Every Trick in the Rook

by Marty Wingate

  “God, you gave me a fright, Alfie,” I called after him. “Mind you don’t mess with that stoat!” I thought a full-grown rook too large to be taken by a stoat, but caught unaware, you never knew.

  Behind me, I heard a car on the drive. The engine cut off, and a door opened and closed. A pricking sensation danced up my arm. I shouldn’t be here. Murderers return to the scenes of their crimes—that’s what they said, wasn’t it? I should run. If I dash through the wood, and jump the drainage ditch, I could make it safely to the front door of the Hall and throw myself on Thorne’s mercy. Why hadn’t I put my trainers on?

  I crept forward, hoping I could dive into an opening on the path I saw about five feet ahead, but I froze on the spot when I came face-to-face with DI Callow.

  “Ms. Lanchester,” she said, pausing in her climb up the trail. “What are you doing here?”

  I thrust my chin out. “It’s the Fotheringill estate, Inspector. I work here.” She raised one eyebrow and waited—such an irritating police maneuver, as if the simple act of keeping quiet would force me into spilling all my thoughts and motivations and reasons.

  “I wanted to see where Nick died—where you found his body. It isn’t as if I’m trespassing.” With a backward glance to the summerhouse, I added, “I didn’t go in.”

  Callow walked past me, took hold of the police tape, and pulled it up. “Go on, then. We’ve finished here, and officers have searched the area.”

  Permission to enter didn’t cause me to hurry. I ducked under the tape and made it up two steps, but my feet were like lead, and it took all my energy to continue—both drawn to and repelled by what I might see.

  “What did you find?” I asked as Callow came up beside me and we continued to climb the stairs—much easier, I found, with a companion.

  “Why would Mr. Hawkins choose the grounds of the Hall to meet Mr. Sedgwick? And would he have known of this summerhouse?” she asked.

  Yes, fine, don’t answer. But don’t expect me to give up asking.

  “Michael’s never been to the summerhouse. It’s mentioned on the estate’s website. And it’s indicated on maps, but we put it in small type with an asterisk: ‘Not open to the public.’ I’ve no idea how it got into Nick’s head.”

  We’d reached the small terrace at the top of the stairs, and I stopped. I may have even backed up a step or two, because Callow asked, “Are you sure you want to go in? It’s been gone over”—cleaned up, she meant—“but it still can be upsetting to—”

  Afraid she was about to say, “to loved ones,” I broke with her and strode forward into the room. First, I was struck by the cold. With the tree cover, the stone and the brick had little opportunity to absorb heat from the sun, and so the mild spring had yet to penetrate. But I could still see what a pleasant place it must’ve been when well cared for—white walls would have made it a bright and cheery place. For a moment, I could see past the ivy that had twined itself round the sconces on the walls, the brambles tumbling in through the broken windows, and the weathered dining table in the center of the room that looked as if one place setting would cause a sudden collapse—and I saw long summer evenings and cold suppers and watching the sun sink behind the undulating farmland to the west.

  “We found him here.”

  The DI had moved to the north side of the room. I took in the scene from where I stood. Police had done what they could, I suppose, but an extremely large dark spot covered the white stone floor below one of the windows. Nature had taken advantage of any opening, but here the brambles had been swept back like a stage curtain.

  Callow took on a neutral tone, as if describing plans for a new traffic-control system. “It appeared that Mr. Hawkins had fallen into the vines and become tangled, the thorns catching at his clothes. We’ve taken a sample of the stems and sent them away for blood analysis.”

  I swallowed hard. It seemed as if there would’ve been plenty of blood for that.

  “Mr. Hawkins would’ve lost consciousness quickly,” Callow said. I wished she’d keep that kind tone out of her voice. I blinked rapidly. “If he didn’t become entangled on his own, the murderer may not have realized how severe the wound was and wanted to make any escape attempt more difficult.”

  Nick and I may have been the world’s worst match as a couple, but I knew him well enough to know he could never have done anything so bad as to deserve to die for it.

  “Did you find anything—fingerprints or footprints?”

