“Do no harm,” said Jejeune.
Maik couldn’t get over the impression that Jejeune was continually looking for a chance to impress Nyce with his background in all this stuff. Though why his DCI should care one way or the other about the opinion of a patronizing tool like Nyce was beyond him. The phone rang but Nyce ignored it, letting it go to voicemail, and reaching over to turn the volume to silent.
“So you and Phoebe Hunter disagreed about these set-asides then?” asked Maik, anxious to make something approaching actual progress in their investigations amid all this birding talk.
“No, Sergeant,” said Nyce, reaching deep for some inner level of condescension, “the student lacked sufficient knowledge in the subject to fully appreciate her supervisor’s position.”
“Getting back to Carrie Pritchard for a moment,” said Jejeune. “I was wondering if you could shed any light on the conflict that appears to exist between her and Luisa Obregón.”
Maik allowed himself a faint smile. It was no accident, he was sure, that Jejeune had happened to ask this of a person who would delight in the disagreements of others and be more than ready to report on them.
“Whole thing stems from when the Obregón’s aviary was destroyed by the storm of ’06,” said Nyce confidently. “Luisa Obregón refused to supply the local birders with a list of the birds she’d lost.”
Maik looked faintly puzzled. Why would birders care what species had been in Obregón’s aviary? He asked the question aloud, to see who wanted to field it.
It was his boss. “Without a stock list from Obregón, every time a rarity showed up for months afterward, no one could be sure if it was a wild bird, in other words, a legitimate rarity, or an escapee,” said Jejeune.
Nyce nodded. “Full marks, once again, Inspector. Obregón’s lack of co-operation was seen as sheer bloody-mindedness and caused a great deal of resentment in the birding community as a whole. Made Carrie’s job as recorder for the Rare Birds Committee hell, I can tell you.”
“But there must be more to it than that,” said Maik. He looked at the others uneasily. What Jejeune and Nyce were describing sounded like the material for a dispute at a birdwatching society meeting, but hardly something to fuel a feud as deep as this one seemed to go.
“My, my, the North Norfolk Constabulary does have some swifties in its ranks, doesn’t it? Any more like you two down there and you’ll be able to enter a team in University Challenge. Yes, Sergeant, there is more to it. A few weeks after the storm, a Mourning Dove was sighted in Hunstanton. It had no bands and no signs of feather abrasion — the usual telltales for captive birds. The sighting was just far enough away from the aviary to raise the possibility that this was a wild bird. As you can imagine, there was a fair amount of optimism that it would be accepted as a legitimate record. Nevertheless, as Rare Bird Recorder, it was still Carrie’s job to check for the possibility of an escape, and after a short time she came back to declare definitively that Luisa Obregón’s aviary stock had included Mourning Doves, and the sighting, therefore, could not be validated. Disappointed a lot of prominent birders in this area, I can tell you — Quentin Senior and Cameron Brae among them. Only, as soon as she made the announcement, up pops Luisa Obregón to categorically deny she had ever confirmed one way or the other whether her aviary had contained Mourning Doves. Furthermore, she claimed she had never even been contacted by Carrie about it. Whatever the truth of it, it was egg-on-face for Carrie, I’m afraid. Molto embarrassment, and a quick vote off the Rare Birds Committee. Carrie, as you will have already surmised, is not a woman to take that sort of thing lying down. From that moment on, the relationship between the two women went downhill on a bobsled. I daresay it hasn’t hit bottom yet.”
Maik greeted Nyce’s report with a stony silence. Nyce’s mobile sounded, but he turned it off without checking it. Jejeune flapped an academic paper he had picked up from a side table.
“This paper, the copy we found at Phoebe Hunter’s flat had your name crossed out and hers written in as lead author.”
Nyce rolled his eyes dramatically. “Oh, God, Inspector, please don’t tell me I have to walk you through the tedious world of academic publishing. She’d done some good work on that paper, and I decided to give her some recognition: the lead credit. Only some idiot at the journal got the wrong end of the stick and put me on as lead instead. Force of habit, I suppose. Anyway, I told Phoebe to change it and send it back, along with a nice note asking them if they could possibly manage to get it right this time. Speaking of which, those other papers of Phoebe’s, they will be released soon, I take it? I can’t understand the delay. I mean, presumably they’re not evidence.”
