A Tiding of Magpies

by Steve Burrows

  A sudden flurry of wings outside the hide had Eric peering through the slat. A small group of Lapwings had dropped in and were settling, faces turned into the wind, their dark green backs shimmering in the sunlight. “A deceit, isn’t it?” said Eric. “The collective noun for Lapwings.” When he turned his gaze back inside the hide again, Jejeune’s was waiting to meet it. He wondered if the inspector had spent any time looking at the birds at all.

  “Canby wasn’t there, of course. By then he was already in the hospice, close to the end of his stage four, poor soul. But Andrea was. Young, beautiful Andrea. So desperate and so sad, and drowning in debt.”

  “You had an affair?”

  “We did. Of course it never really had a chance of success. A few weeks of mutual needs met. That’s all.”

  “Not quite all, though, was it, Eric? You paid a large sum of money to a man to give you his dying confession, and at the same time you were having an affair with his wife. You can see how, at the very least, there would be questions about how you happened to be the only journalist he would allow to be present to hear his confession.”

  Eric nodded. “Indeed I can.” But he didn’t seem bowed by the acknowledgement, or shamed by his actions. “To tell you the truth, Domenic, the money seemed inconsequential at the time. I’d just sold the flat I’d inherited from my parents in Hong Kong. Even back then it was a ridiculously large sum of money. Andrea had a story: a special-needs child who’d settled well into a school and was now facing a traumatic move when they were evicted. Could’ve been a sob story, for all I knew. I’m sure I would’ve bought it anyway. Turned out to be true, as it happens, but the fact is, a few thousand pounds seemed like such a small amount to relieve anyone from such anguish. Perhaps that was even something to do with it, a sense of guilt at having so much, when so little would solve her problems. So I gave it to her. It was a quite uncharacteristic act of generosity, never to be repeated before or since. Just ask the girls in the office.”

  “So it wasn’t in payment for the confession?”

  “Had no idea such a thing was even in the offing at the time. I always suspected Canby’s confession was his way of paying me back, giving me the only thing he could, the only thing he had left. His story. That was his idea, you see, that I’d make a tidy sum from the exclusive and I’d use the money to continue to support his family. I must say, he had it all worked out: the book rights, the film deal. Of course, none of it ever materialized, but at least he died knowing he’d done all he could for them.”

  “He didn’t mind about your affair? Or didn’t he know?”

  “Nothing to know. It didn’t start until after Canby died.

  I suppose it seems predatory now, but it wasn’t. The need to affirm life after the death of someone close, the presence of someone who had been supportive, who understood what she was going through. There may have been a sense of inevitability about it, but it wasn’t calculated, I promise you that.”

  All the right notes, thought Jejeune, just not necessarily in the right order. Until now.

  When he looked up, Eric was peering through slat again. Jejeune looked outside. The sunlight had turned the scene into a postcard; silent, still, serene.

  “Beautiful here, isn’t it?” asked Eric. “The sound of the wind in the rushes, the sunlight glinting off the water. It sometimes takes all my will to get up and leave so I can re-enter the real world. Did you ever report those Ruddy Ducks, by the way?” he asked, without turning from the view.

  “I called, but somebody else had reported them.”

  “Really? Who?”

  “It was an anonymous call.” Jejeune had wondered at this time if it had been Eric. Even now, he couldn’t tell. But it didn’t really matter. “They said by the time they sent someone out there, he couldn’t find them. They haven’t been reported since.”

  Eric withdrew from the slat and shook his head slowly. “Isn’t that just the history of humankind, Domenic? Agonizing over whether to do the right thing, and in the end, our own decisions don’t really matter a jot.” He offered a sad smile. “Poor Colleen,” he said. “She must have been beside herself, having to set her best bloodhound on the trail. Suspicion, you see. It does so erode a relationship, doesn’t it? The curious thing is, I don’t feel any resentment at all. Not a bit of it. I fully understand. Stands to reason I’d only have paid in advance for that deathbed confession if I had known what was coming. In which case, at the very least I’d have been guilty of withholding evidence. The Lapwings are up.”

  Jejeune joined him to watch the lazy circling flight of the birds, off to find another place to rest, or feed. No thought of motives, or duplicity. No concerns about other lives, other agendas, other pasts.

  “Of course, you know Colleen does have a ludicrously high opinion of your skills,” said Eric, as the birds disappeared from view. “She’d just about believe you would be capable of uncovering all this without ever having to talk to me.” He looked at Jejeune frankly. “I’m not for a minute suggesting that you lie to her. But if she can believe I never knew about her suspicions, I’m sure we’d be able to carry on as before.” He paused, and smiled. “And to tell you the truth, Domenic, I’d rather like that.”

  “In the hopeless expectation of death, I record my dying declaration,” quoted Jejeune quietly into the silence that followed. “I’ve always felt there was something missing from that statement.”

  Eric nodded emphatically. “So have I, Domenic, so have I. And I do have to say, if one of my writers had been responsible for it, I would have insisted on a rewrite that included that missing piece.”

  Jejeune looked at Eric for a long time. He didn’t need to ask the question, Eric had done so himself. Now he was deciding whether he would answer it. He looked out of the hide again, and when he spoke, it was to the world outside.

