Peter May - Cast Iron

‘What was it? Some kind of burial ground?’

‘Oh, almost certainly a plague pit. People were dying in their thousands back then. Best left undisturbed, I decided.’

As they set off down the hill behind the château, the old man lifted his head towards the sun sinking in the west. He said, ‘The light goes so early these days. Better be quick, or it’ll be dark by the time we get back.’

The path that cut down the hillside led them into woodland, the last sunlight of the day slanting through branches and backlighting leaves in glorious autumn technicolour, like stained glass. Rising up to their left, jagged white rock pushed through earth and fallen leaves.

‘The old quarry,’ Martin said. ‘Employed hundreds of people for centuries, right up until the 1920s. That’s where they quarried the stone to build the great château in Duras, and almost certainly Château Gandolfo, too.’

By the time they reached the water’s edge, the sun had vanished over the horizon, and a purple dusk, like dust, settled on the land. The water came right up to the limit of the woodland, and several trees around its perimeter were growing out of the lake.

They stood and gazed across still water reflecting the last light in the sky. Enzo was impatient to hear Martin’s story, but reluctant to press him, and so he waited for the old man to tell it in his own good time. For a long time, Martin stood simply staring out over the lake. Until finally he said, ‘She was a beautiful girl. Took after her mother. The love of my life. There wasn’t anything we wouldn’t have done for her.’ He turned to look at Enzo. ‘And I don’t mean we spoiled her. But she was as precious to us at twenty as she had been the day she was born.’

Enzo saw light reflecting in moist eyes, and the old man blinked rapidly several times.

‘She cared deeply about her job.’ He chuckled ironically. ‘After years on the bench I had very little time for the pimps and prostitutes and petty criminals that populate our world, Monsieur Macleod. But Lucie always saw the humanity in them, no matter how deeply buried it was. She saw them all as victims — of society, of their upbringing, or just of fate. And something about her innocence touched them, too. Many of them, anyway. She was cut out for that kind of work.’ He smiled. ‘Whereas her old dad would have locked them all up and thrown away the key.’

He pointed west, where the lake emerged from the trees into open ground.

‘That’s where they found her, and I suppose that’s where her killer must have dumped her body, originally. It’s one of the deepest parts of the lake. Probably weighted down, the police thought. Tied to a boulder or chunk of masonry that would stop her floating back to the surface. No trace of any rope left, of course. No doubt rotted away, or eaten by the same fish that...’ He stopped and swallowed hard, doing his best to compose himself and regain control of his voice before he spoke again. ‘He could never have imagined that fourteen years later there would be such a drought that the level of the lake would fall by as much as four metres and expose his brutal handiwork.’

He glanced at Enzo once more.

‘Do you remember the year of the canicule , Monsieur Macleod?’

Enzo nodded. Two thousand and three. It had been a heatwave like no other he had ever known. It had begun in early March. Day after day after day of sunshine, and no rain. The heat building through the spring until, by early summer, temperatures were in the forties. Classes at university had to be cancelled. Students were fainting. Back home in Cahors he had been forced to keep all the windows shut. The air outside was hotter than in. He had set up fans on tables and chairs in every room, but even then the temperature had been unbearable. Sleep was elusive — some nights impossible. More than 13,000 people around France had died that summer, just from the heat. He said, ‘The Saturday that she disappeared...’ It was his cue to Martin to tell him about that day.

The old man nodded. ‘She’d been unusually subdued when she came home from Bordeaux the previous night. Normally, she would sit at the dinner table and chatter away, telling us all about everything that had happened during the week. Always so bright, never with anything negative to say.’ He drew a long, slow breath. ‘That night she ate in silence. Lost in some world that she wasn’t inclined to share with us. I don’t mean she was deliberately shutting us out. I think she was just deeply disturbed by something. Distracted. Mireille and I exchanged frequent looks, but we didn’t dare say anything. And eventually she brightened a little, making an effort for us. But it didn’t last long. She said she was tired and wanted an early night. It wasn’t even nine o’clock when she went to bed.’

‘Did you and Mireille speculate on what it was that might have been troubling her?’

‘No, monsieur. We had no idea what it might be. It was so uncharacteristic. There was nothing for us to speculate about. But it left us both troubled ourselves. Not sure what to say, even to each other. I suppose we arrived at an unspoken agreement between us, simply not to mention it. As if, by not talking about it, we might make it just go away.’

‘And the next morning?’

‘She was late down to breakfast. But cheerier. Or so it seemed. Then she went back to her room. Mireille called up to her when she was leaving, late morning. Her sister lives in Duras, and she quite often has lunch with her and stays the afternoon. The woman’s widowed, so I never go with her. One man, two women — just doesn’t work. Lucie called down, telling her mother to say bonjour to her aunt. And that was the last exchange Mireille ever had with her.’ He shook his head. ‘She’s never forgiven herself for not at least having kissed her goodbye. Silly. But there you go. You can’t help but feel what you feel.’

Somewhere out on the lake a fish jumped. They heard it rather than saw it, but the rings from its point of re-entry reached out in ever-widening circles towards them, catching the last light of the day.

‘And you?’ Enzo said. ‘What was your last interaction with Lucie?’

Martin kept his eyes on the rings that broke the surface of the water. ‘She didn’t come down for lunch. Said she wasn’t hungry. I ate on my own in the kitchen, then retired to my study. I have a television down there. I was having a cigar and watching the rugby when she rapped on the door. I looked up and saw her through the glass, but I couldn’t hear what she was saying. She wouldn’t come in, and I had to get up and open the door. I’d swear she’d been crying, Monsieur Macleod. Those clear blue eyes, red-rimmed and blurred by the spilling of tears. I’m sure she hadn’t wanted me to see her like that. All she said was, “I’m going for a walk, Papa.” And she turned and headed off down the hill.’ He took a moment. ‘I never saw her again.’

‘Was she in the habit of going walking?’

‘On her own? Never. Not that I can recall.’

‘Do you think she might have been going to meet someone?’

Martin shrugged. ‘Who can know? Usually she was so bright and transparent. But that day she was—’ he searched for the right word — ‘closed. Like a pebble held in your fist.’

Enzo raised his eyes towards the far shore. ‘What is there beyond the lake?’

Martin nodded towards the east end of it. ‘There’s an artificial dam. You can cross the lake there. It leads up to a farm track on the other side. There’s a vineyard, and beyond that you rejoin the single-track road that comes up from the D708.’

‘So, if she’d had a rendezvous she didn’t want you to know about, she could have met someone there who had driven up from the main road by car?’