A Pitying of Doves (16 page)

L
indy
and Jejeune sat side by side on a small rock, watching the swells rise and fall with a gentle heaving. Small whitecaps dotted the surface of the water, as if the passing winds had snagged the skin of the sea and teased out its white foam interior. When they had first come here to north Norfolk, the locals had talked about the character of the sea, its personality. Lindy was starting to understand what they meant. Today, on this lonely stretch of coastline in the middle of nowhere, the sea was a dark and brooding animal, an uneasy, moving thing.

“So the station is back to normal now? After all the excitement?”

Jejeune dragged his eyes away from the mesmerizing movement of the water.

“Constable Salter. Is she okay?”

“I think so,” said Jejeune, considering the question. “Over the worst of the shock, according to Sergeant Maik. From what I can gather, it could have been much worse, if Trueman hadn't acted as quickly as he did.”

“What a pity it wasn't Danny. From her point of view, I mean.”

Jejeune gave her a querying look.

“To be saved by the man of her dreams? Oh, Dom, don't tell me you haven't noticed. I've only seen them together a couple of times, but it stands out a mile. She can barely take her eyes off him when they're in a room together.”

Salter? And Sergeant Maik? Did these things really go on all around him? And were they so obvious to other people?
How many
parts of how many other lives am I missing out on?
he wondered.

“Is it serious?”

Lindy shook her head. “I don't think he has a clue. I imagine he's about as thick as you are when it comes to these things. I shouldn't worry, though. Knowing Danny Maik, I very much doubt you're going to have an office romance on your hands.” A thought seemed to strike her. “You probably didn't pick up the signs with Chippy the Woodworker, either, did you?”

“Carrie Pritchard?”

Lindy nodded playfully, unable to suppress a smile at Domenic's obvious surprise.

“Sorry to burst your bubble, darling, but she's seeing someone.”

“I'm sure she said she was unattached.”

“Gee, imagine my surprise,” said Lindy sarcastically. But if she wondered how such a comment might have made its way into Pritchard's and Domenic's casual conversations about bird migrations on the north Norfolk coast, she didn't let it show.

“Could it be somebody younger?”

Lindy cast him a glance and gave the idea some thought. “Could be. There's a coyness about her, a playfulness that older women sometimes get when they're dating younger men.”

Jejeune looked out over the water. The wind had died down and the whitecaps had disappeared, leaving the sea's skin once again smooth and unblemished.

“Young like Jordan Waters's age?”

“Jeez, Dom, I'm not psychic. I just have normal feminine powers of observation, that's all.”

Based on past experience, it was not a distinction Jejeune would have been prepared to make, but he let Lindy's comment go. To the north, a grain of Sanderlings executed a series of tight swirls over the water before coming in to land at the shoreline. The towering backdrop of windswept saltmarsh grasses seemed only to heighten the fragility of the small birds. Lindy half-turned toward Domenic and watched him watching; alive, alert to every nuance of the birds' behaviour, every flicker of movement. She leaned in against his shoulder, just to remind him she was there, in case he got drawn in too deeply and disappeared into his birds.

“It's beautiful here, isn't it?” she said conversationally. “I can't imagine Burkina Faso has many spots like this.”

“Sorry?”

“That stuff on your laptop. Come on, Dom, I'm an investigative journalist.
Journalist of the Year
three years ago, no less. Nothing since, I'll grant you, but I haven't lost all my skills,” she said, trying to introduce lightness she didn't really feel. “You want to do it, don't you? This business with the Turtledoves, studying their feather isotopes or whatever. The work Phoebe Hunter was doing in Africa. You want to take over the project.”

She was still leaning against him, staring out at the water, at its silky undulation. In front of them, a pair of Herring Gulls was engaged in a noisy discussion over the remains of a crab. Domenic was watching them quietly.
Poor Dom.
He's wondering what he can say, what he can do, to make things better for me
. He didn't seem to realize that at times like this there was nothing in the world that he could have said or done, or even anything that she wanted him to. Sometimes, for all his genius, he seemed so lost in personal situations. She had been prepared to be angry with him, to fight, to argue. But now she felt only sadness for him, and a protectiveness that had no room for confrontation.

“I understand, Dom. Why you would want to do it,” she said. “Really, I do. And now these other ones, the Socorro Doves, they just seem to make the work that much more important. How did they become extinct, anyway? How does that even happen in this day and age?”

