“What does any of this mean, Domenic?” Shepherd’s tone was testy, but for once, Jejeune’s reply matched it. He was fighting for his life here, as far as any further inquiries into this case were concerned, and he wasn’t prepared to roll over just because it suited everyone else’s sense of convenience.
“Well, it explains the presence of all these species in Obregón’s aviary collection, for a start. Nested clades share a great many genetic similarities, and I’m assuming superspecies must be even more closely linked genetically. Obregón must have been using the birds in his studies somehow. We need to get a genetic specialist in to look at all this.”
Shepherd took a short intake of breath to steady herself. It was clear that her patience had run out. Whether it was Jejeune’s inability to explain the significance of Salter’s findings or something else, in a way that none of the others could quite understand, something had tipped the balance for her.
“It’s time to bring this whole sorry episode to an end,” said Shepherd. “Pick up David Nyce and bring him in, Domenic. If he’s as fragile as you say, he’ll confess to Waters’s murder soon enough, and I want you to stay on him until he does.”
Her look at Jejeune held a special message, one meant exclusively for him. “You’ve had your chance,” it said. “I’ve given you all the time I could to make a connection, to bring me something concrete. And you’ve failed to produce even one scrap of evidence to show Santos was implicated in any way. So now, it’s up to me, to wrap up the case and save my job, save all our jobs.”
The problem was, thought Jejeune, if he was right, arresting Nyce wasn’t likely to achieve any of that. In fact, it just might have the opposite effect.
35
They pulled into the car park at the sanctuary. Lindy wasn’t surprised. Domenic had suggested a drive out into the country as if it had just occurred to him, but she had been with him too long to suspect that he was acting on impulse. Domenic always had a plan. It saddened her a little that he had so little capacity for spontaneity. It was part of what drove him to always follow the same route when he was birding, she knew. It was part of what was holding him back on committing to their holiday, even now that the case seemed to be drawing to a close.
The interior of the sanctuary was dark when they entered, and as it flickered to life under the glare of the fluorescent lights, Lindy wondered if perhaps that had been no bad thing. A scene of sad desolation unfolded before them; unwashed dishes lay abandoned on the tops of cabinets, half opened bags of seed gaped forlornly on the floor. They picked their way through the debris and made their way to the cages. Jejeune looked at the birds, sitting perched, unconcerned. Their food and water dishes were full. Volunteers had been allowed back in for a few days now, and even if they showed no interest in the heartbreaking task of trying to restore the sanctuary to the neatness and organization it had known under Phoebe Hunter, at least they were taking care of the birds.
Lindy stood beside Jejeune and peered around at the mess. This is his work, she thought, picking through the wreckage of other people’s lives. It must be a sad, haunting experience to have to face broken dreams and shattered promises over and over again. What a toll it must take on him.
“Why are we here, Dom? What are you looking for? I thought the case was as good as closed.”
“We have answers to the big questions, admittedly. But …”
But, for Dom, that wasn’t quite the same thing as closing the case, Lindy knew. It was the answers to the small questions, the unasked questions, even, that would continue to trouble him. She looked at the birds in the cages. What had they made of the dark pools of pungent liquid that had spilled on the floor of the cage beside them, she wondered? What had been their response to the stench of death? In the wild, it would have been flight. Spilled blood was a warning. Danger was present, you needed to flee. But these birds were caged; they couldn’t escape the death next door. So how long had it been, then, before other instincts kicked in, to feed, to drink, to sleep? To carry on, in short, the way things were before death had interposed itself between them and the rest of their life? If only it was the same for humans, she thought, that after a short period of shock we simply rebounded from the death of another person, to carry on as before. Why must it linger with us, become a part of our consciousness, our lives?
Jejeune picked something up off the floor and stared at it intently. It was a photograph, with sticky notes around the frame. Phoebe Hunter, smiling in the sunshine of Burkina Faso. The scene seemed such a stark counterpoint to the darkness Lindy felt spreading over her. She placed a soft hand on his arm.
