The Rhyme of the Magpie

by Marty Wingate

  He noticed my limp. “What’ve you done to yourself?”

  I brushed off the question. “My toe,” I said, “minor accident. It’ll be fine. So how are the hotel plans? Are you ready to break ground?”

  “Not quite ready.”

  Enough chitchat. “Listen, Val, you said something about Sardinian warblers to Gavin Lecky the other day.”

  Val’s small eyes watched me for a moment, and then he frowned. “The Sardinian warblers—are they a Eurovision group or what?”

  “No, it’s a bird. You called after Gavin about them.”

  “No,” Val said, his head shaking, “don’t recall that. But, of course, I get so busy in here, I do sometimes lose track of the conversations.”

  “Yes, the Cairn’s a popular place, isn’t it?” I asked, not really caring about an answer. I glanced round politely to admire the surroundings, and noticed the paneling right next to my head held a splintered and broken circle about the size of a fist. “Was there a fight recently?” I asked, nodding to it.

  “Nothing I couldn’t handle,” Val replied, holding up a pint glass to me. It was a bit early in the day, but I needed something. I nodded to the Broadside, and he began to pull.

  Val set my beer in front of me, reached for a knife, and began cutting up lemons. “So, what is it about this Sardinian warbler? Is he special?” He had five lemons in a tidy pile of slices almost before he finished the question.

  “I…”

  I lost my train of thought for a moment. Over Val’s shoulder and out the window behind, I saw a magpie circling above the field.

  I cleared my throat. “A Sardinian warbler is rare. I think that Gavin may have seen one near Weeting Heath, where there’s talk of a wind farm. He’s against it—a misplaced wind farm is lost habitat, he told me. I think someone wanted him to keep quiet about the warbler.”

  As I said the words, I knew there was something wrong with them. What had Gavin said when we were standing at the side of the road? He didn’t talk of a wind farm; he said that a misplaced building was lost habitat. I glanced over into the sink where Val had swept his post. Would a local authority deny permission to build if there were environmental concerns—bird habitat, for example?

  Out of the corner of my eye, as if observing the stealth movements of a dunnock, I detected Val’s hand hovering over the knife block. I thought of Kersey’s tongue cut out.

  “Haven’t heard of the thing,” Val said.

  But he had—I had heard him say the bird’s name. Kersey’s betting slip—I could see it clear as day in my mind. “SW to show 30.04 RM WC”—Sardinian warbler at Rosemere. Wheaten Cairn. Out the window, another magpie soared past.

  I rubbed at the pricking sensation crawling up my arms.

  “Look, Val,” I said, my voice beginning too high. I coughed. I could feel beads of sweat breaking on my forehead. I made a show of brushing my fringe out of my eyes. “Could I get a sandwich to take away—just any old thing you can put together. And while you do that, I’ll step outside and phone my dad—he knows I’ve stopped here, of course. Just want to check in. Won’t be a moment.”

  “Sure, sure—you go ahead,” Val said as he selected a long, thin carving knife and checked its blade. “I’ll sort something out for you. You take your time.”

  I went to the door slowly, as if I had not a care in the world, but the moment I was outdoors, I hopped as fast as I could around to the back of the pub, out of sight of the window. I dug my phone out and my fingers stumbled over the screen in search of Flint’s number. But movement in the field below caught my attention.

  Magpies—ten of them.

  Chapter 33

  There’s nothing alarming in that—magpies do tend to hang about in fields where cows, sheep, and pigs are kept. But not in such an organized manner as this. Here, ten of them formed a circle round one of the pig huts as if playing ring-ring-around-a-rosy. They stood perfectly still, except for one, who cocked his head and locked a beady eye on me. I walked forward as if in a trance, edging close to where the land dropped away into the field.

  “Too close, Julia.”

  I jumped. Val had come up silently and stood directly behind me.

  “Sorry, I…” Words, Julia, say some words. But the sight of the carving knife hanging at Val’s side stopped me.

  “Did I give you a fright?” he asked. “Not as much as the one you gave me just now. You’re too clever for your own good, Julia—too close to twigging it.”