“Is there any reason they should be?” asked Jejeune.
“Damned if I know. You’re the detective.” Nyce spread his hands to indicate his desk. “As you can see, I’ve got quite enough to do tidying up her mess. Can’t be doing your job for you, as well, can I?”
The chirrup of an incoming email sounded from Nyce’s laptop, but again he ignored it. “Apologies, Inspector.” Nyce tried one of his underused smiles. “I’m under a bit of pressure at the moment.”
Jejeune hesitated for a second before asking, “Did Phoebe ever mention anyone in particular she may have been close to at the sanctuary?”
The sudden interest in Nyce’s expression was in such marked contrast to his earlier ambivalence that it would have been impossible to miss it. “You suspect she was killed by one of the volunteers?” He seemed to consider the prospect briefly, before shrugging. “She may have mentioned one or two of them now and again in passing, but I doubt she would have come down in favour of anyone in particular. Not good with the big questions, our Phoebe. Her generation seems to struggle so much with the kinds of decisions our own took as a matter of course, don’t they, Inspector?”
Maik would have put Nyce closer to his own generation than to Jejeune’s, but he supposed when you were in the habit of preying on younger women, a bit of self-deception about your age came with the territory.
“There is an unidentified print from the scene,” said Maik. “I wonder if you would you mind coming down to the station with us to be fingerprinted? So we can officially eliminate you from our inquiries.”
“I hardly think so,” said Nyce with a distainful laugh. “You have noticed my desk, I take it? Do you have any idea how incredibly inconvenient it would be for me to leave and go down the station at the moment?”
“Yes,” said Maik simply. “I do.”
With another man he might have pointed out that it would help move the search for Phoebe’s killer forward, but Nyce was intelligent enough to fully appreciate the consequences of his actions. Yet Maik simply couldn’t accept that Nyce was as disconnected from Phoebe Hunter’s death as he was trying to act. What the connection was, the sergeant couldn’t say, but judging from Jejeune’s own measured silence, the inspector had sensed it, too.
“Thank you, Dr. Nyce. If anything else comes to mind, let us know,” said Jejeune abruptly, bringing the interview to a close on his own terms, as he always did.
Nyce had not walked them to the door this time, so the men were alone as they stood on the pavement admiring his shiny green toy. But Jejeune suspected from his sergeant’s expression that Maik’s mind might be elsewhere.
“Everything all right?”
“That man who Nyce was arguing with,” Maik said slowly. “I’ve just remembered who he is. He might well be a disgruntled parent, but he’s also chair of the university’s Faculty Conduct Committee. I wonder why Dr. Nyce failed to mention that. Perhaps it just slipped his mind,” he said with a slight smile. “You know, what with all this pressure he’s under and everything.”
19
Shepherd entered the incident room with Guy Trueman a respectful half-step behind her. He was playing his supporting role to perfection, and if Shepherd was aware that there might be an element of calculation about it, she didn’t seem to mind. Those familiar with Domenic Jejeune, howe
ver, might have detected something of the inspector’s own views on Trueman’s presence by the way he abruptly abandoned his customary desk-perch at the back of the room to take up an awkward hovering off to the side of Danny Maik as the sergeant delivered his morning briefing.
“As you all know, the focus of our investigations has now switched to one Jordan Waters. Now I know one or two of you are familiar with Mr. Waters already, Constable Holland in particular, but for those of you who have not yet had the pleasure, I can tell you that he is most often to be found where drugs are being sold, when he is not trying to get the money to buy them.”
“We’re talking B and E, stolen goods …” offered Holland, “basically, anything that would help him avoid doing an honest day’s work.”