“I’m so sorry, Dom. You do wonderful things. You bring killers to justice and solve cases. Only it’s not enough for you, is it? I’m sorry that the only thing that could ever really bring you happiness is never going to happen.”
“It wouldn’t be forever,” he said quietly. “The field work blocks are only about eight weeks long.”
Anger flooded over her, at his stubbornness, at his refusal to see reason. “It can’t ever happen, Dom, surely you can see that. It’s a dream, a fantasy. This is our world here. This is where our friends are, our home, our life. I have a career here. I can’t just abandon it to trot around behind you carrying your safari kit, while you sit in swamps all day watching birds. What am I supposed to do out there? Maybe write a travel guide? Tell the readers where to buy all that authentic Burkina Faso craft work? How about a blog? ‘Burkina Faso is, like, such a cool country. They have different money and food and stuff. They even talk differently. LOL.’”
Jejeune hadn’t asked her to sit around in swamps, or carry his kit. They had barely discussed the job at all, and even then only in the vaguest of terms. He sometimes felt as if Lindy used her own inner torment as a furnace from which the truth might emerge, pure and beautiful, purged of its impurities. But what was the truth in this case? Jejeune wasn’t even sure he knew himself.
Lindy picked up on his look of uncertainty and confusion. “Or wasn’t I even supposed to go? Perhaps I wasn’t part of your travel plans. Perhaps I am not a part of your plans at all.”
Her anger spent, she moved to the far side of the room, not so much to be away from him, but to make sure he didn’t try to comfort her. Because he couldn’t, could he? He couldn’t say he wasn’t thinking about it, wasn’t constantly working out permutations and possibilities in his head, wondering if it might, just might, be possible to grab this one last chance to have a career studying birds, before the dream finally faded into a younger man’s world. And that was the only comfort she could have used just then.
The sound of a car door slamming fractured the heavy silence that hung between them, startling them both. Moments later, Carrie Pritchard appeared in the doorway carrying an open sack of bird seed. She seemed surprised to see them, even though The Beast was parked directly out front. Or perhaps it was just Lindy she was surprised to see. The lingering tension between Lindy and Jejeune seemed to hang in the air like a cloud, but if Pritchard noted it, she affected not to.
“Domenic … and Lindy. What a nice surprise. I just came down to try to tidy the place up a bit. As terrible as this has all been, we need to start getting things back to normal.” She stopped suddenly. Perhaps she had been about to say Phoebe would have wanted it that way, but if so, she thought better of it.
She set down the sack of seed and stooped to retrieve an upturned dish from the floor. She set it on a desk, as if marking the place where she would begin her task. What she made of the awkward, stilted silence that greeted her remarks wasn’t clear, but it wasn’t enough to stop her from pressing on. “If there is to be continuity with Phoebe’s research, a decision on her replacement will need to be made very soon. I haven’t been able to contact David recently. He has a tendency to drop off the radar every once in a while, but the last time we spoke, he seemed more than willing to go with my recommendation. I can tell you we will very soon be inviting expressions of interest.” She stared frankly at Je
jeune, as if checking to see whether he had anything to say.
Did she know, wondered Lindy. Had she sensed, somehow, the tension between them and guessed its cause? She could not have twisted the knife into Lindy any more cruelly, and yet, for all her many faults, Carrie Pritchard wasn’t a malicious person. Calculating, certainly, and not afraid to use any of the weapons in her considerable arsenal to get what she wanted. But not given to wanton spite. Even in her current distress, Lindy was prepared to concede that much.
Pritchard toyed with the bowl, running her finger around the rim and letting her eyes follow the movement. “Since it appears the decision is pretty much mine to make, I should tell you that my philosophy is that it may be time for a fresh approach, a new set of eyes on the problem. Someone from outside the realms of academia, even.”
She looked up and tried a coy smile. It didn’t work for Lindy, but she doubted she was the intended target anyway. She felt her emotions welling up inside her, but she would not give them the satisfaction, either of them, of seeing her in that state. She excused herself for a moment and went outside.
