A Shimmer of Hummingbirds

by Steve Burrows

  For Flora and Gene, from whose story came my greatest gift

  Table of Contents

  Acknowledgements

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Chapter 18

  Chapter 19

  Chapter 20

  Chapter 21

  Chapter 22

  Chapter 23

  Chapter 24

  Chapter 25

  Chapter 26

  Chapter 27

  Chapter 28

  Chapter 29

  Chapter 30

  Chapter 31

  Chapter 32

  Chapter 33

  Chapter 34

  Chapter 35

  Chapter 36

  Chapter 37

  Chapter 38

  Chapter 39

  Chapter 40

  Chapter 41

  Chapter 42

  Chapter 43

  Chapter 44

  Chapter 45

  Chapter 46

  Chapter 47

  Chapter 48

  Chapter 49

  Chapter 50

  Chapter 51

  Chapter 52

  Chapter 53

  Chapter 54

  Chapter 55

  Chapter 56

  Acknowledgements

  I am grateful, as ever, to my editor, Allison Hirst, my publicist, Michelle Melski, and to Kirk Howard and the rest of the great team at Dundurn. Jenny Parrott, Margot Weale, and the staff of Oneworld Publications in the U.K. have worked tirelessly to introduce the Birder Murders to new audiences, and I thank them for all their efforts. Michael Levine, Meg Wheeler, and Bruce Westwood at WCA offered much valuable advice and insight. Mike Burrows cast a careful eye over the text, David Arango did likewise with the Spanish phrases, and Graeme McLeod, as usual, was my consultant on all things vehicular. My thanks and gratitude to each of them.

  I was fortunate to join members of Toronto Ornithological Club and North Durham Nature on a birding tour of Colombia, organized by Geoff Carpentier. In Colombia, the staff and facilities of EcoTurs and ProAves provided us with great opportunities to experience the country’s bird life. Particular thanks are due to Andreas Trujillo. Over late-night beers in birding lodges, Andreas’s thoughtful comments and suggestions helped me to resolve many plotting challenges. By day, his expert guiding skills helped our group to find over five hundred bird species, including fifty species of hummingbird. Both the guide and the tour company in this story are the product of the author’s imagination, and bear no resemblance to any characters or institutions I encountered in Colombia.

  Finally, my love and thanks go to my wife, Resa, for her unfailing enthusiasm and support. I now consider her uncannily accurate predictions for each book almost a ritual; one might even say, Resa’s rite.

  1

  The cold lay across the land like a punishment. Along the lane, the grassy verges bowed with their burdens of frost, and lacy collars of ice fringed the edges of the puddles. On the far side of the lane, beyond the hedgerow, the skeleton shapes of bare trees lined the boundaries of the fields. Stands of pale grass moved uneasily beneath metallic skies. Winter was stretching its fingers over the landscape, and if it had not yet drawn them in, to clasp the land fully in its grip, the time was surely near.

  The street lamps along the lane were already on, shining through the grey light of the fading afternoon like tiny suns. Suspended in their light, ice crystals spiralled like shards of shattered glass. From the window of a small cottage, a man watched a girl’s progress along the lane. The lace curtain hung from his fingertip like a veil. “Prospect, Erin,” he said without turning. The man’s shoulders were hunched slightly, as if he might be expecting a strike from the tension that seemed to hang in the room like a presence. “This could be the one.”

  From the armchair behind the man, Erin offered no opinion. A kitten mewled around the legs of the chair, looking for an affectionate pat that wasn’t forthcoming. At the window, the man’s eyes tracked the girl’s approach carefully. She was perhaps eighteen, a youngish eighteen, though, slightly-built, with hardly an ounce of adult bulk on her delicate frame. He wondered if she was a runner. But there was no sign of well-developed muscle tone, no athletic spring in her step. Besides, it hardly mattered. Those boots she was wearing, all pointy toes and high heels, would not be much good for running over the uneven cobblestone surface of this laneway. Not that he intended to give her the chance.

  “Yes,” said the man, nodding softly to himself, his eyes flickering slightly as he watched her. He could feel the pressure building in his chest. The hair at his collar was damp with sweat and the dryness in his mouth made it hard to swallow. Stage fright. He closed his eyes for a moment and took a deep breath. He was surprised to find it affecting him like this. He had been over the scenario many times in his head. He should be calmer than this. But the heart holds surprises for even the most disciplined minds, and now the moment of truth was drawing close, the doubts were starting to flood in.

  The girl was closer now, and he could see the wispy trail of her breath as she chatted on her phone. Distracted. Not ideal. He wanted her to know what was happening, to take it all in, to be aware of everything. His eyes moved to the greying sky beyond her, and then switched anxiously back and forth along the lane. No one. He turned his attention back to the girl, perhaps twenty metres away now, no more. If it was going to be this one, he had only a few seconds. Cap, jacket, open the door and run. Her head would spin around at the sound of his approach, just in time to see him bearing down on her. A momentary look of confusion on her face? Panic? Terror? And then. Over. It would be done. He could feel the pulse throbbing in his temples. This has to be done. His heart was racing. You have to do it. He clenched his fingers into his palm, feeling its wetness. But still he hesitated.

