and evidence that filled the rest of it.

My son’s not one yet
, Groves was quoted as saying,
but all through the search I kept trying to imagine how it would feel if he was Laila’s age and had been taken from me. How I’d do absolutely anything to get him back. And how a child must feel. I prayed for her and tried to keep faith
.

A religious man, just like Sean Robertson had said.

Which hadn’t done much for him in the end. Groves believed that in saving Laila Buckingham, he’d crossed paths with an organised gang of paedophiles, and that they’d targeted his son afterwards as an act of revenge. Jamie went missing on 14 June 2010.

His body was found on 8 September 2012, and after over two years missing, it had been far too deteriorated to estimate either a cause or time of death. It was assumed that he had died shortly after his abduction. Since there was no way of telling right now, I decided not to guess, and to concentrate instead on the date of the abduction.

The first connection, then.

14 June 2010 Jamie Groves abducted

19 June 2010 Rebecca Lawrence reported missing (14th?)

The dates didn’t match precisely, but the 19th was only when the Lawrences had made the call to the police. It was likely that Rebecca’s disappearance had occurred on the 14th, when the money from her account was withdrawn, which meant that they would tally exactly.

And that couldn’t be a coincidence.

I rubbed my jawline, trying to work out what it meant.

Like Laura Harrison, Rebecca Lawrence had been a nursery worker. Was it possible she had also been a member of the gang? But if she had been involved in the abduction of Jamie Groves, then it was clear something else had happened that day too. Because that was when Rebecca Lawrence had vanished from the face of the earth.

Fast-forward three years.

30 July 2013 Edward Leland found murdered (home)

1 August 2013 Carl Thompson found murdered (arches)

2 August 2013 Laura Harrison found murdered (fire station); last known sighting of David Groves

These were the three killings that Groves was convicted of
in absentia
– the rest of the alleged paedophile gang. Leland’s body was discovered on 30 July in the remains of a house fire believed to have been started in the early hours of that morning. The other killings followed in the handful of days afterwards.

Of course, if Charlie was to be believed, there had been one other member of the gang.

3 August 2013 Charlie Matheson’s car crash

The staged accident had occurred the day after Groves’ disappearance. Charlie was connected to the paedophile gang in two ways: through her husband, Paul Carlisle, who for some reason had not been targeted at the same time as the others; and through Rebecca Lawrence, who had reappeared in dramatic fashion as her stand-in at the crash scene.

I couldn’t make sense of what I was seeing, but looking at it as a whole, it was fairly clear to me that there was no way David Groves had been responsible for most of it. While he could still conceivably have committed the three murders in 2013, it made little sense that he’d abduct Rebecca Lawrence on the day his own son disappeared, and then somehow hold her in captivity for over three years. Not to mention the fact that
three
men had abducted Paul Carlisle today.

So that was two members of the gang he couldn’t have dealt with himself. Robertson was convinced he’d been framed for the killings of the other three too, and I was beginning to believe he was right. Someone else – the people behind Charlie Matheson’s imprisonment, I suspected – had targeted them all, and in the process framed David Groves.

But why?

From what Charlie had talked about – the Devil in Hell; God in Heaven; a cult of some kind – it made a vague kind of sense to me that they might go after a gang of murderous paedophiles. But Groves had been a good man. A decent man.

And what about you, Charlie?

I looked up at the screen.

28 July 2015 Charlie Matheson reappears

She’d been sent back to deliver a message to Mercer. But that interested me less right now than the timing.

Why
now?

I stared at the screen again. I’d interviewed Charlie on 29 July, the day after she was found. Not quite a full two years since her abduction, but only a few days out. Was there some kind of resonance there? There had to be, but I couldn’t see what it might be. So what about the long game then? These people were highly organised. They had planned this carefully.

Mercer’s words from earlier came back to me.

Peters did a poor job this time with Matheson, didn’t he?

What he’d suggested about Dr Gordon Peters.

Whatever sedative he gave her, it seems like it was too much. Perhaps he set everything back slightly. For people as organised and precise as this, maybe that would be a sin
.

If Peters had been more careful with his dosages, then Charlie might have remembered to ask for Mercer when I’d first spoken to her. Allowing for some time for her story to unfold, and for arrangements to be made, he might have gone to see her as early as 30 July, two days ago. Which was the anniversary of Edward Leland’s murder. But there was nothing special about Leland, was there?

No, I realised.

Not the anniversary of Leland’s murder at all.

Jamie Groves’ birthday.

He would have been eight years old on 30 July this year. I flicked back through the file on the desk until I found the
newspaper interview Groves had given after saving Laila Buckingham. The portrait of a hero. A good man.

I read the quote again.

My son’s not one yet, but all through the search I kept trying to imagine how it would feel if he was Laila’s age and had been taken from me
.

How I’d do absolutely anything to get him back
.

Mark

The briefing

‘You know what you’re asking, don’t you?’ Pete said. ‘You actually do realise what you’re suggesting?’

‘Yes.’

‘And you’re serious about this?’

‘Absolutely.’

There were five of us in the main operations room. I was standing beneath the plasma screen, which still showed the twin images of Charlie Matheson – from before and after her abduction. Greg and Simon were sitting down. Mercer remained with us for the moment, mainly because of his knowledge of the 50/50 case, but he appeared to be completely ignoring me. He kept pacing back and forth, staring at the various sheets and notes that had been tacked to the walls. Pete was standing up. He had spent the last minute staring at me as I spoke. Now he ran one hand through his ruffled hair and sighed heavily.

‘Jesus Christ,’ he said.

I understood his unease. I’d just suggested we contact Caroline Evans, the ex-wife of David Groves, and begin formalities for possibly the worst invasion of a bereaved parent’s peace I could think of. The exhumation of her murdered son’s body.

I turned to Simon. ‘What were the autopsy results on Jamie Groves?’

Simon was silent for a moment; the situation seemed to have subdued even him. He consulted the notes he had in front of him.

‘The cause of death was undetermined,’ he said. ‘The body was entirely skeletal.’

‘Identification?’

‘That was established by the father, David Groves. The boy’s body was found in the clothing he was wearing when he disappeared, along with a stuffed toy that belonged to him.’