A Siege of Bitterns

by Steve Burrows

  Lucky? He didn’t feel lucky. In truth, he envied Lindy, doing a job she genuinely cared about. Could he have ever gotten so passionate about his own work? His curse, if he cared to think about it that way, was that people considered him to have talents, a gift, even, for a job that he neither liked nor particularly wanted to do. But when those talents were in the area of policing, well, he could fully understand how everybody from his parents back in Canada to his superiors would be urging him to follow his talents as far as they would take him. He had heard all the arguments, and he had long since stopped offering counters to them. Now he just did his work, as quietly and efficiently as possible, and said nothing. But lucky? No, he didn’t feel lucky.

  Still, if he couldn’t get to the bottom of Lindy’s current unhappiness, at least he knew he had a cure for it; short-term anyway.

  “It’s probably about time we invited some of your friends up to see what life in the wilderness is like. Do you think they’ll have had their shots?”

  “They’re our friends, actually,” said Lindy, but it was obvious that Domenic had scored a direct hit. Her face lit up and her movements became suddenly more animated. “Do you think so? When? How about next weekend? We could do a small dinner party. Nothing extravagant, but if they came down in the afternoon we could take them down to the beach first. No birding, though, please Dom.”

  “No birding,” he assured her.

  9

  “I’m sure I don’t need to stress the importance of making some early progress,” said DCS Shepherd. “The media will be all over us on this one. Obviously, you can be our point man, but easy does it. I want them eating out of our hand. And you’ll clear everything through me first. Right?”

  They were standing in the corridor outside the incident room. Showing up at the previous briefing session hadn’t gone quite the way the DCS had planned, so this time she had intercepted Jejeune just as he was about to go in for the morning update.

  “Cameron Brae was the closest thing the greens had to a hero out here,” she continued, leaning in close to make sure her message was getting across. “Even if he hadn’t been married to Mandy Roquette, the public would still be baying for justice.”

  Jejeune’s general rule was to say nothing unless he had something useful to add, but the habit had a way of turning dialogue into monologue that some people found disconcerting, especially if they were trying to make a point. Shepherd felt compelled to add more.

  “This is to have the highest priority, Domenic. Whatever you need, manpower, resources, anything at all. I don’t want it being said that this case suffered for want of a few paperclips.”

  As far as Jejeune could tell, neither paperclips nor anything else the DCS could provide would bring the case any nearer to a conclusion just yet. But he promised he would let her know if he thought of anything.

  “By the way, there’s a function at the Saltmarsh Hunt Club Thursday evening. Black tie. Our MP, Beverly Brennan, will be there, and it will be a good chance for you to rub shoulders with some of the other local dignitaries, too. Usual fare, I should imagine. Honestly, I’ve been to so many of these things, these days I basically look at them as a chance to wear a nice frock for a change. You’re girlfriend’s welcome, too, of course.”

  Jejeune watched the DCS disappear along the corridor toward her office. Plenty of hours down the gym, judging by the muscle tone in her legs. She had a body type that would tend to widen out as she got older, but it hadn’t happened yet, and she was clearly working hard to delay the process as long as possible.

  After the carnival-like atmosphere of Jejeune’s first day, attendance for this morning’s briefing session had shrunk back to only those with a legitimate reason for being there. Jejeune went directly toward the back of the room as before. He perched on a desk, his feet resting on the chair in front of him like a benign gargoyle. He began flipping idly through his battered hardback while he waited for Maik to bring the session to order.

  A young police constable entered the room carrying a manila file. Maik stretched out a hand like a one-armed scarecrow, his other arm folded across his chest. The constable hesitated. According to protocol, the file should have gone to Jejeune, as senior officer, but the constable had always found Maik a particularly intimidating presence, and what with the chief inspector looking so preoccupied and all…. He set the envelope in Maik’s calloused paw and left without a backward glance. Maik opened the file and took a quick look at the single sheet of flimsy blue paper inside. It was the investigation file copy of the M.E.’s report.

