A Shimmer of Hummingbirds

by Steve Burrows

  When he spoke to Traz, it was in a voice so low and soft even hummingbirds would not have stirred. “Ask her if she could have found all fourteen birds for Graumann, if she hadn’t stopped.”

  Traz set down his paper cup first. Perhaps he thought these soft gestures with his hands would help. Mariel stirred slightly, like a forest creature sensing something on the breeze. She moved her tiny shoulders slightly, and turned her pale grey eyes on Jejeune even as she answered Traz in Spanish.

  “I can only find the ones that choose to show themselves to me.”

  “But you know where to find them, don’t you, Mariel? All of them.”

  It was almost as if she didn’t need Traz’s translation. She kept her eyes on Jejeune, seeming barely to pay attention to his friend. Are you going to ask me? her look said. Are you afraid of the answer, Hermano Pakisusu?

  And then Traz had it, the secret that danced like a hummingbird on the electricity between his friend and this woman. Only he didn’t have it. “Have you ever seen the Chiribiquete Emerald, Mariel?” he asked, in Spanish, then in English.

  Still Mariel stared at Jejeune, her eyes deep seas of grey, endless and timeless. “No. I have never seen this bird.”

  Traz slumped back, disappointed.

  “But you did go to search for it, didn’t you?” Even before Traz finished delivering Jejeune’s question, the detective saw the light fade from Mariel’s eyes. And he knew he had his answer. The one he had come all the way from north Norfolk to find. Here in this tiny hummingbird garden on the side of a mountain, he had found the truth.

  Mariel had started to cry. Small round teardrops like tiny pearls ran down her smooth cheeks. But she smiled through them and reached over to press her palm gently to Jejeune’s cheek. The ice-cold touch of her hand was startling.

  “She says she is grateful for your wisdom,” said Traz. “Your question has set her free.”

  37

  Interior design had long been a mystery to Danny Maik, but even he found Laraby’s room at The Birder’s Roost dis­quieting. Despite the eerie presence of two stuffed shorebirds in a glass case on a corner shelf, the Dotterel Suite was as forlornly impersonal as any room he had been in for a long time. There were no homely touches, nothing at all, in fact, to relieve the ruthless functionality of the furniture and furnishings. It made the recent contributions of Constable Salter all the more conspicuous.

  On the dresser, a basket with a red ribbon around it held a couple of magazines, while on the small occasional table, a wooden bowl held a better variety of fruit than you could reasonably expect to find in Saltmarsh in the middle of winter. On the narrow window ledge, Maik saw a card made of brown construction paper. The cover was a crayon drawing of sunshine and a house. The note inside was simple and to the point: I hope you get well by saturday love MAX.

  Laraby watched Maik as he read the card. “I might get other cards, but none will ever have a more sincere message,” he said, smiling.

  “Saturday?”

  “I’m taking the lad to the match.”

  “Ah.” Maik replaced the card gently. “Everything okay?” Maik wasn’t asking about the DI’s health. By his count, Laraby had about half a day left on his enforced leave. Judging by his expression when Maik had entered the room, it was going to be at least half a day too long.

  “I’m going mad here, Danny. Things are so bad, I’d even be willing to listen to some of that disco music of yours, if you’ve brought any with you. I’m hoping you’ve at least brought me some good news about Oakes. Like he’s confessed, for example.”

  “Not to the murder.”

  “To what, then?”

  Maik told him.

  Laraby stared wide-eyed. “Flying a drone around some owl? He expects us do him for that? Over a murder?” Laraby was incredulous. “He knows we have an eyewitness? And he’s still maintaining he wasn’t at Dawes’s cottage that night?”

  Laraby looked around as if searching for a place to offer the sergeant to sit. But there was only one chair in the room, an ancient wooden thing with an assortment of clothes and papers sitting on the seat. In the end, Laraby gave up. The sergeant looked comfortable enough on his feet anyway.

  “So he offered no proof he was there on the Saturday night? He just told us, and we’re supposed to believe it? The word of a decent chap, and all that?”

  “It was almost as if he felt he didn’t need to provide an alibi.”

