A Trick of the Mind Read Online Free PDF

branch on the
road.
    The other branch was round the next corner. There was a lay-by just in front of it so I pulled up.
    There was a strong wind blowing now, buffeting the car so it rocked as I opened the door and got out. The wind almost blew me back into my seat as I stepped onto the tarmac. It was pitch dark.
No traffic, nobody, nothing. I stood for a moment, my senses straining. The wind must be blowing in from the sea, there was the faint smell of salt on it, mixed with vegetation. I was thirsty. My
mouth dry.
    The wind whistled through the hedges, shifting a plastic bag that had caught there, blowing it up so it billowed white in the night. The rain had stopped but I wished I’d put on a fleece
instead of just this cardigan over my T-shirt and jeans. I pulled the cardy closer around me and headed back up towards the place where the cones were, the signs saying ‘Accident’, the
calls for witnesses.
    There wasn’t much to see. The cones had been moved back and the yellow tape flapped now on the verge. A car was coming, its lights appearing and vanishing as it approached along the bendy
road. I drew back into the hawthorn, out of sight. As it passed something glinted in the hedge, lit up momentarily by the car lights. I moved across. A shard of glass, it looked like, caught in the
hedge. The police must have missed it. I looked about. It was difficult to see anything else in the cordoned-off area once the car had passed. I don’t know what I’d expected. A shoe?
Blood? A body part? I shuddered.
    But I had something.
    I had the bit of glass. I could check whether it matched the glass from my mirror where it had broken and if it didn’t I could leave this whole thing alone and get on with my weekend.
    I turned and started to walk back to my car. Round the bend, along past the tall hedges, and then the tree branch loomed into focus, just beyond where I’d parked, hanging over the road,
ragged at the ends, sticks strewn about the road; several cars must have driven into it. Then I could see, a little further on, the mangled body of something, squished up against the verge.
    I bent down. A bird. Feathers flattened against the tarmac. Not much left of its head. Quite a large bird, black and white. A magpie? Stupid to let the old wives’ tale affect me, but
nevertheless, I regarded magpies as unlucky. If I’d hit this one, if it had flown into the side of my car, knocked my wing mirror, then fallen concussed, if it had lain there as other cars
passed, flattening its head into the road, I didn’t want to think too much about it.
    But this was my explanation. I
had
hit something. I
had
seen something on the road in my rear-view mirror, but it was just this poor bird.
    I shivered. I must get back. As I set off, towards my car, I noticed a track I hadn’t seen earlier, on the same side of the road as my car. It was a narrow single track, difficult to spot,
as it ran just below the level of the main road. A battered van was waiting there, in the entrance, near an open gate, parked, its lights off.
    Who had parked here, at night, in an entrance to a farm track? Was that someone sitting there in the driver’s seat? A head silhouetted against the sky, which had brightened a little as the
clouds parted in the wind, revealing a watery moon.
    My heart did a little skip as I saw it.
    Why hadn’t I spotted it before? I began to hurry.
    As I drew closer to my car I wondered why I hadn’t left my headlights on. They would have lit up the road so I could see what I was doing.
    I was certain then, that I heard the gentle thunk of a door closing.
    The van door.
    The wind dropped, I could hear the tread of footfall on rough ground. Someone was coming down the track.
    I walked faster, fighting the urge to run, my ears straining – how close were they? I was aware of the solitary figure I made on a remote part of this deserted road at night. I’d
told no one where I was going. If anything happened to me . . . I might