A Tiding of Magpies

by Steve Burrows

  The jangling of keys is going to be a cause for alarm to any intruder, but perhaps some will already have planned a way of escape. Jejeune had none. At the sound, he quickly stuffed the files back into the drawer, eased it shut, and pressed his back against the wall of the darkened office, next to the filing cabinets. He heard a deep sigh that sounded like irritation as the person entered through the front door, but he couldn’t risk peering around the cabinets to see who it was. All he could do was wait. In his panic, he hoped it was Lindy. If it was, things would be bad, terrible. But if it wasn’t, they would be worse.

  As he stood beside the cabinet, hardly daring to breathe, one thing was becoming obvious. Whoever else had entered these offices, theirs was not an innocent visit either. It had now been about ten seconds since the key had turned in the lock. And they had also decided not to turn the lights on.

  Jejeune weighed his options. Keys meant no breakin, so no crime. Yet, at least. He could not spring forward and apprehend the person, in the hope the questions about what he was doing there himself might get lost in the general melee surrounding the arrest. Whoever was now in here, padding through the offices, had entered under the same circumstances as he had. He heard the sound of approaching footsteps and slid down into a crouch, back jammed hard against the wall. If the person hadn’t stopped yet, there were only two possible destinations left. One was the kitchen. Jejeune was in the other one.

  Still no light, only a thin beam like his own. It puzzled Jejeune, but it alarmed him more. He could think of no legitimate reason a person would decide they were not going to turn on the lights in an office they were visiting in the dead of night. It was exactly what he had done. As he said, no legitimate reason.

  He heard the footfall as the person entered the office. Heavy enough for a man. There was the breathing, too. Not laboured, but hardly the delicate respiration of women Lindy’s age, which comprised just about everyone else who worked in these offices. But if it was Eric, why would he choose darkness? He, of all people, had the unquestionable right to be in these offices at any hour of the day or night.

  Jejeune felt the filing cabinet tilt slightly against his shoulder as Eric opened the drawer. A bead of sweat had begun a slow descent from his temple, and his neck was damp around the collar. He could feel the tension in his calf muscles, cramped into this crouch for so long now, and beginning to ache for relief. But he dared not move. He was less than two metres away from Eric, deep in shadow, but close enough that the faintest movement might rock the filing cabinet, even as Eric was leaning into it, scrabbling through the files in search of the ones he needed.

  Jejeune heard a sigh of exasperation and a sharp sound as a file was slapped down onto the top of the far cabinet. The file drawer closed heavily, tilting the other cabinets more forcefully against Jejeune’s shoulder this time. The pain in his legs was intense now, his thighs joining the cry for relief from their cramped position. The muscles were starting to jigger with the strain and the sweat was beginning to run freely down his sides and back. Still, Eric seemed unsatisfied, drumming his heavy fingers on the metal cabinet top in a constant tattoo as he ran something through his mind. Jejeune closed his eyes against the pain in his legs, pressing his head back against the wall. He couldn’t hold on any longer, he was going to have to move, to stand, to straighten out his legs, no matter what the cost.

  Eric moved first, decisively snatching up the file from the top of the cabinet and walking briskly out of the office. Jejeune slumped and straightened out his legs, as quietly as he could but no longer concerned whether it would be enough. Relief flooded back into his joints as the blood began to flow again. He pressed his back against the wall and released a low, quiet sigh.

  Eric had reached the door now, and the sound came to Jejeune across the silence of the empty rooms. Six short beeps followed a longer tone and then a series of measured pulses. The alarm. Jejeune had disarmed it when he entered, the code being a shared secret between he and Lindy since she had moved back into these offices. But Eric had now armed it again as he left. And among its other protections, the alarm was equipped with a motion detector.

