The Reckoning on Cane Hill: A Novel Read Online Free PDF

be? On the grounds that Charlotte Matheson is dead?’
    Fredericks shook his head. ‘I don’t follow.’
    ‘I’m well aware that you need to wear kid gloves here, at least to an extent, but I’m asking if you’ve explained to her that she can’t really be this person, because this person is dead?’
    ‘Oh. I see what you mean. No, we haven’t done that. We don’t need to; that’s not a matter of contention.’
    I finished off my water.
    ‘It’s me that doesn’t follow now.’
    ‘Yes, I’m sorry. Perhaps I’ve not been clear enough. The woman we’re treating knows that Charlotte Matheson was killed in a car crash, and yet still maintains that’s who she is. Hang on.’ Fredericks pulled a couple of sheets from his file and scanned through them. ‘I told her that the Charlotte Matheson she is claiming to be has been dead for two years, and she replied: “Yes, I know I have.” She was disorientated when she first arrived, but we went through all this a number of times.’
    ‘She thinks she’s dead?’
    ‘It seems that way. She’s very confused, and not sure what’s happening right now. There appears to be some memory loss. But she’s adamant that she did die in a car crash. She told the officer who found her that she’d been in an accident, and that it had killed her. She knows all the details.’
    I wanted another cup of water.
    ‘What about the injuries?’ I said. ‘My superior told me that she’d experienced some kind of damage to her face.’
    Fredericks looked awkward at that. He replaced the paper in his sheaf of records and then stood up, indicating that I should do the same.
    ‘Yes,’ he said. ‘That’s really why I got in touch with the police in the first place. I think you’re going to need to see those for yourself.’

Groves
    A man carved out of black wood
    I know who did it .
    David Groves put the card down on the kitchen counter. The post always arrived early to his house, and the day that would have been his son Jamie’s sixth birthday was no exception.
    It was not yet eight o’clock, but the kitchen caught the morning sun, and the light hung in the air now, divided into fuzzy slices by the half-turned slats on the blind. It was homely, he always thought; you could film a commercial for bread in here, or butter. The whole downstairs was open-plan, and the furnishings were old and wooden, giving it a farmhouse feel.
    After Jamie had gone missing, and his break-up with Caroline, Groves had looked around several properties, but had fallen in love with this place the moment he stepped inside. It reminded him of a cat, curled up comfortably in a sunbeam. Every morning the cottage woke up slowly: pipes clanking halfheartedly; eyelashes of dust turning lazily in the air.
    He poured another cup of coffee – strong and black – from the glass bulb jug, then turned his attention back to the birthday card, and the message written inside
    I know who did it .
    That was all, with blank space above and below. Handwritten, like the envelope it had come in: neat lines of black biro that werepresumably a deliberate attempt to hide the sender’s identity. It was addressed not to David Groves, but to Jamie himself.
    At least there was only one this year.
    That was something. Jamie’s birthday was always when the freaks came out. For a while, he’d wondered about that. Nobody could say for certain when Jamie had died, so they were unable to attack him on that date, but why not the date of the abduction itself? Eventually, of course, he had figured it out. It was because it would hurt more on his son’s birthday. The date commemorated Jamie’s birth and the two full milestones he had managed to reach before being taken. It reminded Groves that there should have been so many more, and that there never would be.
    You should be celebrating , the freaks were saying. But we are instead .
    In previous years there had been phone calls – silent, until the caller finally worked up the nerve to