A Shimmer of Hummingbirds

by Steve Burrows

  “Interview terminated at 13:36.” He clicked the stop button. “Given that a senior police officer has been injured in what we consider to be a related incident, I’ll be applying for special dispensation to hold your client for a further twenty-four hours,” Maik told the solicitor, wishing he could recall her name to add formality to his statement. “The DCS here can advise you as to whether I’m likely to be granted it, but my guess is that I will.” He leaned forward across the interview table and addressed Oakes directly. “In the meantime, I’ll be setting up a formal witness identification. And a positive identification from that will give us enough to hold you until you go to trial for the murder of Erin Dawes, Mr. Oakes. The DCS and I are going to leave now, but we’ll give you a second before I send the officer in to escort you to the cells, just so your solicitor can confirm that we’re within our rights to do all of this.”

  Shepherd sat very still. Maik’s breach of protocol was so out of keeping with his character, she was wondering if there had been more impact from the accident than Danny was letting on. Maybe it had been a mistake to let him stay around. She should have insisted he took the day off, like Laraby.

  Maik waited, exuding a patience no one else in the room shared. With the slightest of movements, Oakes rocked back and his solicitor leaned in. Behind the man’s raised hand, they conferred for a moment before Oakes leaned forward again and resumed his upright posture.

  “You’ll find the drone in the back of my car, beneath my photo equipment,” he said. “It wasn’t my device that hit your car yesterday.”

  Maik waited for the rest of the explanation. Now the stonewalling was over, the facts could come pouring out. Maik knew they would be in Oakes’s favour. Whatever was coming, it would be designed to help the man to avoid the charges he was facing. This, whatever it was, had been behind his calmness, and his solicitor’s assurance, during the interview.

  “I was at home on the night Erin Dawes died,” said Oakes. Despite the fact that he had taken a breath to prepare himself, his voice was wavering and uncertain. “But not in the gatehouse. I was out at the ruins.”

  “At night? Doing what, sir?”

  “I was flying the drone. I have been spending the past few weeks trying to acclimate the Barn Owls to having the drone fly beside them as they hunt. The photographic opportunities it would present are fantastic.”

  “My client is aware that in admitting to this activity, he is confessing to committing a crime under section 18 of the Wildlife and Countryside Act, 1981,” said the solicitor. “He is prepared to accept the charges, and the considerable public fallout that will no doubt accompany them.”

  Maik was puzzled, and it took him a moment to recover himself. Beside him, Shepherd stirred uneasily. The interview was going sideways, and wherever it ended up, she had a feeling they were not going to be in the position she had hoped when they had first entered the room.

  “Is that the reason you were interested in investing in the drone technology in the first place?”

  “No, not at all. To be honest, it sounds like a genuinely important project. I’d have been quite prepared to provide the land anyway.”

  “You have proof that you were there at that time, I take it.”

  Maik waited while Oakes and his solicitor conferred again behind the man’s raised hand.

  “Actually, I don’t. Only my word, I’m afraid.” Oakes’s playboy smile couldn’t have been more out of place at a funeral.

  Maik was stunned. Even Shepherd shifted again, though she offered no contribution.

  “None at all?” It was all Maik could do to stop himself from offering a few suggestions of his own — time-stamped photographs, GPS data from Oakes’s phone. He looked at the solicitor significantly. Surely she could see her client’s position. But she looked as cool and unperturbed as before, smoothing her skirt with two hands and flicking her head slightly so a cascade of light rippled down her dark hair.

  The silence ticked by as Danny considered the new information.

  “Clearly, there is not enough to consider freeing your client, Ms. … ma’am,” said Danny awkwardly. “We’ll make the application, as I stated, and set up the eyewitness identification. Until that time, your client will remain in custody.” He looked across to see if Shepherd had anything further to add, but she stood and, after offering the minimum courtesies, left the room without any further comment. Oakes’s solicitor followed suit and a uniformed constable came in to lead Oakes back to his cell.