  He set the form to one side and addressed the room. “Right, death by hanging, more or less instantaneous. So no surprises there, then. Family all alibi out.” A glance flickered in Jejeune’s direction. “So who are we looking at?”

  Jejeune laid the book aside as Maik began, but the sergeant could already see that if Rare and Vagrant Birds of Norfolk no longer held the chief inspector’s complete attention, neither did the proceedings here. Jejeune cast long, languid glances out the window, returning his gaze to the room only to focus on some indeterminate spot in the middle distance. But it was already evident that Jejeune’s apparent lack of interest didn’t mean that he wasn’t paying attention. Sooner or later, when he came across something he liked, or more likely the opposite, the assembled troops would no doubt be hearing from Domenic Jejeune.

  Constable Salter consulted her notes. “Records show the call to Largemount wasn’t answered. Nothing back yet from the professor about the email.” She turned to Jejeune. “Sir, I’ve been thinking. If you were out of work, and you missed out on a potentially well-paying job through Cameron Brae’s activism …”

  Jejeune raised his eyebrows. “It’s worth a closer look. Let’s get a list of anybody who was promised a job at a project Brae subsequently had shut down.”

  “Gold star for Lauren,” whispered Tony Holland. “Would you like me to follow up on Archie Christian, sir?” he asked. “In my opinion, he’s definitely worth a look.”

  Jejeune shook his head. “I’ve seen Mr. Christian’s file. As you say, he attracted a fair amount of attention in his younger days, but a bit of overzealous debt collecting doesn’t necessarily mean he is a killer. Besides, this crime seems all wrong for a professional enforcer. Apart from the chains around the wrists and ankles, there wasn’t a mark on Cameron Brae’s body. I’ve never actually met Mr. Christian, but I’m betting he would have taken a more direct approach, especially if it was revenge he was after.”

  Holland got there just before Maik. “More direct? Brae is about as dead as you can get, sir.”

  Jejeune nodded. “True, but killing somebody by hanging is not as clear-cut as you might think. If the drop is too short, the neck doesn’t break and the victim strangles to death. To kill a victim cleanly, you need to break the neck between the second and third cervical vertebrae, and to do that, you need to calculate the drop height pretty carefully, using the person’s weight.”

  “I don’t get it,” said Salter. “Why would the killer care one way or the other? You’ve already said this was a punishment; a humiliation. I would have thought the more Brae suffered, the better the murderer would have liked it.”

  “Except it can take up to forty-five minutes to strangle to death in a noose. No killer would want to wait around that long to make sure his victim was dead. And besides, someone went through those lists in Brae’s study.”

  It was Maik’s turn to look puzzled. “I thought those lists were still in his in-tray. How do we know anybody touched them?”

  “They were out of order. It’s not a mistake an academic like Brae would have made. Then there’s the return of the stepladder. No, this killer spent a lot of time pottering about at the scene, and that breaks all the rules for a professional like Christian.”

  “Absent any other clear motive, perhaps we should look at the wife’s career,” said Maik, breaking the silence that had followed Jejeune’s pronouncement.

  “Somebody killing her old
man as a way of getting to her, you mean?” asked Holland, warming to the idea. “Why not? Plenty of crazies out there.”

  “We should think about some sort of protective detail,” said Maik. “Just until we’re sure she’s not in any danger.”

  “I wonder, was there a pre-nuptial agreement?” said Jejeune.

  Salter shook her head. “A lot of people thought it would be a good idea. Brae even brought it up himself, apparently, but she refused. She was very firm about it, so everybody just let it drop.”

  Jejeune nodded. “Thank you.”

  And that was it. No discussion of Danny Maik’s cavalier promises to provide round-the-clock security for Mandy Brae, or crazed fans, or unreturned emails. Just the pre-nup that wasn’t.

  Salter sighed. If Jejeune had any idea where he was going next with this case, she was fairly sure he was the only one who did.

