A Tiding of Magpies

by Steve Burrows

  25

  They drove beneath a powder-blue sky through countryside awakening to the promise of a new spring. As soon as they had cleared the industrial-commercial chaos of London’s East End, signs of the coming season began flickering into view. Early daffodils nodded along roadside verges. Hedgerows, filled to bursting with pointillist dots of green, lined the narrowing roads. Even the fields beyond them seemed to be gathering colour, as if they were sucking the life-giving hues up from the earth itself.

  As promised, Des had returned to the car after a few minutes. She hadn’t been hurrying, but she was definitely moving like someone with a purpose. She’d flashed a look at the large watch on her wrist as she reached over to fasten her seat belt, announcing, “Okay, Lonely Oak Point.”

  Des checked her mirror and eased the MGB out past a dawdling Renault. Though there was no oncoming traffic, she gave the sports car a bit extra, as if to celebrate the fact they were open-roading it with the top down on a nice spring afternoon.

  “I still don’t see why we couldn’t have had a look at a beach closer to home,” said Holland, in a variation of a comment he had made at least twice before. “There’s some belters up there in Norfolk, quiet little coves, plenty of privacy if you wanted a walk along the sand … or whatever.”

  “Norfolk is not the only part of England that has its hidden gems, Tony. We’ve got some fairly spectacular undiscovered country down here in Essex, too.”

  “We? You’re an Essex girl?”

  Des nodded. “Born and bred. All of the good qualities. None of the bad.”

  “Just my luck,” said Holland. He fixed his stare on a pub as they passed. “Any chance we could stop for a bite to eat? I’m starving.”

  She checked her watch. “We can eat when we get there. It shouldn’t be too much further now.”

  Shouldn’t be, he registered, as in she didn’t know for sure. But he didn’t have time to dwell on the thought. Des was introducing a new topic; and it was an interesting one.

  “The sergeant certainly seems to love his Motown,” she said, heel-and-toeing out of a corner with a skill that Holland would have been proud of himself. “Are you really not a fan of it?”

  “Some of the upbeat stuff is not too bad, but lately it’s been nothing but this dreck about heartache and loss and all that. I mean, how many ways can you say I can’t find anybody to love me before it gets old?”

  Des returned his smile. “I suppose the good thing is songs were shorter in those days. Even if you don’t like something, you only have to endure about three minutes of it.”

  “Three minutes can be a very long time with some of that drivel he’s playing these days,” said Holland. “Why all this interest in the sarge’s music, anyway?”

  “You and he are fairly close, aren’t you?” asked Des, keeping her eyes on the road perhaps a touch more firmly than the empty lanes might have required.

  “Not particularly. He can be a miserable bugger at times. In fact, he’s been even worse than usual lately, with Lauren Salter being gone.”

  “He likes her?”

  Holland nodded. “Though I’m not sure he knows it.”

  “The people at the station mean a lot to him, don’t they? The truth is, you’re a pretty tight group up there in Saltmarsh. You remind me of a family, always squabbling and having a go at one another, but really, you care a lot about each other.”

  “A family? Oh yeah,” said Holland derisively. “Put the fun in dysfunctional, us lot. Why’re you asking? Thinking of putting in a transfer, so you can join the party and sit at the feet of Detective Chief Inspector Domenic Jejeune?”

  Gill didn’t rise to the bait. When she set her mind on a specific destination, real or conversational, not much was going to deflect her off course. But that didn’t mean she couldn’t take a break along the way. “If you’re really hungry,” she said, “that basket behind the seat has some sandwiches. I made us a picnic. Just don’t eat them all before we get there.”

  Tony Holland finished the last of the sandwiches and leaned back on one elbow, taking in the surrounding landscape. On either side, a scrubby patchwork of windswept grassland rolled to the horizon. The remnants of weathered stone walls tracing the old field boundaries was the only sign that humans had ever set foot on this land. In front of him, the grass sloped gently down towards a cliff edge a few hundred metres away. A glinting ribbon of light beyond told him where the water began. Seated beside Holland on the picnic blanket, Des Gill followed his gaze.

