Cast Iron

Chapter twenty-five

Mist lay all across the plain, filling the contours of the land in swirls and eddies, and, from the slight elevation of the road, it looked like a lake.

The distant motorway was lost in it, but the man could see the faintest trace of fog lamps delineating its route along the horizon, and the sound of early-morning traffic reached him with an odd clarity, the way that sound travels across water.

The sky above was clear, and the southern sun was already spilling its warmth across the treetops to disperse the chill that had settled overnight with the mist.

The road was still wet from last night’s rain, and his dog, a lively Scots border collie, took great pleasure in splashing her way from puddle to puddle. Turning back at frequent intervals to check that her master was still following, and to seek his approval.

As the road curved gently towards the west, she left the pitted tarmac and went bounding off through the tangle of creeper and briar that washed up on the very edge of the mist, like detritus on the beach after a storm. She snagged her fur as she went, barking with excitement. The man imagined she had picked up the scent of a rabbit, or some rodent, or maybe even a fox. Suddenly she stopped and began pawing at the ground. He called after her. ‘Fanny!’ Unusually, she ignored him, snuffling and barking, and circling whatever it was she had found. ‘Fanny!’ He injected a tone into his voice that brought her head up to look at him. But only for a moment, before she returned to her new-found obsession.

He sighed. She was still young. This time he shouted, and still it had no effect on her. Leaving the road, he strode off through the tangle of dead undergrowth left behind in some distant past by the felling of trees. He reached her in a few short strides, and then stopped in his tracks as he saw what it was that had so focused her attention.

The body of a young man lay face down in the bracken, his right leg twisted at an unnatural angle. He wasn’t moving or responding in any way to Fanny’s barking. The man crouched down, with the dread sense that he was in the presence of death, and saw blood dried on the young man’s forehead. Removing his gloves, he lightly brushed his fingers on the skin of the face. It was cold to the touch, and its pallor suggested that life might have departed some time ago.

Now he reached around to the neck, searching with his fingers for what he knew to be the jugular venous pulse. At first he could not find the vein, and when he did, no pulse. Fanny’s constant barking produced a bellow from him that caused the dog to retreat, startled, standing off to stare at him in bemused silence. And it was almost as if the silence itself found the life in Bertrand’s prone body, and the man suddenly felt the faintest of pulses.

He stood up quickly, and with trembling fingers reached for his mobile phone.