  10

  Just why Jejeune had sent him to conduct the interview with the professor alone, Maik wasn’t quite sure. But as a soldier, and a son of a soldier, Danny Maik had spent a good deal of his adult life following orders, many of them a lot more cryptic than this, so he accepted his duty without question. Loyalty to one’s superiors had been drilled into him from an early age by his father. It was about the only thing the serial adulterer had provided for him in his childhood, apart from a series of images of his mother sitting at their kitchen table, sobbing quietly. But the lessons of youth, however learned, stay with us, and Maik would always strive to obey those higher up the chain of command. And if that involved interviewing one of the world’s leading experts on the biochemistry of salt marshes, whether Maik had the first clue about the subject or not, then so be it. At least Jejeune hadn’t asked him to be subtle this time.

  For Maik, universities were the physical embodiment of all the opportunities that had eluded him: the learning, the connections, the privileges. He was not resentful, but he recognized how different his life might have turned out if a university education had been one of the options available to a boy of seventeen living with his abandoned mother. As it was, a chance to escape the stifling miseries of his home life, and a regular paycheque to send home to ease his conscience proved too alluring, so he had enlisted in the army at the earliest opportunity.

  Maik walked down the corridor between the soaring galleries rising on both sides, his footsteps echoing off the polished wood walls. He realized this was a world now beyond him, and found his old sense of tribalism rising; us and them, the mindset that had taken him through so many conflicts. Even here, in the tranquil halls of North Norfolk University? Blimey, son, time to get some help.

  Maik found the laboratory and entered after knocking. Professor Miles Alwyn was a slightly-built man, and his wardrobe seemed chosen especially to emphasize the fact. An oversized white cotton shirt billowed about his slender torso, dangling off his shoulders and gaping woefully around the neck. Baggy corduroys were gathered at the professor’s narrow waist by a thick black belt. Maik had no previous mental image of what a salt marsh biochemist might look like, but with his black-rimmed glasses and wispy brown hair, the man before him put the sergeant more in mind of a minor civil servant in a long-forgotten colonial outpost than a world-renowned academic. Alwyn’s reedy voice did little to dispel the impression.

  “Yes, yes, come in, Sergeant,” he said, making no secret of his annoyance at being disturbed. “I understand the need to investigate this dreadful business, really I do, but I fail to see the urgency. I mean, poor Cameron is already dead, after all, I don’t see why this couldn’t have waited until the end of the day.”

  A less seasoned police officer might have pointed out that, in a murder investigation, decisions about the urgency of inquiries are best left to the professionals. But the sergeant could already sense that trivializing the professor’s work, especially this professor’s work, was probably not the most productive path he could take.

  “We found an email to you from Cameron Brae, dated four days before he died,” he said perfunctorily.

  “Yes, he wanted a copy of a survey we had done on Peter Largemount’s land about five years ago. I’ve no idea why.”

  “You didn’t ask?”

  “I receive requests for data all the time, from people all over the world, many distinguished academics themselves. Each has his own reasons, I assume. All I can say is that Cameron had certainly never shown any interest in the survey results before.”

  “Did you arrange to have the report sent to him?”

  “I sent it myself.”

  “Rather than asking one of the admin people to do it?”

  Alwyn waved a dismissive hand. “It was a ten-minute job, for goodness’ sake. In the time it would have taken me to find somebody and explain the nature of the request to them, it was done.”

  “So the report was to hand then. You didn’t have to go hunting around for it.” Maik made a production of noting something down in his notebook. “Can you tell me a bit more about your relationship with Mr. Brae? I understand he was a colleague of yours here at one time.”

  Alwyn straightened, “Ah, I see you’ve been reading Cameron’s press releases.” He gave his head an emphatic nod. “Yes, he did assist me in some areas of my research, but colleague hardly describes Cameron’s contribution to the work here, regardless of what he would have his adoring public believe. My studies concern the impacts of weather systems on saltwater marshes. There appears to be fundamental differences between the ways saltwater and freshwater marshes are affected by storms and flooding. It is partly to do with the root systems of the vegetation; how deep they run, how well anchored they are.”