  “No, not even in here with all the blood. The killer was careful. And the ground’s thick with leaves—not good material for shoe impressions. A car on the drive wouldn’t show in the chippings. But.” Full stop.

  “But?”

  “Someone met him here—not far off the drive where he told Mr. Sedgwick he’d be and on land where his only tie was to you.”

  I knew her next words. Why did he come here? Why did he want to meet me and to talk with Michael? Why? The question ran on a loop in my head, and I had no way to stop it.

  “Have you thought further about it? Have you thought of any reason why he would be here?”

  “I don’t know!” I shouted at her. “How many times can I say that?” I clapped my hand over my mouth as my voice bounced off the stone and brick. Out the broken windows, I heard a rustling. Calm down, Julia—no need to frighten the wildlife. “Sorry,” I whispered.

  The DI put up her hands. “All right, fine,” she said. “Would you like me to leave so you can be on your own?”

  God, no. I shook my head and we walked out together, dipped under the tape, and continued single file along the path. First down from the knoll, and then up to the drive.

  “There could be something or someone that you haven’t remembered,” Callow said behind me, but cautiously. “An acquaintance from when the two of you were married, someone from your circle of friends.”

  “Nick and I didn’t have friends,” I said as we came out on the drive near her black Volvo. “I’m not trying to sound pitiful, it’s just the way it was. I had my friends. He had birds.” I crossed my arms. “Peg told me that she’s the witness you have to Michael turning into the drive here. But just because she didn’t see him again doesn’t mean he didn’t come straight back out. She had her hands full that afternoon.”

  “Yes,” Callow said, scanning the drive. “And now PC Flynn has hers full, tracking down and interviewing everyone at that funeral.”

  We stood quiet for a moment. The grounds of Hoggin Hall were familiar territory to me and I knew why I had visited the summerhouse, but if police were finished with the site, what was Callow doing here? “Were you looking for me?” Surely her internal DI radar didn’t beep every time a person neared a murder scene.

  “No.” Callow looked back into the wood. “I find it helps my concentration to stand alone at a site. Impressions, thoughts, bits of evidence, can sometimes all come together.”

  “And I got in your way.”

  Before Callow could agree or disagree, a swoosh and a single caw from above caught our attention. I looked up and searched the highest branches of an oak before I spotted Alfie.

  “So there you are,” I called.

  Callow followed my gaze and squinted. “Do you have a pet bird?”

  “He’s a rook. And no, he isn’t a pet. He’s a…friend of a friend.”

  I caught a smile from Callow just before she turned away. It reminded me of the only other time I’d seen her smile—the autumn before. Michael and I spent the night at a lovely country hotel near Colchester when we happened upon Tess Callow in a remarkably short cocktail number that was most un-DI-like. We weren’t the ones who made her smile, of course—she had reserved that for her girlfriend, Chloe, an elegant woman with dark skin who glided across the floor. It seemed Callow and I were becoming quite chummy—mayb I should ask after Chloe.

  “Once again, Ms. Lanchester, I want to remind you to refrain from acting the cowboy. We need no other investigators on this case but the police.”

  I sn
iffed. Perhaps I wouldn’t ask after Chloe after all.

  Alfie cawed loudly from his perch and dropped something—a sheet of paper, but a crumpled one. It drifted a ways, scraping by a twig or two, but got stuck in the fork of two branches. The rook floated down after it, nudging the paper with his beak, setting it free to sail the rest of the way like a paper airplane. It hit the ground not six feet away.

  Callow and I approached and bent over Alfie’s prize. The paper had been rolled and squashed, crumpled as if held too tightly in someone’s hand or it needed to be crammed in a pocket. The corners were torn and a few holes punched in it, but I could easily read the title: Birds of Hoggin Hall. I reached for it.

  “Don’t,” Callow commanded.

  My hand stopped midair. “But it’s just one of our leaflets. Visitors can print them out online. That’s where this one came from.” I swept my gaze left and right. “Although they should know better than to litter. I wonder should we put a rubbish bin along the drive.”