  Something in the way Maik said it had Laraby looking at him. The DI didn’t ask, but he didn’t say anything else, either. Maik looked outside. A bank of low cloud sat menacingly over the fields to the east. He considered mentioning them, just as a way of deflecting Laraby’s intense gaze. But he had started now, and Danny Maik was a person who made sure he finished things whenever he could.

  “James has form. It didn’t come up in our searches for Connor James, but when we ran them again for James Connor, there it was. A couple of ASBOs for disorderly conduct, but there was a domestic on there, too, and an assault with a deadly weapon. No convictions, but it shows he knows his way around the violent side of things.”

  Laraby sat down on the edge of the bed and rubbed his face with his hands. But it was not distress, merely contemplation. “We never escape our past, do we, Danny? No matter how hard we try, how far we run, it’s always with us. Change our name, change our appearance, it makes no difference. It’s a part of us, and we’re doomed to carry it with us, wherever we go.” He shook his head. ‘No, Danny. It’s Oakes. We’ve got his DNA at the scene and an eyewitness who can put him there at the time of the murder. He’s our killer. I can feel it.”

  Maik perched on the edge of the window ledge and twisted slightly to look out the window. A listlessness seemed to lay over the landscape, as if it was exhausted by its struggles to withstand the cold and the winds. Maik was silent for so long, Laraby wondered if there was something the sergeant wasn’t telling him. Bad news, perhaps. “The girl, Forsyth, no last-minute doubts about what she saw? Not suddenly remembered her assailant had a second head, nothing like that?”

  From his window ledge perch, Maik shook his head. “She’s not wavering on her statement at all. There’s little doubt she’s going to select Oakes from that line-up.”

  “Then it’s all over, regardless of what he claims about harassing some helpless bird. I suppose that clears up one mystery. All this interest in DCI Jejeune. Where is he? When’s he coming back? He was looking to unload this drivel on him, hoping to get a sympathetic hearing from a fellow member of the birder brotherhood.”

  “Oakes is more of a photographer. I’m not sure they consider themselves as part of the same group.”

  “’Course they do, all part of the same old boy network, always looking out for each other, sticking together, protecting one another’s interests. Must have come as a bit of a shock when us two came up to question him instead, eh?”

  It had grown darker in the room. Maik’s own bulk blocking off half the window wasn’t helping, but the clouds were gathering outside, hunkering low, smothering the light from the sky. Maik stood up, careful not to disturb Max’s card. He walked over to the shelf where the Dotterels stared out from their glass prison. “Just the two of you? Going to the match?”

  Laraby nodded. “His mom’s off at a class on drone surveillance. She seems very keen on all this business, I must say. Still, she’s a bright woman, so it’s understandable she’d be interested in broadening her horizons.”

  He looked out the window, at the frost-hardened fields stretching out beneath the cloud cover toward the faint dark smudge of hedgerows in the distance.

  “It’s not our game, is it Danny,” he said quietly, “all this drones and cyber criminals and offices on your cellphone? We’re more comfortable doing things the old way, you and me, kicking a few arses, taking a few names. What we want is a place to sit and watch the changing world slide on by, leaving us alone to do our job the way we want to do it, the way we know it should be done.” He looked a
t Maik. “There are worse places than Saltmarsh to do that.”

  “Ever come across anyone named Ray Hayes?” If Maik’s slow wandering around the room was a way of taking attention away from his question, it didn’t prevent Laraby from tracking him with his eyes. There weren’t many places in the tiny room you could have hidden anything, the significance of an inquiry included.

  “Ray Hayes? Now there’s a blast from the past. A real piece of work, Mr. Hayes. There are some villains who don’t really understand why they do things, and then there’s some who just can’t help themselves. But few enjoy it as much as Hayes. He used to like to let his victims know he was coming for them. Give ’em a couple of warnings first, just to terrorize them a bit. I haven’t thought about him for a long time, I’m happy to say, now that he’s safely inside.”

  “Your doing?” Maik found something interesting in the display case, the birds’ plumage, perhaps. He leaned in for a closer look as Laraby continued talking to his back.