  “I thought about it a lot at the time, and for a long while after. But I stopped thinking about it as time went on. And that suited me.” He sighed. “I might not have trusted myself to go back to it even now, if I wasn’t involved with Colleen. But she’s been so desperately concerned since all this business started up again, I needed to do it for her sake. I went back to the office a few nights ago and took the file with all my original notes from that time; more specifically from Canby’s dying confession. I wanted to be sure my impressions at the time were as I now remembered them.” He turned to Jejeune. “It’s that missing piece of the declaration, isn’t it? Some affirmation, however subtle, that the confession is true.”

  “Was it?”

  Eric smiled sadly, and shook his head, as if in wonder at Jejeune’s question. “D’you know, Domenic, in all the many interviews, and police debriefings, and hearings afterward, no one ever asked me that. What was said, that’s all they wanted to know. The exact words. The facts were what they were after. Not one of them ever showed the slightest interest in the truth.” He turned away slightly, and the light from the observation slat fell across one half of his face, leaving the other half in shadow. “You asked me for my opinion, Domenic, and I am happy to give it. Indeed, one might even say I’m relieved to. Because the truth is, whatever else Vincent Canby might have done in his sorry life, when it came to the kidnapping of those two young people, I’m as sure as I can be that he had no involvement whatsoever.”

  46

  Stippled light lay on the uneven brickwork of the walled garden like white moss. Along the gravel path, the buds on the shrubs were green and full. A couple of sunny days and the foliage would start to paint this place with its spring colours. A time for fresh starts, thought Danny Maik. He wondered if the coming of the new season had anything to do with Carolyn Gresham’s decision to agree to an interview. Or perhaps it was just the right time for other things, too.

  At Maik’s approach, he had seen the little girl run to her mother and hug her skirt. That sixth sense, he thought, that children have when their parents are upset about something. In this case, that something, he knew, was him. His approach, hi
s presence here.

  Carolyn bent to kiss the little girl’s head tenderly before easing her off towards Jessica. As before, they watched in silence as the nanny led the girl up the gravel path and into the house.

  They crossed to the patio table, set with a full tea service on a dazzling white tablecloth with pink trim. The wrought iron chairs had cushions to match, but they weren’t particularly comfortable. Given his choice, Danny would have stood, but Carolyn Gresham seemed to prefer being seated. For one thing, it allowed her to absently swirl the cup handle with a delicate fingertip as she recalled the details of the events Danny had come to talk about. The ones she was revealing now.

  The room was always cold, she told him. There was no heater, no light, not even a bulb. The small window let in some light, but the sun never seemed to make it into the room. The house was quiet, too. Monte said he heard reports about them on a TV, but she never heard one. In fact, there were long periods, possibly even an entire day or two, when she had the sense, somehow, that the kidnapper was not there at all.

  “That was my greatest fear,” she continued, “that we’d simply be abandoned. That something would happen to … this person, and Monte and I would be left there, facing each other’s window across that ugly, awful courtyard, unable to reach each other, until finally …”

  She was wearing a chiffon dress in pale lemon. Another bridesmaid’s colour, thought Maik, for no good reason he could come up with. But why not a bridesmaid? She’d already met her own Prince Charming. Three of them, in fact: the one she’d married, the one who had rescued her, and the one she’d lost to the sea.

  “The doors to the rooms were still bolted shut when the task force entered the house,” said Maik. “I take it you escaped through the window.”

  “Monte opened it and helped me out. And then we just ran.” She paused to sip her tea. The cup rattled slightly against the saucer as she replaced it. “Sorry,” she said, “I haven’t been sleeping well. It’s funny. I think it’s gone, and then it all comes back and I can’t get it out of my head for a few days.” She didn’t say it was the detectives’ previous visit that had triggered the return of the nightmares this time. But Maik knew it would have been. They had turned over stones, opened old wounds with their questioning. “I expect this will be the last time anybody will have to visit you about this,” he said gently. He didn’t promise, but his tone did.

  “Your cars were both found abandoned in the restaurant car park the next day. The kidnapper must have been waiting there for you. You never saw anyone?”

  She shook her head. “Monte walked me to my car that night and I watched him leave. That’s the last thing I remember until I woke up in that room.”

  “The kidnapper never spoke to you?”

  “Never. He just slid meal trays beneath the door. Sandwiches. Always sandwiches. And once, a medicine bottle, with a note. Fingerprint.” She tried a weak smile. “I suppose it reassured me that he didn’t want us to see his face. I thought if he was so determined to hide his identity, he intended to let us go. I held on to that.”

  Maik noticed she’d adopted a briskness in her tone, a straightforward reportage that might help preserve some distance from the memories.

  “And you never had a chance to speak to Monte, either, while you were both being held captive?”

  Again she shook her head slightly, making her spun silk hair dance. “There were just the messages in the window of the room where he was being held, on the opposite side of the courtyard. Be strong, Caro. Hold on. I would have given anything for something to write with in return. Here he was, giving me all this hope, this courage to carry on, and I couldn’t send him a single message back. I found a piece of cardboard, but I had nothing to write with. I even thought about blood, at one point.” She looked embarrassed at the melodramatic statement, but somehow this strong, silent man made it seem okay to reveal these thoughts, these secrets she’d held inside her for so long.