Jejeune watched Lindy go, helpless to stop her. He saw the sack of seed on the floor at Pritchard’s feet. Brought in from the porch outside to protect it from marauding wild birds. And yet, if those same wild birds were brought into the santuary as rescues, they would be given all the seed they wanted. How irrationally we guard our possessions, he thought. And how passionately. Possessions and passions; take them out of the equation and you would eliminate just about every motive for murder there was. Perhaps even for these murders.
Pritchard surveyed the room and the corridor beyond. “I hear you’ve managed to find out who was responsible for all this …” she hesitated, “sorrow.” She looked sad. “I didn’t know the boy at all, but still, you never dream it could be someone close like that, do you?” She walked a short way and let her eyes rest on the empty cage at the end of the corridor. “You haven’t found the birds yet, I take it. Sadly, I suspect they’re already dead.”
“The doves are worth a considerable amount of money on the underground market.” Jejeune’s voice sounded uncertain, as if it was rusty from lack of use. His mouth felt dry, the residue of the anguish from a few moments before. “Whoever has them now, it would be in their interests to keep them alive.”
Pritchard shook her head. “Caged birds are extremely fragile. They adjust their metabolism to a regular food source, at regular times, and come to depend on it to a very great extent. Sometimes, even the slightest disturbance in their routine can be enough to send them into decline. That said, I’ll keep my ear to the ground. If I do hear that a pair of Socorro Doves has surfaced anywhere, I’ll certainly let you know.”
At Luisa Obregón’s, she meant, where possessing a pair of birds stolen in the commission of a double murder would certainly be enough to have her aviary closed down by the authorities. “I’ve been wondering,” said Jejeune carefully, “that sighting in Hunstanton. How could you be so sure Luisa Obregón had Mourning Doves in her collection?”
Pritchard waved a careless hand. “Industry tittle-tattle I picked up from somewhere. I’m afraid I can’t remember where exactly.” She looked at him significantly. “But I was not wrong. Whatever that woman may claim, she did have Mourning Doves in that aviary.”
Jejeune was sure it was true. But he was equally sure that someone who was purchasing birds from illegal sources would be very careful about letting information about her collection become industry “tittle-tattle.”
Lindy returned to the room, offering Pritchard a flicker of a smile but avoiding eye contact.
“I was just about to tell the inspector how impressed the community is with him, Lindy,” said Pritchard brightly, “for having solved this terrible crime so quickly. We are very fortunate. One gets the feeling Domenic could be a success at whatever he turned his hand to.” She smiled at him. “And yet, here he is, policing for us in our little community of Saltmarsh.”
Lindy smiled again but said nothing. For now, she thought sadly. But for how much longer?
36
Jejeune was first there because he was closest. By far. He had just returned to The Beast, parked in the car park at Sidestrand, and as he checked his phone messages he caught a glimpse of himself in the rear-view mirror. He was smiling, the first proper smile he had treated himself to in days. And why not? He had been watching a Kestrel, hawking and hunting its way across the clifftop. He had stood there for a long time on the cliff edge, perhaps fifteen minutes, just watching the bird hovering, suspended as if on wires, head moving from side to side, before a dramatic swoop to snatch something — a dragonfly, a grasshopper — and then a rapid climb again to hover once more on the blustery updrafts rising from the cliff face. For a quarter of an hour his mind had been nowhere else, not at a blood-stained bird sanctuary, nor a neglected aviary, nor even the wide, everblue skies of West Africa. Just here, on this coastline, with this bird.
One text message, his phone said, two minutes old: Emergency – Call Station. So he had. A man, tentatively identified as David Nyce, had been spotted on a cliff ledge at Trimingham. It was less than five minutes away. Jejeune advised the desk sergeant he would respond and had The Beast in gear and moving so quickly that the sergeant’s advice that Jejeune should wait for the rescue services met only with the steady tone of a disconnected line.
At Trimingham, Jejeune bounced The Beast over the curb of the clifftop public car park and drove parallel to the cliff itself, examining the grassy edge for a spot where someone could have descended to the rocky face below. There was only one place. The recent rains had destabilized a small section of the cliff, and a fresh white scar marked the site of a recent collapse, where chalky scree and rubble had descended into a steep runnel beneath.
