A Tiding of Magpies

by Steve Burrows

  16

  Domenic Jejeune strolled out to Blakeney Point, enjoying the slow unfurling of spring along the coastal path. The breeding season for the seal colony at the point had already passed, but the Sandwich Terns had not yet established their nests. The detective found himself in a landscape during that rarest of times, a gap in nature’s cycles.

  The late afternoon light rested easily on the undulating surface of the sea. Silhouetted seabirds circled lazily against the sky, their occasional plaintive call no more than a comment on the peacefulness that had settled over this part of the north Norfolk coast. Jejeune checked his watch. He was always conscious of being out of cellphone range. It was a legacy of an earlier event, one that would never leave him. He would still allow himself these pockets of time, to wander, to explore, to bird, but his first act on reacquiring a signal would always be to check his messages. It was too late to correct the errors of the past, but he would do whatever he could to make sure they were never repeated.

  He walked out almost as far as the point, where even on a becalmed afternoon such as this, a faint breeze tousled the vegetation and sent foamy white wave breaks fussing over the shoreline. In the distance, a parcel of Oystercatchers were being disrupted from their pursuit of cockles by one individual flitting and fluttering amongst them. A widowed bird, thought Jejeune, searching this group of committed monogamists for another lonely soul to be its partner for the upcoming breeding season. The detective didn’t bother raising his bins, enjoying instead the wider spectacle of this group of black and white shorebirds against the backdrop of the pale blue sea.

  As he made his way back along the far side of the point, he noticed a small stand of scrubby trees, and he realized what it was that had drawn him out here; the ghost of birding past. On a September day a few years earlier, an Empidonax flycatcher had shown up in this place. The North American native was considered a mega rarity in Britain, and this one’s appearance had been greeted by local birders with equal parts delight and disbelief. He remembered the long walk out here, and the weather, almost impossible to imagine on a soft day like today; a cold, horizontal grey rain that drove onshore in ragged, wind-driven torrents. The noise, too, had been a world away from the balmy quiet of this shoreline now. Sound swirled around then with such force it was like a physical presence; winds roaring like a steam train, waves crashing in shuddering explosions against the shore. It was hard to believe any bird could survive in such conditions, let alone such a fragile visitor. But eventually someone in the group had located the little Empid, huddled low in a sycamore. He smiled now at the thought of what Lindy had said about the relative intelligence quotients of the small bird seeking shelter from the weather, and the group of fifty-odd birders standing out in the teeth of it, bundled up in waterproofs and bulky clothing, vying for the chance to peer at the rare arrival.

  He played his bins over the branches of the tree where the bird had been. Jejeune had no idea why he had come to see the flycatcher that day. Perhaps it was some attempt to fit in, to become part of the local birding community. Certainly it wasn’t the bird itself. He had seen plenty of Empids back home. And besides, no one had even been able to definitively identify this one. The Empidonax flycatchers were a notoriously difficult genus to differentiate. Habitat was one method, but since this bird was thousands of miles from its home territory, that hardly helped. Song was the best clue, but, not surprisingly, the bird was finding little to sing about in the midst of a north Norfolk storm. On field marks alone, it could have been any one of three species. Later, Jejeune had heard some people had settled on Willow Flycatcher while others had plumped for Alder. They had taken whatever facts they needed, and from them, fashioned a truth that suited them. Perhaps Mansfield Jones had a point, after all, thought the detective.

  Further out to sea, a raft of ducks bobbed in and out of his view as they rode the gentle swells. Likely Common Eiders, down from the colder northern waters to breed, but he needed better looks to be sure. He went down to the waterline and tried to fix his binoculars on the birds, but they were drifting further out to sea now, disappearing behind the swells with increasing frequency. Without a scope it was impossible to make a definitive identification.