  Danny remained in the room for a long time. It had been a troubling interview. Not only had Oakes passed on an opportunity to bring charges of assault, he had readily admitted to a crime that was guaranteed to bring a public outcry, not to mention a damaging blow to a lucrative career. Maik doubted he would sell another photograph of a bird, at least in these parts, for a very long time. And for what, when none of it did anything to prove he was innocent? Surely, even if Oakes could convince himself that this self-sacrifice was going to be enough to deflect charges of murder, his high-priced solicitor would have a more pragmatic view. Maik had no doubt Oakes had used the drones to track Barn Owls, as he said, but he could offer no evidence of any kind that he was doing it the night Erin Dawes was murdered. Oakes had been identified at the scene, leaving the cottage. And for the life of him, Danny couldn’t see how an unsubstantiated claim of involvement in a minor offence was going to be any defence against that.

  34

  “Well you don’t look as much like beef jerky as when I brought you in, so I suppose that’s a good sign.”

  Despite his light tone, the relief in Traz’s face was evident as he saw the person he knew as his friend staring back at him.

  The two-room clinic was a single-storey breeze-block structure facing onto the only road through the small town. The buzz of passing traffic entered through the open windows in a constant stream, and a lazy fan did little to distribute the dusty air in the reception area. The interior of the clinic was clean, but the decor was wilting under the tropical heat and patches of damp showed through the plaster on the walls. Jejeune was in one of the two beds in the room at the back. The starched white linens were dazzling in the sunlight that flooded in through the window and the floor glistened with polish. If the staff could do nothing about the condition of the building, they were determined to ensure the things within their care were well maintained.

  There were bright lights behind Traz’s head, and Jejeune raised an arm to shield his eyes from them. He realized he was not wearing a shirt about the same time he realized he had a plastic tube trailing from his arm.

  “They’re rehydrating you. They think you should be okay, but they’re going to watch you for a while.” Traz drew up a rickety wooden chair and sat next to the bed. “They were worried about the heatstroke, but your bloodwork came back okay, so it looks like there’s been no internal damage.”

  Even in his drowsy state, Jejeune realized this was surely due to his friend getting him immersed in cold water so soon after the rescue. He scooted himself up on his elbows so he could see Traz more clearly.

  “Thanks,” he said simply.

  “For what? It’s all my fault.” He lowered his voice slightly. The receptionist in the next room had spoken to him only in Spanish, but Traz was pretty sure the nurse who had treated Jejeune would know some English. She was also in the other room at the moment, but Traz was taking no chances. “I found Mariel’s address. Armando left his laptop open and I searched the past trip reports. I knew he would have them, as reference for this tour. They must have thought it was you who’d searched.”

  “How did they find out?” asked Jejeune.

  Traz shook his head. “I accessed the files before we went to dinner that night. The internet connection was going in and out. It was down when I searched, but it must have come back on when Armando returned later, and Dropbox alerted him that the files had been accessed.” He banged his forehead with the palm of his hand. “There’s a word in Spanish: idiota.”


  Despite his discomfort, Jejeune managed a smile. “Lindy would say it’s the inevitable result of artificial intelligence meeting genuine stupidity.”

  “It’s no joke, JJ. You could have died because of me.”

  “I’m alive because of you. As a way of making amends, I’ll take that.”

  “You said something,” Traz told him, “when I was loading you into the Jeep. About a call, a mic, a haze, and not to tell Lindy? That last part I got, but the rest didn’t make sense.”

  But it did to Jejeune now, as it came flooding back; the shaven-headed man with the tattoos up his neck who’d come dancing into the detective’s mind in his delirium, taunting him with his threats to Lindy.

  “Ray Hayes,” he said softly. “And Maik, not mic. Danny Maik, my sergeant. I have to call him.” Jejeune hiked himself up on one elbow again. “Is my phone around?”

  Traz shook his head. “No signal in here, and I’m betting there is no way they’re letting you use the land line for an international call.”