“Are we thinking he’s our killer, Sarge?” asked Salter from the front row. The only visible sign of her previous ordeal with Maggie Wylde was a small bandage on her neck, but that wasn’t to say there weren’t other, internal scars. She was looking at Maik in a way that seemed to suggest his answer mattered a lot to her. Are we giving up on Maggie? she was asking. Are we closing the book on my last chance to redeem myself?
“He is, I would say, someone we would be extremely interested in speaking to about the murders.” Maik looked across at Jejeune for confirmation that he didn’t need. Despite plenty of practice, Maik still wasn’t comfortable running the briefings to this extent, less so when Shepherd was in attendance, let alone his ex-CO. But if Jejeune saw no reason to relieve the sergeant of his burden just yet, Shepherd apparently did.
“While we are out beating the bushes trying to locate said Mr. Waters, it might be nice to have a solid motive in place for when we do eventually bring him in. Do we happen to know, for example, whether he was stealing the birds to order? I hear Luisa Obregón posted a list of birds she would be willing to purchase for her aviary. Anything in that, do you think?”
Shepherd studiously avoided looking at Trueman. Jejeune suspected that, like him, she had little doubt about the identity of Maik’s source, but she also suspected Trueman would be unwilling to confirm the details of illegal phone surveillance conducted at the behest of Mexican officials while he was in front of a roomful of police officers. Nevertheless, Jejeune and Maik could hardly be expected to keep the rest of the investigative team in the dark about the fact that Waters had telephoned Obregón. So now Shepherd was apparently casting around for another way to introduce the Obregóns into their collective consciousness. Not for the first time, Holland was in quickly to take up his DCS’s lead.
“Most of us here remember what a tearaway the son was in his younger days,” said Holland, casting a sly glance in Jejeune’s direction.
Salter nodded. “It wasn’t just teenager temper tantrums either,” she said. “That assault on the photographer was vicious.” She turned to offer an explanation to Jejeune. “He caught him sneaking around on their property, trying to get pictures of his mother. A follow-up story to the father’s disappearance; you know what they’re like — ‘the grieving wife, two years on.’ Gabriel Obregón attacked him with an iron bar, sent him to the hospital. In the end, it all went away. The photographer was trespassing. I suppose it could have gotten messy for the newspaper …” She shrugged.
“The boy is very protective of his mother,” Maik said thoughtfully. “If somebody had upset her in some way …” he made a who knows face. “Still, she seems to have him on a pretty tight rein these days.”
“A mommy’s boy with a hair-trigger temper,” said Holland. “Put a lid on a simmering pot like that, and something’s bound to blow.”
“I wonder,” said Jejeune, casting a significant glance in Trueman’s direction, “does anyone know what Victor Obregón’s area of study was?”
“Something to do with genetic engineering,” said Trueman. “He was very highly regarded, I believe.”
Shepherd nodded. “That’s right. I remember reading at the time that it was something of a coup for North Norfolk University to get him.” She cast an inviting glance around the room, seeking others to confirm her recollections.
“So, have we been overthinking this thing, then?” Holland asked the room at large. “A genetic engineer, a Mexican. I mean, hello, let’s connect the dots here. I can think of a couple of Mexican organizations who might be very interested in Obregón’s line of work. And I’m not talking about increasing the yield of their guacamoles, either.”
“I’m not sure the north Norfolk climate would be the ideal place to do genetic engineering on guacamole trees, in any case,” said Maik, grateful that Salter in the front row had dropped her gaze to avoid eye contact with him.
“No,” said Shepherd quickly. “There’s no evidence to support that at all. I think that’s at least one avenue of investigation we can safely shut down. Agreed, Domenic? No traction there?”
She seemed keen to not only kill off Holland’s line of inquiry, but to bury it in a lead coffin. Her furtive glance in Trueman’s direction confirmed what Jejeune suspected. With Anglo-Mexican detente dangling from an ever more tenuous thread these days, stereotypical theories involving Mexican drug cartels were not the sorts of ideas DCS Shepherd wanted Guy Trueman taking back with him to the consulate. Having scoured the room with a glance that dared anyone else to postulate any connection between Obregón’s disappearance and this case, Shepherd switched gears with her customary élan.
