A Cast of Falcons

To Hilary and Michael, for all the stories we have shared.

 

I
am grateful to my editor, Allison Hirst, my publicist, James
Jim Pub
Hatch, and the rest of the team at Dundurn for all their work in support of the Birder Murder series. I am fortunate, too, to now be in the capable hands of Jenny Parrot at OneWorld Publications in the U.K. Bruce Westwood, Lien de Nil, and Meg Tobin-O'Drowsky at Westwood Creative Artists have been creative indeed in finding solutions to the challenges I have brought them. On the very rare occasions I haven't been chained to a computer writing, ahem, I have enjoyed the company of many birding companions. Thanks to them for adding new species to my list over the past year.

And as always, love and thanks to my beautiful wife, Resa. In your predictions about the success of the Birder Murder series, you have proven, as usual, to be the opposite of left.

T
he
noise. The deafening, terrible noise. The sound of air, rushing through his clothing, tearing at his hair, clawing his lips back into a grotesque grin. Ten seconds? Perhaps. Thirty-two feet per second, per second. A memory. School? Shadows. Sadness. Anger.

Lightheaded now, lungs unable to snatch the air rushing by. Panic. The rock face a grey curtain hurtling past at one hundred and twenty miles per hour. Terminal velocity. Another memory. School? Or college? Good times. Laughter. Women. Bars.
Five seconds? Terminal!
I'm dying.

He had seen the angel, a brief glimpse as he released his grip on the rock face. On life. Pure, white, beautiful. An angel that had brought him death. Angels. Heaven. Too late? Never too late, his mother said.

His mother. Regrets. Words not spoken. Actions not taken. Taken. Birds. Fear, now. Plunging down through open space.
I'm going to die.
Repentance. The key.
God, forgive me. For the birds. For—

T
he man watching through binoculars fixed the body's landing place against the scarred granite backdrop, and then swept the horizon in either direction. Nothing else stirred. He focused again on the rock face and relocated the crumpled form, remembering the sickening flat bounce as life had left it. He lowered his binoculars and sat, deep in thought, seeming not to notice the fierce buffeting of the winds that scoured the bleak landscape. After a moment, he tucked his bins into a canvas bag resting against his hip, careful not to damage the other item inside. Things had changed now, but perhaps there was still a way; and perhaps this other item, now nestling gently against the bins, held the key. He rose from his crouched position and began to make his way toward the towering presence of Sgurr Fiona.

He moved with haste over the uneven terrain, beneath a sky that was grey and leaden. Swollen rain clouds were riding inland on the onshore winds. A fierce Atlantic squall was on its way and the exposed heath would offer no shelter once the storm arrived. The man wore only a heavy fisherman's sweater, denim jeans, and walking shoes. He had no coat or waterproofs to ward off the horizontal rains that would soon drive across the landscape.

He had estimated the distance to the rock face at a quarter of a mile, and he could tell now, as he crossed the ground with his steady, purposeful gait, that he'd been about right. Even experienced walkers underestimated distances in these parts. The stark, featureless landscape seemed to draw in the mountains on the horizon, making them appear closer. But the man had spent enough time in the natural world to be alert for its deceptions. It was those of the human world he found harder to detect.

He moved over the tussocks easily, barely noticing the sprigs of gorse and brambles that snatched like harpies at his trouser cuffs. Once or twice he stumbled over the craggy, moss-covered mounds, but for the most part his progress was sure-footed, even in the flimsy, well-worn soles of his walking shoes. On the horizon, the grey mass of a low cloudbank had begun its inexorable time-lapse march across the landscape. He would need to work quickly if he was to find shelter before the storm came. He had a window, a tiny chink of opportunity: The coming storm would discourage others from venturing out here. But squalls passed over these coastal areas quickly, chased into the inland valleys and hill passes by the relentless coastal winds. Behind the storm would come the clear white-blue skies of the North Atlantic. And then the walkers would return to the trails. It wouldn't be long before the body was found and reported. He must do what had to be done long before that happened. He needed to be far away by then.

The last of the vegetation died away and he emerged onto a slight slope of scree that led up to the base of the rock face. Sgurr Fiona towered above him, its peaks already lost in the greyness of the clouds. He stopped for a second to take in its grandeur, and as he looked up, he paused. Until now, only the images of the death, the violent impact of the man's body hitting the ground, had occupied his thoughts. But the initial shock was starting to wear off, and he began to recognize a meaning behind what he had seen; an explanation, perhaps. Had the other man recognized it, also, in those last, long terrifying seconds? Had he, too, acknowledged what it might mean? Either way, it was just him, now, standing alone on this desolate, windswept heath, who possessed this wisdom, this secret, entrusted to him by another man's death. He looked up at Sgurr Fiona once again, but the sky below the clouds was empty.