  His feet felt suddenly wet, and he looked down to find water lapping over his shoes. A cold rush of memory welled up inside him: another day, another time the water had swept over his shoes. And with the memories came the feeling again; fear, not for his own safety but that of someone else. Only, things were different this time. He was directly responsible for the danger that now threatened Lindy. He had brought her into his world, where vengeful criminals and violent reprisals were always a possibility. He had done so because he wanted her by his side, sharing his life. They had never discussed the dangers, never weighed the risks. There had been no conditional offer, no exit clause. Now, the threat he had always dreaded was coming for her, and he was to blame. He knew it was his responsibility to protect Lindy, but he had no idea how to do it, and he was afraid that he would not be able to.

  Along the shoreline in the distance, three small brown birds dropped in. Jejeune raised his bins and studied the new arrivals closely until he could be sure; Shore Larks, huddled on the shingle ridge, the wind tousling up their soft brown plumage into feathery cowls. Horned Larks, they had been to him once, in a past life. It was a good sighting, but despite it, and the low, saffron light of the late afternoon sun and the soft sea breeze and the calls of the circling gulls overhead, his troubling thoughts refused to leave him. This place was now beyond redemption for him today. Only another visit, at another time, would bring back its joy. He turned to make his way back to the car.

  Back at the Range Rover, he dug out a spare pair of dry socks and changed into them. He climbed into the driver’s seat and checked his phone. There was one text, from Danny Maik. Incident at Kowalski residence. On my way.

  17

  The shadows of evening were encroaching when Jejeune arrived, but he noticed the gaunt form of Paulina Kowalski immediately. She was hunched down beside a hedgerow on the far side of the road, about fifty metres from her house. Jejeune pulled over the Range Rover nearby and got out. Maik’s Mini was parked in a small lane just behind him.

  As the detective approached, Paulina Kowalski motioned him over with an urgent gesture. “Two men. They came to my door. They said they were policemen.” Her face twisted slightly. “Pah, I have seen this kind of policemen before. They said they must take all my son’s belongings away. They told me a list: laptop, phone, other things. They said, when a foreigner disappears, they must take all his belongings to the police station. Do policemen talk like this — a foreigner? I told them my son and I have been here for seventeen years. We are not foreigners.”

  “Did you let them in?” Though Jejeune was listening carefully, his eyes had not left the front door of the house since he arrived. Neither had Paulina Kowalski’s.

  “I would not let such men into my home. I said I was going out. They went away, but I was afraid, so I called Sergeant Maik. He told me to leave the house and stay away until he arrived. I walked to this place and watched. The men returned and put something in the lock, a metal bar, I think.”

  “They went inside? Where is Sergeant Maik now?” Despite his whispered tone, the alarm in Jejeune’s voice was clear.

  “He went into the house also. He asked me to stay here until you arrived, and tell you what had happened. He said if I heard any noise from the house, I should call the police emergency number.” She paused for a second. “I have heard no noise.”

  Jejeune reached for his phone but hesitated. A call to the station now would likely result in questions about why a senior police officer believed the established hostile entry procedures didn’t apply to him.

  “How long ago did he go in?” he asked.

  “A few minutes, no more.”

  Jejeune regarded the house carefully. If Maik hadn’t encountered any resistance by now, perhaps he wasn’t going to. But there wa
s no guarantee. “I’ll go over. Please stay here until one of us comes to get you,” he said to the woman. “And as the sergeant said, if you hear any noise, please call that number.”

  There are sounds an empty house makes; ticks and hushed whisperings. They seep from the floors and walls and ceilings in the absence of human habitation. But there are other sounds — a creaking floor, the rustle of a window curtain — that could be the telltale signs of a house that only appears to be empty. The trick is in knowing the difference. Jejeune eased the front door back carefully and sidled into the narrow hallway. He paused for a moment, straining to listen beyond the silence, beneath it. He heard nothing. He cast a glance at the staircase as he passed, watching for moving shadows. He saw none. Jejeune tightened his grip on the knob of the door leading off the hallway and drew in his breath. He felt the tension that leached the resilience out of so many police officers eventually; not the adrenaline jolt of action, of confrontation, of a weapons threat even, but the taut, nerve-twisting anxiety, the edgy racing pulse and elevated heartbeat that comes from knowing that danger could lie behind any door, and wondering whether this was the one.

