The Reckoning on Cane Hill Page 5

  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.

  The kitchen looked like a bomb had hit it. There were plates piled on the side, a stack of old pizza boxes, a toaster resting in a sea of burned crumbs. The floor was only half tiled with cheap plastic squares, many of which were peeling up, and a line of crumbs and hardened cheese and old garlic skin ran along the base of the counter. I had to edge around a box filled with empty wine bottles gathering dust just behind the door.

  ‘Sorry about the state of the place. We’re run off our feet at the moment. Come on through.’

  We.

  It had been two years since his wife died, and it was hardly surprising that he’d moved on. Even so, I felt a twinge of awkwardness. This was going to be an even more difficult conversation than I’d expected.

  Beyond the kitchen, the res
t of the downstairs was open-plan: a double room with bare varnished floorboards. There were whorls of cat hair around the legs of the furniture, and the back of the nearest settee was coated with it; the creature must have been nearly bald. That settee, which divided the room roughly in two, was also covered with a pile of coats. The other settee was pointed at a wall-mounted plasma screen. Carlisle had been watching football. As I followed him over, he picked up a remote and muted the screen.

  ‘Have a seat, if you can find one.’

  He sat down on the free settee – or rather, half collapsed in the middle – but made no gesture towards clearing the other for me. I scrunched the coats up a little, perched as best I could and clicked on my camera.

  ‘Before we start, I want to say that this is more of a courtesy call. Although I’m also hoping you might be able to help me with something.’

  ‘Right.’ Carlisle massaged his eyes and suppressed a yawn; it really was as though I’d woken him up. His whole manner struck me as odd. A visit from the police usually livens up an ordinary person’s day somewhat. At the very least, it flicks the on switch.

  ‘Am I interrupting?’

  ‘No.’ He gave a sigh and leaned forward. ‘No, sorry. I’m just exhausted. We’re not sleeping well at the moment.’

  ‘You live with your girlfriend?’

  ‘Yeah. Fiancée. We’re engaged. Not married yet.’

  Fast work, I thought. But again, who was I to judge? It made me think of Sasha, and of course of Lise. I forced myself to stop doing so.

  ‘You used to be married to a woman named Charlotte Matheson. Is that right?’

  I had his attention now. He stared at me.

  ‘Yes. Yes, I did.’

  ‘And she died in an accident.’

  ‘A couple of years ago. Yes.’

  Each yes was accompanied by a blink and made to sound final. I felt sorry for him, because I recognised that particular strategy. When you lose someone, people mention it all the time; even if they don’t say it out loud, you know they’re thinking about it. They express concern, they ask questions, they offer condolences. It’s all meant well, but it can feel like a carousel of attention: each person coming forward not to help you, but to take their turn saying the right thing in the spotlight of your loss. Eventually it becomes easier just to shut it down.

  ‘Yesterday afternoon,’ I said, ‘a woman was found on Town Street in the north of the city. She was very confused and disorientated, and had suffered some injuries.’

  ‘Okay.’

  ‘She gave her name at the hospital as Charlotte Matheson.’

  Carlisle continued to stare at me. I tried to read his expression, to see if there was anything there: shock; surprise; fear. But there was nothing. It was the reaction of a man who hadn’t been expecting anything like this, and still didn’t fully comprehend what I was saying.

  ‘More specifically, she claims to be Charlotte Matheson. Your wife. This woman named you as her husband and gave us this address as her place of residence.’

  ‘I don’t understand.’

  ‘Neither do I. She also claims to remember the accident itself.’

  ‘What is that supposed to mean, she remembers the accident?’ He glanced at the door in the far corner of the room, then back to me, and almost whispered, ‘My wife died in that car crash.’

  ‘Yes, I know. I’m sorry. This woman knows all the details of the accident. And she claims that she died in that accident too.’

  Again I watched the expression on his face.

  Horror dawning now.

  ‘Why would she do that? I just ... I don’t ...’

  ‘I know. I really can’t say at the moment why she’s claiming this. The woman clearly isn’t very well. At all. But what she is is adamant. So the first thing you have to be aware of is that it’s possible she will, at some point, seek you out.’

  ‘What?’ The horror was absolute now. ‘You can stop her. Can’t you?’

  No, not really.

  ‘Yes,’ I lied. ‘Perhaps. It depends on her behaviour. The issue we’d be facing at the moment is that she’s not obviously dangerous.’

  ‘She’s obviously deluded.’ Carlisle shook his head. ‘What is wrong with her? Why would someone do this? I don’t...’

  ‘Well, that’s the other reason I’m here.’ I leaned forward. ‘The why. Obviously this woman is not Charlotte, but there must be a reason why she has fixated on your ex-wife the way she has. So it’s possible that you know her in some way, or that Charlotte did.’

  ‘I don’t know anybody fucking crazy enough to do this.’