  I took off, but got only a step away when he knocked my legs out from under me. My phone went flying, and I toppled forward into the long grass, bending my bad toe and crying out. He pulled a short length of rope from behind him and had whipped it round me, pinning my arms to my side, before I could right myself.

  “What are you doing?” I shouted as I struggled, squirming on my stomach and trying to kick at him backward. The knife appeared an inch from my eye and stilled me.

  “No use wriggling, Julia—I can catch and tie up one of my Berkshires in no time at all, and pigs are more of a handful than you.” He stood up and yanked on the end of the rope like a leash. “Now, up with you—I’ll have to put you away, too, until I can sort this out.”

  I scrambled up as he kept the knife across my throat, so close I was afraid to take a deep breath. Images of Kenneth Kersey—his tongue taken out by perhaps this very knife—swam in my mind. When I retched, Val moved the knife away in time, and I was sick on his shoe. “Ah, would you look at that?” he remarked as if I spilled the tea. He jerked the rope, and like a puppet I obeyed, my hands flapping uselessly at my sides.

  Down the incline we went, each stumble sending cold waves of panic through me as the knife danced in front of my throat. As we made our way, I tried throwing him off balance, half-afraid the knife would plunge into my throat if I did so. But Val was short and round, with a low center of gravity and unlikely to tip over easily. Every time I slid, he pulled all the harder.

  He began muttering to himself as he pushed me over the stile and held me fast against the post as he climbed over.

  “For once could I get something to go my way? This bloody Sardinian warbler could ruin everything.”

  “Kenneth Kersey bet a Sardinian warbler being seen here at Rosemere, didn’t he?” I asked, and Val paused in our journey.

  “He’d been hanging about the pub talking with Rupert or that Lecky—talking birds. I knew he was a gambler, I’d heard him at it. One of those who would put down a few quid on just about anything, from what time the rain would start at Wimbledon to what day a UFO would land on Trafalgar Square. Yeah, he won’t be around to collect on that, will he?”

  We started up again, into the field toward the pig hut, my trainers sinking in the soft ground where the animals had rooted round. On the other side of the field, a few brown hogs observed us.

  “Next thing I know, Kersey’s on about Sardinian warblers, saying one had been spotted over at Reedsmere and he’d wagered it would show up here at Rosemere next. Now, I’m a reasonable man—I told him to keep quiet about it. I was having a hard enough time getting my planning permission for the hotel without all this bloody conservation hoo-ha. The local authority finds out about it and I wouldn’t be allowed to put a shovel in the ground. And what about my pigs? There’s no way I’d let that happen.”

  I cringed as Val brandished the knife in the air for emphasis. We were slowing up and I didn’t want to know what was at the end of our journey. “You followed Kersey to Marshy End and killed him over a wager?”

  “Didn’t have to follow him, did I? When Rupert stopped for a coffee on Saturday, he let drop that he had a meeting with Kersey the next morning. Bright and early Sunday I waited on the road until I saw Kersey and then asked him to walk up the river a bit. I told him all he had to do was keep his trap shut. He told me to shove it. So you see, he practically asked me to shut it for him.”

  “But you…you…” I hesitated to bring up his murder method with the blade so close to me. “His t
ongue,” I managed to choke out.

  “Stopped him talking, didn’t it?”

  “And you sent Carl to kidnap Rupert.”

  “Ahhhh.” Val’s voice rose with frustration, and I shook as the knife danced. “You see why I must take care of everything myself? No one can do a proper job these days.”

  “You mean, he wasn’t supposed to take Rupert?”

  “Not Rupert—Rupert’s my ace in the hole. People see someone famous like him drinking in the Cairn, and they come back.” He shook his head. “I told Carl to take Lecky aside for a day or two—put the fear of God in him so he wouldn’t call attention to this bird. But Carl is dumber than a box of socks—he thinks one birdman is just like another, and so when he sees Rupert, he decides to grab him. There’s someone else I’ll need to see—Carl the Case. You’re all making a fair bit of work for me.”

  Val pulled on my rope reins. We had come to a halt in front of one of the huts.

  The ten magpies had stayed put until we approached, and then as one they lifted off, heading south. Fly to Rupert, I pleaded silently. Fly to Michael. Make them understand.

