Gently Where the Birds Are

by Alan Hunter

  ‘I don’t have any, sir. And I’ve covered most of the village now. I was across at The Purlins. They told me you’d been there, and I thought the lady looked a bit upset.’

  ‘Did you see the lad?’

  ‘No sir. And the lady got rid of me pretty damn quick.’

  ‘Reckon she’s on to him, sir,’ Aspall said. ‘It struck me she knew how to handle sonny. Perhaps we should call back.’

  ‘Perhaps.’ Gently sipped the excellent beer. ‘Who’s in the bar?’

  ‘Just the regulars,’ Campsey said. ‘And a rep from London on his way to Lothing.’

  ‘No luck there.’

  ‘None sir. It looks like our man doesn’t come from these parts.’

  No luck – and luck was surely what they were needing most in this case! After the first flattering breakthrough they had run up against a number of closed doors. Because Aspall was right, of course: they had no grounds for leaning too hard on the kids. Nothing positive to go on . . . they weren’t even certain that the photograph was of recent origin. Unless they turned up something soon the case was going to bog down.

  ‘You’ll know young Middleton and young Easton?’

  ‘Yes sir. They’re a decent pair of kids.’

  ‘I’d like you to ask around. If anyone saw them near the scene on Saturday afternoon.’

  ‘Yes sir.’ Campsey looked perturbed. ‘Do we think they’re involved in this, sir?’

  ‘We damn well know they’re involved in it!’ Aspall snapped. ‘So don’t go dragging your feet, Campsey.’

  ‘No sir.’ Campsey stayed blank faced. ‘Just wanted to know where we stood, sir.’

  Lunch arrived, and with it Sergeant Warren to add to the tale of non-progress.

  ‘We’ve cleared the wood, sir, and the clifftop. I’ve knocked them off for a bite to eat.’

  ‘What about the Priory?’

  ‘I took a look round there, sir. I couldn’t see that anything had been disturbed. It’d be a right old place to park a body, but if you dug a hole it would have to show up.’

  ‘Nothing likely in the ruins?’

  ‘Just a lot of old stones, sir, and bullocks’ pancakes. Plenty of those.’

  No body – and there wasn’t going to be one! That was Sergeant Warren’s transparent conviction.

  The lunch matched the beer in quality but it was eaten in steady silence. Cars came and went outside, the toothsome landlady collected the dishes. And everyone was thinking the same thing, sharing the same mood of gloom.

  ‘Well, I’ll be off, sir,’ Campsey said, rising.

  ‘Me too, sir,’ Warren said.

  They went hastily, as though glad to escape from the settled depression in the room. Aspall caught Gently’s eye.

  ‘So what now, sir?’

  Gently shrugged over his coffee. ‘Some routine,’ he said. ‘If we can’t find the body, at least we’d better find Miss Stoven.’

  Aspall’s expression lacked enthusiasm. ‘Do you really think she can tell us something, sir?’

  ‘I think it’s odd that she took off so suddenly. And odd that she cut her visit to the Eastons.’

  ‘You’ve only young Easton’s word for the invitation, sir.’

  ‘On balance, I’m inclined to believe him.’

  Aspall made an irritable plunge at the sugar. But clearly one didn’t come between Gently and his hunches . . .!’

  ‘What do you want done, sir?’

  ‘I want you to get on to Wimbledon. It shouldn’t be difficult to locate her mother. Either the girl is there or her mother can tell us where to look. Also I want to know about friends that she may have had in Wimbledon. Especially boyfriends. Draw Wimbledon’s attention to the copy of the photograph being circulated.’

  Aspall stared. ‘You think he comes from there, sir?’

  ‘One thing’s certain – he doesn’t come from here!’

  ‘But, sir—’

  ‘This is our only lead. So I want it followed up.’

  Aspall tightened his lips. ‘Where will you be, sir?’

  ‘I’ll be having a talk with that bird warden. Then I’ll meet you again here. I shall need the car.’

  Aspall winced. ‘Yes, sir.’

  But he didn’t go straight to the bird warden’s house, which was off Heath Lane, beyond Sandlings. First he turned down to Katherine Stoven’s cottage and parked for some minutes behind the minibus.