  Callow paid no attention to my TIC musings, but pulled a thin blue glove from her pocket and, using it like a pot holder, picked up the paper. She dug in her suit pocket, came up with a key, and popped open the boot of her car.

  I followed her over and continued to explain the paper’s appearance. “It’s only a leaflet—I wrote it. It’s sort of a crossover promotion with Dad. Visitors can follow the trail and use a special online code for tickets and to watch extras from the television program. They can get discounts for bird feeders and seeds and the like.”

  Those words—“discounts,” “codes,” “tickets”—smacked into one another like bumper cars causing minor collisions. I needed to take care of something, but couldn’t remember if it had to do with my job or Michael’s. I began at the beginning, stacking up my own schedule and responsibilities against my temporary post as personal assistant to Rupert and looking for the snag.

  “Ms. Lanchester?”

  I jumped, surprised to find myself standing on the drive with Callow. She held up a clear plastic bag in one hand and, in the other, the leaflet.

  “Would you mind?” She nodded at the bag.

  “Right, yes.” Obediently, I opened the bag. Callow dropped in the leaflet and only then did she smooth it out, so that I could see, deep within the folds, a reddish-brown stain that had soaked through. It was a sight with which I was becoming disturbingly familiar. I stepped away.

  Callow got on her phone and called for two PCs to do what she called a “fingertip” search. “Tomorrow,” she said, “no stone unturned.”

  “But you already searched, didn’t you?” I asked when she finished.

  “Yes, well.” Callow held up the bag as she sealed it. “Either we overlooked this or it’s been left since.”

  Good luck to those poor sods. “There’s no reason for Nick to have that leaflet with him,” I said, putting up a weak argument, but hurtling on regardless. “He didn’t care for birds in their proper places. Mind you, if he’d spotted a sparrow on the cliffs of Hirta, he’d be delighted, but here—where a sparrow should be—he wouldn’t give it a second glance.”

  “Perhaps the murderer printed it out.”

  It gave me the creeps to think of murderers printing out our estate leaflets. I continued to search for another explanation.

  “That”—I stuck my hands in my pockets and nodded to the bag—“that could be rabbit blood. Yesterday, I saw a stoat hunting just there. He’d caught a baby rabbit.”

  “Are you saying the baby rabbit had been birdwatching using one of your leaflets? Referred by your friend the rook, no doubt.”

  Chapter 11

  At four o’clock the next morning, the alarm went off, sending spasms through my body as if I were being electrocuted. I’d chosen the loudest, most obnoxious sound I could pull up on my phone, in case I entertained any subconscious thoughts of sleeping in. Job done—with the result of eyes open, nerves jangled.

  A shower and a cup of tea and I was away on my forty-five-minute journey. I flew up the empty, earlymorning A14 outside Bury Saint Edmunds. Where was a roadside service when you wanted one—at the very least a petrol station with a Costa Express or even a tea caravan in a layby. Nothing. They’re missing a great business opportunity here, I thought, serving all of us up early and off to work. Me and—I scanned the empty road and in the mirror saw headlights—me and that fellow back there. I tried to take my mind off food.

  The evening before, after stopping at my cottage for a quick omelet, I’d had a productive five hours at the TIC, managing to whip out both reports for Smeaton’s Summer Supper as well as sorting out upcoming interviews for Dad on Cambridgeshire and Norfolk BBC radio stations. Twice I’d picked up my phone to ring Michael on the pretense of clearing up some small detail. But I didn’t ring, didn’t text. He had been quite clear on the parameters of this “stepping away” business. Was he even thinking of me now? What was he doing, apart from changing out bird quiz questions on Rupert’s website? I had seen him only two days before, but at that moment, it felt as if eons had passed. Perhaps he would return to his old life, working for the family PR firm. Perhaps he would never come back again.

  My sister had rung—a distraction I had desperately needed, although while we talked I had continued on Rupert’s schedule, writing him an email with interview dates and times.

  “Jools, are you even listening to me?” Bianca had asked.

  “Of course I am,” I said, hitting “send.”

  “And so how many hours has Vesta added?”