  He opened the door slowly and peered in. Beyond the window on the far wall lay the street, but in the darkened glass he could see only the reflection of the interior of the room. He waited for his eyes to adjust to the low light and peered into the shadows. Again, nothing. He withdrew and padded softly along the narrow hallway, heading for the kitchen. He heard a sound that might have been a faint creak and froze. In the stillness, the silence seemed to hang around him menacingly. Behind him, the staircase receded into a pocket of deep shadow. He had already begun a slow turn when he caught a flicker of movement from the corner of his eye. He spun in a half crouch, forearm cocked, ready to deliver a strike.

  “All clear,” said Maik from the lowest stair. “They went out through the back garden, by the looks of it. The gate is unlatched.” He had affected to look elsewhere while his DCI straightened to his full height and brought his breathing back under control. But now it was time to look at him directly. Or as directly as the shadowy light in the hallway would allow. “They’ve had a bit of a look around in what I assume was the son’s bedroom, but it was careful. Not much disturbed, nothing broken.”

  Jejeune nodded. He knew the sergeant’s survey would have been thorough. Maik knew how to look at a room rather than in it. To concentrate on looking for something specific meant it was easier to miss something else of importance. “Mrs. Kowalski is waiting to come back in,” said Jejeune. It was clear he wasn’t going to dwell on his scare. “We can ask her to check if anything’s been taken.”

  Jejeune watched Maik leave and found light switches for the hallway and living room. He sat on the staircase for a moment, letting his heart rate retreat towards normal. He knew he would have to address Maik’s newfound penchant for solo heroics. But now was not the time.

  Paulina Kowalski hesitated for a moment in the doorway. On the step behind her, Maik waited patiently. He recognized the signs; a homeowner reluctant to enter a house from which the sense of security had been stripped. A home was supposed to be a place of refuge, a place where you felt protected and safe. With the previous incident and now this one, this house no longer offered Paulina Kowalski sanctuary. Now it was a place of uncertainty, of danger, even. Maik leaned forward slightly, addressing her back in a low murmur. “As I say, ma’am, we’ve checked everywhere. However, if you’d be more comfortable staying somewhere else tonight —”

  “This is my home,” she said, striving for defiance even as her voice faltered slightly. “I will not let these men of the Agencja Bezpieczeństwa Wewnętrznego force me from it.”

  “They were not Polish secret police,” said Maik. “They were not policemen of any kind.”

  With an effort of will that was almost visible, she forced herself to step across the threshold. It changed things, and she began to settle a little.

  “I will make tea,” she said, shrugging off her coat and heading to the kitchen.

  Maik’s reflex was to stop her, but Jejeune held up a hand and the sergeant nodded his understanding. She needed to do the small things again, the routines, the little rituals of domestic life. They would help her regain possession of her home. And it was a fair bet the intruders hadn’t stopped to make tea while they were here; if the fingerprint team was going to recover any usable prints when they arrived tomorrow, they wouldn’t be from sugar tongs or a teapot.

  The two detectives were sitting in the living room, each deep in his own thoughts, when Mrs. Kowalski entered with a tea tray. She set the items out on the table meticulously and poured three cups of tea with the same careful attention, as if observing the rules of some exacting ritual.

  “Do you mind if we go up and check whether anything was taken from your son’s room?” asked Maik, cradling the cup in his large hand as he stood.

  The woman nodded silently. Maik guided her to the stairs while Jejeune stayed in the living room. He was sitting in the same chair as on his previous visit. The cracked photograph had been repaired roughly with a piece of tape and had been re-hung on the wall. It was the only sign of the turmoil that had erupted the last time they were in this room. He sipped his tea and looked around him. A normal living room in a normal house, thought Jejeune. Quiet, modestly furnished, unremarkable. And yet what kind of normal house witnessed talk of guns and breakins and Polish secret police. He looked at his hands and listened to the emptiness of the room.

  Paulina Kowalski re-entered and took a seat. Maik followed. He shook his head. “Nothing obvious anyway. Once the fingerprint team has been in, we should be able to tell where they were concentrating their efforts. It might give us a bit more of an idea if they were looking for anything in particular.”