  Now the low sun was fronting the cottage, just as it must have done on Saturday. Ahead it laid bars of light across the track, including one where the body would have been lying . . . visible here, from the cottage gate, though perhaps not from the cottage, which was screened by a hedge.

  Yet the crack of a pistol, that must have been heard – even the modest pop of a ·22! In such quietness as this, it would have brought her running to see who it was disturbing her solitude. And then what had she seen . . .? Who had seen her . . .? What had changed her mind about calling at Sandlings – the gates of which she would be passing in any case, on her way to the reserve?

  He studied the cottage again, in its sunny innocence. Whatever she had seen, she had returned to it: had spent three more nights there, perhaps four, before vanishing without a word to her friends. Did it hide some secret . . .? It sat so still, its windows shut, its chimney smokeless . . . yet it was long odds that its owner had merely flung off to Wimbledon, on a sudden impulse of reconciliation. It was that sort of case. You didn’t know its weight, didn’t dare grab the nettle too firmly . . .

  Disgruntledly, he turned the car and sent it winging back to the road.

  A turning to the right, some distance past Sandlings, led to the bird warden’s abode. A No Vehicles Beyond This Point board was contradicted by tyre marks, and Gently took the liberty of driving on. The lane was a rough one. Brambles reached out to scrape the passing car. Ruts set it bobbing and lurching, and the wheels skittered on soft patches. Within half a mile however it ran out into open heath, and there, beside a gloomy thicket, stood a slightly unkempt dwelling.

  A lonely place; for sheer isolation it surpassed even Miss Stoven’s cottage. All that neighboured it was undulating heath, fringed in the distance by blue-green pines. Heather and gorse scrub darkened the heath, which was freaked with white sand and whiter pebbles. The thicket was of spiky hawthorn, old and tangled: a sort of witch wood.

  What sort of a man would live here?

  Gently got out and stared at the cottage. A little larger than Miss Stoven’s, it was built in the same style of blank brick and pantile. Its bit of ground was fenced, but otherwise neglected. A garage and a shed stood at the rear. On each side of the porch were placed beehives, their occupants stirring in the pale sun. A telephone . . .? There didn’t seem to be one. A Calor gas bottle stood by the garage.

  The gate stood open: Gently went up and knocked, with an eye on the restless, zooming bees. No answer. A glance into the garage showed that, like Miss Stoven’s, it was empty. But the bird warden was certainly in residence: windows of two of the rooms were steamy. Presumably he had had his lunch and returned to his business of wardening.

  So now where did one seek him . . .?

  Gently turned the car and bumbled back to Heath Lane. A little further along it he came to the public entrance to the reserve. Here there was a hut displaying publications and a box for money, but no attendant: just a tarmac track beckoning across the heath to an elevated knoll, where cars were parked. He drove on. To the left was the sea, dreamily visible over the cliff edge, to the right the rolling heath with its leprous burns of sand and stones. On the knoll a couple with slung binoculars were in the act of locking a 1300: Gently swung in beside them and hastily jumped out.

  ‘Excuse me! I’m looking for the warden.’

  ‘I’m afraid we haven’t seen him.’

  They were elderly people, dressed in smart tweeds and wearing formidable boots with chunky socks.

  ‘Do you know where I’ll find him?’

  ‘You could try the hide
s. That’s his car, so he’ll be here somewhere.’

  ‘The hides . . .?’

  ‘Down there along the wall. Follow the path and you can’t miss them.’

  Nor could he. The scene below the knoll spread down the coast in a panorama – beach, low sandhills bushy with tamarisk, and behind a shallow bank, marsh and mere. Open water was visible among the reeds but to the right they swung inland in a strange, fawn sea, bounded by a clear stream and high bracken slopes, and beyond by birches, copper in the sun. Far down the coast brooded the cube of a power station, and on the edge of the mere a distant black mill tower. Stooping fields, and a frieze of pines and hardwoods, formed the horizon to the west.

  ‘You see? Down there . . .’

  What looked like two cattle stalls were perched on the rim of the bank. One or two figures, seeming shadowless and without perspective, strolled on the pale sand below them.

  ‘And if he isn’t at the hides?’

