Holland shook his head. “Definitely third person, ma’am.” He seemed to hesitate for a moment. “This man she was meeting, though, I think his name might be John Damian.”
Had there been a faint shimmer of movement from the back of the room? By the time Maik looked at Jejeune, he was motionless, intense, focused.
“He fits the description of that birder I told you about. John Damian told Quentin Senior he was over here on holiday, but there’s no record of him at any of the hotels or guest houses in the area. I know, I checked them all.”
“All, Tony?” Salter was the first to voice her astonishment, but the others in the room all shared it. “Bloody hell, that’s a mountain of work. There must be literally hundreds of holiday rooms out here. It would have taken you hours. Why didn’t you ask? Some of us could have helped.”
Holland simply shrugged.
“That’s a commendable effort, Constable,” said Colleen Shepherd. “A pity you couldn’t have followed him from the coffee shop, to find out where he was staying.”
“I did,” said Holland.
Now it was clear. It was alarm that DCI Domenic Jejeune had been suppressing. The sudden tensing, the agitation, the flitting gaze, as if he couldn’t find a safe place to rest it. The eyes of everyone else in the room were on Tony Holland now, but it was a couple of moments before Danny Maik could bring his own to join them.
“When they finished, they went their separate ways. I didn’t follow the woman, because I already knew where she was staying,” said Holland practically, “so I stayed with this bloke. Only I lost him on the north Norfolk coastal path. He was heading down to your neck of the woods,” he said, casting an off-hand look Jejeune’s way.
“No suspicious-looking characters slinking past your place, by any chance, Domenic?” asked Shepherd with a grin.
“I couldn’t say,” said Domenic, forcing a smile. “I wasn’t home.”
But Maik wasn’t smiling. Tony Holland hadn’t said when it was that this mystery man, this John Damian, might have been passing by his house, so it was hard to understand how DCI Jejeune could be so certain he wouldn’t have been at home. Shepherd and the others, though, had already moved back to Holland’s report.
“John Damian,” Shepherd said, rolling the name around in her mouth. “It’s an unusual name. So why does it ring a bell with me? Sergeant? Anyone? You seem to have almost total recall of things like this, Domenic? Any suspects with that name ever cross our paths since you’ve been here?”
“It’s never come up,” he said, with a firmness that seemed to Maik’s heightened sensibilities to go some way beyond certainty. “But this part of the world is a popular holiday destination; it’s not unusual for out-of-towners to be wandering around. Saltmarsh’s economy would pretty much crumble without them, as I understand it.” He shifted his position slightly on the desk, a precursor to a shift in emphasis. “I wonder, Constable, were you able to determine the exact nature of Ms. Aliyev’s business here in Saltmarsh? I mean, is there any reason to suspect she isn’t also just here on holiday?”
“What, other than her putting down business on her hotel registration as the reason for her stay, you mean?” Holland eyed Jejeune with undisguised contempt. “There’s the Kazakh connection to Gyrfalcons for a start.”
Jejeune shook his head. “I don’t know. There are markets all over the world for Gyrfalcons, many of them much bigger than Kazakhstan’s,” he said, with a quiet insistence that seemed to have eluded most people. Most not including Danny Maik.
“Are you saying you’re not even interested in talking to her? To either of them?” asked Holland incredulously. “You’re brushing all this off, just like that?”
Maik saw Shepherd shift uncomfortably. In truth, in the past, it wouldn’t have been entirely unlike Jejeune to do just that, if he felt they were unproductive leads. But with Tony Holland a good deal beyond merely engaged in this line of inquiry, and Jejeune, for reasons all his own, as nervous and edgy as Maik had ever seen him, this standoff had the potential to get personal in a way few had before. Shepherd seemed to sense it, too, and flicked a glance at Maik, signalling him to move in.
“That’s not the case at all, Constable, but there is no evidence that either one of them have committed any crime, is there? And I take it you’ve already done background checks that show neither of them as having any criminal record. So it’s hard to see how we can justify bringing them in.”
