Free The Reckoning on Cane Hill: A Novel by Steve Mosby

arrived. But these days he had to rely on the report to remind himself, or else the coverage that filled the news over the days that followed.
    Hero cop saves missing girl .
    He didn’t know it at the time, but the single interview he gave contained a line that would come back to haunt him:
    It wouldn’t have mattered how many of them had been in there at the time .
    Because while Groves was doing his best to shun the attentions of the media, Simon Chadwick was telling his own story to the police. He claimed not to have abducted Laila Buckingham, and it turned out he had a solid alibi for the window of time around her disappearance. He also claimed that she had simply been staying with him – that he was ‘looking after her’ – and that he hadn’t laid a hand on her. There were other people, he told the police, and it was their fault. He had just been doing them a favour. He hadn’t known. He hadn’t understood.
    It was obvious, deep down, that he knew more, but there was evidence that his testimony was at least partially true. Although Laila Buckingham could remember little of her abduction and ordeal, she corroborated some of Chadwick’s story. And there had been a degree of organisation behind the abduction that Chadwick would have struggled to orchestrate by himself. The implication was that a larger paedophile gang was operating locally.
    And yet Chadwick was either unwilling or unable to identifythe other people he claimed were involved, and those individuals were never found. Ultimately, Simon Chadwick was the only person ever convicted for his part in the abduction and abuse of Laila Buckingham.
    Hero cop saves missing girl .
    The report had named David Groves, of course. Whoever the gang were, they would have known who he was. They would perhaps have wanted revenge. And two years afterwards, in almost identical circumstances to Laila’s disappearance, Jamie Groves had been taken too.
    It was a warm evening, so he and Caroline sat out on the small patio at the back of his cottage. It caught the sun in the evening, although the light was already retreating, slinking back across the overgrown garden at an angle. The air was mild, but still felt heavy with the day’s heat. A fluttering globe of midges hung by the far hedge, while the birdsong was growing lazy and subdued.
    They sat on two white plastic chairs, separated by a matching table on which there was a bottle of white wine, beaded with condensation. They each had a glass, and Caroline had an ashtray as well. She was drinking faster than he was, but he was used to that. On a different day, maybe he’d have said something, but not today. There were more bottles inside. More than they would need.
    ‘How was your day?’
    Groves thought of Edward Leland burning to death in his half-empty home. The possible cuts on his face. Whatever had happened to him, he hoped the man was at peace now.
    ‘It could have been worse,’ he said. ‘You?’
    ‘I didn’t go in today.’
    ‘No, of course not.’
    That was just one of the many ways they handled Jamie’s birthday differently. While Groves did his best to carry on as normal, Caroline, consumed by the loss, dedicated her every waking hour to it. She would have spent today thinking abouttheir son: looking at photos of Jamie; turning his memory over in her head; perhaps even cursing the God that Groves still clung to. But there was no recrimination either way. It was the coping that bonded them, not their differing approaches to it.
    He imagined it seemed odd to outsiders that the two of them got along better now than when they had been married. Sean, for one, couldn’t understand why Groves always spent the evening of Jamie’s birthday with Caroline. But the strange truth was that while Jamie’s murder had finally broken them apart, it had also brought them together again. In the past, they’d pecked at each other over trivialities, but after their son was taken, there had been no further arguments. It