A Pitying of Doves

by Steve Burrows

  They were each subdued as they packed, but there was no anger in their silence. Domenic was a policeman. End of. The job, whether he wanted to do it or not, came first. And Domenic’s expression as he drove down through the mountains after his call to Danny Maik told Lindy all she needed to know about the seriousness of the situation back home.

  Only once had he broached the subject after he told her they would have to cut the holiday short and return to the U.K. right away. “It’s been good,” he told her. “I’m glad we came.” And she could tell that he was. But it had not all been good, and she could see the trace of sadness behind his eyes.

  “I’m so sorry, Dom,” she said sadly. “Maybe it’s not too late, if it’s what you really want to do … work with birds. Maybe there is some other way you could be involved, when we get back home. There are lots of organizations; that citizen science Traz was talking about …” Her arguments petered out as she acknowledged their futility.

  Their packing was interrupted by a knock on the door. It would be Lindy’s new friend, the desk clerk, with the details of their flight. Five hours from now, thought Lindy, if she remembered her research correctly. George F.L. Charles to London via Bridgetown, Barbados. She had played the Detective Chief Inspector card with the clerk when she stopped by the desk, just to make sure there was room on the flight. So, five hours. Time to do a little shopping on the way to the airport perhaps, eat at one of the roadside cafes, grab a couple of last little bits of St. Lucia to take home with them from this brief, strange, enlightening holiday.

  She padded to the door barefoot, readying a smile for the girl she had connected with over the course of their short stay. How strange, she thought, the way people pop into our lives and assume such importance and then are gone again, most likely forever.

  But it wasn’t the desk clerk. Three policemen stood in the hall, two in the smart white starched shirts and peaked caps of the St. Lucia constabulary, and one behind, smaller, but clearly the power, in his lightweight peacock-blue linen suit and dark wraparound sunglasses.

  “Royal St. Lucia Police Force.” The man in the blue suit offered a name, but in her shock she missed it. The three men entered the hotel room without asking for permission. Blue Suit removed his sunglasses before he spoke.

  “Domenic Jejeune?”

  “Inspector Domenic Jejeune actually,” Lindy answered for him. “Chief Inspector.” She looked at Domenic, who had stopped packing but was still hovering over his case, making no move at all.

  Blue Suit was impassive. He showed no signs of discomfort despite the tropical heat in the room, where Lindy had turned off the air conditioning and opened the windows wide to allow the St. Lucia climate free rein one last time before they left.

  “You will need to accompany us to the station.” His delivery was dispassionate. It didn’t seem to leave much room for argument, but Dom seemed to be accepting it particularly meekly. Professional courtesy was one thing, but Lindy didn’t owe a thing to these men who had pushed themselves into her hotel room at the end of her vacation.

  “We have a plane to catch,” she said bluntly, looking away from the men and making a show of resuming her packing.

  Neither Blue Suit nor the other officers reacted. They just stood there, waiting for Domenic Jejeune, Chief Inspector Domenic Jejeune, actually, to decide what he was going to do next. There was no hostility in their demeanor, but no reassurance either; not a single smile or softening of an expression to reduce the tension. The other two were still young; perhaps friendliness might be construed as a sign of weakness out on the mean streets of Castries. But Blue Suit was a veteran, his hard face lined with the experiences of a lifetime of imposing law and order on this tropical island. He could have afforded a slight smile and gotten away with it, a small gesture of mollification. He offered nothing. Lindy had caught Domenic’s act a few times and she had always thought he had the professional detachment thing down pretty well, but he could take a few lessons from this one. There weren’t many cold things on this island, but this man’s demeanor out-cooled anything else by some distance.

  “Flights leave the island daily for the U.K. If you miss this flight, arrangements can be made to take a later one,” he said in the same neutral tone as before.