  “Me and your DCI. We did him on a murder. He blew most of a woman’s house into the neighbour’s garden, with her still inside it. I let Sergeant Jejeune interview Hayes when we brought him in. It was the first time I’d ever seen him in action.” He nodded his head at the memory. “Old Ray was in his element at first. He saw it as a meeting of the minds, communing with a fellow intellectual. Hayes was clever, you see. The TV would have you think we’re dealing with Rhodes Scholars all the time, but clever villains don’t come my way all that often. Hayes was an exception. He enjoyed being the brightest one in the room, and Jejeune let him think he was, at first. But it wasn’t too long before he had Hayes contradicting himself left, right, and centre.” He shook his head. “It didn’t go down well. Hayes didn’t take too kindly to some jumped-up sergeant with a funny accent showing him up every time he opened his mouth.” A thought seemed to come to Laraby suddenly. “Why are we talking about Ray Hayes anyway?”

  Why, indeed? Up until a few minutes ago, Danny had no idea. But he did now. A man from Jejeune’s past, with a history of setting explosions.

  “Just a name that came up,” said Danny. He turned and came to the window again. Outside, the light was all but gone, the clouds so low it was as if they were sagging with the effort of holding up the sky. “I was thinking, if that Barn Owl’s a regular around the ruins, there might be one or two of the local birders who’d gone out to see it on Saturday. They could tell us if Oakes was there or not.”

  “Perhaps we could get the DCS’s boyfriend to ask around. He’s a birder, isn’t he? Another one of Jejeune’s mates? He and the DCI are all part of some cliquey birding club, I suppose. It’s a wonder you haven’t joined them yourself, Danny. Give your career prospects a bit of a boost with the Super.”

  “I’m not sure birding would be much of a positive with the DCS these days. I don’t think her partner’s interest in it has brought them any closer.”

  “Is that a fact?”

  Maik regarded the inspector carefully. He wondered what it was about him that encouraged these indiscretions. Whatever magic Laraby managed to weave with his questions, if criminals in the interview room found it as hard to keep their mouths shut as Danny, he could well understand why Laraby’s closure rate was as high as it was.

  38

  Night descended over Picaflor with the stealth of a hunting animal, inching into the valley below and consuming the mountains as the pink-tinged clouds faded into the darkness. Mariel lit the candles along the porch rail. Fireflies danced in the distance and the steady trill of night insects began to fill the still, warm air around them.

  Mariel had not cried aloud. She had let the tears fall freely from her cheeks as the two men sat in silence beside her. But the tears had stopped after a while, and she had started to speak, slowly and earnestly. At first, Traz had tried to translate on the fly, but Jejeune had stopped him. Nothing should interrupt Mariel’s words, escaping from her now, after being held inside for so long. Freed from the need to pause, she poured out the details in rapid-fire Spanish now, barely halting for breath. It was as if she wanted to purge herself of these memories, to cleanse herself of them, every detail, every deceit. But Jejeune knew Traz would forget none of it. The intensity of Mariel’s delivery would etch her account on his soul. He knew his friend would remember it all, every phrase, every word.

  Jejeune had no idea how long they sat there with the flickering candlelight dancing across Mariel’s face as she leaned forward to emphasize a point or rocked back into the shadows as a sad memory visited her. His ankle began to throb, but he dared not move, unwilling to disturb Mariel, or her narrative, or even the soft night air itself. So he sat, listening to the cadences of her voice, the rise and fall of a language he did not understand, though he already knew the meaning of her words.

  Only when she had finished, rid herself of her burden, did Mariel stop talking. She sat in silence for many minutes, sunk back in the armchair, her memories wrapped around her in the darkness like a shawl. The flames from the candles guttered slightly in the evening air, reflecting off her flawless, shiny skin. The insects continued their trills; the faintest of breezes shuffled the leaves of the bougainvillea. But nobody spoke.

  And then Mariel stood. “Food,” she announced, disappearing into the hut. By the light of the candles, Traz began to tell Jejeune Mariel’s story. He used her words exactly, her phrasing, her inflections. It was as if he had become a vessel to deliver the story only. Jejeune did not interrupt him.