  “I don’t know, Erin. This one? Or not?”

  Not.

  He let out a pent up breath and withdrew his finger, letting the curtains fall back into place with a delicate shimmer. From behind his lace screen, he watched the girl pass beneath the street lamp outside, still chatting on her phone. Her breath spiralled up in the cold air, seeming to him like whispered prayers, drifting up to heaven. She would never know how close she had come.

  It was the light. It was important, perhaps the most important thing of all. It needed to be right, and it wasn’t. Not yet. The man saw the mug on the window ledge in front of him and a bolt of alarm speared his chest. What if he had left it here, in his rush to get outside? He picked up the mug and carried it wordlessly into the kitchen. As he walked past the armchair, the kitten let out a small bleat. It looked for a moment as if it might follow the man into the kitchen, but in the end it jumped up onto Erin’s lap and curled itself inside its tiny tail to go to sleep.

  In the kitchen, the man set the empty, unwashed cup carefully in the sink. He peered out the kitchen window, checking the narrow garden as it ran down to the boat dock. He could feel the cold winter air coming in through the neat hole in the glass panel of the door. On the far bank of the river that ran behind the cottages, a pair of Mallards was hunkered down, blending in to the pale, brittle reed stems. Nothing else moved.

  The man sat for a long time at the kitchen table, watching as the day retreated into the half-light of dusk. There was a large part of him that didn’t want to do this. But something e
lse had taken over. His actions were no longer his to control. His breathing had begun to quicken again. He steadied it. He felt tiny droplets of moisture running down his temples. Sweat. DNA. Bad thing.

  He stood up quickly and walked back into the tiny, neat living room, now sheltering pockets of darkness in its corners. “We’ll leave the lights off for now, Erin,” he announced. He approached the bay window and peered through the curtains again. All the other cottages had lights on now. From outside, this one would look like a missing stone in the necklace of lighted windows that ran along the lane.

  The man checked his reflection in the window glass; the brown leather jacket with its soft corduroy collar; the cap, tilted far enough forward to hide the plastic lining. And the greying goatee, with the little horns on the moustache. He gave the beard a downward stroke with his thumb and forefinger, as if to ensure it was in place. From the corner of his eye, he caught a flicker of movement, and he turned quickly to see a woman walking slowly down the lane, carefully picking her way between the puddles. Not up from the village as he had always envisioned it, but coming from the other direction. Panic started to rise within him. This was wrong. Why hadn’t he ever considered this? Pull yourself together. What did it matter? She was taller than the other one and slightly older; a year or two. More woman than girl, this one. His mouth felt dry, and he dragged the back of his wrist across his lips. His breathing was shallow and rapid. A whisper of doubt flickered across his mind. Would she put up a fight? Try to grab him? No, he thought, the twilight, the shock; they would do their work. It would all happen the way he had planned it.

  The woman was getting closer. Another fifty metres and she would be directly beneath the street lamp outside. Darkness all around and just that tiny pool of yellow light spilling onto the cobblestone lane like a spotlight on a stage. He watched her approaching. She had picked up her pace slightly and was hunched against the evening, as if something in her subconscious might be whispering about the dangers a quiet lane like this could hold. He wondered where she was going. Home after a hard day’s work? To the pub to meet her friends? Or her boyfriend? It didn’t matter.

  He sat at the window, his right knee bobbing up and down like a piston, resisting all his efforts to control it. His heart felt like it might explode from his chest. He was finding it hard to breathe. The mantra built in his mind, like the roar of an oncoming train. This has to be done. You have to do it.

  “Here’s where I have to leave you, Erin,” said the man over his shoulder, not taking his eyes off the woman outside. His mouth was dry again and he licked his lips to moisten them. As the woman approached the pool of light beneath the street lamp, the man stood up. He ran to the front door and snatched it open. The door banged back against the wall of the cottage, but the woman was already looking in his direction — that primeval mechanism, perhaps, alerting her to danger? It was already too late. The man sprinted toward her. She stared, frozen in terror, as he closed the gap. Less than five metres now, with no signs of slowing. The woman raised her hands defensively, bracing for the impact. The man exploded into her, lowering his head and smashing his cap into her face. The impact lifted the woman off her feet and sent her flailing back against the street lamp, snapping her head back hard against the post. Lying on the cold ground, stunned, she heard rapid footfalls; the sound of running. She raised her head and managed to focus in time to see the man sprinting away down the centre of the narrow lane. His escape rang off the cobblestones until, like the assailant himself, the sound finally disappeared into the night.

