A Pitying of Doves (10 page)

I
t
doesn't take long to lose touch with the rhythms of London, and Jejeune found he could no longer judge the travel times across the city with any accuracy. As a result, he arrived for his meeting at Regent's Park more than half an hour early.

“The Clarence Gate entrance,” Hidalgo had said, “near Baker Street.” Jejeune realized he had time for a coffee and strolled through the pedestrian traffic, past the shops with their Sherlock Holmes paraphernalia and the small knots of early-morning tourists destined for disappointment in their search for a real-life number 221B. He took a table on the outside patio of a café called The Blue Parrot and ordered a small cappuccino. The blackboard menu on the wall beside the doorway featured an exquisite chalk drawing of a Blue-and-Yellow Macaw. The proportions and plumage of the bird were rendered perfectly. It seemed a shame that someone with such obvious artistic talent should be working at a café. A shame, too, perhaps, that they didn't know their parrots from their macaws.

As Jejeune sipped his coffee, a steady stream of pedestrians passed by a few yards from his table, each immersed in an internal world from which everything and everyone else were excluded. It was unusual for Jejeune to have time like this, to simply sit and observe the passing parade of life. If he had free time, he spent it birding, or musing on his current case. Or both.

What would the famous Sleuth of Baker Street have made of this case? he wondered. Would Holmes have brought his own brand of Occam's razor to bear, the now-famous axiom that when you had eliminated the impossible, whatever remained must be the truth? Well, Jejeune had eliminated the impossible, and he was fairly sure that a lot of what remained was not the truth, or anything close to it.
So, any other thoughts, Sherlock?

A group of people stopped in front of the café, as if weighing whether or not to go in. The men were dressed in exquisitely tailored suits, but the women wore traditional African dress — billowing garments in bold, earthy colours. Jejeune looked at the men. They said that once Africa got into your veins, it never really left you. Had it stayed with them, he wondered, when they had sloughed off their old skins and donned the garb of the London businessman? And what about Phoebe Hunter? Had she died clinging to the faint exotic tang of her field research, the scent of Africa in her nostrils, the red earth buried into her skin? He drained his coffee and checked his watch. Hidalgo, he knew, would be a punctual man, and it was Jejeune's habit, also, to arrive on time.

Hidalgo was on the bridge staring at the water when Jejeune approached. His expression when he turned reflected a genuine pleasure to see the detective. “Thank you for meeting me here, Inspector. Please understand, we have no secrets at the consulate, but your presence, while the sorrow is still …”

Jejeune nodded. “Of course. I understand you had a service yesterday.”

“A small ceremony in the consulate chapel. A larger, more formal service is to be held at Westminster Cathedral. The archbishop himself has kindly offered to preside.” Hidalgo shrugged. “Perhaps it will help the staff to come to terms with things a little. Some will also find distraction in their work, others with their private memories. But grief is like water, Inspector. No matter how many diversions you put in its path, it will find an outlet eventually.” He sighed deeply. “Sometimes I do not know what to do with this sadness. To know I am responsible for Ramon's death.”

Jejeune tensed, unable to keep from staring at Hidalgo.

“In this foreign land, I was responsible for his life,” said Hidalgo simply. “So I must be responsible for his death, also. How could it be otherwise? But I apologize. Not
responsible
. Perhaps there is a better word in English. I had a duty of care. I failed in that. I brought him from his homeland as a healthy young man. I will return him to his family in a coffin. It is a burden I must live with forever.” He addressed Jejeune with a new urgency. “You must find this person who killed him, Inspector.”

Jejeune was not in the habit of offering the consolation of empty guarantees that the killer would be brought to justice, but all the same he would have liked to have been able to provide Hidalgo with some assurance that progress was being made. But was it? What leads was he following, exactly, other than the one that Hidalgo would least like to hear — that Santos may have died while committing a crime?

Hidalgo began to move off along the path. “I thought we could walk around the park,” he said. “I understand you are a birdwatcher. Perhaps you will see something interesting.”

More likely if I'd brought binoculars,
thought Jejeune. Still, it was a perfect morning for birding, soft and calm, and a park, even one as expansive as Regent's Park, generally brought birds close enough for identification. If not, perhaps he could still work on his bird calls.