“Agreed,” said Shepherd. “We have no grounds. If there was evidence of any connection between Darla Doherty’s death and the Philip Wayland’s murder, or even with the Old Dairy compound itself …”
“She died on the property, for Christ’s sake,” shouted Holland in exasperation.
But Shepherd was in a forgiving mood. “If either one of them crosses our radar again, we can most certainly invite them in for a chat, but until then, I’m sure what the sergeant is saying is that there are areas we can employ ourselves more productively, solid leads we can follow. We are all aware of your loss, Constable, and we are all deeply sorry for it. Truly. I understand your need to reconcile yourself to it, to get some answers, and I give you my word, if they are out there, we will pursue them. But for the moment, there’s more than enough to be done in trying to find Philip Wayland’s murderer.”
Unable to contain his rising frustration any longer, Holland gave an exasperated snort and stormed from the room. Like the others, Maik watched his departure in silence. Once, all you had to do to turn Tony Holland off an investigation was to make it sound like hard work. But this was a different Holland now, one pursuing his own agenda, charged with an urgency and a rightness of purpose that was unlikely to be quelled by a little thing like an unenthusiastic response from his superiors. Whatever it was that Domenic Jejeune didn’t want Holland looking into, Maik was pretty sure this approach wasn’t going to prevent it.
42
Lindy entered the cottage with her customary post-work relief and shrugged her shoulder bag onto a chair.
“You birders have a lot to answer for,” she said in a tone that Damian was unsure how to interpret. He looked up from the book he was reading with a puzzled expression.
“Taking a nice, well-balanced, rational man like Eric and turning him into a raving lunatic,” she said. “He’s talking about going to Hong Kong to see some bird, only he claims he has to go on April 18. He is joking, I take it.”
Damian shrugged. “When we were kids we had a Baltimore Oriole show up on the same bush on the same day three years in a row. May 8.” He smiled at the memory. “I wonder if Domenic remembers that. He was so excited by the third year he kept asking me every day when May the eighth was coming. He was so small then, he couldn’t even read a calendar properly. What bird is it?”
“A Spoon-bellied Sandpiper? Does that sound right?”
Damian laughed. “Now, that’s a bird I would like to see, but I think Eric will be going after a Spoonbilled Sandpiper.” He inclined his head. “It’s a good bird.”
“But you wouldn’t travel to Hong Kong to see it?”
“What, me? No. You kidding? That’s crazy.”
Lindy regarded him suspiciously for a moment. “Because you’ve already seen one, right?”
“A couple,” admitted Damian sheepishly.
She slumped into a chair opposite him. “So what bird would you travel halfway round the world to see, I wonder?”
Damian gave it some thought. “There’s a few, but probably top of the list would be the Floreana Mockingbird.”
“Never heard of it,” she said.
“Few have, which seems a little unfair, considering it’s probably the single most important bird in the history of modern science.”
Lindy’s eyes widened and she sat forward slightly.
“It was the Floreana Mockingbird that led Darwin to the first step on his theory of natural selection,” said Damian simply.
“But that was the Galapagos finches, surely? I mean even I remember that fr
om university.”
Damian shook his head. “Darwin saw the finches, but it was the difference between the mockingbirds on the Galapagos island of Floreana and a nearby island called Chatham that he suspected undermined the ‘stability of species’ as he called it. Of course, if anybody ever comes up with a sighting of a Spoon-bellied Sandpiper, I’m on the next plane. In fact, I think I’m going to make that my new Twitter handle.”
Before Lindy could comment, they heard a car door closing outside. A look of relief crossed her face. “Thank God. He said he might go up to the Old Dairy compound again, but it looks like he changed his mind.”
Damian was puzzled.
“It was a strange mood up there last time,” said Lindy. “Ugly. There were some nasty undercurrents with those protesters. I worry about him going up there again, about what might happen if things get out of control. Somebody could get hurt.”
Domenic opened the door, but for once there was no smile for Lindy. For anybody. He looked directly at Damian. “Fancy a walk?”
“Not particularly,” said Damian, turning his eyes back to his book. Whatever it was that had Domenic seething, Damian seemed to know what it was.