  Arrangements can be made. But not by him. Lindy had been around power often enough to recognize it when she saw it. You wouldn’t find this one rounding up the tourists who had committed crimes after a few too many Piton beers and shipping them back home. That would be the purview of these happy chappies in the white shirts. Blue Suit would be back in a well-appointed office somewhere, planning schedules for visiting dignitaries, not playing travel agent for a visiting copper.

  “May I have a couple of minutes?” Domenic sounded polite, but not contrite.

  “You can take a few moments, but you may not be alone.”

  “Just what the hell is going on?” Whether Lindy’s fire came from the fact that she didn’t know, or that Domenic seemed to, wasn’t clear. She turned to him in frustration. “Is this about the case?”

  “It could be. I’m not sure.” Jejeune paused, sighed almost. “No,” he said finally, “I don’t think it is.”

  Realization fell from the sky and landed on Lindy with a crushing force.

  “It’s about your …”

  Jejeune’s look stopped her cold. There were a thousand messages in his gaze. You need to not know. You need to be able to say you don’t know, that I have never told you anything. It needs to be true.

  Lindy reached for her bag. “I’m coming with you.”

  The two uniformed officers looked at their commander uncertainly. He gave a disinterested shrug.

  “No,” said Jejeune urgently. “Stay here and wait for me. Finish packing. I’m sure we will work all this out and I’ll be back in no time.” He looked toward the commander as if seeking some reassurance, but the man’s face remained impassive.

  Lindy reached for the room telephone. “Then I’m calling the British High Commission, right now.”

  “Don’t call anybody,” said Jejeune. “Please. Just wait. I’ll be back. Check into other flights, the next one. Just in case …” he added weakly. “It’s okay, Lindy, honestly. Everything is going to be all right.”

  And when I get back I’ll explain everything, he didn’t say. We’ll have a laugh about all this over a couple of drinks, about how it was all a mistake, just some crazy, typical police cock-up. He didn’t say any of it, because it was clear that it was no mistake. It was about the only thing about this entire mad, frightening business that was clear to Lindy. Blue Suit hadn’t built a career of policing on this island by barging into the hotel rooms of visiting police officers and hauling them off to the station by mistake. Whatever was going on, it was Domenic Jejeune they had come for. And it was Domenic Jejeune who, with one last lingering backward glance that was meant to be reassuring but fell short on so many levels, was going with them now, leaving Lindy with nothing to do but sit on the bed and let all her anger and frustration and concern well up inside her and release itself as tears.

  47

  Gabriel Obregón was slumped against the kitchen cabinets when Maik and Holland burst into the farmhouse. From the angle of the boy’s shoulder, Maik guessed it was probably a broken collarbone. Luisa Obregón was kneeling beside him, dabbing his bleeding mouth with a towel.

  “Is he still here?”

  She nodded. “In the aviary. He came in demanding the doves. Gabriel tried to stop him.” She looked down at her son. “He was so brave.”

  Holland had known this call was something different, something tricky, when Maik had grabbed his shoulder as he headed out of the station. “With me. Now,” he had said urgently. Holland understood now why Maik had looked so troubled by the call he had received moments earlier.

  “Why did he want the doves?” Holland looked at Maik, but it was Luisa Obregón who answered.

  “He said the police would hesitate, think twice, about arresting him if h
e had the birds as a …” she struggled for the phrase.

  Her son offered it through swollen lips. “Bargaining chip,” he said weakly.

  Why hadn’t she called 999, or the station? Why him, on his mobile? Did she know, somehow, the connection between the two men, or had he said something, mentioned Danny, as he was using his dark arts to neutralize Gabriel Obregón?

  “Sergeant, my son.” She reached down and tenderly stroked his cheek.

  Maik snapped out of his reverie. “Are the birds here?”

  “I have already told you this. I have not seen those birds since they disappeared during the storm. Sergeant, my son needs help. He must go to a hospital.”

  Maik turned to Holland. “Get an ambulance out here. But tell them no police. We’re here, it’s under control. No backup required. Got it?” And then to Obregón again. “Was he armed?”