They followed a path along the edge of the lake and paused near the bandstand to look out over the water, spangling in the morning light. Jejeune saw the dark shapes of small ducks. Pochard, probably, though they were just too far out to be sure.

“Your first university degree was in conservation biology, I understand, Inspector. I, too, was interested in this as a young man. But, like you, I suspect, I came to realize my talents lay in other areas.”

He waited, but Jejeune did not seem predisposed to comment either way. Hidalgo shrugged philosophically. “In the end, I turned my attention to the study of economics. It gives the mind the structure to take on other subjects more easily. As a career decision, it was a wise one. It has brought me great success.”

Hidalgo stopped abruptly, as if chastising himself for letting his thoughts stray from the crushing sadness of his subordinate's death. The two men strolled on, pausing on the Long Bridge. Hidalgo spent a long time looking out over the water. “Despite its much-admired cosmopolitanism, London can make a person feel very alone at times, especially outsiders like you and I. Do you not think so, Inspector?”

Jejeune did not answer. He scanned the waters carefully, but there were no birds in sight. “Did you know Santos used to come birdwatching in this park?” he asked. “His book has a number of records from here.”

Hidalgo's eyes opened wide. “But I would have thought Hyde Park, surely? It is not far from the consulate. A nice walk at lunchtime.”

“There are a few records from there, but this park seems to have been a particular favourite of his.” Jejeune fell silent and scanned the water once again in a slow, careful pass. When he returned his gaze to Hidalgo, the older man was waiting, half-turned toward him, an eternity of patience in his eyes.

“You are looking for something in particular, perhaps?”

Jejeune offered an apologetic smile. “Santos recorded a Smew out there, a duck of the high Arctic. It's a very good sighting. I imagine he would have been pretty pleased with it.” He continued to let his eyes rest on Hidalgo.

“If you are wondering whether he ever mentioned it, I can tell you, Inspector, with my hand on my heart, he did not. Ramon may have enjoyed looking at birds, but he said nothing of this to me, or, as far as I am aware, to any of his colleagues.”

Was it possible? Jejeune never discussed his own birding with his work colleagues, at least not anymore. Not unless it was in response to some cryptic comment from Maik, or more likely, Shepherd. But did acquaintances not come to know about your hobbies simply by being around you, by picking up on hints, absorbing the clues almost by osmosis? Jejeune thought about Eric, Lindy's larger-than-life boss at the magazine. The two men had met numerous times, but there were still vast open oceans of Eric's life that were completely unknown to Jejeune. But he didn't work with Eric, did he? Danny Maik, then? Hardly a fair example, either, really. Maik could be awarded a knighthood and the first you would know of it would be when you saw it on the six o'clock news. So perhaps it was possible to work closely beside someone and be completely unaware of their personal life — their passions, their interests — if they decided they wanted it to be that way. Like so many things in this case, it left Jejeune with a vague feeling of uncertainty, as disconcerting as it was distracting.

“I understand you met with Sir Michael Hillier earlier. He is well?”

Jejeune said nothing, but he didn't try to hide his surprise. Hidalgo smiled. “He is a good man, but he has a job to do. We must both protect the interests of our countries. Such a case as this, it can test friendships to the limit, I think.”

They walked on again in silence, passing the plantation and the playing fields, empty now in the middle of a weekday morning. Jejeune could hear the gentle burble of a Blackbird coming from the large stand of trees framing Winfield House in front of them. He peered closer and found the bird working the ground beneath a large pine. From somewhere up in the tree, the distinctive wheezy song of a Greenfinch drifted down. Once the calls had been unfamilar to him, but now he thought of them as the birds of his everyday world. In truth, Jejeune no longer felt like an outsider in this country. Despite the best efforts of Holland, and others, he felt at home here; if not British exactly, then a part of the British identity. But if that was true, why were thoughts of Africa consuming his every waking moment?

Jejeune suddenly realized where they had stopped. “This seems to have been another favourite spot of Mr. Santos's. He recorded Chiffchaff and Willow Warbler right over there, in fact,” he said, pointing. He casually scanned the treetops for any sign of movement, but there was none.