“Mostly because they lived only on one small island,” Jejeune said. “The numbers would never have been that great to begin with. Even a natural disaster like a hurricane could decimate the population enough that it might never recover. In this case, it was introduced predators — rats and feral cats. It usually is on islands. Coupled with the inevitable habitat loss when humans arrived with their farm animals. It was a lethal combination.”

“And nobody thought to do anything about it?”

“I'm sure they're trying an eradication program now, removing the predators to preserve the island's other endemic bird species. But for the doves, it's too late. The habitat they need will be degraded beyond use, and they have nowhere else they can call home.”

“So these birds still in captivity, and any more that are bred, they're consigned to a life behind bars forever?”

Jejeune nodded, and for a moment Lindy was overwhelmed with sadness for a species that could never know freedom again; a freedom granted even to these ragtag gulls squabbling away on the rocks in front of her. For the first time, she began to see Carrie Pritchard's Free to Fly program in a new light.

“I don't know why anybody would want to keep birds in an aviary. Not a private one, anyway. But I suppose there will always be a market for rare things, and if there are no more of these doves left in the wild, I can see why some collectors would pay a lot for them.”

“Yes, and as a motive for Waters, it makes sense. But for Santos,” he shook his head, “I'm not so sure.”

Lindy pulled back from him slightly in surprise. “Santos?” she said, “You're trying to implicate a diplomat from a friendly foreign country in this? Blimey, Dom, choose your enemies well. They'll be around long after all your friends have disappeared. You have told DCS Shepherd about this, I take it? I imagine she's thrilled to bits.”

“She doesn't think I'd get much backing from higher up if I tried to pursue it. According to her, as far as the media and the general public are concerned, I'm already yesterday's news.”

Jejeune didn't sound too upset at the prognosis. Lindy knew he had always been uneasy with the media attention that had tracked him since he had rescued the Home Secretary's daughter. She knew if Shepherd was right, the waning public interest would come as more of a relief to him than a disappointment, even if his favoured status had undoubtedly earned him some leeway in the past, and allowed him to pursue lines of inquiry others might never have been permitted to follow. Exactly like this one, in fact.

“I'm sure she wasn't trying to be unkind. She's just pointing out that the stakes are high here, Dom, and politicians can have short memories when faced with the pragmatics of a potential diplomatic incident.” She squeezed his hand in a playful gesture designed to lighten the mood. “I could see if Eric would let me do a feature about you in our rag, if you like. Jam you in between the reality show feuds and the celebrity liposuctions. Put you right back in the public eye.”

He gave her a thin smile. “I just can't understand why a young man who has already secured all the benefits of a diplomatic career would risk it all to steal a pair of birds,” he said.

“Maybe Santos just needed the money. It's the simple explanation. This Occam's razor thing, it really is a problem for you, isn't it? But he was married, right? You know what they say: ‘It is a truth universally acknowledged that a man in possession of a wife must be in want of a good fortune.'”

Jejeune smiled. When they had first met, Lindy had been in her Jane Austen phase, and it had become one of their shared things. It had been in the early days of their relationship, when they had indulged each other's passions with more tolerance, and he had never quite managed to get around to telling her the appeal of eighteenth-century drawing-room dramas was, quite frankly, lost on him. As a result, he had sat through many hours of TV presentations, with Lindy snuggled contentedly against his chest, while he cast furtive glances at the great outdoors just beyond the window, thinking about the indescribable wild beauty of places just like this.

The sea had changed moods now and there was an ethereal glow to the water. It seemed to be glittering from within, as if it had trapped light, somehow, and was only allowing it to escape a little at a time in a silvery sheen. Lindy watched the Herring Gulls in front of them, so primal in their pursuits. How much easier Domenic's job would be if humans could be so uncomplicated. Animals killed to satisfy their needs: protection, defence, hunger.
Humans are supposed to have evolved beyond that,
she thought.
But have we really? Was that not what murder was, the hunting of another human, killing to satisfy some need?