  She shook her head. “I did not see a weapon, but perhaps, this man …” She turned again to look at her son. Both Maik and Holland took her meaning. Perhaps this man did not need weapons.

  Maik moved toward the door. “I’m going in to the aviary,” he told Holland. “You stay out here. Under no circumstances come through that door. You wait out here for me to tell you what to do next.”

  Holland nodded and reached for his phone as Maik moved off. Listening to the ring, he looked down into the face of the young man lying at his feet. He was the image of his father, the man Holland had seen in the missing person files: the dark hair, the features. And the eyes, dark fluid reflecting pools into which Luisa Obregón could immerse herself, as she was now doing, reliving her past. Holland regarded her carefully. It was as clear as a written statement: Luisa Obregón was still married, faithful to a man who had disappeared from her life and was never coming back. Even an eternal optimist like Tony Holland could see that he would never have stood a chance with her.

  Danny Maik strolled out onto the elevated walkway trying to project a confidence he didn’t feel. The afternoon sun was streaming in through the glass panes on the roof of the aviary, and a sticky, cloying heat filled the space. All around him, birds beat the air with their wings as they escaped to the safety of the treetops. But not below. When Maik reached the observation platform and leaned over the rail to tentatively scan the overgrown vegetation below, he could see nothing moving at all.

  “You shouldn’t have warned Colleen Shepherd off, Danny. A dead giveaway that I was in your sights.” The voice came from off to the right somewhere, indistinct.

  “You weren’t even a suspect then, Guy. You were just wrong for her. That’s all.” As he called out, Maik scoured the dense undergrowth for signs of movement. There were none.

  “You ought to open one of those online dating services, Danny. Make a fortune.”

  Maik craned his neck to see over the railing. A different location now, farther back, behind him somewhere. He had seen nothing, though, not even the shimmer of a single branch as Trueman had moved through the tangled foliage.

  “Those stolen birds aren’t here, Guy,” called Danny. “They never were.” The heat was oppressive now. Maik wanted to remove his jacket, but he was concerned about making any unusual movements, at least until he knew where Trueman was. And if he was armed.

  “Not about birds anymore, though, is it? We’ve got other business to sort out now, you and me.”

  Over to the left again. Always moving but never giving a sign of it. Trueman hadn’t lost any of his skills, by the look of it. But Danny knew he couldn’t say the same about himself. Finally, he detected a flicker, a shimmer of movement, almost directly beneath the platform. If Trueman did have a weapon, he had a bead on Danny from here.

  “This is not us, Guy, shouting at each other through the treetops like this.” Maik eased back from the railing carefully. “I’m going to take my coat off, no sudden movements, nothing up my sleeve. And then I’m coming down.”

  No response this time. Silence was unnatural, even in this man-made jungle in the middle of the north Norfolk countryside. But it wasn’t comforting. When Guy Trueman was around, silence was your enemy.

  Maik removed his jacket and loosened his tie, then began to climb down the ladder, discreetly tucked against one of the supporting pillars. Facing the ladder, he had his sweat-soaked back exposed to the aviary. If Guy Trueman was going to attack him now, Danny would have no defence. Maik reached the ground and spun around. Nothing. Just a wall of green — thick, dark, impenetrable.

  Maik began to pick his way through the vegetation, moving slowly, carefully. The heat was even greater down here, and he blinked the sweat from his eyes as he moved through the undergrowth. He felt gravel beneath his feet and found himself in the centre of a small clearing. There were feeding stations and a stone water fountain, long dry and now all but claimed by mosses and climbing vines. On the ground, a few old feeding dishes lay overturned and broken. It would have been an open space when the doves used to feed here, thought Maik, exposed, offering no cover.

  Maik heard a rustling behind him and turned to find Guy Trueman standing on the far side of the clearing. He was in a combat-ready stance but his hands were free of weapons. A single shaft of light from above penetrated the overgrowth and fell on the gravel between them.

  “Well, this is a situation, isn’t it, Danny? Bet there’s no Motown tune to cover this one.”

