The Reckoning on Cane Hill: A Novel (6 page)

Drugged? I wondered – but then realised I was taking the story at face value. There probably never was an ambulance or a man. Nevertheless, I presumed the doctors would have done blood tests, and even though they wouldn’t necessarily be conclusive, I reminded myself to ask Fredericks about it on the way out.

‘The next thing I remember is lying in a field. I was on my back, and I could feel the damp grass around me – it was overgrown enough to be taller than me lying down. There were birds singing, and the sky hurt my eyes. It wasn’t too bad at that point, but it was still too much. I knew it was going to be too much.’

‘Too much?’

‘The detail. The
everything
.’

I looked around, understanding now why the room around us was so dimly lit.

‘Because it’s dark where I’ve been,’ she said. ‘I remember that much about it. Everything’s very dark when you’re dead. Being back wasn’t so bad at first when I was lying there in the field, but as soon as I stood up, it got worse. When I walked for a bit.’

‘How long did you walk for?’

‘I don’t know. Maybe ten minutes? It’s hard for me to judge. Not long. I came to the road, and the cars ... I walked a little way along, but it was all yammering at me.’

She cupped her hands over her ears now, wincing, as though even the memory of all that noise and static was difficult for her.

‘I couldn’t carry on. I sat down. People started talking to me, and I just wanted it all to stop, to go away. I could only cling to a couple of things. I knew who I was. I knew what I needed to say. Some of it, anyway.’ She looked worried by that. ‘I need to remember.’

My head throbbed suddenly. I took a sip of the water I’d brought in with me, but it tasted warm and metallic now, and it didn’t help. Something had clearly happened to this woman,
but that didn’t mean that anything about the story she was telling me was true. I was trying to think about the man, the ambulance – at least two people involved, then, as there would have to be a driver – but then this woman wasn’t Charlotte Matheson, and she hadn’t died in a car crash two years ago. Since everything else she was telling me was built on those shaky foundations, there was no point assuming that any other part of the structure was solid.

‘You don’t believe me,’ she said.

‘I want to help you,’ I said. ‘I want to understand.’

‘No, you think I’m crazy.’

‘Charlotte—’

‘
Charlie
,’ she spat at me. ‘I’m Charlie Matheson. Get my fucking
name
right.’

And there it was – the outburst of anger. I’d interviewed numerous people with psychological problems over the years, and the flare-up immediately ticked every single box on my internal list of warning signs. I’d seen this behaviour a hundred times before.

Yes
, I thought.
You’re right, whoever you are
.

I
do
think you’re crazy
.

‘Okay, Charlie.’ I stood up. ‘I think we’re done here for the moment.’

‘I lived at 68 Petrie Crescent with my husband Paul. We married on the third of February, in a church in Hardcastle. I kept my maiden name. We went on honeymoon to Italy. We spent a week each in Venice, Florence and Rome.’

I opened the door.

‘I’ll see what I can do.’

‘I want to see Paul. I
need
to see Paul.’

‘I’ll see what I can do.’

As I stepped out into the corridor and closed the door behind me, I took a deep breath.

Thank you again, Pete
.

Thank you very much indeed
.

Mark

The accident report

Back at the car, my hangover kicked in harder. The afternoon sun was coming through the windscreen at a painful angle, right into my eyes.

Through the windscreen
.

Just like Charlotte Matheson. The real one, at least.

There was a bottle of water and a half-used strip of paracetamol capsules in the glove compartment. I fumbled for both. Then I flipped the sun visor down and logged into the department’s computer system on my tablet.

I swiped through to the search screen. While it was nice of Pete to give me the paper files, I found technology easier to deal with. The connection was fast, and a minute later I’d downloaded the entire file on the real Charlotte Matheson’s accident. I transferred it to the current case file, then scanned through the details.

They seemed basically to fit with what she’d told me. There had been a car accident, late at night on the ring road to the north. The weather had been bad, and it looked as though she’d lost control on one of the corners and gone over an embankment and down the far side. Bang. She hadn’t been wearing a seat belt for some reason, but there had been no obvious suspicious circumstances.

I didn’t have my seat belt on ... I went through the windscreen
.

So she was right about that.

I didn’t die right away. Not long. But I was on the grass for a while. Flickering in and out
.

That part didn’t fit. The real Charlotte Matheson had been dead when the police and ambulance crews arrived on the scene. There were photographs on file showing the car lit up from within, angled up from the tree it had struck. One headlight was still working, a splay of light revealing spits of rain and the body further down the embankment. Matheson had gone through the windscreen, which had done catastrophic damage to her head and upper body. One photograph showed the blood over the bonnet and on the grass. Another, illuminated further by torchlight, revealed a muddy swirl of hair, and injuries to her head that resembled a shotgun blast. She would have died instantly. No flickering in and out for the real Charlotte.

The file contained no photographs of her in life, but the post-mortem shots had been included. Her body, even more brightly lit in the autopsy suite, was a vivid sight. The head was crumpled in and partly flattened, with a jagged split bisecting the face, so that the bruised eyes looked like split plums lying eight inches apart. The glass had torn off swathes of skin – a world away from the careful scars of the woman in the hospital – and there was a wound to one shoulder so deep that the arm had been nearly severed.

For very obvious reasons, this was
not
the woman in the hospital. But at first glance there was a definite similarity in body type and age, and from what I could tell, the hair, brown and curly, was identical. In life, Charlotte Matheson would have at least slightly resembled the woman I’d just talked to.

What about ID?

The damage was so extensive that I very much doubted they’d have run with a viewing. Swiping through, that turned out to be the case. The husband, Paul Carlisle, had identified her clothing and belongings. The victim had credit cards in
Charlotte Matheson’s name, Charlotte was missing, and it was her vehicle. That had been enough for a formal ID.