  From behind the screen of the net curtains, the sightlines from Erin’s armchair to the street lamp were unobstructed. The woman was still on the ground, sobbing softly now, reeling from her injuries. She was beginning to shiver, too, as shock began to seep into the places where her fear had been. But Erin didn’t go to her, or call out to check if she needed help. Nor did she reach for a telephone to call for an ambulance, or a police officer. Erin Dawes did not respond at all. The dead never do.

  2

  The heat was waiting for Chief Inspector Domenic Jejeune, enveloping him in its sultry embrace as he emerged through the glass doors of the international terminal. He stood for a moment on the sidewalk, adjusting to the mirror-like glare of the sunshine, as he searched for a driver to guide him through the casual, yellow-taxi chaos of Bogota’s El Dorado International Airport.

  Despite the heat, Jejeune felt a lightness that he had not known for days. The shadowy world of hedging and half-truths was behind him now, sloughed off like dead skin. He was here, in Colombia. Whatever was going to happen, whatever was waiting for him, it could all begin now.

  A taxi driver approached, an older man with a lined face and a crooked, world-weary smile. Before he could reach Jejeune, two other drivers swooped in, vying for the fare. They were younger, hungrier, and Jejeune watched as the three men held a spirited negotiation for the right to claim the prize as their own. His thoughts turned to three other people who had wrangled over his fate recently; one he should not have deceived, one he could not, and one he would not.

  “Black Inca, Chiribiquete Emerald, Green-Bearded Helmetcrest,” recited Lindy Hey, absently bunching the ends of her long blond hair with a fist as she read the list once again. “My God, Dom, this isn’t a birding tour you’re going on, it’s a trip through the enchanted forest. These names alone make these birds worth travelling all the way to Colombia to see. Well, almost.” She offered him a wan smile. They were standing by the bed, side by side, methodically packing his travel kit. His departure was still a couple of days away, but Lindy was not a person to leave things till the last minute.

  She waved the paper at him. “Will you see these when you’re over there, do you think?”

  “The ones on that list? Most of them. Probably.” He hesitated. “Perhaps.”

  Lindy gave him a look. Another time it might have made it all the way to exasperation, but Dom was leaving soon, and she had already determined to make things as comfortable between them as possible until then. Besides, she already knew the reason for his uncertainty. “It depends on how much of your trip is actually going to be about birding, you mean? Have you decided yet what you’re going to tell DCS Shepherd when she asks why you’ve chosen to go to Colombia at this particular time?”

  “It’s the dry season.” Jejeune waited for Detective Chief Superintendent Colleen Shepherd to look up from her paper hunt. “It makes access to remote areas easier.”

  Perhaps even those that exist inside us. But even though the thought went unsaid, it was clear from Shepherd’s expression that she suspected there was more behind Jejeune’s impulsive decision than he was telling her.

  The DCS let herself stay occupied with hunting through the various papers on her desk. The task seemed to be a constant feature of his visits to her office these days, as if all the shuffling might give her eyes something else to do, rather than looking at him. Both would tacitly acknowledge they were not enjoying the most cordial of relationships at the moment, even if neither was willing to broach the subject openly. As a result, most of their conversations now teetered on this tightrope of strained politesse, where eye contact was avoided as much as possible and conversation carried the clipped terseness of those who would sooner move on.

  “Nothing else going on?” Shepherd straightened finally from her task and looked squarely at him. “On the domestic front, I mean. Everything’s okay, I trust … between you and Lindy.”

  Jejeune managed to hide his startled look from his DCS, but not without some effort. “Fine.” Even to him, the answer seemed to lack the conviction he would have liked.

  “It just seems a bit sudden, that’s all. I can’t imagine what that girl of yours makes of this zipping off to foreign climes to watch birds with Christmas just around the corner. Still, I suppose she has more than enough events of her own to attend. She seems to be very much in demand these days, I must say. Every time I open a newspaper, I see something about her.”

&nb
sp; “Exactly. I doubt she’ll even notice I’ve gone.” Jejeune offered a smile, grateful that Shepherd’s scrutiny of his motives seemed to be behind them.

  The DCS seemed to consider his comment. “As a visiting police officer, I assume you’ll be informing the Colombian authorities of your trip. Just as a courtesy, I mean. How long you plan on being in their country, where you’ll be going, that sort of thing.” She paused for a long moment. “And, of course, the reason for your visit.”

  “Birdwatching.”

  Deputy Consul Carmela Rojas made her pronouncement in a way that suggested she might have been expecting a different answer from Jejeune. Behind her, Sloane Square was enjoying a crisp, bright winter day. Sunlight danced off the woman’s dazzling white blouse as it slanted in through her office window.

  The Deputy Consul for Legal Affairs looked up from the form she was consulting, her dark eyes searching Jejeune’s face. She was about his height, though the way her straight black hair hung down her back made her seem taller. It wasn’t a hairstyle Jejeune would have necessarily associated with the prosaic business of diplomatic liaison, but then he doubted Carmela Rojas would have any difficulty being taken seriously by her male colleagues.