  The elderly man shrugged. ‘Anyway, he’ll be back here by dark. But you should find him.’

  They went off cheerfully, with the binoculars bumping against their chests.

  Gently remained staring while he lit his pipe. Down there . . . what a place to hide a body! It was almost search-proof, and you would probably need an Act of Parliament even to begin . . .

  He spared a moment for the warden’s car, a stocky little Daf 33; then pressed his match into the turf and set off down the track to the beach.

  CHAPTER SIX

  ‘PHILIP RUSHMURE?’

  And after all, he found his man at the first attempt: up steps made of sleepers sunk in the sand, and in a long, low, pent-roofed shed.

  A draughty hole! A slit opened on the mere to admit a thin, persistent air, and a rough bench ran the length of the structure to enable watchers to squat with their glasses.

  At the moment there were only two of them, one a masculine-faced lady swathed in woollens. The other was a tall, lean, heavy-boned man, who was gazing through the slit with his glasses lowered.

  ‘Quiet – just a moment!’

  Up came the glasses. Both the watchers crouched eagerly. And the wind kept sidling through the slit . . . Gently’s eyes were watering already!

  ‘What can you see?’

  ‘Mmn . . .?’

  ‘Is it something special?’

  ‘Just a moment . . .!’

  But all there seemed to be out there were a handful of waders and a couple of ducks.

  Gently sighed and reached out his matches. No doubting the identity of this earnest voyeur – it was sewn on the shoulder of his safari jacket, in gold letters on a green flash. A man of about forty-five, with a smallish head on a stalk-like neck, and features not unlike a bird’s – and, if it came to that, a piping voice. Very properly a birdman! His rapt attention with the glasses was almost like a meditation.

  ‘. . . what is it, then?’

  ‘I’m a police officer.’

  The eyes turned towards him were something of a shock. Pale blue, they seemed without focus, as though staring through him into space.

  ‘Oh?’

  ‘I’d like a word with you.’

  The eyes remained far away. It was uncanny: you wondered whether he was seeing you at all.

  ‘Is it about avocets?’

  ‘It’s about Saturday. More especially the afternoon.’

  ‘Oh, I know nothing about Saturday. I was down here all day.’

  ‘That’s what I’m asking about. Who was with you?’

  Rushmere gave a little snuffle. ‘It’s my busiest day – lots of people! I really wouldn’t know where to begin.’

  ‘Didn’t you ring someone to join you?’

  The eyes were as vacant as the sea. ‘Did I do that?’

  ‘So I’ve been told.’

  ‘Then quite probably it’s true.’

  ‘But did you?’ Gently said, beginning to lose patience.

  For answer Philip Rushmere snatched up his glasses: a hoarse quacking had come from the mere. He crouched alertly, elbows braced.

  ‘Yes, I did – Ka Stoven. Something I knew she’d want to see.’

  ‘What was that?’

  He ignored the question. ‘She was with me until dark.’

  ‘From when?’

  ‘Oh . . . after lunch. About 2 p.m., I would say.’

  ‘You rang her at lunchtime?’

  ‘Mm . . . mmn.’

  ‘May I ask from where you rang?’

  His finger stroked the focus-wheel of the glasses. ‘Quiet, please – just for a moment!’

  And the trouble was that you couldn’t decide if his evasions were deliberate or not. The mind behind a pair of eyes like that might well be as darting as a sparrow’s. The head, the curious face . . . you seemed to be dealing with a different breed, with a man dropped in from Mars. If you pricked him, he might not bleed.

  ‘Where did you ring from?’

  ‘I didn’t ring.’

  ‘But you just said you did!’

  ‘No, you said that. It doesn’t really matter, but I called on Ka after lunch.’

  Gently stared frostily. ‘And that’s the definitive version?’

  ‘It’s exactly what happened. If you put leading questions, you must expect impertinent answers.’

  A rap on the knuckles, even! And now the glasses swept the scene randomly, pausing insolently, with the expert finger crisply adjusting focus. A part of the man . . . a talisman, between his eyes and the world . . .

  ‘Lend me your glasses, will you?’

  ‘Eh?’

  But Gently had his hands on them. Firmly he took them, and Rushmere was compelled reluctantly to slide the lanyard over his head.