He approached the body and forced himself to look down at the broken, rag-doll form. It was clear the man had died on impact. The damage seemed to be mostly to the head and face. It was difficult to even make out the features now. He shook his head. It was as if the fates themselves had determined to cloak the death in a double layer of mystery: not only of who the dead man was, but of what he had looked like in life.

The man felt a momentary wave of sadness for the empty shape at his feet. All that was left of Jack de Laet, with whom he had drunk, and laughed, and swapped lies — and unknowingly, a few truths too — over the previous weeks. He was a bad man, Jack, one of the worst. But he had been a person, a living, breathing human being. And now he was … what? The man didn't have time to consider the question. Musing about the afterlife, the great beyond, was for a warm pub, where he would head after this, for a hot meal and a glass of single malt whisky and the comfort of a gently burning fire. Out here, at the base of a granite rock face, under a low, roiling, gunmetal sky, he had work to do.

He knelt beside the body and slowly began to withdraw the day pack from beneath Jack de Laet's stiffening form. He worked with great care. He couldn't see any blood coming from under the body, but if there was any, he knew the small pack could disturb it, smear it, perhaps in a way that a good forensic examiner might be able to detect. He breathed a sigh of relief when the pack finally slithered free showing no traces of blood. He lifted it to one side and peered in. “Ah Jack, you lied to me,” he said quietly, without malice. Using a handkerchief, he withdrew a book from his canvas shoulder bag. It was battered and dog-eared, with a long-faded cover from which the images of a couple of birds, well-drawn and easily identifiable, stared back at him. He took a pen from his pocket and wrote two words on the flyleaf, holding the cover open with the handkerchief. Then he leaned forward to delicately lift the flap on one of De Laet's jacket pockets. He slid the book in.

He patted the pocket slightly as he closed the flap and rose from his kneeling position clutching the small day pack.

“See you soon,” he said. But he wasn't talking to Jack de Laet.

D
eath
had won again. As it always did in the end. Another man had challenged it, tried to face it down and defeat it with his frail human courage. And he had lost. In this case, Death had stalked its victim, pursued him silently through this leafy forest glade, treading the path parallel to this one that ran farther down in the ravine. At some point, it had moved ahead of the man so it could scramble silently up to this footpath, and lurk, hidden from view, until the man rounded the bend. To find Death waiting for him. A short struggle, perhaps, and then Death had claimed another victim, and dragged his soul off to its lair. And now it was up to Danny Maik to find out who had been Death's foot soldier this time, and to bring that person in to face the justice that Death itself never would.

They knew the choreography, and little bits more, from the trail of clues, footprints whispered into the woodchips of the two trails. But it was not enough to tell them who had been following the man, so they were still no closer to knowing who had decapitated him and left his body lying here in the centre of the path, and the head a few yards off, in the bracken to the right.

In this strange twilight aftermath of the event, not now fresh enough to be shrouded in shock, but recent enough that the horror had not yet faded completely, it was the jogger that Danny Maik felt for most. The emotional trauma of those Philip Wayland had left behind would be understandable; their grief and despair justified. No one would consider it unusual if any of the family or friends fell apart for a few days. Or longer. But the jogger who had found the body was not in their circle, not really entitled to any of the emotions his death engendered in them. And so, this unremarkable woman, who had done nothing worse than decide on this path for her morning jog, must now deal with her own feelings only in the shadows. Maik could hardly imagine the shock she had endured. One minute enjoying the woods, hearing the rhythmic pounding of her running shoes on the trail, treating her lungs to the fresh, clean woodland air, and the next, happening upon the worst, most horrifying sight she would ever see in her life.