  A wooden board fit into slots on either side of the door, creating a double barrier—any hog inside would be well secured. Val pulled the board off with one hand, opened the door, and threw me in, quickly shutting it again. I bounced on the plywood floor and my bag hit the wall as I heard the board go back. The ceiling was low, so I crawled to the door. “What do you think you’re going to do, Val? You can’t keep me a prisoner here—you can’t keep me isolated. They’ll find me—they know I’m here.”

  “You’re not alone,” Val shouted back, “although I daresay he won’t be great company. And don’t you worry, I’ll come up with some use for you. Now, if you don’t mind, I’ve got to change my apron and open my pub.”

  “Help!” I screamed as loud as I could. “Help me!” I continued to shout until my throat hurt, and I rested my cheek against the door, panting. I was too far away from the pub to be heard. Why had Val put me here—did he hope I’d be trampled by a hog inside this hut that was no bigger than the kitchen in my cottage? If that was the case, he’d forgot the hog, I thought, looking round. My only company was a tarp, crumpled in the corner.

  Cracks of light came in between the pieces of bowed plywood, and I could just make out the toe of a black shoe sticking out from under the edge of the tarp. The shoe didn’t move, and for a moment, neither did I. It was the last place I wanted to look, but I knew I must, and so I crept forward on my knees.

  “Hello?” I whispered hopefully. I crawled closer and worked one of my arms round so that I could get hold of the tarp. I hesitated for a moment, plucking up enough courage to see what was underneath. I took hold of the tarp with two fingers and pulled it away. There lay Gavin Lecky’s body, a trickle of blood running down his head, past his hovering kestrel earring, and into his two-day stubbly growth.

  I gasped. “Gavin—oh my God.”

  Chapter 34

  A low groan and a flutter of eyelashes.

  “Gavin!” I shouted, prodding him with my knee. “Are you all right?”

  Another moan, followed by a curse. He opened his eyes and squinted up at me.

  “Julia?” he whispered hoarsely. “What are you kicking me for?”

  I laughed with relief. “You’re alive—that’s good, that’s very good. What are you doing here?”

  Gavin didn’t reply, but slowly pushed himself to a sitting position using his left hand, while his right hand he held close to his chest.

  “What happened?” I asked, nodding to it.

  “I missed Spore and got the wall instead,” he said, taking a moment to examine his knuckles, bloodied and bruised. He stretched his fingers and then shook his hand. He studied our surroundings. “Smells like pigs,” he said.

  “Yes, pigs,” I said. I leaned back against the wall, relieved I wasn’t sharing space with Gavin’s dead body. “He’s thrown us in a pig hut in the field. I was about to figure out he’d killed Kersey. And you’re here because of the Sardinian warbler?”

  Gavin seemed to search for the words before replying. “He was afraid I’d talk it up that one might be coming to Rosemere.” Gavin wiped his cheek, and some of the dried blood flaked off while the rest stayed in his stubble. He gingerly touched the back of his head and winced. “It could do, and I wouldn’t keep quiet about it if I saw one. What’s a life list if it isn’t true?”

  “You mean all those birds on your list—you’ve really seen every one?”

  “Of course I have,” Gavin said loudly, and blanched. “Did you think I was lying?”

  “No,” I said quickly, shaking my head, “of course not. So you wouldn’t lie for Val.”

  “I was out at the fen here this morning when he rang and wanted to talk. I went up to the pub and we went round about it again. He tried paying me off—and didn’t offer much of a bribe for all that.”

  “He wanted Carl the Case to kidnap you, but he got Rupert by mistake.”

  Gavin squinted at me. “I don’t know who this Carl is, but he needs new specs if he thought Rupert was me. Is Rupert all right?”

  “Yeah,” I said. “They let him go.”

  “Spore’s desperate. The Cairn isn’t doing too well, and he thinks this hotel idea will save him. But he’ll never get permission to build—Rosemere is too important a site. It isn’t only the wind farms that are the problem, you see, Julia. It’s all the ill-conceived buildings splattered across the countryside. We can’t let that continue—we’re losing habitat too quickly as it is.”