  ‘Now . . . I expect you’re making your rounds. I may as well come along with you.’

  ‘But, really!’

  ‘We can talk as we go.’

  And he ducked through the door and slithered down the sleepers.

  ‘These are good glasses.’

  ‘If you don’t mind—!’

  Clearly Gently didn’t mean to part with them. He had stuffed his head through the lanyard and now was studying the misty power station.

  ‘They’ve got the penetration of the devil. Who was the lady who was listening so hard?’

  ‘Mrs Holton, but if you’ve quite finished—’

  ‘We may as well keep our business private.’

  It was good: the glasses stayed ruthlessly clamped in Gently’s hands. He was searching around for fresh objects and quite ignoring the agitated birdman. They were tramping along a sandy trough between the wall of the mere and the marram banks, out of sight of both sea and fresh water – really, nothing to see at all!

  ‘What were those that just went over?’

  ‘Common sandpipers. Now, I insist—!’

  ‘They tell me you had a stork around here on Saturday.’

  ‘Look, I simply don’t have the time!’

  But Gently did. He tramped on cheerfully, whipping up the glasses now and then. He was enjoying himself, his expression said – there were birds about! This was fun!

  ‘If you’ve something to ask me, for heaven’s sake ask it!’

  ‘Eh? Isn’t Miss Stoven crazy about birds?’

  ‘Why do you keep on about Ka Stoven?’

  ‘Look, I know that fellow. It’s a heron!’

  And so it went on for a teasing half-mile, until Rushmere was reduced to a sulky silence. Then the way ahead was interrupted by the sluice that drained the marshes. It was an untidy yet picturesque feature, with comfortable iron rails to lean on. From them, below, a drain popular with waterfowl stretched across the marsh towards the old pump-mill.

  Gently leant on the rails. ‘But why Miss Stoven?’

  Rushmere’s odd, small-chinned face was bitter. ‘Why . . .?’

  ‘With the whole of the village to pick from, why did the choice fall on the Dryad?’

  His mouth quivered. ‘That isn’t her name, and she doesn’t much like being called
by it!’

  ‘It’s familiar usage with some of her friends.’

  ‘That’s no reason for you to adopt it.’

  Gently hunched. ‘But still . . . why?’

  ‘I can’t see what that has to do with you.’

  ‘Perhaps we both know.’

  Rushmere stared at the waterfowl: up the drain were a timid pair of grebes.

  ‘So where is she now?’

  ‘Don’t you know?’ The piping voice had gone high.

  ‘Do you?’

  ‘No – I don’t!’ But the voice was still shrill.

  ‘I think she’d have told someone where she was going.’

  ‘But why pick on me?’

  ‘Perhaps because you picked on her on Saturday.’

  ‘Look – those ducks that just settled. They’re widgeon!’

  He snatched for the glasses, but Gently’s hands grasped them remorselessly. The curious eyes flickered angrily and almost, for the moment, found a focus.

  ‘Let’s get on to what you do know. What time did you call at hers on Saturday?’

  Rushmere snatched his eyes away. ‘After lunch. I’ve already told you.’

  ‘Couldn’t you put a time to it?’

  ‘I don’t know! I called on my way back. Half-past one to two. Why should you want to know that?’

  ‘Was she alone?’

  ‘Give me my glasses!’

  ‘Just answer the question, Mr Rushmere.’

  ‘I don’t have to answer anything, but you do have to give me my glasses.’

  ‘Just a moment.’

  Calmly deliberate, Gently focused on the widgeon. Half a dozen of them, all males, the buff on the chestnut heads showing plainly. ‘Who was with her . . .?’

  ‘Nobody!’

  ‘Lionel Easton had been in touch with her.’

  ‘That was on the phone!’

  ‘She told you, did she?’

  ‘Just give those glasses back here!’

  Gently lowered the glasses, but didn’t give them back. ‘I’m asking you to think very carefully, Mr Rushmere. This could be a matter of some importance . . . look there! That was a kingfisher.’

  ‘I tell you, she was alone!’

  ‘Did you go in?’

  ‘No – yes! But only for a moment.’

  ‘She was acting naturally, without constraint?’

  ‘Yes, naturally – there was no one there!’