  “Can you call him for me, Traz? Now? Today? It’s important. Sergeant Danny Maik.” Jejeune gave him the number. “Ask him to make inquiries about Ray Hayes. But discreetly. Not through the official police records. Tell him that part is vital. Will you do that?”

  Jejeune’s intensity burned brightly, perhaps in spite of his frailty, perhaps because of it. Either way, Traz was left in no doubt as to the importance of the request. He agreed to take care of it as soon as he found a signal outside.

  The nurse came in and carefully checked the dressings on Jejeune’s wrists. There were deep red welts where the lariat-like vine had bitten in as he was hauling himself out of the pit.

  Traz made a comment to the nurse, who gave Jejeune a strange look before replying to his friend. After a short conversation, she departed, apparently satisfied with her work, if not with Jejeune himself.

  “I told her you were into bondage,” said Traz flatly. “We agreed that, while neither of us understand it ourselves, it’s your business.”

  Jejeune managed a weak smile. “You’re aware of the condition called mythomania, also known as compulsive lying disorder? I come across it every now and then in my line of work.” He fixed Traz with a serious look. “How did you know what had happened to me?”

  “At first light, we boarded Jeeps for Monteria. Thea, her father, and you weren’t around, so I assumed you were all coming in a separate vehicle. When we got to Monteria, I asked about you and Armando said he’d been told you had to return home early — an emergency. It sounded wrong, but I thought, you know, something to do with Lindy maybe? If you’d received a call late at night, it was a possibility. Until I started unpacking at the lodge and found this.” He fished in the top pocket of his shirt. It was a black wallet containing Jejeune’s passport. “I have the same wallet. I must have picked yours up by mistake. Which I suppose means my own passport is at the bottom of a ravine somewhere in Titi National Park by now, with the rest of your stuff.” He paused. “I got back to Titi as fast as I could.”

  “I still can’t understand how you knew to come to that part of the trail to find me,” said Jejeune.

  “Ah, you know,” said Traz, tilting his head casually. “There was only one road up into the hills from the farmhouse. You didn’t have to be Jim Rockford to figure it out. At the end, there was one good trail into the forest. I thought even someone of your Bambi-like innocence might get suspicious if someone started leading you through pristine rainforest on a trek in the middle of the night.”

  “Unless she had a weapon.”

  “The forest is the best weapon you can have, if you use it properly.” Traz looked up at Jejeune. “She? Thea?” Sadness flickered across his features. “She knew that pit was there, JJ. This was no accident. What did she tell you she was taking you to see, anyway?”

  “Harpy Eagle.”

  Traz nodded. “Elevation’s right. We were on the edge of its range.” He pulled a face. “It’s possible. It’s clever, though. You might not make that trek for a Baudo Guan, but nobody’s going to turn down the chance for a Harpy. That’s the holy grail bird down here.”

  Jejeune’s mind went back to the trail, to virtually the last thought he had before falling. “Have you ever seen one?”

  Traz nodded. “Once, in Panama. A guide was showing me a howler monkey in the top of a tree when a Harpy swept in and took it. Imagine, a full-grown howler, plucked just like that. Even from our distance, I heard a sound like a gunshot. I thought someone was firing at it. Know what it was? The monkey’s skull, popping like a pea pod in the eagle’s talons.” Traz looked up at Jejeune, something sad and haunted behind his eyes. “It stayed with me a long time, that sound. One minute a living thing is sitting in the treetops, just looking around, the next …. I couldn’t stop thinking about it, the move from life to death, how sudden, how final.”

  Jejeune felt the slight pressure as Traz squeezed his hand in an unconscious gesture that would have embarrassed them both. Traz recovered himself and came back to the present. “Yeah,” he said, nodding, “I would have gone with her on the promise of a Harpy, too.” He thought for a moment longer. “Now that you’re awake, I suppose I’d better go and get the cops. They can come here to take your statement.”

  “No,” said Jejeune, sitting slightly more upright.

  “This is not the Wild West, JJ. They have laws here, too, you know. You were the victim of a serious crime,” hissed Traz, lowering his voice. “You can’t brush this off, or pretend it didn’t happen. You have to tell them Thea Walden tried to kill you.”

