Every Trick in the Rook

by Marty Wingate

  Michael exhaled deeply and shook his head. “No, I’ve never seen him.”

  Callow nodded toward the DS, who pulled a flat plastic bag out from beneath the file folder.

  “We found this clutched in Mr. Hawkins’s hand,” she said. “Can either of you tell me why he might have had it?”

  The bag held a piece of paper about the size of an index card with a black-and-white photo. The paper looked as if it had been torn off a larger sheet and wrinkled, but flattened out again, with reddish-brown stains around the edges. The photo on it may have been a black-and-white copy, but the colors came to life in my mind. Michael and I smiled at the camera: I wore my flirty pink dress—long sleeves, short hem, plunging back—and Michael, a tux. I remembered the night—it had been two months ago and we were all dressed up for a fund-raising dinner for the Rupert Lanchester Foundation. It had been a lovely evening and had raised buckets of money. The photo looked as if it had been printed off an online news site, one of those social events pages. Part of the caption was missing, but our names were legible, as well as the phrase “busy couple who still find time to…” Find time to what? I wondered.

  “Why would Mr. Hawkins have this?” Callow asked. “And if he’d been away for three years—”

  “Five,” I corrected her. “He left for St. Kilda five years ago. We were divorced three years ago.” I waited for her to ask why it took us so long, but she followed her own train of thought.

  “If he’d been away for that long, it might make sense he would want to see you, Ms. Lanchester”—it made no sense to me, but I kept my mouth shut—“but why would he want to talk with you, Mr. Sedgwick?”

  “I’ve no idea.”

  “Are you asking them”—I nodded toward Nick’s ID—“the rest of the people in AIL? Are you asking them about Nick?”

  “We would if we could find them,” Glossop said.

  “You mean they’re in hiding?”

  “Do you know how many people live on Hirta—the only inhabited island of St. Kilda?” Callow asked.

  I shrugged. “Not too many, I would think.”

  “Ten—year-round,” Callow said. “For two months in the summer, the researchers move in and the tour boats arrive. The population swells to about thirty-five. Mr. Hawkins was one of the few who lived there throughout the year. Sounds like a lonely life for a young man.”

  “Sounds like it would suit Nick.” My face reddened as I heard my words as they would hear them, callous, cold.

  The DI stood, signaling an imminent dismissal. She rested her fingertips on the table and stood straight and tall.

  “We are at the very beginning of this investigation, and may need to reach you with further questions. I know you both realize”—right, here it is—“how very important it is that you do nothing on your own. If you accidentally come across even the smallest piece of information that may have to do with Mr. Hawkins’s death, you will turn it over to me or to DS Glossop and not pursue it yourself. Am I understood?”

  It was as if I was in school again—I almost replied, “Yes, miss,” but stopped myself in time and nodded.

  “And, Mr. Sedgwick, we’ll need you to give us your schedule for Friday and anyone who can verify your whereabouts.”

  I shot out of my chair. “You can’t be seriously keeping that up. Why in God’s name would Michael want to kill Nick?”

  Before Callow could answer, Michael put a hand on my arm and said, “I don’t mind. You know how it is, Julia.”

  Only too well.

  —

  “Come back to the house with us,” Dad said as he, Beryl, and Linus clustered round Michael and me when we emerged.

  “Yes,” Beryl said. “We’ll cook a meal together, just have a quiet evening.”

  I shook my head. “I want to go home—come by the cottage, why don’t you? Linus, you, too.”

  “Thank you, Julia,” Linus replied, pulling his trouser clip from his pocket. “I’ll go back to the Hall. I know the others will be waiting to hear you’re all right.”

  “You didn’t cycle over, did you?” Linus rode his bike all over the estate and the journey to the police station wasn’t that far, but still, it seemed a bit extreme—the road between Sudbury and Smeaton could be quite busy.

  He looked down at the clip in his hand and smiled. “No, sorry, automatic response, I suppose.” Back went the clip. “Please let me know if you need anything. The TIC is closed tomorrow, but why don’t you take Tuesday off as well—surely Vesta could fill in?”

