Chapter 1

The fog changed everything. Sound travelled strangely through the woodland in fog. Birds erupted without warning. Shapes appeared too close. The trees themselves seemed to move if he looked at them too long. He pulled his coat tighter and rubbed at his eyes. Four thirty was too early for anyone to be awake, never mind feeding thirty thousand pheasants.

Ahead, the track curved through dark spruce and larch before opening onto the release clearing. Tall netted pens stretched across the slope in uneven blocks, their overhead wires disappearing into mist. Thousands of young pheasants stirred inside, restless shapes moving through mud and shredded grass.

The smell hit him immediately. Feed grain mixed with wet feathers and undercurrents of ammonia, and something metallic underneath it. Owen slowed the quad.

The birds were already awake.

Usually they remained half-dozing at this hour, hunched beneath the shelter covers until daylight strengthened. Now they rushed wildly along the netting in nervous waves. Wings battered against mesh overhead. Panic travelled through the pens in rolling bursts.

He frowned. “Easy now,” he muttered.

The quad crackled over puddles as he approached the feed bins. One of the floodlights beside the main pen had gone out during the night, leaving half the enclosure in darkness. The pheasants kept moving. Too much movement, so he killed the engine. Silence settled heavily around him except for the constant rustling of birds.

Then came a slow creaking sound above the noise. Owen looked up. At first he thought it was torn netting hanging loose from one of the centre poles. Then the shape turned slightly in the mist.

His stomach dropped. For a second he could not understand what he was seeing. The figure hung awkwardly above the feeding run, boots turning inches above the mud. One arm twisted behind the body. The other hung limp and pale against the waxed jacket. The wire support pole creaked again.

Owen stumbled backwards. “No.”

His voice vanished into the fog.

The pheasants surged beneath the body in a frenzy of beating wings. He stared upward.

The dead man’s face had darkened badly. Eyes partly open, and rainwater dripped from the chin onto the ground below. A nylon cord disappeared into the overhead framework where the release netting had been secured.

Owen recognised him suddenly, it was Daniel Hanson.

The compliance bloke from the breeding company. He had seen him twice before arguing with Rhys Bevan beside the hatchery sheds.

Owen’s breathing shortened. “No no no…”

His boot slipped in the mud and he nearly fell.

The birds were going mad now, scattering away from the swinging body then circling back in confusion. One young cock bird flew directly into the hanging legs and tumbled sideways into the wire.

For several seconds he simply stood frozen, unable to move.

The fog pressed tightly around the clearing. The woodland beyond the pens had vanished completely into white. He became suddenly certain somebody else was there. Watching.

The feeling struck so sharply he spun around. There was nothing… only trees and mist. Yet the sensation remained.

Owen backed slowly towards the quad bike without taking his eyes off the body. His hands shook so badly he dropped the radio while reaching for it.

“Control?” he said breathlessly. Static answered.

He grabbed the handset again. “Control come back. I need someone up at Pen Three. Now.”

The reply crackled faintly through interference. “You’re breaking up, Ows.”

“There’s… Christ…” He swallowed hard. “There’s a bloke hanging in the pen.”

“What?”

“A body. It’s Daniel Hanson. I think he’s dead.”

Another burst of static.

“Stay there. Don’t touch nothing. Rhys is on his way.”

Owen looked back at the hanging figure. Something about it felt wrong. Not simply the horror of finding a body. Something else.

The positioning. The wire. The way the boots hung too low beneath the cord. He moved closer before he could stop himself. Mud sucked at his boots. The birds retreated from him in nervous bursts.

Daniel Hanson’s face remained turned partly sideways. There were cuts along one cheekbone. Dark marks beneath the jaw. One hand swollen and grazed raw.

Owen stared.

The dead man’s shirt collar had folded awkwardly beneath the cord. Beneath it, just visible in the dim light, bruising spread darkly across the throat. Not from hanging. Even Owen could see that.

A distant engine sounded somewhere beyond the trees. He stepped backwards immediately. Headlights flickered through mist lower down the track.

Rhys Bevan arrived hard and fast in the estate pickup, tyres spraying mud across the fencing. The engine cut sharply, and the car door slammed shut.

“What the hell’s going on?” Rhys emerged broad-shouldered and red-faced beneath a tweed cap, already angry before he reached the pen.

Then he saw the body. His expression changed instantly. Owen noticed it at once.

Rhys stared upward silently for several moments while pheasants crashed around the enclosure.

“Jesus Christ,” he said quietly.

Owen swallowed. “I found him like that.”

Rhys ignored him. Instead he walked the perimeter slowly, eyes scanning the mud, the poles, the damaged section of lower netting near the back fence. Too carefully. Like he was checking something.

“You touch anything?”

“No.”

“You sure?”

“Yes.”

Rhys looked again at the body. “Bloody idiot,” he muttered.

Owen frowned. “What?”

But Rhys did not answer. The older man removed his gloves slowly and rubbed one hand across his mouth. His breathing clouded white in the cold air.

“We call police,” Owen said.

Rhys nodded once. “Yes.”

Yet he did not move.

Instead he kept staring upward through the swirling mist as if working something out in his head.

Far off beyond the woods, another engine approached. This one heavier.

Rhys finally looked at Owen. “You didn’t see nobody else up here?”

“No.”

“You sure about that?”

Owen hesitated. That feeling returned again. The sense of somebody standing beyond the trees watching the clearing. He looked towards the woodland edge.

Fog drifted silently through the trunks. Nothing there. Still, he could not shake it.

“No,” he said eventually.

Rhys studied him for another second.

Then blue lights began flashing faintly below the hill, barely visible through the mist rolling across the forestry track.

The pheasants continued battering wildly against the netting while dawn slowly spread across the valley. And above them all, Daniel Hanson turned gently from side to side in the cold Welsh morning.