She seemed so shaken, so utterly traumatized by her discovery, as she was led away, trembling and sobbing into Constable Lauren Salter's sympathetic embrace. When the police arrived, they had found her standing beside the body, over it almost, as if unable to draw herself away. Or perhaps it was just that she was unwilling to leave the victim, feeling that someone should stay to watch over him, even in his brutalized, incomplete state, until the medics could come and treat him with the care and dignity the last moments of his life had denied him. If so, the woman's compassion would cost her dearly. Days and nights of images, things seen when her eyes had been inexorably drawn to the horror at her feet on the path; images that may never leave her. How could you confront such a sight — the headless body of a person — out here in the silence and the solitude of the woods, and not be damaged by your discovery? Domenic Jejeune, too, had seemed to recognize the toll the woman's discovery would take, had already taken, on her. The DCI made sure he organized her care and treatment before turning his attention to the body on the path. In truth, there had been no need to rush on that score. Both Detective Chief Inspector Jejeune and Sergeant Danny Maik had already long acknowledged the truth of the situation. Death had won again.

Maik looked along the trail again now and then turned his gaze to the right, peering through the undergrowth as if trying to judge exactly how far he was from the compound. Though this path was a public right of way, the battered sign on the fence made it clear to anyone veering from it that they were entering onto
PRIVATE PROPERTY
.

Public access through private land. Maik could hardly count the times as a beat constable he had found it necessary to go over the concept with tourists:
Yes, the path does go through private property. Yes, you are allowed onto it. No, you don't need the owners' permission. No, I don't understand it either.
And when the new foreign owners had acquired this particular property, the “Old Dairy” as they now called it, Maik had been present at the earliest briefings, when the questions about public access to private property had become even more pointed.
What exactly does the concept of land ownership mean in this country, when the public is granted rights of way into perpetuity?
But if the legal representative of Old Dairy Holdings had expected Detective Chief Superintendent Colleen Shepherd to quail under his withering glance, he was disappointed. Shepherd had told him politely that it meant whatever the Highways Passage Act meant it to mean. The discussion had ended there.

The world being the way it was, Maik had probably always known if any major crime was ever going to be committed around here, it would happen on this path, where jurisdiction and rights were at their most nebulous. Now, it would require all of DCS Shepherd's considerable diplomatic skills to get them the access and co-operation the investigating officers were going to need from Old Dairy Holdings to pursue their inquiries into this case.

Maik looked around at the glade again, drinking in its tranquility, the tangy hint of bark on its breezes. It had happened at dusk, the medical examiner had determined, at the far end of daylight's arc, when any protesters had long since gone home and the woods had returned to silence
. What brought you here, Mr. Wayland, to this path beside the place you had not worked at in more than a year? What, if anything, did it have to do with you being killed in such a disturbingly brutal way?
Maik smiled wryly. He was pretty sure his absent DCI would approve of these questions about Philip Wayland's final moments, even if he might not be too impressed by the high-minded affectation with which Danny's subconscious was composing them.

Absent,
thought Maik. His
absent
DCI. Even for the famously disengaged Inspector Domenic Jejeune, the absence was puzzling. The call had come in from the Highland Constabulary just as the first analysis of the physical evidence in this case was starting to materialize. Not the ideal time, one would have thought, for the inspector to go haring off up to Scotland. Not at all the actions of a DCI fully engaged in the business of solving Philip Wayland's murder. Jejeune had certainly been invested enough in the case during the early days, even if his detached approach might have suggested otherwise. So when did a trip up to the Scottish Highlands suddenly take precedence over an active murder inquiry? When did investigating a book, a bird guide no less, found on the body of a fallen climber, become more important than pursuing a killer? Perhaps today was the day Danny would get some answers. Perhaps there would be a message waiting for him at the office, or an email, telling him the DCI was on his way back to north Norfolk.

Maik looked around the glade now, seeing the last remnants of the police incident tape flapping from one or two trees and the fresh bark chips on the trail that replaced the blood-stained ones gathered as evidence. It seemed inconceivable that this spot could have been the scene of such violence and brutality a scant few days ago. Shafts of light were beginning to filter through the leafy canopy, dappling the forest path into tawny patterns. Beneath the giant beeches on both sides of the path, patches of bluebells awaited the warmth of the early morning sun. This was a place of tranquility again now, a place that seemed to have gathered up the horrors of the past and laid a blanket of quiet over them. Nature providing a balm for the crimes of humans, forgiving them once again, as it always did.

Maik turned and headed back to his car, but not before pausing for one quick look back. The corner of an office was barely visible through the vegetation, the only evidence one could see of the research compound on the other side of the wire fence. DCI Jejeune had spent a long time staring at that office the last time he was here.
Just what was it you were looking at?
wondered Danny.
And why does it make you distrust the only witness statement we have in this case?