  “No, tomorrow will be enough.” I didn’t know what everyone expected me to do—wear black? Plan the funeral? In my stomach, the lump of guilt began to swell.

  We walked out and down the steps to the car park, and I heard someone call my name.

  “Julia?”

  I turned toward the voice and heard the click of a camera. Five or six people, strung out along the edge of the pavement, all began talking at once, their volume increasing into a Tower of Babel.

  “Rupert! Is it true your son-in-law was murdered?”

  “Michael! How will this affect your relationship with Julia?”

  “Julia! Did you find the body? What went through your mind? Are you sorry for the divorce now?”

  For a moment, we stood frozen as the questions pelted us. A woman in a brown duffel coat—her hair close-cropped on one side, with a severe wedge of auburn frizz on the other—thrust something furry at me. I could see scratches on her hand and arm, and for a second I thought she held a kitten, but then realized it was a small windscreen, like a tiny muff, on a handheld recorder. Recorder? I jumped away from the thing.

  “Michael!” A tall, wide fellow pushed his way forward. “Were you arguing with him and it turned violent? Tell us your side of the story.”

  Dad spread his arms and hurried us away.

  “Rupert! You didn’t see any carrion crows, did you? Not like in the film, eh? Pecking his eyes out?”

  We all stopped at that last one. I whirled round, scanned the group, and saw a man at the back standing up on the curb. He was short and balding with wispy blond hair. He had two cameras round his neck and an iPhone in his hand, and he wore one of those canvas waistcoats with a million tiny Velcro pockets. His face was flushed, and I knew he had been the one.

  Rupert took a sharp breath. “Now, then, this is a private matter,” he called in a friendly manner—I doubted that any in that group could hear the underlying fury. “I’m sure you’ll respect that.”

  “Lord Fotheringill?” One of the other men asked this with a note of delighted incredulity in his voice. They all turned on Linus, who held his head high and gave us a nod. Rupert herded us away.

  “Your Lordship,” we heard one say, “bad luck for the estate. Or will you start conducting murder tours round the Hall?”

  Chapter 5

  When we’d arrived back in the village, Beryl had nipped into Akash’s shop for sandwiches and now had them arranged on a plate, which she set on the coffee table.

  I brought the tea in. Dad sat in the one armchair and the rest of us crowded onto the sofa. I spotted the roast-chicken-and-stuffing sandwich and nabbed a half—it had been hours and hours since breakfast.

  The first topic of discussion was “How did they know?” They meaning the press, the media, whoever that lot was outside the station.

  “Police reports go online quickly, don’t they?” Dad asked. “Incident reports and the like.”

  “Sounded as if they knew more than would be in an incident report,” I said.

  “Journos are free with their suppositions—at least some types are,” Michael said. He knew a thing or two about the press, because he’d worked in his family’s PR business, HMS, Ltd., before getting on with Rupert. “They’ll say anything and look for a reaction. If they get one, that’s what they’ll pursue.”

  “It’ll die down, this attention,” Beryl said. “Just don’t engage—don’t react or lash out.”

  I saw the three of them exchange looks.
That advice was meant for me, of course. But I could behave when I needed to—although I hoped it wouldn’t come to that. Perhaps they would just leave us alone.

  —

  Michael and I went over everything Callow and Glossop had asked and what we had told them, and Beryl and Rupert began to fill in their side of the story. Late Saturday afternoon—only the day before—the police appeared at Hoggin Hall to inform Linus that a man’s body had been found on the grounds. As they scoured the scene—no doubt rummaging through Nick’s pockets—police discovered his identity but did not make any connection with us until they found the crumpled paper in Nick’s hand. Michael and I were out of touch at the coast, and so when they couldn’t find us, they found Rupert instead. He and Beryl were in Bristol, where Dad had given a talk at the university on Friday.

  “I explained who Nick was,” Dad said.

  “And we came straight back,” Beryl added.

  “Did you have to”—I swallowed hard—“identify him?”

  Dad nodded once. “Yes. But I told them I had no idea how Nick came to be there.”

  “Nick called Smeaton ‘my village’ in the email to Michael. How did he even know where I was?”