She looked at his troubled features as he watched the gulls preening and fluffing on the rocks. At least two, he had told her at the cottage that day. At least two people were intent on stealing the birds from the sanctuary. Two paths to follow, then. Two stories to resolve into a single narrative, where people are murdered so birds can be stolen. It had seemed so absurd at the time that another man might have tried to convince himself that he must be mistaken. But such thoughts never seemed to occur to Domenic Jejeune. Once he had taken his readings, sifted through the evidence, he no longer seemed to have any doubts. It was one of the strange inconsistencies of the man beside her, that he could so lack a sense of his place in the world and yet have such unfailing confidence in his deductions. And now he had done it, identified them, these two people he had always known were involved. He was so good at this, and it meant so little to him.

“I don't expect policing will ever match your interest in birding,” she said, suddenly, “but maybe if you just gave yourself a chance to take some reward from being a detective, you know, saw the upside everybody else sees in your work, the results you get. I expect there will always be a little part of you that hangs onto this dream about Burkina Faso. But it might just be time to acknowledge the truth of it, Dom. It's never going to happen.”

Perhaps she was right. Perhaps it was his destiny to stay here on this windswept, beautiful coast and look for the reasons human beings chose to end each others' lives. All he knew was he could never settle to it, could never accept it, until he was certain that his chances for another life were over. And despite the best intentions of the beautiful young woman sitting next to him, that certainty had not yet come.

P
erhaps
there was some law, some hidden rule of quantum physics, that stated the chaos increased the farther it spread from the epicenter. Police units and rescue cars were slewed all across the road, haphazardly parked with two wheels on grass verges, tucked into gateway entrances and any other small niche they could find in the hedges that lined the lane. Around the periphery of the action, people were calling on mobile phones, shouting to each other, gesturing, discussing the new approaches with the crane operator, the tow-truck drivers, the structural engineers. But, at the centre of it all, right next to the beat-up panel van that was teetering precipitously on the wall of the bridge, a small knot of people stood calmly discussing the situation and looking for all the world as if they were chatting about Norwich City's prospects in Saturday's match. Of course, it helped if one of the people at the epicenter of chaos like this was Danny Maik.

He had seen Jejeune arrive, watched him park The Beast some way off and walk along the lane to where everyone was gathered. He had seen him pause suddenly, freeze, not once, but twice, each time obviously straining to listen to a sound coming from the marsh that stretched out beyond the bridge.
Even at a time like this,
thought Maik,
with a suspect's car precariously balanced between the lane and the marsh ten feet below, and the suspect himself who knew where, even now Inspector Jejeune takes the time to listen to a bird call.

As he approached, Jejeune paused again in mid-stride.

“Hear that?” he asked the small group.

Danny Maik had been holding court with Salter and Holland, issuing short, succinct instructions in a low conversational tone. Against the backdrop of gesticulating and histrionics going on around them, Danny's performance was a masterclass in understatement. But even then, it apparently hadn't left any room for Maik to cast an ear toward the marsh.

“Sorry, no.”

“I think it could be a Baillon's Crake. It would be remarkable if it is. It's an extremely rare find here in Britain. There was an influx a few years ago and some of them seem to have stayed on, but it's still a great bird.”

“Ah,” said Maik uncertainly, the only one of the group able to muster even that feeble a response. “Erm, the crew is keen to start recovering the van, but they've held off in case you want to see it before they get started.”

Jejeune looked around at the surrounding countryside. It was a damp, cool morning, and wraiths of mist draped the hills inland. In front of them, heavier mist lay low over the marsh, leaving only tantalizing glimpses of the wetland, like some heavenly landscape appearing between the clouds. The mist seemed to muffle the sounds of the marsh, too; an eerie silence hung over the land, in which the noises from the bridge behind them, and perhaps that one other sound, seemed to echo.

“No sign of Waters,” said Maik. “There is a single set of footprints, though, disappearing off into the marsh. If you look closely, you can see the track where the reed stems are all bent. Constable Holland has an idea this is not a single-car accident.” Maik turned to Holland to offer him the stage.

“That hairpin back there slows you down. You couldn't get up a head of steam going over Carter's Bridge if you wanted to. Waters was born and bred here. Like most of us, this road would have been second nature to him. I can't see him misjudging this, even in this fog. Not without some help.”

“Only one set of footprints though, right?” confirmed Jejeune. “So if somebody did run him off the road, they didn't try to follow him into the marsh.”

