A Pitying of Doves (17 page)

“I
t
's Lauren, sir,” said Holland breathlessly, meeting the two men as they emerged at the edge of the marsh. “She went to put a container underneath the van to collect the petrol. She had just gotten under there when the van slipped off the wall. She was right beneath it. We think it has …”

Maik brushed past him and mounted the steep bank in long, loping steps. Jejeune matched him stride for stride. A wall of stunned faces greeted them as they climbed back onto the road surface. Men and women trained to handle traumatic situations, facing them every day, were standing around in a daze.
When it's one of your own…,
thought Maik. He had been here before, too many times, and he knew all the training in the world couldn't prevent the shock from rising within you. All you could do was keep it in check, prevent it from taking over your actions. And do what you had been trained to do, as efficiently and dispassionately as your emotions would allow.

Maik began to issue commands, his tone urgent but controlled, directing the crane driver to move in closer to the bridge wall, so the two constables already down below could get enough slack to hook up the cables. “Bugger the harness, just get something on those axles so he can lift it,” shouted Maik, “and make sure you're well clear when he starts to raise it. Everyone else, out of the way. Let him see what he's doing.”

Other commands, orders issued, advice given. And all followed exactly, every one of them, as part of a single great ballet of movement and action, choreographed by Grandmaster Danny Maik from his parapet on the bridge.
In Danny we trust
. It was Maik's direction they wanted at a time like this: Danny Maik, the voice of authority, while he, Jejeune, stood motionless, watching it all like some casually unfolding drama, real-time actions slowed so he could take it all in. It was as if he was behind a gossamer screen from which he could see and be seen, but could play no part, beyond peering over the wall, looking for any signs of movement beneath the van. Of which there were none.

The heavy diesel engine of the crane roared as the operator manoeuvred it into position, swinging a pair of giant steel cables down to where the two uniformed constables stood waiting. As soon as there was enough slack, they approached and began attaching the cables to the van's exposed axles.

“Wait for the crane to swing the van off to the side before you go under there,” Maik called from up on the bridge. In these circumstances, it would be all too easy for some would-be rescuer to venture in too soon. The crane's engine, bellowing with the strain of the added load, filled the air again with its angry thunder. As the cables drew taut, the van rose slowly from the ground. Without warning, the rear cable slipped off the axle, slamming the van back into the earth with a sickening crash. The crane continued to lift on the single cable, hauling the front of the vehicle higher, where it began spinning in a slow, terrible spiral, until it bounced against the half-collapsed bridge wall, its metal skin squealing against the jagged stone.

“Drop it down again. Let's get that second bloody cable back on, now!” shouted someone from the bridge. But not Danny Maik. He was silent, his eyes fixed on the spot from where the van had first lifted, where even from here he could still see the remains of the steel container Salter had been trying to place to collect the gasoline. It was crushed beyond recognition. Beside the container lay the remains of one of the dislodged sandstone blocks from the bridge, pulverized into powder by the two tons of massive force slamming onto it directly from above. Nothing could have withstood such a blow, Maik realized. Not metal, not stone. Not human flesh. He summoned one of the medics over with a crooked finger and whispered quietly into his ear. The man nodded solemnly and moved off to the waiting ambulance. Over the roar of the crane, Jejeune couldn't hear Maik's message, but he knew what it was: prepare for the worst.

Side by side, the two men watched almost in a trance as one of the constables approached the twisted metal block of the van and began to reattach the rear cable. Perhaps Jejeune heard it first, his birder's ear attuned to sounds behind the animal roar of the crane. But if he picked it up a heartbeat sooner than Maik, his sergeant matched him stride for stride to the far side of the bridge, where they could see officers running across the road, shouting. Leaning over the wall, they saw a shock of blond hair appear from beneath the bridge, framing a pale face streaked with blood and dirt. Salter's clothing was torn and filthy. Her shirt was soaked with blood and, even on all fours, she appeared to be dragging one leg. She tried to stand, but her expression morphed into a grimace of pain and she stumbled backward into the open and collapsed.

Maik directed the recovery efforts from the ground beside Salter. Even now, it seemed best to leave things in the hands of the one person whose instructions would be obeyed without question. Jejeune watched from the bridge. He heard the grunts of pain, and the single short cry as Salter was laid on the stretcher and covered with a blanket.

M
aik watched the lights of the ambulance disappear along the lane before making his way back up to the bridge, breathing heavily after the steep ascent. “She made it,” he said, his eyes shining with an emotion Jejeune hadn't seen before. “She was directly beneath the van as it started to fall, but she was able to dive back into the arch. Her left leg got caught, but they don't think it's broken.”