  “I see,” said Maik. Or at least I might, he thought, given time.

  “Cameron’s work, while interesting in its own way, I suppose, was really nothing more than a derivative of my research. He was looking at the impact of these weather systems on the populations of certain marsh species. Birds, mostly, of course.”

  Alwyn was hovering in a way that suggested he believed he had contributed all he could, or wanted to, and was now waiting to be dismissed, so he could get on with more important things.

  “I understand you worked together quite closely, in the early days.”

  “Mostly on surveys for the government, of the sort we did on Peter Largemount’s land. Phase one and phase two environmental studies, prior to a land sale or a change of use. I did the biochemistry and the microbiology. Cameron did all the macro stuff, the fuzzies and the furries. And the feathers, of course.”

  “Change of use? That would be agricultural to commercial?”

  Alwyn looked at Maik over his glasses. “It’s hardly likely to be the opposite these days, is it, Sergeant?”

  Maik found himself wondering just how little pressure it would take to snap that scrawny chicken-bone neck of the professor’s. Not that he was actually intending to do it, more as just an abstract academic exercise, the way they liked to do things out here in university land.

  “Your collaboration stopped quite suddenly, by all accounts, but there was never a public explanation for your split.”

  “That’s because it was a private matter. While some of us felt it was more important to remain in the trenches doing the real work, the hard science, others felt the call of stardom. There may be some redeeming features to standing before a camera and reporting on other people’s findings. Call it what you will, but it isn’t science. ‘Professional differences,’ I believe the newspapers would term it these days.”

  “And yet, even after he left, he still maintained an office in the department. And part-time status as a lecturer.”

  “Sadly, university administrators are every bit as sycophantic toward celebrities as the rest of you. They let him maintain a presence here, no doubt in the hope that some of the stardust would fall upon them. I’m not sure that it ever did. But I suppose it was useful at fundraisers.”

  “It must have been awkward, given the nature of your breakup, crossing paths all the time.”


  “Hardly. I told you, Cameron’s idea of expanding the frontiers of science was standing in front of a camera and reading it off a script, or posing for photographs with that ridiculous wife of his. The tedium of data analysis was hardly his realm anymore. Plus, of course, I generally do most of my lab work at night. I enjoy the solitude.”

  “Do you know his wife at all, the current Mrs. Brae?”

  “The Party Animal? Don’t look so surprised, Sergeant. Most of these students grew up on The Roquettes’ music. Even a few of the younger faculty, I imagine. I can’t say I ever cared for it myself.”

  Nor did Maik, truth be told, but he got the sense he and the professor were in the minority. The Roquettes’ oeuvre was hardly the sort of contribution to the history of music that was going to endure, but it had captured the imagination of an entire generation for a brief moment in time.

  “I have never met her, but she did call me once, just after she moved to Saltmarsh. She wanted to know if I could explain the nature of Cameron’s work to her.”

  “And?”

  Alwyn shrugged. “I could have covered his contributions to the field, such as they were, in about ten seconds. His research was not what one would call far-reaching. I sent her a brief synopsis, really rather basic.” He shook his head regretfully. “Sadly, even that proved beyond her. She called with some alarmingly naive questions. I told her it was obvious that this would simply be a waste of time for both of us. I thought that would be that. But she called back. Wanted me to tutor her, one on one. Offered to pay me any sum I chose. She was quite insistent. I suppose people like that are used to getting what they want. But she clearly had no capacity for such a level of study, and I told her as much. I never heard from her again.”

  Maik must have pulled a face as he wrote in his notebook.

  “This is a university, Sergeant. More, we are a science faculty. Our entire raison d’être is the truth. I was not about to take her through a secondary school science curriculum on the pretense that one day she might be able to converse as an equal with her husband on saltmarsh ecology, not even if she was a paying passenger.”