  “How does anyone know anything these days?” Michael asked. “He probably found you online.”

  “Oh, right.” Our website for the estate included a staff page with a photo of Vesta, Willow, and me—all smiling, wearing our uniforms of navy pencil skirt, cardigan, and white blouse. Well, not Willow, of course—she sported one of her usual hodgepodge outfits of batik-print skirt, crocheted waistcoat, and beret.

  “And you’ve had no word from him all this time?” Dad asked.

  “Except for signing the divorce papers, nothing for—five years.”

  “And you, Michael—Nick has never tried to get in touch with you before this? What about your family business?”

  I couldn’t imagine what Nick would need with HMS, Ltd., now run by Miles, Michael’s older brother. Send out press releases for the latest vagrant-bird sightings? Red-crested pochard drops in for a visit!

  “No, sir.” Michael picked up his mug of tea and stared into it.

  “Dad, do you know the people Nick worked with—AIL, the Avian Institute of Learning?”

  “I’ve no idea.”

  “Would they be from Cambridge, do you think?”

  “Entirely possible, but it’s not for us to find out. We’ll have to leave it to the police.” Dad apparently didn’t like the silence that followed his statement. “Won’t we, Jools?”

  “Yes, of course. But I do hope they’ll tell us what happened.” The sandwiches had been reduced to crumbs, and the teapot held only sodden lumps. “Shall I do us another pot?”

  “I’d say we’d best be off,” Beryl said, gathering dishes and setting them on the tray. I followed her into the kitchen, where she turned to me and said, “You’ll ring Bianca, won’t you? Your father sent her a text to say we’d found you, so she knows you’re safe, but she’ll want to hear from you.”

  “Of course I will. Did you tell Stephen?”

  Beryl shook her head and frowned. “Have you spoken to him lately?”

  “It’s been two or three weeks,” I said. Beryl’s son, Stephen; my sister, Bianca; and I had grown up together. We had been, as my mum used to say, thick as thieves; our parents had called us the gang of three. Bee and I still kept in touch with Stephen, although we were geographically scattered, Stephen in London, Bee in Cornwall, and I in Suffolk.

  “I understand you want to stay here, Julia, but won’t you come over to Cambridge tomorrow?”

  “Michael and I have the next month’s schedule to sort,” Dad said as he took his jacket and helped Beryl into hers. “Might as well get some work done.”

  “Yes, all right.”

  We walked out onto the pavement with them. One moment the street was quiet, and the next, pandemonium.

  “Julia! Can you bear to have him touch you knowing what he did?”

  “Rupert! Do you regret hiring Michael?”

  There they were, hurrying across the road toward us. It looked like the same ones, all snapping photos and waving phones in the air—the large one, two men wearing identical jackets, that woman in the brown duffel coat with her kitten recorder, the short one with the pockets—all hoping for a juicy sound bite. But above it all, and almost drowning out the hateful questions, was a raucous cawing from the sky. Out of the corner of my eye I saw a dark figure drop from the sky and looked up in time to see a rook dive-bomb the group of journos. They scattered, but the big one tripped and fell flat. The others laughed.

  Dad seized this moment of distraction and said to us, “Go back inside,” as he and Beryl made for their car. Michael and I retreated indoors and moved to the window, peering through a slit in the curtains. Three of them—the large one and the twin jackets—followed the famous Rupert Lanchester to his car, but kitten woman stayed across the road. She stood next to the balding fellow with the cameras—the little weasel—but when she said something to him, he stepped away.

  “Talk about carrion crows,” I said. “I should ring Callow—couldn’t she send someone to drive them off?”

  “They’ll get tired of it,” Michael said. “Was that a crow out there?”

  “No, a rook—his long, pale beak, you know. And his leg feathers.” I peeked out the slit, scanning the rooftops across the road. “I met a rook the other day.”

  “Did you now?” I noted the relief in Michael’s voice as the subject shifted. I looked over to see one corner of his mouth tug into a grin. “And what’s he called?”