“Internal injuries?” Jejeune wasn't asking for a diagnosis from Maik, just the opinion of someone who had been close to such situations before.

“She's making a fist of being upbeat, which is a good sign, but she's got a bit of fight to her, so it's hard to tell how much pain she's in or what the damage is. There's a fair bit of blood. I didn't get a good look as they were lifting her out, but there were plenty of cuts and bruises. The blood could always be from those.” Maik paused for a moment, as if trying to convince himself of the truth of his statement.

The two men were silent for a moment with their thoughts. As always, an inquiry would find out what happened and how. And apportion blame, too, plenty of it, and no doubt aimed in Constable Lauren Salter's direction. But an inquiry wouldn't tell them why, wouldn't tell them what Maik and Jejeune already knew: that Salter was still trying to make up for her earlier mistake. Trying too hard. With Maggie Wylde no longer available to deflect the lances of her guilt, Salter had decided to confront them head on. If somebody didn't intervene soon, she might not get rescued a third time.

“I'll follow her to the hospital, if that's okay with you, sir. I don't think there's much more I can do here anyway. Waters is long gone by now.” Maik let his eyes rest on Jejeune for a long moment. The DCI seemed troubled by something. Not Salter's situation, surely? As terrible as it was, this accident couldn't be laid at the DCI's feet. Maik doubted it was the reference to Waters, either. It hadn't been intended as criticism and surely Jejeune knew him well enough by now not to take it as such.

He followed Jejeune's gaze to the van, now resting on its roof on the road, the cables still attached to the axles. The driver's door was clearly visible for the first time. Apart from the scratches and dents caused by the bridge wall, there was one other obvious and clearly identifiable mark: a long shallow scrape running almost the full width of the door.

Jejeune turned to see Maik looking at the same thing. “We've seen that shade of British racing green before, haven't we, Sergeant? You go on to the hospital. I'll stay on here a while and direct the clean-up.”

Maik eyed him uncertainly for a moment. Jejeune had never offered to stay on at a scene before. But then again, there had never been a rare bird at a scene before, either. Although, perhaps that was unfair. Since the rescue efforts had begun, Jejeune had seemed reluctant to become involved, as if he felt like he didn't belong, that somehow it wasn't his place. Whatever the reasons for Jejeune's decision to stay, Maik was in no mood to dwell on them. Without another word, he ran from the bridge and got in his car to race after the speeding ambulance.

I
n
the days immediately following Salter's accident, a cloud of disillusionment seemed to descend over the station, slowing any progress in the case and discouraging the investigators pursuing it. In the vacuum of inactivity, it was inevitable that the gossip about Salter's resignation occupied more of their time than any productive police work.

After Salter had been released from her two-day observation period at the hospital, Jejeune and Maik had squeezed into the sergeant's Mini and made the trip out to the tiny row cottage down near the quay that Salter shared with her son and her widowed father, Davy. Predictably, the journey had been soundtracked by vintage Motown: a collection called
Chartbusters
, though, frankly, if these tunes had busted the charts, Jejeune couldn't imagine what the competition must have been like. He only recognized one song — “You Keep Me Hangin' On” — and that through a much later cover version from the dawn of his youth. In truth, he preferred it to the original, though he didn't choose to share this opinion with his sergeant.

Seated at the Salter's ancient butcher-block table in the kitchen, cradling cups of tea made by Davy, her “live-in maid,” as Lauren introduced him, the three police officers endured awkward, stilted conversation punctuated by uncomfortable pauses. That was, until Salter's announcement.

It had come out of the blue. One minute they were all sitting around talking and the next she was delivering the bombshell, quietly and reasonably, if not without emotion. She was resigning.

Max,
thought Danny. The two recent brushes with death had made her stop and think about what life would be like for her little boy, already with an absent father, if he was forced to grow up without a mother, too, relying only on the kindly but aging Davy for his upbringing. But Jejeune had a different idea and, as usual, he turned out to be right on the mark. Danny had seen it in her eyes when Jejeune had looked at her across the kitchen table and, for one of the few times Maik could ever remember, offered a piece of unsolicited advice.

“Guilt isn't like other emotions,” Jejeune had said in that quiet, reasonable tone of his. “It doesn't diminish with the passing of time. You can wake up two years later and still feel as guilty as the day something happened. The thing is, Constable Salter, guilt will never let you go. You have to accept it, allow it to become a part of you. Eventually your life will begin to adjust to its presence.”