“You read all of the entries in this book of his?” Hidalgo asked in surprise.

“Not all, no. But those I saw gave me some sense of the man. He seems to have been meticulous, precise in his records. And perhaps a little cautious. Many of his sightings were tagged with question marks.”

“Yes.” Hidalgo gave a thoughtful nod. “Yes,” he said again, “Ramon was all of these things. Perhaps it was his military background that encouraged these qualities, this precision. Your sergeant, he, too, possesses them?”

Jejeune nodded. Along with loyalty and trustworthiness, other qualities Hidalgo had praised in Ramon Santos. Another wave of introspection seemed to take hold of Hidalgo and neither man spoke for a time as they continued their stroll along the edge of the lake. They walked unhurriedly, just two men in the watery sunshine of a spring morning in London, lost in their own thoughts, about loyalty, about loss, about murder.

Back at the bridge, Hidalgo reached out to grab Jejeune's hand. The DCI could feel the dry warmth of the other man's skin, and it seemed to add sincerity to his words. “I am comforted to know you are on this case, Inspector. It is strange, is it not, how we both abandoned our early career choices in favour of more pragmatic ones? And yet, here we are. I still work in conservation, but now it is the Mexican culture I hope to conserve, wherever I can. And you, too, are still protecting the world from those who would do it harm, if perhaps in a different way than you once intended. I wonder, sometimes, if it is not the career that chooses the man, rather than the other way around.”

It occurred to Jejeune that of all the people to whom Hidalgo might have chosen to address this observation, few would be as well-qualified to comment as himself. But he said nothing, and after shaking hands one last time, the two men went their own separate ways without a backward glance.

J
ejeune
was hunched over the computer when Lindy entered the tiny nook they had set aside as a home office. From behind, she draped her arms over his shoulders. An image of a barren, sun-baked landscape flickered on the screen.

Oh, Dom
, she thought,
how I wish you wouldn't wish.
Surely he could see it was too late to start all over again, too late to start chasing rainbows, stomping through the wilderness of Burkina Faso in search of the career that had eluded him. She leaned forward and popped a piece of something into his mouth.

“Norfolk dried biffin. Pressed baked apples, basically,” said Lindy. “I found the recipe in an old Norfolk cookbook.”

“How old?” asked Jejeune.

“Be careful, young Domenic, or I might just start asking what
again
means, when used by somebody like Carrie Pritchard. As in, ‘so nice to see you again, Domenic.'”

“It means we had met before,” said Jejeune simply. “We've both been birding the same bit of coast recently.”

“You never mentioned it,” said Lindy casually.

“There didn't seem any point,” said Jejeune. “You didn't know her at the time.”

Jejeune's naiveté in matters of relationships still took away Lindy's breath at times. What woman wouldn't want to know that her partner had been alone on the wild shores of north Norfolk with Carrie Pritchard and her pulsating sexuality? Surely even Dom could not be that oblivious to her charms. Could he?

“Cosy was it, out there, with just the two of you? Share a skin of wine with the bohemian Ms. Pritchard, perhaps?”

“I told her I never touch alcohol, having seen its terrible effects on my booze-hag of a girlfriend.”

Lindy pulled a face, signalling the end of the contest, but not of her interest in the subject. How much had Carrie Pritchard's presence added to the sense of “wonder” he had referred to earlier. Perhaps it was she who was behind this nonsense of Dom's assuming Phoebe Hunter's research project. Pritchard was responsible for finding a replacement. If she really felt Dom was a suitable candidate, who knew where it could lead? Had they already talked about it, perhaps, at another meeting that he had failed to mention because he didn't think it would be of interest to Lindy?

She navigated back to the safer waters of the case, concentrating on the victims, rather than the suspects, just as she knew Domenic was. “Were you ever able to locate any of Phoebe Hunter's relatives?” Lindy knew it bothered Dom particularly that he could not find even a single family member to mourn this girl's passing.

He shook his head. “It's funny, but even the few friends who knew her all seem to have a different opinion — Phoebe the meek, Phoebe the driven, the manipulative, the caring.” He spread his hands. “Take your pick.”