  “Beautiful here, isn’t it?”

  “Not bad,” he conceded. Holland could see no one walking along the long sweep of the clifftops. Like our coastline, he thought. But not quite like north Norfolk. Here, the impact of the relentless coastal winds was more in evidence. Tussocks of grass hugged the ground tightly, and the few shrubs that dotted the landscape were bowed and stunted. Even now, lying down, Holland’s hair danced and his shirt rippled constantly.

  He looked up as Des drew in a sudden breath. “Did you see that?” she asked, pointing out over the meadow. “It looked like a small owl, but it wasn’t flying like a bird. More like some sort of giant moth.”

  “An owl?” laughed Holland. “In the middle of the day? I think you’d better leave the birding to your hero.” He pulled a paper map from his back pocket and unfolded it, holding on tightly as it flapped vigorously in the wind. “I’ve been having a look at this. I found it in the glove box. I wanted to confirm we are actually still in England.” He looked out over the water where it spread from the estuary, under the vast sky, across which swaths of white cloud trailed like tattered banners. “It feels like we’re on the edge of the known world out here.”

  He jabbed the map with a finger at a point where the fringes of the coastal lands fanned out towards the water like fraying cloth. “This is us, right? What I can’t figure out is why you chose to make that massive sweep down towards Wakering only to come all the way back up north along the coast again. This road here would have brought us straight out. Your way must’ve added about fifteen miles to the trip.”

  Des brushed Holland’s hand away and pointed her own dainty finger at the map. “Because that red boundary indicates MoD property. The area is an extension of MoD Shoeburyness. It runs all the way to Foulness Island, over here. They test missiles and ballistics all the time. There’s no access to Lonely Oak Point through the property. The stretch of coastline from here to Wakering is outside the boundary, but the only way to get up here is from the south.”

  Holland gazed out across the wide expanse of water. A thin grey smudge of coastline was barely visible through the haze. “So that’s Foulness Island.” He peered more closely. Foulness Island. Twenty-five square kilometres of wind-razed fields and overgrown, boggy grassland dotted with low stone buildings, the legacy of a farming tradition dating back centuries that had finally succumbed to the economic pressures of the last few decades.

  “Is that why you wanted to come here? To see where those kids were held.”

  “It can’t be more than a few miles’ drive from here,” said Gill. “I had no idea it was so close.”

  “Close to what?”

  “To where Inspector Jejeune saw his rare bird — the Iberian Azure-winged Magpie.” She pointed. “It was in that tree down there.”

  He followed the direction of her finger to where a single oak tree stood in a mixture of rough brambles and low, scrubby bushes near the cliff edge. Other oaks he had seen this year were already showing some interest in leafing, but this one, bent into the teeth of the winds that funelled in towards the Thames estuary, seemed completely bare. He wondered if it was dead.

  Gill watched Holland’s face; a map of a thousand thoughts.

  She saw his gaze leave the tree and go out again to Foulness Island. “Did you ever read up on that fingerprint trick?” she asked.

  He smiled sheepishly. “To tell you the truth, I’ve been a bit busy. Any chance of the Reader’s Digest version? I remember he said he’d ac
cept a fingerprint as proof of life when the kidnapper refused the phone call.”

  Gill nodded. “A separate fingerprint, actch, from each hostage. On an item the kidnapper would have to buy, so they could be sure the prints were recent.”

  Holland waited, his interest piqued now. “So what was it?”

  “Ephedrine, the stuff they use to treat shock.” Des paused. “A separate hundredmilligram container for each hostage’s print.”

  Holland looked out over the raw, windswept landscape of Lonely Oak Point for a long moment. When he spoke, there was genuine admiration in his voice. “Now that,” he said, “was clever.” He nodded thoughtfully. “What is it now, one hundred and sixty?”

  “Because the kids use it to get high, a hundred and eighty milligrams is the maximum amount of ephedrine anyone is allowed to buy in a single transaction. Any attempt to purchase more than that has to be reported to the local Controlled Drugs police hotline as soon as the person leaves the shop.”