  I’d had a vague notion that I could avoid telling Bee and my dad that Vesta was away, just as I could avoid admitting to Linus—who knew where Vesta was—that I had taken on Michael’s job. I knew it would require a bit of juggling the truth, and I had thought myself prepared, but when put on the spot, I hesitated, and, as my mind had darted about looking for a useful lie, my sister heard the nanosecond of silence loud and clear.

  “Jools, you’ve asked Vesta, haven’t you? You said you wouldn’t do this all on your own. You can’t.”

  I suppose the truth would have to do. “Right, well, here’s the thing.” And I had, in bright and cheery tones, related Vesta’s happy news and how everything was ticking along perfectly well and I had it all in hand.

  “How’re you doing with Nick’s death?”

  I took a sharp breath. God, she’s good at the sneak attack. When we had played checkers growing up, I often had thought myself on the verge of winning when I’d cornered one of Bee’s remaining pieces, but she’d suddenly appear from nowhere, jump four of my men, and cheer her victory.

  My defense in a shambles, I confessed, “I went there today, saw the place.”

  “Why?”

  “To see if it would hurt.”

  “And what good did it do?”

  “It was sad to think of him there. And then Callow arrived and found one of our TIC leaflets nearby—well, Alfie found it.”

  “Alfie? Is he police?”

  I laughed, and told her the story of my new friends, and was thus able to lead her to more pleasant chat.

  “How’re the children? How’s baby Estella?”

  Before we had finished our conversation, I begged, “You won’t mention to Dad about Vesta, will you? Because I’m doing fine, really—I’ve got all events, meetings, and tours in hand.” As I said this, I pulled up my merged schedule one more time to make sure all was well. “Everything’s under control.”

  —

  On the other side of Mildenhall, I turned down the lane to Marshy End just after five o’clock, and a thought came to me—I’d send Basil out to collect breakfasts. That’s the sort of assignment that suited Basil Blandy, general dogsbody that he was. That is, whenever he arrived.

  I bounced along the drive—really, we should get this leveled out—scrub willow and blackthorn obscuring my vision until I turned the last bend and stepped on the brake. The yard, surrounded by our cottage and a couple of outbuildings, buzzed with the crew stringing cable, carryin
g ladders, and stacking logs against the low stone wall. That’s right, Dad had wanted to build a hedgehog haven. Hedgehog populations had dropped dramatically and—creating shelter for the little, lovable creatures would be a fantastic living-with-nature segment. But it hadn’t appeared on the schedule—who had taken this initiative?

  I marveled at the activity. No Rupert this morning—we would be concentrating on selecting positions for motion-activated cameras at various nest sites, testing the feed, and choosing segments long enough for Dad to do a voice-over.

  “Good morning, Julia,” one of the tech lads called. A couple of others that I recognized, with their hands full of equipment, raised heads in greeting. I spoke with each and introduced myself to the two I didn’t know.

  Basil wandered out of the cottage, headphones round his neck and computer tablet in hand. His ginger hair had gone a bit long on top, and it suited him.

  “Hiya, Julia, morning. You’re just in time—we’re about to record the dawn chorus. Well, a bit past.” Basil looked round the yard. “Phones!” he called.

  Every single crew member pulled a phone out of a pocket. Basil looked at me. “Sorry, Julia, it’s the only way we can get a clean sound. I don’t even mind the Lakenheath boys flying over, but those pesky mobiles. We switch them off completely. You all right with that?”

  “Certainly,” I said, reaching for my own mobile and thinking I needed to institute that rule when Dad was on a phone interview. Even a vibrating mobile could spoil a recording or a live broadcast.

  Basil lifted his finger, pointed to several trees where I could see he’d installed the audio equipment, and we all stood silent and let the birds have at it for about ten minutes. Songs of blackbirds, chaffinches, robins, wrens, and dunnocks filled the air. Those early birds dug into the ground for their food and so took advantage of the soft soil in the morning. I breathed in the sweet, cold scent of spring and closed my eyes for a moment. What a peaceful way to begin a day.