“There's nothing sinister in that, though, surely,” said Lindy. “We are all different things to different people. You, me, everybody. None of us lives our lives so we can have a nice, consistent obituary.”

Jejeune shook his head again. “The thing is, it's all based around her professional life. On a personal level, she seems to have gone through her life without meaning very much to anyone at all. Phoebe Hunter appears to have barely existed beyond her work.”

The overwhelming sadness of Jejeune's comment hung in the silence between them for a moment.

“I must say, Carrie was right about her success with set-asides, though,” said Jejeune, as if trying to redeem the memory of Phoebe Hunter in some way. “She seems to have had a knack for getting local landowners to commit to the idea.”

Carrie!
Lindy was thoughtful for a moment. “You know, appropriating farmland is still a sensitive issue in these parts. Could Phoebe Hunter have upset somebody with her efforts?”

Jejeune shrugged. “It's hard to see how. Set-asides are entirely voluntary. Still, I suppose it wouldn't hurt to look into it.” He nodded appreciatively. “Thanks.”

“Glad to oblige,” said Lindy. “The sooner you get this case wrapped up, the sooner I get to lie on a beach somewhere.”

Jejeune's response, if he was going to offer one, was stilled by a knock at the door.

L
indy opened the door to find Danny Maik blocking out the light from the almost full moon behind him.

“Danny, come in. Domenic didn't say you were coming over. Still, that's my man, mind like a steel sieve sometimes. Fancy a cuppa?”

Domenic had told her once that her use of the sergeant's first name made Maik uncomfortable. Lindy had smiled to herself at the time, at the very thought of making a granite wall like Danny Maik uncomfortable about anything. Maik stepped inside uncertainly.

“I just stopped by on the off-chance the inspector might be in. I thought it might be a bit dark for birding by now.”

“You've heard of owls, I take it?” said Lindy with a lopsided grin. “He's in the back. Go on through. Do you want me to put on some Motown? I've probably got some Stevie Wonder on my iPod somewhere. He's no Biggie Smalls, but I've heard he's okay.”

The sergeant's wan smile seemed to suggest he could live with the pain of her jibe, and he went along the hallway to the office. Jejeune greeted him with a certain caution. Good policemen, the best ones, knew enough to separate their private lives from the job. If Maik had been prepared to risk breaching that delicate membrane, it could only be because he had something significant to report.

“Sorry to bother you at home, sir, but a couple of things have come up.”

From somewhere, the unmistakable vocals of a young Stevie Wonder emerged from hidden speakers, telling them that everything was alright. Uptight. Clean outta sight.

Lindy appeared in the doorway. “This okay?” She was swinging her long blond hair from side to side in time with the music, bouncing lightly from one foot to another in a way that made Maik feel every moment of his age.

Yes, Stevie, tonight everything is definitely alright. And uptight. And clean outta sight.

Maik turned back to Jejeune. “The prints from the filing cabinet are not Maggie Wylde's. Neither is the fingernail fragment. But this paper she was talking about, it's a receipt. Unsigned, but it says Victor Obregón sold a pair of doves to Norman Wylde. It was stuffed in a drawer in her filing cabinet.”

Jejeune nodded. In and of itself, the news was nowhere near important enough for Maik to have made the journey out here, especially at this time of night. “A couple of things?”

“The employee roster at the sanctuary has yielded a viable suspect. In fact, better than viable — a local drug dealer, Jordan Waters.”

Alright
.

“Was he a volunteer?” asked Jejeune.

“Not a voluntary volunteer, no. It was a parole job, which is the only reason there is any record he was working there. Looks like you were right, sir. He would have been in the habit of locking the cages as a matter of course.”

Uptight.

“And,” continued Maik, “I have come across a source who says he was in contact with Luisa Obregón at least once by phone.”

Clean outta sight.

Maik allowed himself a satisfied smile. “The interesting thing is, this phone call …”

“It was placed before the theft.”

Maik was startled. “The day before.”

Jejeune nodded. “It crossed my mind that whoever took those birds wouldn't have done so without a buyer in place. Whatever it is that makes these birds special, there would be a very exclusive market for them. If this Waters was prepared to risk violating his parole to get mixed up in something like this, it would only be because he had a pre-arranged buyer out there. It makes sense.”