  And just to drive the point home, thought Holland, Jejeune had asked the kidnapper to purchase two separate hundredmilligram amounts. He couldn’t have looked any more like he was trying to skirt the rules if he’d had it printed on a T-shirt.

  “I take it the hotlines didn’t get too many reports of attempted overbuys that day.”

  Des shook her head. “In fact, when you limited them to those that also included the purchase of rubbing alcohol and a lint-free cloth, in the whole country there was just the one. In a place called Halworth. It’s about six miles from Foulness Island. And that was significant for one very important reason.”

  But this time Holland was with her. Already there, in fact. “Because Foulness Island doesn’t have cellphone coverage.”

  His smug smile told her he wasn’t going to need her to confirm it, but she nodded anyway. “There’s none here on this side of the estuary either, but Foulness Island is the only dead zone in the area with inhabitable buildings. There are a few places on the island where you can get a signal, but coverage is extremely spotty.” She looked out across the field of wind-teased grass sloping away in front of her, the wheat-coloured stems moving like a restless sea. It was a long time before she spoke. “Can I ask you something, Tony? If it came to a choice between a fellow officer and the job, where do you think Danny Maik’s loyalties would lie?”

  Holland recognized this wasn’t the kind of thing you’d ask somebody unless you were expecting a serious answer. He gave the question the consideration it deserved.

  “I suppose he’d end up going in the direction of the truth.” He looked a touch surprised at his own answer, as if he wasn’t quite sure where it had come from. “Whatever that means,” he added flippantly. “Sounds like a line from one of his songs. I’ve got to stop listening to that bloody Motown.”

  But Des wasn’t buying his act. She knew exactly what Tony Holland meant. And even if he was trying to pretend otherwise, she knew that he did, too. “We should probably get going,” she said, “otherwise we’ll hit the rush hour traffic.” They stood and she began to repack the picnic basket as Holland folded up the blanket.

  “You know, I’ve been thinking about that map again,” said Holland, as they tucked the picnic items into the MGB’s tiny boot. “It’s a bit of a jaunt back to Saltmarsh from here. I wonder if we shouldn’t turn it into an overnighter. That way we could take our time, have a look around a bit, make it a proper weekend by the seaside.”

  “That’d be nice,” agreed Des. “My exes will stretch to a room for the night. I don’t suppose you’re on an expense account, though, are you?”

  Holland shook his head ruefully and cast his eyes out over the wild, windswept field, and the estuary beyond it, one last time. “Sadly, not. Looks like it will have to be a single room.”

  “Okay.” Des shook her head doubtfully. “It’s going to be a tight squeeze, though.”

  Holland gave her a knowing smile. “Oh, I’m sure we can make it work.”

  “We?” asked Gill. “I’m talking about you, sleeping in this tiny MGB all night. Still, you did say you were flexible.”

  26

  There are times when it is possible to sense an atmosphere, in a house, in a room, behind a closed door, even. As Jejeune stood on the doorstep of their cottage, he was aware something had changed. But he hardly had time to register the thought before he opened the door.

  Lindy was waiting in the foyer as he entered. She had been crying. Her eyes were red-rimmed and her cheeks blotchy. “It’s over, Dom.”

  His heart froze. He stood still, unblinking, uncomprehending. Behind Lindy in the house, the shadow of a figure moved. But there had been no strange car in the driveway. Only Lindy’s Leaf.

  Lindy reached up and touched his face with an open hand, stroking it gently. She pulled him into an embrace and he could feel her sobbing gently into his chest. The figure behind her morphed into someone recognizable and he took Lindy’s shoulders, easing her away from him to arm’s length. There was no sadness, he saw now, only tears.

  “Damian, Dom. It’s over. You did it.”

  Afterward, he had no memory of shrugging off his coat, or setting down his bag, or being led to the living room. His senses only seemed to return with Colleen Shepherd telling him she could scarcely imagine how much of a relief it must be to him, to them both.