“Did you come across anything of significance at the Obregón’s aviary, Domenic?”
“Possibly,” he said warily. “Did you notice anything about the birds in that aviary, Sergeant?”
“They had wings?” said Maik. Although Jejeune suspected there might not be quite as much ambivalence as there once had been, Maik clearly wasn’t going to admit to any interest in birds today, especially in front of his former CO.
“They were all doves. The Mourning, Inca, and Zenaida doves I could recognize, but there were a couple of other species I couldn’t identify — possibly hybrids of the other three.”
He looked at Shepherd as if anticipating some sort of protest. Instead, all he got was a dead-eyed stare. “The thing is, they’re pretty drab birds. I mean, I don’t particularly advocate keeping birds in an aviary anyway, but if you were going to, there are some fairly spectacular species you could choose: monmots, turacos, rollers. Even if you wanted to stick to pigeons and doves, you could have Luzon Bleeding-heart Doves, for example, or Splendid Fruit Doves. They are astonishingly beautiful, exotic-looking, just the kind of thing you might expect a private collector to want in an aviary. But to set up such an elaborate arrangement and then stock it with dowdy birds like these, well, it just doesn’t seem to make sense.”
If Jejeune was waiting for anyone in the room to contradict him, it seemed like he might be waiting a very long time.
“I’ve also looked into the species Luisa Obregón was looking to buy,” continued Jejeune. “Again, all doves. Pacific, Galapagos, and Eared.”
“I didn’t know doves had ears,” said Holland, to relieve the silent astonishment of the room.
Jejeune ignored the interruption. “I think somebody should look into all these species of doves, the ones she has, the ones on her list. Let’s see if we can find anything that connects them all.”
Maik stepped back slightly, although whether it was to distance himself from the suggestion or to make way for the avalanche of volunteers he expected for this task wasn’t entirely clear. As it was, the suggestion hung loosely in the air, unclaimed, uncomfortable, unwelcome. The sound that escaped Shepherd’s lips could have signified any number of things. To most in the room, exasperation could most definitely have been one of them.
“Well, an interesting idea, certainly,” she said with an enthusiasm that sounded just a little bit forced. “But in the meantime, it does seem that Jordan Waters is our best suspect. For now, at least, finding him should be our number one priority.”
“Right then,” said Maik briskly. “We all know what needs to be done, so le
t’s get out there and do it. If there’s nothing else?”
Possibly there was. Amid the general scraping of chairs and low mutterings as the group collected their belongings and began to file slowly from the room, Jejeune appeared ready to say something to his sergeant. But Maik was already sharing a laugh with Trueman, and at the last moment the DCI seemed to think better of it. Whatever it was that Domenic Jejeune was going to say, it could apparently wait for another time.
20
The clouds hung low over the estuary behind Carrie Pritchard’s house, as if the sky had descended to meet the land. It had rained earlier in the day, and was threatening to do so again, but for now, patches of bright blue sky peered through the clouds and the sun was shining. North Norfolk weather was a transient, temporal thing. Predicting how it would change in the course of a day was something of a preoccupation with the locals, but it seemed to Lindy that if you went with a forecast that it was going to be rainy with sunny breaks, or vice versa, you would be right more often than not.
Carrie Pritchard was tending to some potted plants on her window ledge when Jejeune and Lindy approached. “Ah, Inspector, I just had a call about you, as it happens.”
Jejeune looked interested, Lindy more so.
“The lab called. Apparently, they think they might have mixed up the feather samples submitted by your department with some sent in from the sanctuary earlier.”
“Phoebe Hunter sent materials to a lab for analysis?”
“Yes. The sanctuary obviously doesn’t have the resources to do its own lab work, so we outsource it all to a local firm. They were asking if I could send back Phoebe’s results so they could check them against these new ones. They’re in quite a state about it, actually. But I told them the police were not allowing anyone access to the sanctuary at the moment, so I wouldn’t be able to get to Phoebe’s results.”
“There were no lab results at the sanctuary,” said Jejeune definitely. “I need to call them right away.”
A Pitying of Doves Page 13