  They had been here before, surrounded by foliage in heavy, tropical heat. The clothes were different, though. Civvies, now, Danny in his shirtsleeves and Guy Trueman in a golf shirt and sharp slacks, looking as if he had just stepped off the course at the Saltmarsh Golf Club. And the danger, of course, that was different, too. Before, it had never come from within.

  Trueman made a show of taking in their surroundings. He spread his hands before him. “So, what happens now? Mano-a-mano?”

  “Be a bit embarrassing, wouldn’t it? Two old buggers like us rolling around on the ground.” Maik made it sound light, but both men knew the truth of it. With the skills they possessed, it could be more than embarrassing. For one of them, it could be fatal. “You weren’t in your room, Guy. Not when Jordan Waters was killed.”

  Trueman looked at Maik with interest, but he said nothing.

  “We have a changeable climate out here in north Norfolk. You never know what you’re going to get from one day to the next. Especially on a spring morning. We’ve been getting a bit of sea fog lately. Fret, the old timers call it.”

  “Long way to come just to give me a weather report, Danny. You got a point?”

  “This fret, it burns off as soon the sun comes up, most of the time. You’d never even know it’s been there. But when it rolls in,” Maik shook his head sagely, “sometimes you can’t even see your hand in front of your face. Certainly from your hotel room you couldn’t see the picturesque seaside village of Saltmarsh come to life, dawn breaking over the boats in the harbour, things like that.”

  Trueman stayed silent still, but Maik could see his body squaring, shifting his balance just that little bit, to where it would need to be if he was going to launch an attack.

  “There was a lot of fret about at oh six hundred on the morning Jordan Waters died,” Maik said, slowly, evenly, keeping his voice as flat as he could. “I know, I was out in it, recovering Waters’s body from a culvert.”

  “A bit of fog?” Trueman’s laugh had all the anger and contempt he could muster. “That’s what this is all about? Come on, Danny, you’re embarrassing yourself here.” Trueman tensed slightly as he eased into another stance. It was one Danny recognized. Guy Trueman was tipping forward ever so slightly onto the balls of his feet, readying himself for action. “You always did think you were one up on me, didn’t you? The rest of them,” Trueman held up a little finger, “round here, no problem. But not Danny Maik. I never minded that. When you’re in charge of a unit, there’s always going to be one, somewhere down the ranks, who’s smarter than you are. Now a good CO, he might even welcome that, as long as this man knew how to keep it in check. But
you’ve overstretched yourself here, old son.”

  “You’re going to have to come in with me, Guy,” said Maik evenly. He felt a bead of sweat trickle down his cheek.

  “And what if I don’t want to? What then?”

  “The kids today,” said Danny quietly, “they have a saying — I don’t think it would end well.”

  “How d’you mean, me doing time for assaulting a police officer and you in a hospital bed somewhere? Not well like that, you mean?” Trueman raised his voice angrily, but he didn’t move.

  They stood in their arena of green, two aging gladiators separated by a shaft of sunlight, the heat like a physical force around them. Trueman seemed to be considering things, weighing his options. He hasn’t decided yet, thought Danny. He hasn’t made his mind up which way this is going to go. But it would be up to Trueman. It would be his decision. Danny would be content to let him make the first move. It was the last move Danny was more concerned about. He just hoped he would be making that one.

  “What is it now? Forty-eight hours you can hold me?” said Trueman conversationally, so suddenly it made Maik flinch slightly. “So I’ll just sit it out, shall I? And on hour forty-nine I’ll pick up my gear and skate off into the sunset. And then where are we, eh? Hard feelings all round, and nobody’s really any farther ahead. Come on, Danny, it’s not too late to put this right. This is not even reasonable suspicion you’ve got here. You couldn’t hold your worst enemy on this. I know it, you know it, and your flirty DCS knows it, too. All I see here is a bit of doubt, some desperation, and a handful of jealousy thrown in for good measure.”