  It was probably no more than a minute, but it seemed longer; much longer. Jejeune had been sitting beside the cabinet, unmoving, legs stretched out in front of him. They no longer ached, but he was not sure how quickly he could move until he tried. And moving quickly was going to be what it was all about, now. Six seconds. Six seconds from the moment his movement was first detected until the alarm sounded, both here in the office and at the monitoring centre in Norwich. A call to the Saltmarsh police station would be followed by a visit from a patrol car, and a casual poke around the doors and windows to check everything was secure, before Eric got a call summoning him back to the offices he had so recently left. In his heightened state of awareness, he wouldn’t be buying any false alarm stories. Even if he wasn’t sure exactly what had happened, he’d know something was wrong, someone besides him had been in here tonight. And everything Jejeune had been working towards would be compromised.

  So, six seconds. To reach the alarm panel, open the cover, and enter the code. Correctly. First time. In the dark. Could he do it? From a sitting position, beside a filing cabinet at the far end of the offices? A lightning quick flash from his penlight had told Jejeune one of the motion sensors was pointing directly at Eric’s doorway. It would detect his movement the second he stood up. And the countdown would be on.

  He wanted to wait, but for what? No help would be coming. None could. Anyone who came here, anyone at all, was going to mean he’d failed in the task he’d set for himself, the undetected investigation into the conduct of Eric Chappell, a long time ago. What he’d learned so far tonight had taken him a good distance along his route. But it was a long way to the finishing line. And he needed to get there without anyone else being aware of what he was doing. Yet.

  He risked one more flash of the light, to map the route from his position to the alarm panel beside the door. He’d been careful coming in, sure-footed in his approach, stepping lightly around obstacles, taking his time. Now he’d need to run, hell-bent for leather, slam into the panel and begin keying in the six-digit code the second he arrived. If he got it right, he could catch his breath for a second, reset the alarm, and slip out undetected into the night. If he didn’t.… The thought went unfinished.

  He drew his legs in towards him, eyes locked on the monitor, waiting for the steady red eye to begin blinking. He all but convinced himself the beam couldn’t see down behind the cabinet when the red light disappeared, as if sucked into the darkness, only to reappear and begin its slow, toxic pulsing. He jammed his back against the wall and forced himself upright, propelling himself forward. He sprinted towards the door, feeling his legs lag as they came to terms with being in motion again. A cable. There was taped-down cable somewhere between two desks. He remembered seeing it on his way in, innocuous enough during the day, but surely enough to trip a sprinting man now. He felt it beneath his sole as he ran, and pushed on. As he reached the far wall, his thigh caught the arm of a chair. Not there before. Moved by Eric, perhaps, as he left. The collision spun him off balance, and he fought to regain his momentum, recovering enough to fall against the wall, his palms thumping down near the alarm panel. The high pitched beeping had increased in speed now, a frantic staccato of warning. He pried the cover open on the second try and began punching in the code. What if he didn’t finish in time? Did he get a grace period while he was trying? Did the alarm decide six seconds meant six seconds, and that was that? He finished the code as the beeps merged into one long agonized wail of sound and he held his breath. Silence. And the slow metronomic pulsing of a green light on the panel.

  The night air had never felt so sweet.

  32

  Danny Maik had seen high walls like this before, but they had been designed to keep people in. Here, he suspected, the aim was the opposite. He and Inspector Jejeune were standing shoulder to shoulder on the rear steps of the redbrick
Victorian house they had just been led through. The open lawns and low shrubbery at the front of the house had given no hint of this secluded, walled garden that lurked at the rear. The sun sat just above the wall at the far end, painting a wide stripe of light along the pink gravel path that bisected the garden. A regimented pattern of well-maintained side paths came off the main artery, lying between flower beds that were showing the first green signs of life.

  At the far end of the path, a woman was bending down beside a young girl of about three. Behind them, a younger woman waited with the patient indifference that was the tradecraft of household staff everywhere. The mother’s hand rested delicately on the child’s shoulder as she directed her gaze to something in the flower bed. She seemed to flinch at the sound of the men’s approach along the path and snapped her head up to look at them. She straightened quickly and drew her daughter to her, even as it became clear she recognized one of the men.