“Damian’s been telling me about the Floreana Mockingbird,” said Lindy innocently, trying to dispel the tension. “Did you know about this?”
Domenic nodded but it was clear he wasn’t going to buy into any distraction. “We should talk,” he said to his brother.
Lindy could see now that there was going to be no way of derailing the confrontation. She picked up her bag and swung her car keys around her finger. “I’m just going to pop out to the shops for a few things. I shouldn’t be more than about an hour,” she said, giving the men a timeline. As soon as the door closed behind her, Domenic rounded on his brother.
“Are you out of your mind?”
If Damian was going to protest ignorance, or innocence, Domenic was in no mood to give him a chance. “You were seen, Damian, talking to Tamilya Aliyev. Seen by a police officer.”
Panic creased Damian’s features and he involuntarily flashed a glance out the window, in case an arrest team had followed Domenic, or perhaps even accompanied him.
Domenic read the signs. “I can’t protect you, Damian. If they find you here, I’m going to be in the next cell. Do you know how much harm you could have done?”
“To what, your pride? I was trying to help,” said Damian simply. He wasn’t defensive, but there was no contrition in his statement either.
“I don’t need any help.”
“You do, Domenic. You’re completely on the wrong track. About the girl, about the birds, everything.”
“What, so now you’re an expert in police investigations, too? Why did Aliyev agree to talk to you anyway?”
Damian shrugged evasively. “Maybe she got the impression through a draft email that I could help her get some birds.” He didn’t smile. “They weren’t stealing the prince’s Gyrfalcons, Dom. The Kazakhs are only interested in wild birds. They don’t want captive ones.”
“They seemed happy enough to take the prince’s white Gyr.”
Damian shook his head. “No,” he said. “White Gyrfalcons are not what they want. Black. That’s what they’re after, the darker the better. Why do you think we were up in Labrador? That’s where the dark Gyrs are.”
Domenic considered this news, the information taking the edge off his anger.
“Then why the sudden need for a white one?” he asked. “Iceland. Scotland. You said he intended to bring that bird to north Norfolk. What was that all about? Unless De Laet had more than one customer.”
Damian tapped his lips with his forefinger. “I can’t explain that. He wasn’t in touch with anybody except the Kazakhs, as far as I know. But Aliyev said they would never pay the premium De Laet would want for a wild white Gyrfalcon.” He paused and looked at his brother. “It’s about passports. De Laet somehow convinced Doherty to provide them, so the Kazakhs could transport the wild Gyrs he got for them into their country. As soon as the birds arrived safely in Kazakhstan, the passports were returned to the Old Dairy, and no one was any the wiser.”
“So what went wrong?”
“The Kazakhs paid for two birds, but there was a foul-up in the delivery schedule, and De Laet had to hold onto them for a while. Eventually the Kazakhs gave him the green light, but the birds were never sent. Aliyev came over to find out why.” He paused significantly. “This is a dangerous business, Dom. The places some of these people come from, they’re like the Wild West. They don’t have a lot of respect for law and order. They don’t see an unarmed police force as some quaint reminder of an earlier, more innocent time, they see it as a sign they have the advantage.”
“Thanks, Damian,” said Domenic sarcastically. “I have travelled a bit you know.”
“Yeah, but seeing the world through the windows of the local Sheraton is not quite the same as being on the ground in these places.”
It was the kind of remark that would have sent Domenic into a tailspin when they were growing up, but now, despite his anger, he was able to see Damian’s words for what they were, a manifestation of his older brother’s genuine concern for him.
Damian’s tone softened. “I’m just saying you need to be careful, that’s all. There’s a lot of bad money out there, money from sources you don’t even want to think about. I think the Kazakhs have taken the soft approach so far because this is dream arrangement. Trapping wild birds is the easy part. It’s smuggling them across borders that takes the real work. To be able to waltz birds through Almaty Airport on a passport, that’s an arrangement worth protecting. But as soon as they find out De Laet’s gone, and their chances of getting any more birds have gone with him, they’re going to have nothing to lose. If they start throwing their weight around to get what they’ve already paid for, people could get hurt.”