  ‘No, I understand. But like I said, she has some injuries. It’s possible this woman has been through some kind of trauma, and that might explain the confusion she’s suffering. She might be somebody you knew once.’

  ‘What does she look like?’

  A fair bit like Charlotte Matheson.

  ‘The most obvious thing,’ I said, ‘is that she has some facial scarring.’

  ‘Okay.’

  Carlisle looked off to one side, thinking it over. Trying for me. Which was immediately disappointing, because it meant he didn’t know her – at least not as she was now. He was trying to remember women with facial scars, but if this woman had ever been part of his life, and looked then as she did now, he wouldn’t have had to think very hard about it.

  ‘I don’t know,’ he said.

  ‘That’s okay. Aside from that, she does look a little like your wife – similar height and build, similar curly brown hair. Did Charlotte have any extended family who resembled her?’

  ‘No. Only child. There were cousins, I think, but not that she ever saw or talked about.’

  It was something to explore, maybe, but already I wasn’t holding out much hope.

  ‘What about close friends?’

  ‘Not that I know of. She had friends, obviously, but none that looked much like her. Not that I can think of, anyway.’ He frowned, then rubbed his forehead with the heel of his palm. ‘Christ. No. I don’t think so.’

  ‘Okay.’ I tried to hide the disappointment from my voice. ‘That’s fine, Paul, honestly.’

  ‘I have absolutely no idea ...’

  ‘Do you have a photograph of Charlotte?’

  ‘I—’

  But then we both heard a noise on the stairs, and he stopped mid-sentence. Someone was making their way down, very slowly. The wood made careful creaks.

  He lowered his voice again. ‘I’ll see what I can do.’

  I nodded conspiratorially. A moment later, the door at the far end of the room opened, and a woman came in. She too was in her early thirties, with short mussed-up blonde hair, and she was also wearing a dressing gown, along with the same look of bleary tiredness as Paul Carlisle. She was clearly very pregnant, her belly swollen out front in an enormous sphere. Nearly full term, I imagined.

  I’m just exhausted, I remembered. We’re not sleeping well at the moment. At the same time, I couldn’t help doing the maths in my head. Carlisle’s fast work was even speedier than I’d first thought.

  She noticed me. ‘Oh. Hello?’

  ‘Good afternoon.’ I gave what I hoped was a casual smile. ‘Sorry to interrupt like this.’

  ‘No, that’s okay. What ... ?’

  ‘Police. Nothing serious, honestly. I was actually just on my way out.’ I stood up, turning back to Carlisle. ‘I think we’re done, Mr Carlisle. Thank you for your time.’

  ‘No problem.’ He looked sick. ‘If you could just wait outside for a moment ... ?’

  ‘Yes, of course.’

  I kicked my heels slightly down the path and waited, feeling bad for the man but also – perhaps bizarrely – just as sorry now for the woman in the hospital. Thinking back on our conversation, as crazy as it had been, she had seemed genuinely to believe the story she was telling me. If she really did think she was Charlotte Matheson, how was she going to react to the knowledge that her former husband was now not only engaged to someone else, but
also expecting a child with her?

  Not very well, I imagined.

  Carlisle emerged a minute later, pulling his dressing gown around him and holding a pack of cigarettes, a lighter and a piece of paper.

  ‘She just gets upset about all that, you know? My past life.’

  ‘I understand.’

  He handed me the paper. I looked at it for a long time. It was a straightforward head-and-shoulders shot: a passport photo, I guessed, that had been blown up in size and printed out. He wouldn’t have had time to do that just now, which meant this was something he’d kept, despite all the more obvious ways he’d moved on. People are complicated.

  In life, Charlotte Matheson had had an appealing face, with freckles across her nose and cheeks. She wasn’t wearing any make-up for the photograph, but she was smiling slightly, and there was a trace of fire in her eyes. Just looking at her, you could imagine her taking no nonsense from anyone. She stared out of the photograph with an expression that said: I’ve got your measure, and you know what? I’m not impressed.

  It was hard to be sure, what with the scarring. But it looked a lot like the woman in the hospital. The eyes especially.

  Maybe too much like her.

  ‘Any help?’

  ‘I don’t know,’ I said honestly. ‘But thank you anyway. May I take this? I’ll return it, obviously.’

  ‘Of course.’

  As I walked down the path, I heard the click of a lighter behind me, and then he said:

  ‘There’s something else too.’

  ‘Oh?’

  I turned back and saw him blow smoke out of one corner of his mouth.

  ‘You said she gave her name as Charlotte Matheson. The woman in the hospital? So that’s definitely a lie.’

  ‘A lie?’

  He nodded.

  ‘She would never have done that. With her, it was always Charlie. Even on our wedding day in the vows.’

  He tapped some ash off the cigarette, and sounded sad and faraway.

  ‘Even then.’

  Groves

  A little boy and his Bear

  By the end of the day, they’d attached a name to the man they’d found in the burned house.