Jejeune slewed the Range Rover to a stop and got out, scrambling to the edge to scan the cliffs below. There! Nyce was standing on a narrow ledge about forty feet below him. A hundred feet farther down, an angry sea foamed around the black fangs of half-submerged rocks. Nyce was looking out over the sea as if transfixed by something on the horizon. He was wearing the same clothes Jejeune had seen him in a couple of days before — khaki trousers and a thin blue denim shirt, now rippling in the fierce winds that scoured the cliff face. He was barefoot, a pair of battered sandals discarded beside him on the ledge.
Jejeune didn’t know what to do. “Doctor,” he called. Nyce gave no indication that he had heard. Jejeune called again, louder, battling the winds that threatened to snatch away his words. “Dr. Nyce. Please. We need to talk.”
Nyce’s frame seemed to tense, but he did not turn from his intense study of the sea. “Too late for a chat, Inspector,” he called over his shoulder. “The decision’s been made, I’m afraid.”
“There have been claims, sexual impropriety.” Jejeune was desperate, pulling things out of the air. There were no such accusations as far as he knew, merely rumours, but the truth hardly mattered now. Jejeune was in a desperate struggle to save a man’s life. And what man of Nyce’s vanity, what innocent man, could refrain from defending himself against such charges? Unless Jejeune’s words would turn out to be enough, in Nyce’s fragile state, to convince him that everything really was lost. Jejeune had no way of knowing. But he was out of options.
Nyce responded by backing away slightly from the edge. He let out a derisive, sneering laugh, but he still didn’t turn around.
“My God, you people really are incredible. You’re talking about poor Phoebe, I take it? Well, let me set your mind at rest, Inspector. There was never anything like that between Phoebe and me. Do you understand? Never.” He stepped forward again and for a sickening moment Jejeune thought the battle between the will to end life and the will to preserve it had been lost.
“Then tell me your side,” called Jejeune urgently. “Let me come down there so you can set the record straight. People should know the truth.”
“This is idiocy, Inspector. You are absolutely wrong.”
Frustration seemed to overtake Nyce at his inability to remove this stain from his character. But he backed away from the ledge again. Safe, for the moment anyway.
Jejeune edged cautiously onto the narrow channel between the rocky outcrops. The loose, unstable scree made the footing treacherous, and he turned his back to the sea, scrabbling for handholds, clutching the tiniest of knots and crevices as he descended. Twice, clumps of rock came away under his grasp and crumbled to powder in his hands. He could see the scuffs and skid marks from when Nyce had come down this same crevice. Neither man had paused to consider if it would be possible to ascend by the same route.
The wind was a physical force on the ledge, tearing at Jejeune’s hair and clothing and filling his ears with a roaring, singing sound. Nyce was at the other edge of the ledge, ten feet from Jejeune, three feet from death. He was staring down, seemingly mesmerized by the pulsating movement of the sea roiling over the rocks below. Finally, he withdrew his gaze and looked at Jejeune. The inspector made no move to approach him.
“How did I get here, Inspector? How did I go from what I was to what I am now?” He gave a little laugh. “It was sudden, I’ll tell you that much. One minute, on top of the world, the next,” he spread his arms, “this. You can’t stop me, you realize, though that is undoubtedly your intention. You are a good, decent human being, and you want to stop me.” He laughed a little again, an unsteady, dangerous sound. “You want to save me from myself. It’s too late for that, I’m afraid. That boy, Waters, he has seen to that. He took away everything. There’s nothing left.”
A cascade of loose rubble broke free, the small pebbles pattering onto the ledge like rain, and then spinning off into the infinity beyond. Over Nyce’s shoulder, Jejeune could see a line of people on the far headland. They were too far away to help, but it meant that others, the coast guard, the rescuers, would know where they were. If Jejeune could keep Nyce engaged, keep him telling his story, just until help arrived … Then what? He didn’t know. He only knew he couldn’t release his grip on this strand of narrative, this fragile thread that was tethering Nyce to him, to life.
A Pitying of Doves Page 22