“Perhaps they already have.”
Damian shook his head slowly. “Aliyev didn’t kill that girl, Domenic. I know what that feels like …”
“Stop, Damian.”
“I know, Domenic, and I’m telling you, she’s not carrying that around with her. I could see it in her eyes.”
He was silent for a long moment.
“I don’t know how we got here, Domenic, you and I. Sometimes, our past, those days we spent as kids, it all seems so far away it’s like it never even happened.” He shook his head. “I was telling Lindy about that Baltimore Oriole that came back to our garden year after year. Remember?”
Domenic nodded and seemed to peer into the past. “May ninth, three years in a row.”
Damian didn’t bother correcting him. It wasn’t another argument he was looking for, merely a return to an earlier time, a time of innocence, when they had both been facing the world from the same side, before life and its labyrinthine ways had come between them. “A miracle of timing, Mom called it. Remember?”
“Timing,” said Domenic, nodding slightly to himself. And then again, more significantly, “Timing.”
And then, Damian knew his brother wasn’t back in their childhood garden anymore. Domenic Jejeune had just closed in on a killer.
43
Lindy was sitting in the living room, her feet tucked beneath her on the couch as Domenic came in. She surreptitiously stashed her reading material away, but she knew he had seen it and she smiled guiltily. Her article, reread for the umpteenth time. Despite her ongoing protestations, he knew it meant a great deal to her to win the award. It would be a justification, of sorts, that she had made the right choice. Following the glare of public recognition that had accompanied her coverage of Domenic’s case involving the Home Secretary’s daughter, Lindy had been offered a number of high-profile positions. Her decision to abandon the frenzied world of national newspaper journalism for the opportunity to do more in-depth pieces with a smaller magazine had surprised most, and outraged some, and the lean years that had followed had often left her squirming with self-doubt about her choice. Though this nomi
nation had raised her profile nationally again, Domenic knew that, in the competitive world of journalism, only winning the award would truly establish her place once more among the industry’s elite.
“Okay if I turn this off?” He crossed the room and consigned another vapid Canadian one-hit wonder to silence.
“Damian?” he asked, to spare her the effort of acknowledging her reading material.
“Out for a walk. I feel so sorry for him at times, cooped up in here. You can see him almost pacing back and forth to get back out there. It’s like he’s in captivity. By the way, ‘Disturbing Mental Image Alert’.” She splayed her fingers out at him like blinking neon sign. “I think my boss and your boss may be hooking up sometime soon.”
Jejeune’s eyes widened. Lindy nodded in confirmation. “Eric sidled up to me and asked in an ever-so-casual way whether you might be able to get him Colleen Shepherd’s phone number.”
“Could it be about a story for the magazine?”
Lindy gave him an exasperated look. “Since he’s the senior editor of one of the country’s leading magazines, I think we can assume he’d know the police department has a Press Office to handle requests like that.”
“I’ve always thought of Eric as a man who seemed more comfortable in the company of attached women,” said Domenic.
“Some men are like that. Perhaps he’s always just enjoyed the comfort of knowing he doesn’t have to try, if they’re already taken. In truth, it’s unlike him to take such a direct approach. Like his birding, he seems ready to get serious in a hurry. Perhaps he’s reached that stage of life where he realizes he might only get one more shot at things.”
She could only smile at the look of anguish on his face. “Cheer up, Dom, I sincerely doubt they’ll wile away their evenings talking about us. It may come as something of a shock to you, but the world doesn’t entirely revolve around DCI Domenic Jejeune.” A thought seemed to strike her. “Isn’t it funny how she always seems drawn to the same kind of man — confident, powerful, charming?”
Jejeune nodded sadly. “And it always seems to turn out so badly for her.” He paused for a moment. “Do you think that’s always the case, that a person tends to be attracted to the same type of partner? That after one relationship, they might move on to somebody else who is similar in a lot of ways?”
A Cast of Falcons Page 25