  “At first I thought it was soroche, altitude sickness. We had just returned from finding the Blue-bearded Helmetcrest, and it was a hard trip. Dios mio, three days on horseback up to the Espeletia fields. We camped and it was cold at night, very cold. When we came down, Graumann was shivering and sweating in turns. We came here, for the Santa Marta Sabrewing and the Blossomcrown. He seemed to recover, but by Urrao I knew he was ill again. He was sleeping later and later each day. To see other birds, this would have been a problem, but hummingbirds love the sun. They feed all the time; morning, noon, evening.”

  It was unnecessary information, facts Jejeune already knew, and delivering it seemed to snap Traz back into the present. He began telling the story as a narrator.

  “She called the company from Urrao. They said to continue. Graumann was paying them a lot of money. She never did find out how much, but they promised her more for herself if she carried on. She told them she thought Graumann should go back to Bogota first, to get some medical treatment. By now she could sense his sickness, smell it in him.”

  Traz paused and looked at Jejeune. “The way she said it, JJ, I believe her.”

  Jejeune simply nodded, though whether his friend could see the gesture in the low light of the candles he didn’t know. Traz continued anyway. “After a day of rest in Urrao, Graumann seemed to rally. He told her he was okay, but that he wanted to go to Chiribiquete next. It was going to be the hardest part of the trip, and he wanted to get it over with. They went by Jeep and canoe. It took them four days. But Graumann was getting weaker all the time. In the park, they met a family of Karijona. They said the river was high and the mud along the banks was hard to walk through. She asked them if they had any traditional medicine that might help Graumann, but as soon as they looked at him, they told her he would die if he tried to make the trip. The Karijona went with her in the canoe and helped her to get him back to where she had left the Jeep. When Mariel and Graumann arrived back in Bogota, she called the company to tell them what had happened. The next day somebody called her at the hotel and told her if anybody asked, she was to say she had quit in Urrao. They said not to tell anyone she had been to Chiribiquete, or she would be in trouble. They told her to leave the man in the hotel room and they would send someone to help him. She wrote up some trip notes and left them in the room. She never saw Graumann, or anybody from the company, again.”

  Jejeune struggled up from the chair and hobbled along the porch. He looked out over the hillside. Only an occasional speck of light di
sturbed the darkness in the valley, a tiny hint of human habitation, all but swallowed up by the surrounding blackness. Far below, a thin trail of lights traced the Santa Marta coastline, but beyond, all was black space, the vast empty nothingness of the ocean. A flash of lightning lit up the sky in the distance, but it was so far off no sound reached them. A wave of fatigue washed over him, and he felt unsteady suddenly, as if something that had been supporting him had been removed. He reached out shakily for the porch railing until Traz appeared at his side and guided him gently back to his chair.

  Through the open doorway of the hut they could hear the sounds of food being prepared. A smell of warm rice and beans drifted out, and Jejeune realized he was hungry. He couldn’t remember the last time he had eaten. He was surprised that Traz, who observed mealtimes with an almost religious devotion, hadn’t mentioned it. Mariel appeared at the doorway with two plates for them. She handed them out and returned for her own. They ate, balancing the plates on their knees and swilling down the food with blackberry wine.

  “The person Mariel spoke to at the office, who told her what to do,” said Jejeune, “could it have been someone who wasn’t a native Spanish speaker?” He recoiled from his own question slightly, uncomfortable at leading a witness like this. But Mariel didn’t understand — you spoke Spanish or you did not. This person, this hombre, Jejeune heard, spoke Spanish.

  The three sat in silence, eating quietly, hunched over their plates. Not until she had finished her food did Mariel speak again. It was a softer statement now, less emphatic, more tinged with sorrow.

  “She didn’t hear about the Karijona deaths for a few weeks,” Traz relayed, “and when she did, she heard that Damian had caused them. She heard he’d confessed. She believed it for a while. But then she stopped believing it.” Traz paused. “She says she has known the truth for a long time.”

  The truth. The evidence that exonerated his brother, the evidence Jejeune had always known would exist, somehow, even when he had no reason to believe it. No one had ever been able to verify exact dates for the deaths of the Karijona, but it was days, at most, after Damian’s contact with them. And now, here it was, evidence of earlier contact with the same source of infection. Testified to. Admitted. Witnessed. The dates of Mariel’s visit, he knew, would be an exact match for the incubation period for bacterial meningococcal meningitis when he researched it.