  “Inspector Jejeune,” she said. “We’ve been expecting you, haven’t we, Alicia?” She looked down at the girl, as if seeking her agreement. She looked up again and stared at Jejeune like someone looking at a spectre from her past. Whatever once passed between these two, thought Maik, time has done nothing to diminish it.

  “Those are daffodils.” Alicia told the men, pointing.

  The woman put her hand on her daughter’s shoulder once more and guided her to her nanny. “You’re a very clever girl, Alicia Montague Weller. You can go into the house now and Jessica will give you a treat. We’ll learn some more flowers later.”

  All three watched the slow progress of the girl and her nanny along the sunlit path. No one spoke until they had disappeared into the house. Jejeune turned and introduced his sergeant.

  “Carolyn.” She extended her hand and Maik was struck by how delicate and frail it seemed. Behind the woman, sunlight and shadows played across the rough brick texture of the walls, dappling them into latticework patterns.

  “You have a nice spot here,” said Maik.

  “Yes.” Carolyn smiled uncertainly and looked around the garden. She nodded as if to convince herself. There was a flicker of movement on the gravel path and Carolyn recoiled from it. A bird gave a short trill, and hopped onto the edge of a flower bed.

  “Robin,” said Jejeune, and Maik saw him give a slight smile.

  Maik looked at the woman carefully. From a distance she resembled Lindy. Though she was younger than the DCI’s partner, she had the same lithe build. But the similarities ended at the physical level. In place of Lindy’s brash, piratical grin, Carolyn Weller could offer only a tentative, approval-seeking smile. And where Lindy exuded confidence and poise, Carolyn Weller’s self-assurance seemed as fragile as a bird’s egg. She paused for a moment like someone gathering herself. “There are questions, I understand?” she said. “Part of an inquiry?”

  “An internal police matter.” Jejeune waved his hand vaguely. The gesture was so out-of-character, Maik suspected it had been a deliberate choice, to alleviate the woman’s concerns. It was apparent to Danny, even from his brief time in Carolyn Weller’s presence, that anything which would reduce her anxiety would be welcome. In appearance, Carolyn Weller was as well-groomed and polished as one might expect of the daughter of a high-ranking political figure. But hers was an uneasy gloss. Beneath it lay the same brittleness Maik had seen in chronic drug abusers, though she lacked the rest of the identifiers — the personal neglect, the lassitude, the apathy. In their place was tentativeness, a skittishness that refused to let her settle.

  “We just need to go over some details with you …” The DCI hesitated, “About that time.”

  She led them to a small wrought iron table beneath an awning. “I don’t think about it as much these days, you know.” Carolyn looked towards the house. “Children give you someone else to focus on, don’t they? Another life to consider, besides your own.” The comment seemed to make her sad and she fell silent for a moment.

  “You told the investigating officers there was a Magpie that used to come around. You saw it from your window.”

  She nodded. “In the courtyard, between my room and the wing Monte was being held in.” Her eyes flickered along the path, over the gardens, but there were no threats coming. She was safe to continue.

  “Was something attracting the Magpie?” asked Jejeune. “Was someone feeding it?”

  “The windows were locked. We couldn’t open them to put out any food. But the bird came every day, anyway. They do that, don’t they?”

  Jejeune nodded. “Sometimes they do, yes. Did it ever come near the windows?”

  “It stole something, didn’t it? A pin. The officers told me.”

  She turned to look back up at the house as if she had heard a noise up there, or suspected she might. At first glance, Maik had thought her blouse was white, but in these shadows he saw now that it was a delicate shade of lavender, too pallid to compete with the rigorous sunlight. He saw marks, too, on her pale skin. They were vestiges of a lost person, tattoo ink and piercings, but all of them discreet. These were not badges of rebellion; they were attempts at masking, at trying to be someone else, anybody who wasn’t Carolyn Weller née Gresham, daughter of the current Home Secretary and former kidnap victim.