The message had been delivered with such quiet earnestness, Jejeune not leaning forward at all, not gesturing with his hands, just looking frankly into Salter's eyes, that Maik could tell this was a subject his DCI knew something about.
The boy
,
the one who died during the rescue of the Home Secretary's daughter
. With all the hoopla surrounding the girl's safe return, no one else had paid much attention at the time. But Jejeune would have. It was the sort of thing he would carry around with him, if he felt he was to blame.

Salter listened quietly. “I don't think I can, sir.” She shook her head slowly. “I just don't.”

Neither man had said anything; neither pointed out that she couldn't have prevented the murders even if she had acted on Phoebe's phone call, or that the only person responsible for Phoebe's death was Jordan Waters. Nor did they urge her to reconsider, take a break, think about it before making any hasty decisions. They just sat there in silence, untouched tea going cold in the cups between their hands. Salter had excused herself politely, claiming tiredness, and limped out of the room, letting the men see themselves out.

B
ecause Jejeune and Maik had never discussed it, in fact, never even referred to Salter's announcement at all, neither could be exactly sure where the gossip could have come from. But this was a small community, and cottage walls were thin, windows generally open, and neighbours often in the garden. It had gotten out, that was the important thing. It had become public property, and rumours were now swirling in many directions at once, the way they did when there were no facts of any sort to anchor them to.

So it was with something approaching shock that Jejeune had entered the incident room to find Constable Salter, detective first class sitting in the front row, left leg stretched out before her, sporting a walking cast that already showed signs of mileage. Her look could have conveyed a thousand things, but mostly her soft blue eyes said only one:
I'll try.

Maik welcomed Salter's return, too, but despite her prominent position in the room, she seemed uncomfortable with the attention she was attracting, so he passed over all but the briefest of acknowledgements and launched straight into a summary of their progress so far, which wasn't much.

Uniforms had found Nyce's car later on the day of the crash, parked round the back of a local pub, sporting significant damage to the front passenger wing.

“Nyce claims his car was stolen that morning, but we can't place him at home. A neighbour called to talk to him about something, but there was no answer. He says he must have been out looking for the car at that time.”

“And what do we think about that?” asked Jejeune, enjoying the look of distain on Danny's face.

“I think all that book learnin' doesn't seem to be much of a preparation for a life of crime. Do you want me to go and pick him up?”

“And charge him with what? Insulting our intelligence? No. For one thing, I don't think we have a motive.”

This was new territory for the DCI. Normally, he didn't pay much attention to motive. In the past, it had always been enough for Inspector Jejeune to work out the
who
. He seemed content to let somebody else worry about the
why
; not too keen himself, apparently, to dwell in the dark recesses of the criminal mind.

Maik was itching to move, as much for the activity as anything else. Left to his own devices, he would have gladly arrested Nyce on a charge of failing to possess a personality. And probably made it stick, too. But Jejeune seemed reluctant to act, or even to explain why.

The door opened suddenly and a smartly dressed DCS Shepherd entered, with a spring in her step. Guy Trueman, who entered a moment later, also seemed to have a particular lightness about him this morning.

Shepherd regarded Salter carefully, as if trying to assess her state of mind. Some wounded officers wore their injuries like a trophy; others as if it was a badge of shame. But however they looked at them, Maik knew Shepherd was here to ensure that her officers did not start simply considering injuries to be part of their normal operating procedure.

He noticed Holland's eye roll; not a dramatic one for the paying customers, but a genuine look of despair meant just for himself. Like the others, he knew what was coming: a check on everyone's well-being; offers of counselling sessions or private chats Shepherd knew no one would ever dream of taking her up on. And then one of her addresses to the troops, reminding them of her unwavering faith in their professionalism and urging them to take this incident “on board” and learn from it.

Careful Danny, you're becoming as cynical as young Holland.

Maik turned to the room at large, taking up the discussion about David Nyce once again. “When we were with Nyce, he did everything he could to avoid checking texts and emails that were coming in. Now, normally, I might just put that down to good manners, but with Nyce …” Maik shook his head. “He doesn't exactly strike me as the type to let a little thing like courtesy come between him and his work.” He didn't pause for agreement. “I wonder if it might be worth having a look into his background, just to see if he's avoiding contact with the outside world for a reason.”

“Good idea, Sergeant,” said Jejeune, with uncharacteristic enthusiasm. “I'll have a word with the chairman of the Faculty Conduct Committee myself.”