  “He’s called Alfie,” I said, and smiled back. “He was with his friend, a little girl named Tennyson. They stopped in the TIC Friday afternoon.” That reminder brought the light moment to an abrupt end. Friday afternoon, when Nick was murdered.

  “We might as well stay indoors this evening,” Michael suggested. “What do you say?”

  “Yes, perfect,” I said with false cheer. “We’ll watch a movie. I’ll do us a pasta.” We looked out at the empty street. “What did Nick want with us, Michael?”

  —

  I came down the next morning to find Michael at the same spot near the window, peering through the curtains.

  “Are they still there?” I asked.

  “They’re reassembling, I’d say.”

  “The absolute nerve of them.” I took two decisive steps toward the door, but Michael caught my hand. “Yes, all right,” I huffed. “Don’t engage.”

  “Tea’s ready,” Michael said as I heard the toast pop.

  We sat in the kitchen. “Why don’t I follow you over to Cambridge in a bit?” I asked as I reached for the butter. “I think I’ll ring Bee again; she’ll have a bit more free time this morning.”

  My sister, Bianca, lived at the end of the earth, as far as I was concerned—St. Ives—and deftly juggled a husband and four children. But evenings could be chaotic, which had been the case when we’d tried to talk the evening before. Now, with her husband, Paul, at his gallery, and Emelia, Enid, and Emmet in their various schools, she’d have only baby Estella to deal with. And me.

  “Yeah,” Michael said, “that’s fine. And listen—why don’t you stay off the Internet this morning.” I grabbed for my phone, and Michael put his hand over mine. “I mean it, Julia—what good will it do except to get you angry?”

  “I can’t not look. I can’t avoid the whole matter. I’ll be fine.”

  “Will you? Reacting will only make it worse—they’d seize on it and use it against you.”

  I nodded vigorously. “Yes, all right.”

  A few minutes later, when Michael stepped out, a cacophony of rapid-fire questions hit us like pellets, accompanied, once again, by a rook’s harsh descent from above.

  “Michael! Did he attack you? Were you defending yourself? Tell us how it happened!”

  “Were you in it together, Julia? Was Michael saving you?”

  I swallowed a retort as Michael yanked t
he door out of my hand and closed it with a shudder. I watched from our lookout as he walked to his car, acting as if he was entirely alone on the street instead of being trailed by a gaggle of angry geese, nipping at his heels. As yesterday, the rook flew at the group, scattering them as they ducked his attack. Rooks—as well as crows, magpies, and jackdaws—took offense easily and didn’t soon forget a slight. Had one of these journos—or perhaps the lot of them—done the bird some wrong? Steal a rock bun he had saved? Wouldn’t give up a bit of ham sandwich? I squinted at the bird. Was that Alfie?

  Michael drove off and the reporters slunk back, keeping to under the eaves and darting in doorways. You can’t hide—I see you. I clamped my eyes on the little weasel, who brought up the rear. Especially you. He might look innocent, hanging back like that, but I knew better and was happy to make him the figurehead. It felt good to have a target.

  love nest torn apart by murder!

  rupert’s shock over daughter’s tryst with ex

  the birds told him to do it!

  the rival for her affections—did boyfriend go too far?

  The headlines went from bad to worse. I had the windows tiled on my laptop screen so that the impact quadrupled. The People’s News, Sightings, Suffolk Echo, Cambridge Mercury and Reformer—I’d never heard of these sites. The photos of us—mostly Michael and me and Dad, but with Beryl in the background, and one of Linus holding his hand up—were those awful, catching-you-off-guard sort—mouths open, arms waving as if we were trying to get away from it all. And so we were.

  I kept the images on the screen as I rang Bee, anger fueling the fiery pain in my chest. I desperately needed a load of good sense.

  “They’re toerags, every last one of them,” Bianca spat into the phone. “They don’t care how this rubbish affects people’s lives, they only care about selling their gossip. And will they retract any of these allegations when they find out what really happened? Bloody unlikely, I’d say.”

  I felt better immediately. “It’s as if they’re an entirely different breed from the press that write about Dad and his teaching and the program,” I said as I switched on the kettle. “Where do these people come from?”