  “It was like being buried alive,” she said suddenly, looking down at the interlocking patio stones, as if she could peer back into her memories. “Out there on that causeway, with the fog closing in all around. Except in a way, I suppose I was already dead. I mean, what state is it when you no longer expect to live, when you no longer want to?” She shook her head. “My body was fighting to survive of course, but my heart, my mind, they wanted it to end. It was like I was being pulled apart, and in the middle there was this emptiness, a hollow space as if something had left me: the will to go on, I suppose, the hope and belief that I’d live.”

  She put her hands together in an attitude of prayer and pressed the fingertips to her lips. Her hands were trembling. The men gave her a moment to return to them, to this table, this garden.

  “Forgive me,” said Maik gently, “but I’ve never understood why you didn’t run towards the road after you escaped from the house. Why head down to the water in the first place?”

  “As soon as we were out of the house, Monte recognized where we were. He was an Essex boy. He’d been to Foulness Island before, on holidays, day trips. He said there was only one road on and off the island. If the kidnapper was coming back for us, he’d be coming that way. He said we had to run the other way, away from the road. So we did.”

  Maik nodded thoughtfully. “But you were sure the kidnapper wasn’t in the house.”

  “Monte said not. There were no lights on, no sounds. Monte said he could always hear the TV on when the man was there.” She took a deep breath. “I was out there for so long,” she said softly. “So long. And then I heard that strange voice coming to me through the fog,” said Carolyn. “I didn’t know at first it was a Canadian accent, but I knew you had come to save me, to save us both, like Monte said you would. Only …”

  Only he hadn’t saved them both. Maik saw the light disappear from Jejeune’s eyes. He had been too late to save Monte. Despite the boy’s faith in him, Jejeune had only managed to save one of them. Maik looked at his boss. Whatever he’d come to ask, surely it was time to end this now, to put these memories back in their box, where they could do no further harm. But Jejeune had one more place to visit, one more memory, one more secret to uncover.

  “There was something else, wasn’t there, Carolyn? Something you didn’t tell me at the time, or the investigating officers. Or even, I suspect, your parents.”

  “No.” But the denial held a refrain of evasion. Maik knew what would follow. Silence, as Jejeune listened to the birds singing in the tall trees beyond the high walls of this garden. And waited.

  Carolyn bowed her head and left her stare lingering on the patio stones at her feet. Seconds of the quiet spring morning passed before she spoke. “It was already over,” she sa
id, sagging slightly as the long-held secret finally escaped from her. “Between us. That night was meant to be our last date. As friends.”

  Maik stirred. “You never said anything about this to anyone?”

  She gave a slight tilt of her head. “It seemed important not to. It made no difference, really. Besides, let’s be honest, half the present government got reelected on the sympathy vote afterwards, Daddy included. I’m not sure the truth would have played as well in the constituencies.” Cynicism didn’t suit this inoffensive, wounded creature, and its impact seemed heightened because of it.

  “Can I ask whose decision it was to end things between you and Monte?” asked Jejeune.

  “Joint. Probably more mine, but Monte was okay with it. We’d gone as far as we could. We both knew it. Sometimes it’s like that with a relationship.”

  Jejeune nodded. Yes, sometimes it was.

  Carolyn cast a nervous glance at the house. “If there’s nothing else, I should probably go inside. Alicia has a way of getting Jessica to agree to the unhealthiest of snacks. You don’t have to go back through the house. There’s a side gate. I’ll show you.”

  She led them to a wooden gate discreetly tucked into a niche in the wall. Despite her breeding, Maik wasn’t expecting her to tell Domenic Jejeune it had been good to see him again. She didn’t thank them for coming, either. Jejeune turned as she opened the gate for them.