Maik eyed him carefully. If there was a reason his DCI was keen to spare Nyce the scrutiny of a formal police investigation, Danny couldn't imagine what it might be.

“It might be worthwhile looking into this set-aside business more closely, too,” said Jejeune. “Luisa Obregón seems to have been prepared to entertain the idea. I have the feeling that wouldn't have gone down too well with her son.”

“And so he killed Phoebe Hunter to prevent it happening?” Maik had not meant it to sound so sarcastic. But the message was clear:
as important as the conservation of Turtledoves undoubtedly is, sir, the residents of Saltmarsh are not going to resort to murdering one another over it. Not here in the real world, where the rest of us live.

“Right, well,” said Shepherd briskly, “I'm sure Inspector Jejeune has also decided that one of the first things we need to resolve here is the extent of Phoebe Hunter's involvement in all this. She had the birds' DNA tested. She would have known they were rare, and valuable. Presumably, she must have shared that information with Waters at some point. From what we know of Waters, he was hardly likely to get there on his own. So, a romantic link perhaps?”

Shepherd and Jejeune exchanged a glance, but it was quite clear she was going to pursue this avenue of inquiry whether Jejeune took any ownership of it or not.

“According to David Nyce, there was nothing special going on between Phoebe Hunter and anyone at the sanctuary,” he said.

“Anything that he knew about. And one might expect that he would have been paying special attention, for obvious reasons.” Shepherd paused to check that the reasons were as obvious to everyone else as they were to her. Apparently they were. At least, no one asked for a clarification.

“Still, even if Nyce is right, and there was nothing going on between Phoebe Hunter and Waters, she may have been naive enough to have mentioned it in casual conversation.” Lauren Salter's voice sounded slightly uncertain, as if she was unsure how her first contribution to the discussion might be received.

“Telling a man with a history of burglary that there are some potentially valuable items in a cage to which he has the key goes a bit beyond naiveté, wouldn't you say?” asked Shepherd.

Jejeune shook his head uncertainly. “Phoebe Hunter dedicated her life to the welfare of birds. It makes no sense that she would be a party to them being sold to the caged bird trade, where who knows what kind of conditions awaited them.”

“Fair enough, then,” said Shepherd reasonably, “so we're back to naiveté.” She scoured the whiteboard at the front of the room, which showed more white space than entries, and fastened on a small detail relegated to the far corner. “This written note left on the car in the hotel car park,” she asked. “Anything more on that?”

Maik looked at Trueman. Despite his admiring glances in Shepherd's direction, surely even Danny's ex-CO must realize she was putting on this show for his benefit. You didn't get to be as successful a DCS as Shepherd was by micro-managing the daylights out of every aspect of a case like this. But Tony Holland seemed keen enough to indulge his DCS's interest.

“Strangely enough, ma'am, we don't seem to have a very big collection of writing samples from our local villains to compare it with.” His tone implied that such oversights would never be permitted by a newly promoted Detective Sergeant Tony Holland, should that day ever come. “Of course, if the note was in joined-up writing, that alone would be enough to eliminate most of the rabble I could think of.”

Shepherd didn't smile. “Right,” she said curtly, “so not a viable line of inquiry, then. Where are we on the DNA tests on those fingernail fragments? If we've got a match with Waters, then even that milk-veined lot over at the CPS office would be willing to move forward with a prosecution, surely.”

Shepherd seemed to want to give Trueman something definite to take away with him, perhaps to overwrite any lingering residue of Holland's earlier references to Mexican drug gangs, but an uncomfortable silence had settled over the room.

“We don't have Waters's DNA for comparison,” said Maik finally.

“What? He's a convicted criminal, for God's sake. Surely his DNA must be on file.”

“His records are missing. Mislabelled, they think. Or, you know … just gone.” He shrugged.

Shepherd was staring at him as if she thought by the force of her sheer willpower alone she might change the sergeant's report. God almighty, if the public only knew the extent of the bureaucratic cock-ups made on a daily basis in the nation's police stations, any scant trust they still had in their police forces would disappear in a puff of smoke.

“Ma'am, if I may,” said Holland tentatively, using the sincere tone he went to when he wanted to make an impression with his superiors. “As the sergeant says, I know this Jordan Waters. I've lifted him a number of times over the years, as a matter of fact. The thing is, I can see him being involved in this somewhere along the line, but I can't see him killing anyone. He hasn't got it in him. I'm sure of it. I know him.”