Peter May - Cast Iron

Voices came to him in the night. Shouting. Angry, frustrated. They had lost him, without any idea that he had gone down into the stream. He waited for several trembling minutes, listening to their voices fade into the darkness, before he crawled out from his hiding place and scrambled, warily, back up the slope to the deer path. He could hear them distantly, still shouting to one another, as they spread out further into the woods. And he turned and limped back the way he had come, like a wounded animal, cold and wet and frightened, and almost consumed by guilt at having abandoned Sophie to her fate.

Sophie lay on the cold floor, sobbing in the dark, broken pieces of light bulb beneath her. They had thrown her immediately back into the room, and she had heard the door locking and their footsteps retreating along the concrete as they set off after Bertrand.

In her heart of hearts, she had always feared that, if only one of them got away, it would be Bertrand. It had been altogether too much to hope that they would both escape. She heard in her mind the echo of her own voice screaming at him to go. And she had seen his hesitation. She knew just how painful it must have been for him to leave her, but she didn’t blame him. He was more likely to evade capture out there than she was. He was stronger, more resilient. He was their best hope.

Still, it did nothing to ameliorate the sense of total despair that gripped her. She was on her own now, and if Bertrand succeeded in getting away she feared those men would take their anger out on her.

Somewhere in the outside distance she heard men’s voices shouting, and then silence. A silence so thick and pervasive she felt she could almost touch it. She pulled herself up into a sitting position and leaned back against the wall. Looking up at the window, she could tell that there was moonlight out there, but it must have risen on the far side of the house, casting its light towards the woods, for none of it came directly into the room. Very slowly, her eyes accustomed themselves to what little light there was, until she could see her own hands trembling in front of her.

She prayed that Bertrand would get away. If they caught him, God only knew what they would do to him. She closed her eyes and thought about her father. It would be his birthday tomorrow, she remembered. And when she didn’t turn up, they were bound to realise something was wrong. And if Bertrand escaped, he could lead them back here. She wanted nothing more right now than to feel her father’s arms around her, his soft Scottish brogue, calm and reassuring as he held her, telling her that everything was going to be all right.

Then she heard rapid footsteps out in the hall, and she pulled herself up to her feet, heart pushing into her throat and nearly choking her. The key turned in the lock, and she stood, blinking painfully in the sudden glare of electric light from the corridor as the door was thrown open. There was just the one man. Still hooded. With Bertrand gone, they clearly didn’t think she posed the same threat.

He stepped into the room, and fingers of steel closed around her throat, almost lifting her off her feet. She could barely breathe, and his face came to within inches of hers, so that she could smell his sour breath through the fabric of the mask. ‘Some boyfriend, eh? Leaving you here on your own. What a fucking hero.’ He released his grip a little.

‘Yeah, well, you would know,’ she spat back at him. ‘Easy to play the big man with someone who can’t fight back.’

‘Shut your fucking mouth, bitch!’ And he took the open palm of his hand across the side of her face. A bruising, powerful slap that knocked her off her feet and sent her sprawling in the dust.

She rolled over on to her back, tears springing to her eyes, and saw his blurred figure stepping towards her. She said, ‘Guess you’re pissed off cos he got away.’ Her words and voice sounded much braver than she felt. ‘Well, he didn’t leave me. He’ll be back. With help.’

He leaned over and grabbed her by the hair, pulling her roughly to her feet. Again, he pushed his face right into hers. ‘Yeah, he probably will. But you know what? We’ll all be long gone by then. And your old man might get the message sooner than planned, but get it he will. Bitch!’ And he threw her out into the corridor.

Bertrand watched the house from the cover of the trees, acutely aware that his pursuers would likely give up the chase and come back this way very soon. One glance at the clarity of the sky overhead told him that they were nowhere near any village or conurbation. There was no light pollution of any kind, except from the moon itself, which shed its silver light across the land like frost.

The house was huge. Stone-built on three levels, and to Bertrand’s eye looked nineteenth- or early twentieth-century. It had seen better days. Most of the windows were shuttered, and creeper grew freely up the walls and into the eaves. Juliette balconies all along the first floor were balustraded by rusted wrought iron, and the walls were stained where gutters blocked by leaves had overflowed and rainwater had run down the stone.

On the other side of the driveway he could see an overgrown lawn stretching away to a separate garage sitting in the shadow of a large chestnut tree which was in the process of piling its leaves up all around it.

From behind him, in the woods, he heard voices and the sounds of men slashing their way back through the undergrowth. He knew he had to move, and that he would have to break cover, exposing himself to the glare of the moonlight and full visibility to anyone watching from the house. But he could see a light in only one window, and nobody at it. So he sprinted across the gravel, past the vehicles parked there, and ploughed through the long grass of the untended lawn, already wet with dew.

To his surprise, when he reached the garage, he found that the door was not locked, and he slipped inside.

Moonlight spilled in through windows along the far side, and he could see three vehicles of some sort, covered over with dust sheets. The place smelled damp and fusty, as if it hadn’t been in use for a long time, and, as he crossed to a heavy workbench against the near wall, dust rose up from his feet and hung in the silver light.

A toolbox lay open, some of its contents strewn across the worktop. Hammers and saws hung from hooks on the wall above it. He lifted a short crowbar, curved and forked at one end, and hefted it in his hand. It felt solid and heavy, and would make not only a good weapon, but an ideal tool with which to pry free the bars on the window to the room they had been kept in.

From the shadow of the garage, he peered out across the expanse of grass and saw his pursuers, three men, emerging from the woods and hurrying back into the house.

It had occurred to him as he crouched, shivering, in the water beneath the boulder by the stream, that he couldn’t leave Sophie here. However long it took him to find and secure help, by the time he got back, their captors would almost certainly have gone, and taken Sophie with them. He had to get her out now.

As soon as his pursuers were inside, Bertrand ran, crouching, from the shadows to the near wall of the house. An overgrown path ran around it. And he followed it quickly to the back. There were extensions here, and a couple of outbuildings, but no sign of life, and he ran past the bins and the rear entrance to the deep shadow that the moon cast on the far side of the house. Beyond lay the woods that Sophie had seen from the window.

She had described a tall pine tree that stood high above the others, and he saw it now, his marker to identify the window to the room in which they had been kept. There were several windows at path height along this side of the house, each allowing light into basement rooms. All were barred and lay in darkness. But even at a glance Bertrand could see that the bars were rusted, and corroded where their fixings were set into the wall. A simple matter to prise them free with the crowbar.