  “Did she? Or did I just wander off and get lost in the forest? I was unconscious. Maybe she tried to find me. Maybe she went to organize a search party. At the moment, we have no proof at all of any wrongdoing.”

  “What about Armando’s story that you’d gone home?”

  “You can hardly expect a tour company to tell the group one of the party members is missing, maybe dead. They’ll say they just didn’t want to alarm the rest of the group. My bet is they’ll have alerted the authorities. If Thea happened to get a little confused about which part of the forest we were in, you could hunt around forever up there and never find anybody. I’m just saying, if they have been clever enough to plan this, they’ll already have come up with a story that covers them.”

  The nurse came back in the room and began making up the bed next to them. Traz lowered his voice again, but turned it into a discrete murmur, rather than the whisper that might have attracted the nurse’s attention. “None of this makes any sense. Nobody would want to … do what she tried to, just because you were looking into your brother’s case. He’s as guilty as he always was. He took Graumann to Chiribiquete. He was denied a permit and he went anyway. Graumann infected the Karijona and they died. However Mariel is involved, it’s not going to change those facts, is it?”

  “No,” said Jejeune slowly, “not those facts.” But if Traz had been looking at his friend instead of the interesting way the nurse was leaning over the bed, he might have seen in his eyes a light that suggested that something had changed.

  “We need to see Mariel, Traz. Right away.” Jejeune leaned forward slightly, but sank back on the pillow with the effort. The nurse looked over, but Traz held up a hand to indicate everything was okay.

  “You’re here for another twelve hours. After that, maybe we’ll talk.”

  “She could be in danger.”

  “So could you, if you don’t get properly rehydrated.” Traz handed him his iPod. “Here. I was going to load some Justin Bieber on there for you, but I didn’t know how much morphine you were on.”

  Jejeune smiled and closed his eyes. “Twelve hours? You’ll come back and we can go? It’s important.”

  “Most things are, when you’re lying in a hospital bed. Get some rest.”

  Traz was already at the door when Jejeune’s weak voice reached him. “Traz. Make that call to Danny Maik for me, would you? Now?”

  But Jejeune didn’t
hear Traz’s answer. He was already asleep by the time his friend assured him that he would.

  35

  Maik hadn’t wasted much time after the interview, getting a car from the pool and heading down to the marina. Connor James was on his hands and knees scrubbing a section of the deck below the topsail that Maik wouldn’t have thought was particularly susceptible to dirt. He looked up at the sergeant’s approach. He seemed surprised to see Maik, and hesitated a moment before abandoning his cleaning with the enthusiasm of a man who didn’t have a lot of practice at it, and didn’t particularly want much more.

  “Sergeant. Fancy a can of sugar water? I know how important it is that you lads keep your wits sharp.”

  It would have been hard to find offence in James’s upbeat banter, and Maik was in an indulgent mood. “Mine are about as sharp as they’re going to get,” he said. “I will take a cup of tea, though.”

  The men went below, where there was more evidence of cleaning and tidying. A couple of half-filled cardboard boxes stood near the stairwell, and it looked to Maik as if a few more artifacts had gone since the last time he was here. He wondered whether he’d find them if he went to the gallery in Norwich.

  “You’re doing a lot of work on this boat.” Maik left the comment dangling as he watched James’s body for any signs of tension, a slight shuffling of the feet perhaps, or a shimmy of discomfort. There were none. But then, standing stock still was a form of response, too.

  “Time for a change,” said James. “I’m putting her on the market.”

  As Constable Salter had already told him. Maik nodded. One chance, one truth. So far, James was still on the right side of doubt.

  “Leaving Saltmarsh?”

  “Maybe. Just passing by, were you? Today?” If James had noticed the bruise on the sergeant’s forehead, he’d done a good job of showing no interest in it.

  “Inquiries, as a matter of fact.” Maik offered a flat smile. “When did you know the IV League options had not been exercised?”