Maik couldn't be sure if Jejeune was dismissing Holland's idea or merely trying to fit it into the evidence. There was a call from a uniformed constable down in the marsh beneath the bridge. Gasoline from the ruptured tank of the van had begun running down the wall of the bridge and flowing into the marsh. The tank of an old van like this could probably hold as much as sixty litres of petrol, and that meant another headache for the recovery crew, another complication in the already difficult process of trying to drag the van back over the wall onto the road. Now, the sparks that seemed inevitable as the metal dragged against the stone wall would present a real danger. The crane operator came over to discuss whether the van could be swung out and away from the wall before being pulled up to the road surface. Salter climbed over the retaining rail and scudded down the steep slope to see what could be done to stem the flow of gasoline into the marsh.

Maik led Jejeune down a muddy track to the edge of the reed beds. “He was headed in that direction.” Maik tilted a thumb toward the dark wall of pines that separated the far edge of the marsh from the beach beyond.

Jejeune looked out over the reed beds, as much as were visible through the mist. Normally, this was a swaying landscape of constant motion, but now a ghostly, unnatural stillness hung over it, as if the crash had scarred the natural world, too, leaving a wound as deep as the one the van had carved into the stonework of the bridge.

Maik watched Jejeune as he peered out over the marsh.
You think he's still out there
, thought Maik.
And I think you're right
.

“He can't have gotten far in this stuff. I could get the canine unit in. This mist — fret, the locals call it — should start lifting fairly soon. It'll make the job easier.”

“No,” said Jejeune. “No dogs.”

“These rare birds, these crakes, they do fly, I take it,” said Maik reasonably. “I mean, it would have gotten to this marsh under its own steam. So it would be able to get away again, if the dogs got too close.”

“No dogs,” said Jejeune again. “We can follow the tracks ourselves,” he said, taking the first tentative steps onto the spongy surface beneath their feet. Maik was at his shoulder in a matter of seconds, and they began methodically pushing their way through the high grasses in silence. Off to their right, a faint metallic rattle caused a pause and an involuntary head turn from Jejeune. Maik waited, annoyed. “Concentration is your best weapon in this stuff,” he murmured quietly. Whether Jejeune heard it as criticism or not didn't really matter. Even Danny's Motown had a time and place.

Maik realized he knew nothing about this Waters, the man to whom they had tied these murders. He was a name only, floated before them like a wraith of this mist. He had heard references to Jordan Waters down at the station, seen the name on reports. But what of the man? He had drifted into their consciousness only at his arrests. But what about the gaps in his life, those great empty spaces about which they had no knowledge? Had he picked up some special training, perhaps, like Danny? Would he, too, know how to use the high cover of a reed bed to steal up behind someone and snap their neck, before melting away into the cover, leaving the marsh to the dampness and the mist and Jejeune's rare bird? Maik heard a reed snap behind him and he spun around in a crouch.

Jejeune had heard it, too, and was bending forward cautiously, trying to peer between the reed stems. Perhaps, just perhaps, there was a shadow of movement in there somewhere. Maik made a circling gesture with his hand and moved off silently to flank the patch of reeds. Jejeune watched for another flicker of movement, a shimmer of disturbed light filtering through the reeds. He realized he was holding his breath. There. Another faint sound of pressure on wet reeds underfoot. There was no doubt now. But would Danny Maik be in position yet? Did he have a clearer view? The mist swirling all around them was so dense that Jejeune couldn't tell. Then, finally, a definite movement, barely visible in the mist-shrouded light. Maik burst through the reed cover from the far side, shattering the silence. Jejeune ducked half a second late as the object came toward him, shoulder height and rising fast. The heron's long legs barely missed him as it lifted off with a heart-stopping clatter of wings.

Jejeune made his way into the tiny clearing between them, where he found Maik still recovering his breath. “Well, at least we found your bird,” he said.

Jejeune couldn't suppress a smile. “It was a Grey Heron, Sergeant. We could be five yards away and we would have virtually no chance of seeing a secretive bird like a Baillon's Crake in these reeds.” He paused, and Maik could see Jejeune's silent acknowledgment. As conflicted as he might be, this way was far too dangerous. They should call in the dogs.

But before he could voice this or any other thought, there was the sound of tortured metal and a thunderous crash from behind them near the road and loud, alarmed shouts and cries; the sounds of panic. Without another word the two men began thrashing their way frantically back through the reeds. Whatever had happened back at the bridge, they knew they would be needed. Now.