“Of course it makes sense,” said Lindy sarcastically. “As long as you ignore the fact that pathetic get-rich-quick schemes are a drug dealer's stock in trade.”

Both Maik and Jejeune looked puzzled. For reasons neither of them could understand, Jejeune's response seemed to have upset Lindy. Both men were conscious of the awkwardness of the sergeant's presence here, but it didn't seem to have anything to do with that.

Jejeune nodded thoughtfully. “I suppose it's unlikely that a parolee like Waters is going to lock up the cage and then leave prints all over a filing cabinet.”

“I would certainly hope all these television police dramas are teaching our young criminals better than that,” said Maik flatly.

“We won't get a warrant for Obregón's phone records based on a single unsubstantiated report,” said Jejeune. He looked up at Maik. “I wonder … if it came to it, would your source be willing to go on record about this call?”

Maik thought for a moment. “Let's say no, for the time being. But the call did take place. I have no doubt about that.” He shut up suddenly. Danny Maik's skepticism was legendary. If he said anymore, he may as well identify Trueman by name, though he suspected from Jejeune's expression that the DCI may have already gotten there anyway.

Even for a book as closed as Jejeune, the reaction was less enthusiastic than Maik had been anticipating. As he saw things, it pretty much nailed Waters with regards to time and place for the theft, at the very least. He talks to Obregón one day, and the next he's in the sanctuary stealing some birds that used to belong to her husband. Identifying Jordan Waters represented a fairly significant step in the right direction in this case, and linking him to Obregón was a step still further. But from his expression, Jejeune apparently didn't share that view. Lindy saw the confusion on Maik's face and felt badly for him.

“Are you sure you won't stay for a cuppa, Sarge? There's a dried biffin with your name on it in the kitchen, too.”

“As spiced shoe leather goes, it's not too bad,” said Jejeune, trying to reduce the odd tension that was pulsing through the room. But neither Maik nor Lindy seemed willing to let him, though he had no idea why.

“Thanks all the same, but I'd better be getting back. Leave you two to enjoy the rest of your evening together.”

“Fat chance of that, now you've brought him a viable suspect. Still, you've done brilliantly. Hasn't he, Dom?”

Jejeune snapped back from his thoughts. “What? Yes, excellent, Sergeant.”

As soon as she had closed the door on the sergeant's retreating figure, Lindy rounded on Jejeune. “You don't
have
to be so clever all the time. You can have a day off, you know. You don't have to constantly keep showing us how easy it all is for you, this case, this profession, how it all so manifestly fails to offer you any sort of challenge whatsoever.”

Jejeune looked puzzled. Lindy sometimes unleashed these tirades and he had learned from past experience that the best way to handle them was to let them run their course and then try to find the root cause afterward. Usually, though, there was some sort of warning, a gathering of clouds before the storm. This attack was so sudden and so intense that Jejeune offered a defence almost as a reflex.

“I told him he had done well.”

“Eventually, yes. But you had already done better, hadn't you? Gotten there anyway, worked it all out in advance. Sergeant Maik was obviously well chuffed to bring you the news about Waters, but you had to show him you already knew the suspect would be looking to sell the birds. Couldn't you have waited, at least a little bit, just nodded and thanked him?”

Jejeune looked perplexed. It wasn't really a giant leap of logic that the person who had stolen the doves would already have a buyer in place. These were live creatures that would need care and shelter and food and water every day. They weren't the kind of commodity you kept hanging around on the half-chance you were going to be able to unload them on eBay. Was she asking him to have delayed pointing all that out, just for the sake of massaging Danny Maik's ego?

“We get it, Dom. This is all so easy for you. You come up with the answers before most of us have even figured out the questions. But just so you know, there are few things as satisfying to the rest of us mere mortals as watching some smug prat get his comeuppance. You'd do well to remember that, Inspector Domenic bloody Jejeune.”

She stormed out of the room, leaving the residue of her anger suspended in the void created by her departure. But whether or not he had intended sending out the message, it occurred to Jejeune that if it was so clear that this profession held no challenges for him, then there was one very obvious solution. It was interesting that someone as perceptive as Lindy had failed to point it out.