  He certainly kept to a clear message. I began to reconsider Gavin’s desire to secure a spot on A Bird in the Hand—he might make a good spokesman after all.

  “I told Spore if I saw a warbler I’d bloody well say so. He picked up an empty whisky bottle and said I wouldn’t. That’s when I threw the punch, but he ducked and darted behind me. He moves fast for a round little git. That’s the last thing I remember. Until I woke up to you,” he said, managing a weak smile.

  Brown smears and bits of long grass coated Gavin’s jacket. “Looks as if he rolled you down the hill and out here.”

  I put my ear to one of the slits and listened for the sound of a rescue. “My phone is out there,” I said. “They might find us—they might look for the satellite signal.” A dim hope, I knew. I wasn’t missing—I had only stood Michael up for a date. That was hardly a reason to phone the police.

  I crawled on my knees closer to him and turned my back. “Look, Gavin, could you untie me? All we need to do is break that door down and we’ll be out. Surely we can run to the road before he sees us. I dropped my phone—we might see it on the way, and we can ring the police. Flint will be here in a flash, I’m sure of it.” I waited, but felt no attempt to free me. “There, Gavin, there—can you untie his knot?”

  I glanced over my shoulder. Gavin was unconscious, head slumped to the side.

  “Gavin!” I shouted, flipping over and kicking him with my knee. “Gavin, wake up!”

  He came to. “Yeah, what?” he asked, looking up at me. “What did you say?”

  “You cannot go to sleep,” I said firmly, “do you understand? You probably have a concussion, and you must stay awake so that we can escape. Right? Gavin?”

  “Yeah, yeah, I’m on it,” he said. Pushing himself up, he began to work on the knot. “I’d say his pigs don’t get out of one of these,” he said through teeth clenched round the rope.

  It was a few minutes before he got me loose. At last, I collapsed on the floor, rubbing the feeling back into my arms. “Why didn’t he tie you up?” I asked.

  “Didn’t need to, I suppose. Probably thought I was dead already.”

  “Well, he was wrong. Now, look, we can’t stand, but if we lie on our backs and kick at the door, we could break it down. Come on, get over here.” I crawled to the door, and heard a thump behind me. Gavin had collapsed, face-first.

  “Gavin!” I shrieked, and shook him for a few second
s before he revived.

  “Sorry, Julia, I can’t quite keep my eyes open.” He took a few deep breaths and said, “Right, let’s do it.”

  “No, let’s sit for a few minutes. When you’ve recovered a bit more, then we’ll try.” Gavin couldn’t die on me—or sink into a coma. I didn’t want to be alone. With two of us, we could do something.

  We sat back against opposite walls, Gavin careful of his head, me careful of my foot. It had swelled so much that it looked like over-risen bread dough flowing out of the tops of my trainers. I wondered if I would have to have my shoe cut off me. I pressed on the toe lightly and frowned.

  “Spore do that to you?” Gavin asked.

  I shook my head with a rueful smile. “I was angry at Michael and took it out on my cottage door.” I saw Gavin’s eyelids sink and thought I’d better keep him talking.

  “I’ve never seen a Sardinian warbler.”

  “Well, you wouldn’t have, would you? I haven’t, either,” Gavin replied, lifting his eyebrows and pulling up his eyelids on the way. “Quite rare—they cause a big stir when one appears.”

  “What does it look like?”

  “He’s much like a blackcap, you know, except not in his song—that’s a sort of rattling sound.” Gavin scratched his chin as he got a far-off look in his eyes. “Almost got one a couple of years ago—there was a report of a sighting near Lakenheath.” I saw a gleam in his dark eyes. “That’s right, two years ago—I stopped at Marshy End on the way back, just to see if I might talk with Rupert. But it was only you there.”

  This wasn’t the topic of conversation I would’ve chosen, but, oh well. “I remember that.”

  “I enjoyed that afternoon,” Gavin said, and I saw his smile.

  Go on, Julia, confess. “Yeah, it was nice.” I felt myself go red. “Really. I wasn’t doing too well that day, and you…you know…helped me out of that.”

  “You’re quite a woman, Julia.”

  “Oh God, Gavin, don’t. Please.”

  “I see the way that Sedgwick looks at you.”