Peter May - Cast Iron

It was clear to him that going back the way he had come was the only viable option. The single-track metalled road could only be fifty or sixty yards distant. And, if anyone was going to pass this way, it would be on that road. Somehow, he had to get himself back up the slope and cover the distance to it. Because no one was going to find him here.

He had never been good with pain, but he was going to have to overcome that now. His leg lay uselessly on the ground in front of him, the break halfway between knee and ankle, the shinbone snapped clean, its two halves lying at a sickening angle, one to the other. He couldn’t even bring himself to look.

It took the next five minutes to manoeuvre himself into a position where he was supporting himself on his left knee, his broken leg trailing hopelessly behind him and to the side. There was no one around to see his shame as he vented his pain, crying out in the early-morning light, involuntary tears tracking through the dirt and blood on his face.

Now, using all his upper-body strength, he began pulling himself up the slope, using his good leg as an anchor and trailing the other behind him. Sweat joined the tears on his face.

Finally, he could see over the lip of the drop, back towards the road and the trees beyond it casting their shadows deep into the woods. It was going to take considerable effort — and some time — to get there, but just the sight of it gave him hope and strength.

He reached forward to grasp a rock half buried in the soil, to pull himself up, finally, out of the riverbed. And was caught completely by surprise as it tore itself free of the dry earth that held it, rolling back to strike him in the face. His other hand lost its grip, and he tumbled back down the slope, twisting as he went, indescribable pain forcing a scream from his lips. He was unconscious before he hit the bottom.

By the time Enzo and Fabien got back to the apartment, they were both a little glassy-eyed. They had polished off the champagne and spent the rest of the morning in the Forum. Now, they realised, most of Enzo’s birthday-party guests had already arrived.

Nicole greeted them in the hall, her face dark with anger. ‘Where have you been?’

‘You told us to get out from under your feet,’ Enzo said.

She peered at them suspiciously in the gloom of the hallway. ‘Have you two been drinking?’

Enzo and Fabien exchanged innocent looks.

‘Us?’ Fabien said.

And Enzo shook his head vigorously. ‘Noooo, no, no, no, no. Just a little toast to your wedding.’

She glared at them. ‘Nearly everyone’s here, and they’re all wondering where you are.’

‘Then they need wonder no longer,’ Enzo said, and he strode off into the séjour .

The first of the guests to greet him was Commissaire Hélène Taillard, the town’s chief of police, a statuesque woman, somewhere in her middle forties. She had freed blond-streaked brown hair, normally pinned up beneath her hat, to fall in curls over her shoulders. She greeted him with a ‘Happy birthday, Enzo,’ and kissed him on both cheeks, her plump, rouged lips lingering overlong on his face. He breathed in the familiar scent of her perfume, and remembered with relief how they had once narrowly avoided having sex. He had been saved from his own libido only by the timely, or untimely, arrival of Sophie. How different might things have been now if she had not returned home when she did?

Kirsty was there, too, baby Alexis the centre of attention among the female guests. She gave her father a hug and a kiss. ‘Happy birthday, Papa,’ she said.

He looked around and turned to Nicole. ‘Where’s Sophie?’

But Nicole just shrugged. ‘I don’t know.’

‘Happy birthday, old fella.’ Préfet Jean-Luc Verne pumped his hand. It was his little joke, since he was several years Enzo’s senior. Enzo attempted a smile. He and the chief administrator of the Département du Lot were old friends, accustomed to intellectual sparring and the occasional game of chess. The state-appointed préfet was a graduate of the Ecole Nationale d’Administration, and a formidable intellect in his own right. It was he, along with Commissaire Taillard, who had called Enzo to task at a dinner party one night when the Scotsman had boasted that his forensic experience, coupled with the latest science, could easily solve the seven cold-case murders in the book, then just published, by Parisian journalist Roger Raffin. Bets had been placed in the amount of 2,000 euros, and the following morning, in the cold light of day, Enzo had cursed his predilection for a glass or three of good Cahors wine and his foolishness in accepting the bet.

He did the rounds of all his guests. Neighbours and friends, colleagues from the university, and was surprised to see Nicole’s father there. The old farmer had made an attempt to smarten himself up, his hair plastered to his head with some highly perfumed oil. He wore a jacket that was a size too small, and buttoned over an expansive belly which stretched out the creases of his white shirt. The knot on his blue tie was tied too tightly and Enzo wondered how he would ever get it undone. He recalled the day the two of them had rolled around on the floor in here, knocking lumps out of one another, when the farmer had believed Enzo to be taking advantage of his daughter. Now he shook Enzo’s hand warmly. ‘She’s told you the news?’

Enzo nodded. ‘She has.’

‘I’ve tried to persuade her to stay on at the university, but she won’t hear of it.’

‘Then we’ll have to get together and use our joint powers of persuasion.’

‘ Oui, oui, we will.’

Enzo saw that the man’s glass was empty and reached for a bottle to refill it. ‘Daughters, eh?’

‘Enzo, are these your notes on the Lucie Martin case?’

Enzo turned at the sound of Hélène’s voice to see her looking up at his whiteboard with Préfet Verne. He made his way across the room to join them. ‘What powers of deduction you have, Hélène — given that her name is written up there in bold, blue letters next to Régis Blanc’s.’

She cast him a withering look. ‘One day,’ she said, ‘I’m sure you’ll tell me all about the phone call I received from the gendarmerie in Duras the other night, asking whether a certain Enzo Macleod was someone I would think capable of breaking into a château.’

Enzo shifted uncomfortably. ‘A misunderstanding.’

‘I’m sure it was.’ She lifted a sceptical eyebrow.

The préfet said, nodding towards the whiteboard, ‘Are you making any progress with this thing?’

Enzo was guarded. ‘Some.’

‘Confident, then?’ Hélène asked.

‘As confident as I was with all the others.’

‘Well, even if you do crack it,’ Préfet Verne said, ‘the final case — Raffin’s wife — that seems to me to be the trickiest of the lot.’

And Enzo knew that it would be. There was almost nothing to go on. Marie had returned alone one winter’s night to their empty apartment in the Rue de Tournon. Although there were no signs of a break-in, someone had been waiting for her there in the dark, and smashed her head in with a heavy brass ornament. There were no fingerprints, and in the absence of all forensic evidence — fibres, DNA — the police had been at a loss. There was no apparent motive for the attack, and Raffin himself had been at an editorial meeting at the offices of the left-wing newspaper Libération . He had discovered her body on his return home.

However it would be tricky, not for any of those reasons, but because it was personal. She had been Raffin’s wife, and Raffin was the father of Enzo’s grandson. He and Raffin had never once talked about the murder, but Enzo sensed that it was still a raw and painful subject for him, the unsolved murder in his own life that had prompted him to research and write about the other six cold cases in his book.