  She laid a hand on his forearm, in what had become their version of a hug. “Eric’s just popped out to get a bottle of champagne, so we can celebrate properly. Really, Domenic, I’m quite surprised at you, not having any bubbly on hand. I’d have thought you have had more than your share of victories to celebrate.”

  The details came to him in pieces; Lindy, then Shepherd, then both, talking over each other at times in their efforts to fill him in. As with all of life’s defining moments, the final verdict was not clean cut. Damian would remain a wanted criminal in Colombia. He could never return there. But the international warrant had been lifted, the extradition orders rescinded. Damian was a free man everywhere but Colombia.

  Damian would rankle at the caveat. Domenic said as much and drew laughs from the women. But he knew his brother well. Banned from the country with the most bird species in the world? There would be endemics, he knew, possibly dozens of them, that Damian would suddenly realize he wanted to see and now never could. But eventually he would come to understand that he was free to travel anywhere else in the world, to enter and exit countries unrestricted. And in a rare moment of self-indulgence, Domenic recognized that it had only happened because of him.

  Eric’s arrival infused the gathering with new energy. He strode into the kitchen, a bottle in each hand, and emerged with four fluted glasses, Lindy’s prized legacy from her grandmother, filled with frothing, golden liquid. Lindy, normally so protective of her kitchen and her treasures, smiled her gratitude towards her boss. She hadn’t left Domenic’s side since he sat down.

  “To Damian, first, I think,” announced Eric, holding his glass aloft. “A free man, at last.”

  They drank, and then it was Lindy’s turn. But her salute was not to Domenic. “To Colleen, who brought us the good news.”

  “I really did nothing,” protested the DCS. “I’d asked the Colombian Consulate to inform me of any developments, that’s all. Why they chose to let me know before Domenic, I don’t know.”

  At the mention of his name, the three of them simultaneously seemed to recognize the enormity of Jejeune’s own contribution. The frivolity faded and there was a solemnity about the way Shepherd formally raised her glass in Domenic’s direction. The others followed suit, their faces respectful and sober, gathered like crèche figures looking in his direction. “To Domenic. No man could wish for a better champion in his corner. What you achieved was truly remarkable. I’m sure your brother will never forget it.”

  They sipped in silence, and it was only at the lowering of the glasses that it was felt the mood should lift.

  “I should give Danny a call,” said Lindy. “He ought to be here.
” She was uncertain of the role Maik had played when Damian had visited Norfolk, but Domenic’s brother had expressed his gratitude to the sergeant in one of his emails. Perhaps now she could finally get around to asking Danny about it.

  “I’m not sure he’s at his best, socially, at the moment,” said Shepherd uncertainly. “He seems a bit out of sorts. Of course, having to deal with Dr. Jones all the time can’t be helping. That man could try the patience of the Dalai Lama.”

  “Jones, that cadaverous chap one sees loitering in the corridors sometimes?” asked Eric. “The one with the odd name, Mayfield, something?”

  “Mansfield.”

  “Whatever he’s called, I would have thought he would have had more sense than to try to antagonize Danny Maik. He must have a good deal more backbone than it appears,” said Eric.

  “It’s not deliberate,” said Jejeune. “He just refuses to allow himself to make any inferences, however logical they might seem to others.”

  Lindy thought Danny might have welcomed a bit of caution in that regard, given who he spent his days working with. Jejeune’s own ability to infer connections he considered logical was not exactly shared by everyone. The “others” Domenic had just referred to included neither Lindy, Danny, nor anyone else she had ever met.

  Jejeune took her dubious look at face value. “Imagine you were standing on a street in a strange city and you saw a green double-decker bus go by,” he said. “You might be comfortable saying that you now knew that the city’s buses were green.”

  Lindy nodded slowly. “Whereas, all you could really know for certain was that one of the city’s buses was green.”

  But Jejeune shook his head. “Mansfield Jones would claim all you could say with certainty is that one side of one of the city’s buses was green.”

  “Blimey, I can see why working with him would drive poor Danny up the wall,” said Lindy with feeling. “Great name, though, Mansfield. Wonder what the story is there.”