Page 15 of Dead Fall

He looked over at Felix’s mum and dad. ‘We didn’t want to release any information until we were certain, but we now have evidence that Felix took a short cut across the field adjoining the road. A field with a nine-hundred-kilo bull in it.’

Felix’s mum gave a soft gasp, reaching out to grip her husband’s forearm.

Cassie remembered the look of shock etched on Felix’s face and the niggling feeling that he was trying to tell her something.

‘You believe this animal attacked Felix?!’ asked the coroner.

‘Yes, ma’am. We believe that the bull charged Felix, striking him from the rear, and threw him over the fence onto the verge, causing his fatal injuries.’

The parents were sitting up straight, gazing at DC Brookwood.

‘Whatever gave you this idea?’ asked the coroner.

‘I got an anonymous phone call. A woman saying that Felix might have been attacked by a cow or a bull.’

Cassie recalled how dismissive he’d been when she’d finally got hold of him, treating her like some kind of nutjob. But when she’d suggested the family might run their own tests on Felix’s clothing – which they would be entitled to do – she had sensed him changing his tune.

‘How extraordinary,’ said the coroner. ‘But a phone call isn’t “evidence”.’

‘No, ma’am.’ Brookwood pulled a piece of paper out of his pocket. ‘We did have Felix’s clothing sent to the lab for testing, and I only received the results this morning.’ Unfolding it, he read from the printout. ‘It confirmed that there were “multiple hairs” found on the rear of his hoodie which were “bovine in origin”.’

Chapter Twelve

She cooked dinner that evening, trying to make amends for her screw-up the previous night, so that by the time Archie got home the cabin was warm and smelling of cooked tomatoes and peppers. It was her one-and-only party piece – a veggie lasagne – plus a steak for Archie which was resting in the oven. Despite going vegetarian after her very first post-mortem she had no issues with other people eating meat.

He raised an eyebrow. ‘Good day?’ But she was relieved to sense that his anger of earlier – justified anger – had dissipated.

As they ate she told him what had happened at the inquest, and on reaching the bit about the anonymous phone call, he shook his head, torn between admiration and disapproval. ‘You’re going to get yourself sacked one of these days.’

‘Curzon never saw me.’ She topped up their glasses with wine – corner-shop Shiraz but totally drinkable.

‘When he hears about the coroner’s finding he’ll be apoplectic. And he’s bound to wonder why the cops suddenly asked for an analysis of the clothing.’ He washed down a mouthful of steak with his wine. ‘What on earth made you think about a bull attack, of all things?’

Cassie shrugged, remembering wheeling Felix’s reconstituted body back into the body store after his PM. The look of shock on his face had dulled, but as she’d gone to zip the body bag closed over his face she’d frozen, gripped by the feeling that foreshadowed her moments of connection with the dead: a slip-sliding sensation, a humming in the air, her senses gone into overdrive.

Run! A single word that seemed to rise from his unmoving lips in a whispered shout. And then silence.

When she’d resurfaced from the moment, it had made her think.

You couldn’t run from a car.

She had gone straight back to the plastic sealed bag in which his running gear had been stored. Opened the ziplock and put her face into the opening. A faint smell wafted out. Animal, not human. Of course, she couldn’t identify what kind, but outside a zoo there was only one animal strong enough to throw Felix far enough to cause fatal injuries.

‘I dunno,’ she told Archie. ‘Maybe I smelled something on his clothes when he came in.’

She dropped her gaze, feeling uneasy about telling him a half-truth. It was something she’d never shared, this feeling that the dead sometimes ‘spoke’ to her. Was that wrong? Shouldn’t she be able to talk to him, of all people, about it? But trying to imagine the conversation she found it never ended well. He was a scientist, a stone rationalist, and he would think she was batshit crazy. Anyway, as she always told herself, what she picked up from her guests was probably no more than a combination of her subconscious observations and a vivid imagination.

Probably.

Whatever the source of her hunch, the outcome would hopefully bring Felix’s parents some closure and even comfort. Their son hadn’t been struck by a driver who left him to die without even dialling 999; it had simply been a terrible freak accident.

Archie was looking at her with a half-smile on his face. ‘You’re not actually a witch are you?’

‘Uh-huh.’ She nodded. ‘Can’t you taste it in the lasagne?’

‘What?’ He frowned, his forkful paused halfway to his mouth.

‘Toe of newt.’

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