The only odd note in the file was a question over her where abouts that day. Reading the details, I frowned. Matheson had called in sick to work, yet her husband claimed she had left that morning as usual. It had never been established where she had been instead, or why she had been driving along the ring road at that time of night.

Was that important? Probably not. At the time, it would likely have been a question that was acceptable to leave unanswered. For the police, at least, not everything can or has to be explained; while it was a mystery, it was not one that would have mattered much to us. The circumstances of her death were clearly accidental, and ultimately, that was all we had needed to know at the time.

I wondered about it now, of course, but that was simply because of present circumstances. A woman had just told me a strange story connected to this accident, so it was understandable that a weird detail in the file would seem suddenly intriguing and important. But in reality, there was no obvious connection at all between the two things.

So what was happening here?

I leaned back in the seat, rubbing my eyes.

There were two obvious explanations I could think of. The first, and to my mind least likely, was that she was telling the truth – that she really was Charlotte Matheson, and the police had made a mistake with the ID on the body. It wasn’t completely impossible, but it meant that an unidentified woman had been driving Matheson’s car that night, dressed in her clothes and carrying her possessions, all for reasons unknown, and that the real Charlotte had been somewhere else for the last two years, the whole world believing she was dead.

But aside from how unlikely all that was, it wasn’t even the entirety of the woman’s story.
I went through the windscreen
, she’d told me. She claimed to remember dying at the scene. Which really
was
impossible.

The second explanation – the most likely – was that she was crazy. I decided that, actually, I was fairly satisfied with that one. As sad it was, in due course her real identity would be established; there would be a hospital that Fredericks hadn’t checked, or else a concerned relative would come forward. Given the extent of her scarring, it should hardly prove too difficult to establish her real identity. Case closed.

Except ...

Why Charlotte Matheson?

Despite myself, the question nagged at me. This woman certainly looked like her, and she knew many of the details of what had happened. She knew about Charlotte’s life. I could understand somebody being traumatised and confused, and I could understand someone lying ... but why
this
lie in particular? Why choose Charlotte Matheson?

There was only one possible answer I could think of. She must have known her. She might have been a close friend who had been deeply affected by Matheson’s death, or perhaps someone associated with the family somehow. Thinking about it more, in fact, I decided that had to be the case. No matter how confused and crazy you are, if you’re giving out information, then you have to have got it from somewhere.

So there was at least one more thing I could do.

I swiped back through the file until I found Charlotte Matheson’s address: 68 Petrie Crescent, just as she’d said. It wasn’t going to be an enjoyable conversation to have with her widower, but it might clear things up relatively quickly.
Yes
, Paul Carlisle might tell me.
She had a batshit-crazy sister
. Something like that, anyway. Case then closed for real.

The paracetamol were beginning to work their magic, and I knew I wouldn’t be able to leave it – that it would continue to bother me if I did. Better to sort it out now and have done with the whole fucking thing.

In for a penny, in for a pound.

I started the engine.

Mark

Paul Carlisle

After Lise drowned, I moved all the way across the country. Maybe that was an extreme reaction. I know that everyone has their own way of coping with tragedy, and so it shouldn’t have surprised me that Paul Carlisle still lived in the house he’d shared with his wife. It did, though. I guess some people can exorcise ghosts from a place more easily than others.

It took half an hour to drive from the hospital to Carlisle’s house, which was in a pleasant little suburb towards the eastern edge of the city. A mile or so further on, you were in the countryside proper, but you could already smell it from here.

With the window down, my arm resting on the sill, I drove past the two pubs at the centre of the village. The larger one had a sprawling car park, where a travelling fairground had set up, with miniature wheels and rides, all candy colours and flashing bulbs. The street around was busy with people enjoying the late-afternoon heat. A small local carnival. As I drove slowly through, I heard children’s laughter and the
whoop-whoop
of the stalls, and then the flat bang of the punchball machine.

I supposed it was possible Carlisle was here somewhere: he lived just around the corner, towards the end of a side road. I indicated, turning in. If he wasn’t home, what was I going to do? Leave it, perhaps. Except I knew that I wouldn’t.

I’d been thinking about it on the drive over – justifying the trip to myself. Paul Carlisle was the best option right now for discovering the mystery woman’s real identity. Since she was both distinctive and fixated on Charlotte Matheson, it was likely he knew her, or at least had done once.

And of course, there was another reason too. However wild her story, she hadn’t committed an actual crime, and while her stay at the hospital was voluntary so far, that situation wouldn’t continue indefinitely. Depending on how her story shifted, there was no guarantee she’d be sectioned. It was possible that she’d be out in public in a few days’ time.

I want to see Paul
.

I
need
to see Paul
.

Petrie Crescent and Paul Carlisle would presumably be her first port of call. Regardless of any light he could shed on the circumstances, I figured that Carlisle at least deserved a heads-up about that in advance.

I parked up outside, behind a van, then walked up the path, knocked on the glass door and waited. A moment later, the curtain at the window beside me twitched slightly, and then a silhouette appeared at the door. Despite the time of day, the man who opened it looked like he’d just got up. He was wearing a dressing gown, and his hair was wild. I guessed he was in his early thirties.

‘Paul Carlisle?’

‘Yeah.’ He scratched the side of his head, ruffling his hair more, then gestured at the window, where something had been stuck to the inside of the glass. ‘Sign says no selling.’

I held out my ID. ‘I’m police, Mr Carlisle. Detective Mark Nelson. I was hoping to speak to you for a few minutes.’

‘Right.’ He sounded annoyed. ‘What’s it about?’

I looked at him for a few seconds. ‘Can I come in?’

‘I suppose so.’

As I followed him in, I felt myself bristling a little.

Nice attitude, Paul
.