  “The list of belongings they asked you for,” said Jejeune, “can you remember it?”

  Paulina Kowalski nodded. “Laptop computer, phone, digiscope, external drives, iPad.”

  “And these men wouldn’t have found any of these in Jakub’s room?”

  She shook her head firmly. “I do not know where they are.”

  “Could they be in his locker at Wawel?”

  Again she shook her head decisively. “Jakub would not store anything like this there. He used this locker only for his hunting clothes and his rifle. His ammunition he kept here. Beneath the sink. It is here still. I checked.”

  “They didn’t ask about his rifle?” said Maik.

  “No, they did not ask about this,” said Mrs. Kowalski firmly. The detectives exchanged a glance. There would be no need to ask about the rifle if you already knew where it was.

  Jejeune shifted to face Paulina Kowalski directly and Maik knew he had steeled himself for this moment while they were away. “Mrs. Kowalski,” said the DCI softly, “I’m very sorry to have to tell you the dental records have confirmed the body we recovered was Jakub.”

  The teaspoon chinked softly against her cup as she set it down; a tiny chime to accompany the passing of all hope.

  “Yes,” she said simply. But there was something else in her face, just for a moment, the same disconcerting look in the woman’s eyes that Jejeune had seen the first time he sat in this room. As before, it was gone before he could identify it. His brief glimpse over at Maik told him the sergeant had not seen it.

  “I can arrange for a police officer to come here tonight, if you would like,” said Maik, “perhaps even just for the company.”

  “The only company I wish is that of my son,” she said quietly. “And this I can never have again.” Her sigh was a deep, wretched sound, and she seemed to teeter for a moment between this tiny, sparse living room and an abyss of sorrow waiting to swallow her. Finally, she returned from the precipice and looked at Jejeune intently. “It is our duty to protect our loved ones from the dangers in the world, Inspector. But no matter how hard we try, or how much we wish to, we cannot always save the ones we love.” She looked around the room, at the heavy, dark curtains, a
t the washed-out wallpaper and the threadbare furniture. “Jakub was my only treasure on this Earth,” she said. “And now he is gone.”

  18

  The Polish Community Centre was situated on the far end of a berm, an earthen barrier that rose six metres above the surrounding landscape, separating farmland on one side from the watery expanses of Tidewater Marsh on the other. The track that led from the coast road described a wide, sweeping curve across the flat terrain, with a short, sharp incline at the end that climbed up to the berm itself. Once on the top, there was enough room to drive along the berm and park, but turning a car around to leave again didn’t allow much room for error. It was a steep drop on either side, to the water in one direction and the soft brown earth of the fields in the other. As they parked and got out, for once Jejeune was glad they had chosen to make the journey in Maik’s protesting Mini.

  At the side of the building were several large piles of vegetation. It was the Frankenweed that the workers had dug from the marsh, being left to dry before being incinerated. The long vines dangled limply from densely-tangled, interwoven mats of roots that bore the scars of having been ruthlessly hacked out of the earth. Jejeune was still staring at the mounds when a young woman opened the front door. He recognized her as one of the workers from the marsh. “The Count offers his apologies,” she said. “He will be with you soon. He has asked if you would be kind enough to wait.”

  “Sikorski is a Count?”

  The woman offered Maik a shy smile. “This is how the people of our community refer to him,” she said. “He does not use the title himself.”

  The sergeant let his gaze linger on the heavy metal grille, now folded back from the doorway, as they entered the building. The detectives exchanged impressed glances as they were led through a large central hall. From the outside, the building had the rough, careworn look of many old structures along the north Norfolk coast. Neither paint nor shingles fared well in the face of the fierce storms that pounded the area, and the elements seemed to save a special kind of fury for places that dared to sit on high, exposed ground, as this one did. But the peeling, cracked skin of this building gave no clue to the impressive interior that awaited visitors. Throughout the length and breadth of the hall, white-plastered walls were half-timbered with rich, dark panelling. Beneath the men’s feet, an immaculate hardwood floor glistened. Around its outer edge, the floor had been expertly dressed with an intricate herringbone pattern.