  “Would you like more tea, Sergeant?” she asked suddenly.

  He wouldn’t, but it gave her something to do, a situation to control, so he accepted. He watched her as she poured. The sleeves of her chiffon dress rippled gently in the passing breeze. She was like a hologram, he thought, hovering between two worlds. You got the sense she could suddenly begin shimmering and then simply fade away into this soft spring morning. Maik had not known the woman before the kidnapping, so it was impossible for him to gauge how much the incident had affected her. He only knew that it must have. The person who returns from a kidnapping is never the same as the one who was taken. The one who had returned from this kidnapping was a skittish, fragile person who hid herself in a high-walled refuge and started like a frightened horse at the appearance of a songbird in her garden.

  “You said you had the sense that the kidnapper left you both alone in the house sometimes. Do you have any idea how he might have got on and off the island? The only road route is by bridge, and he would have had to pass through an MoD checkpoint to cross there. They were checking everybody by that time, so we know he didn’t leave that way. They kept a pretty close eye on boat traffic to and from the island, too.”

  She lowered her head in thought. “I suppose he could have used the Broomway.”

  Yes, Maik supposed he could. If he had knowledge of it. Or memories. “But he couldn’t have got you and Monte to the island that way. Forgive me, but I doubt he could have carried even you all the way across the Broomway to the island.” Maik looked uncomfortable, but her smile excused him.

  “I have no idea how he got us to the house, Sergeant. As I said, I didn’t wake from the chloroform until I was inside the room.”

  From the house came echoes of laughter; a child and an adult. The maid, playing games to distract Alicia Montague Weller while mummy talked to that gruff man outside about something that made her sad.

  She turned her head sharply at the noise to look back up to the house, but she returned her gaze to him. “My father has always refused to take any responsibility for Monte’s death, you know.”

  “I can’t see that he has any,” said Maik reasonably.

  “He prevented the rescue team from entering. They were there, on the island. They knew the address, but he made them wait. They could have saved Monte. They could have prevented us from ever having to go onto the Broomway. But he wouldn’t let them go in.”

  “Monte was taken by the sea, Mrs. Weller, by the Broomway, as so many others have been over the years. Your father was not responsible for that. No one was.” Once, he might have tried the same speech on another person. But he knew it would have met with the same blank-eyed rejection it did now. Maik wasn’t sure how much she knew of the rescue efforts. He suspected her father would have sheltered her from them as much as possible. But anyone with Carolyn Weller’s intelligence and resources would have been able to find out what she wanted to know, what Maik knew now, that they had honed in on Foulness Island as soon as they received the report about the attempted ephedrine purchase, and that despite their best efforts, they couldn’t narrow the location down to any fewer than seven or eight potential locations, scattered all across the island. And that, when Jejeune had provided them with a way to pinpoint the location that day, Gresham had still told the Emergency Task Force to wait. He wanted Jejeune there, to oversee the operation, to guide it with the steady hand that the Home Secretary now trusted above all others. Only no one could locate him. But whatever Carolyn knew, Maik wouldn’t be confirming any of it. That wasn’t why he had come here today. He had come for answers. And now he had most of them, if not quite all.

  “Thank you for your time, Mrs. Weller. I don’t believe I need to trouble you further,” said Maik, standing. He hoped they would heal in time, this fractured family with their unspoken recriminations and blame. But he wasn’t sure they would. Whoever Carolyn Weller was now, Maik knew this was not the same person who had been kidnapped that evening on her way home from dinner with a friend who used to be a boyfriend. Her family could
never be the same, either.

  As he made his way to the gate, he looked down along the gravel path that bisected the garden so sharply, at the neat plots of tilled earth that ran off perpendicularly on each side. It reminded him of an army barracks, everything precisely positioned and in its place. Even the flowers, when they bloomed, would have a regimented orderliness to them. They would be part of this controlled world that Carolyn Gresham chose to inhabit now. In reality, he had served with men who would have scaled this rough stonework as easily as a ladder. These walls offered no real protection from the threats of the outside world, only the illusion of it. But perhaps the illusion of safety was all Carolyn Weller needed.

  He turned to her as she opened the gate for him. “One last thing, if you don’t mind. You said before you didn’t recognize the accent on the Broomway as Canadian at first. Were you expecting to?”

  She looked away. “Monte said he would come. He heard it on the TV. A Canadian detective was looking for us. Monte was sure he would find us. It was the last thing he said to me. Stay here, Caro, he’s coming for us. I know he is.”

  47

  Mansfield Jones looked around Domenic Jejeune’s office with something approaching a professional scrutiny. “It’s always interesting to enter another person’s domain for the first time, don’t you think, Inspector? There’s a certain unguardedness that I find quite appealing.”

  Jejeune nodded in understanding. Future visits would come with preconceptions. The first visit, when all the sensations, the stimuli, the impressions poured in at once, that was when you got your real insights into a new domain, or anything else.