A Shimmer of Hummingbirds

by Steve Burrows

  Behind him, the uniformed officer who had driven him, a lad who himself looked like he shouldn’t have been driving unaccompanied, hovered uncertainly as he waited for further instructions. Laraby seemed not to notice, so Danny Maik dismissed the officer with a short nod of his head. The sergeant, it appeared, would be seeing to the new DI’s transportation arrangements from now on.

  “Sergeant Maik and Constable Salter? You two were first in after discovery, I understand?”

  Their silence told Laraby he was correct.

  “Initial impressions?” He softened his demand slightly with a trailing smile. “Best part, sometimes.”

  Perhaps Salter’s embarrassment was heightened by Laraby’s unwillingness to dwell on her faux pas; her neck and ears still held a noticeably rosy glow. Nevertheless, it was clear she would need to go first. Danny Maik was still looking as if somebody had told him the investigation was being taken over by Sherlock Holmes.

  “It looks like a burglary gone …” Salter hesitated. Wrong did not begin to cover the heartbreakingly sad scene they had encountered. “We think someone broke in through the back door expecting the place to be empty, but then found her here, possibly asleep in the armchair. Smothered her with a pillow and then had a riffle around. There’s evidence that some personal effects have been taken; jewellery and such. And the drawers in that sideboard have been searched.”

  “TV and electronics?”

  Salter shook her head. “It looks like whoever it was might have been disturbed before they had a chance to get them away.”

  Laraby looked around the room. “Murder in a pretty little village like this,” he said, shaking his head. “Doesn’t seem right, somehow. How did we catch it, anyway?”

  “A call from a neighbour three doors down. Out for a late-night stroll. She saw the door wide open and called the station.”

  Laraby glanced across to Maik, as if checking whether he might have anything to add. He didn’t, but he was looking at the new DI as if he might have more than a few questions of his own.

  “This stroll…?” Laraby asked him.

  “A well-established routine.” Maik seemed to be paying out the details reluctantly, as if suspicious of exactly what Laraby might do with the information once he had it. But his tone suggested he was comfortable enough with his earlier verification that Laraby could be, too.

  Laraby came around behind the armchair and hunched slightly, following the line of sight. The dark mass of the safe beneath the window was in direct view. “Killed here?”

  There was a beat of silence between the men which Salter felt compelled to fill. “It looks like the location of the suffocation, forensic confirmation pending. We found a pillow on the floor by the chair. No signs of a struggle. Mind you, a high chair back like that, an approach from behind. If the killer got a good hold, it would be difficult to put up much of a fight.”

  The DI nodded without speaking. “So, what do we know about our victim?”

  Still Maik seemed reluctant to answer any inquires not specifically directed his way. Again, Salter stepped in. “Erin Dawes, thirty-eight, owner and sole occupant of the property. She’s lived in this village all her life. Went off to university, bought this place when she came back, and she’s been here ever since. Never married. No kids.”

  Laraby picked up a photo from the table. “This her?” He considered the photo for a long time, and was still looking down at it when he spoke. “Good looking woman, but never married. Anything in that, I wonder?”

  “Other than she had some common sense?”

  Divorcee, Laraby’s smile seemed to say. But there was more irony than bitterness in the constable’s response now. If she wasn’t completely over the break-up, she was well on her way.

  “Not much of a social life at all, that we can see,” continued Salter. “About the only thing we could find was an investment group called the IV League.”

  “Ivy league like those American colleges?”

  “In a way. The same derivation of the name, IV, four in Roman numerals. This lot actually spelled it I, V, though. But there’s no meetings in her diary for the past couple of months, so either she left, or they’ve disbanded.”

  “Let’s find out which, shall we?” Laraby nodded and moved to set the photograph down on a small side table draped in a floor-length floral cloth. The sound seemed so perfectly coordinated to the inspector’s actions that at first they all assumed it was the squeak of a loose table leg. But a faint movement of the cloth caused Laraby to bend down. He fished beneath the hem for a few moments and emerged with a tiny kitten in his hand.

  He held it up to eye level, the squirming form dwarfed by his hand. Laraby didn’t look happy, but to his credit, he didn’t take it out on the animal. “Looks like it’s starving,” he said. “See if there’s any milk in the fridge, will you, Constable?”

  “Milk’s no good,” Salter told him with authority. “It’ll want water.”

  He handed the kitten off to Salter and watched her disappear into the kitchen with it before turning on Maik.

  “I thought SOCO had done a sweep of this place.” The tenor of the statement was unmistakable.

  “There’s a cat door in the kitchen,” said Maik evenly. “I imagine the kitten was outside when they were here and came back in after they left. They wouldn’t have missed it. The SOCO crew are a bright bunch. They know what they’re doing.”

  Laraby nodded to himself slightly. The legendary loyalty of Danny Maik — unwilling to let anybody take any liberties with the SOCO team’s reputation, even in their absence. Laraby considered the hulking form, now turned slightly away from him in examination of something else in the room. I’ll bet I could enjoy working with you, Sergeant Maik, he thought.

  Laraby pointed to the figurine of the bird on the small table beside the chair. “This lot has all been dusted by those Mensa members from SOCO, I take it?” He hefted the figurine and distractedly tapped it against the cupped palm of his other hand as he gazed around the room. Maik’s eyes followed the metronomic rise and fall of the yellow and black bird.

  Laraby looked at the safe. “That’s a formidable piece of hardware for any domestic dwelling. Any reason this woman would need a six-hundred-pound safe in a quaint country cottage like this?”

  Salter answered from the kitchen doorway. “She was an accountant … sir.” She added the title as an afterthought, but Laraby either didn’t notice, or didn’t mind. “She did a couple of on-site jobs at local companies, a half-day here and there, but mostly she worked from home.”

  “Took it seriously, by the look of things.” He pointed to the kitchen. “Point of entry?” he asked. Maik nodded and followed the DI into the other room. For a moment, the two men stood shoulder to shoulder, peering intently at the hole in the glass panel in the kitchen door.

  “What do you reckon on that kitten, Constable?” asked Laraby finally, without turning round. “Can we find it a good home?”

  “I can try.”

  He nodded absently. “There was a mug, I understand, in that sink over there. You said there was no sign of a struggle. Any evidence of a sedative?”

  Maik was still staring at the weed-lined path beyond the back door. “No, but there was recoverable DNA on the mug.” He turned so his look found Laraby. “The SOCO team has already sent it for analysis,” he said. “Results should be back within a couple of days.”

  Laraby raised his eyebrows in what might have been admira­tion. He gave another short smile and returned to the living room. Maik and Salter trailed after him, leaving the kitten in the kitchen to lap at the saucer of water she had set down. “DCS Shepherd tells me the ME’s already finished his preliminary examination of the body. Any signs of recent injuries? Cuts or bruises? Burns? Broken bones?”

  “Nothing at all. She seemed to be in very good health. A couple of tattoos — not gang, not military. We checked, just in case, but they weren’t in our database.”

  Laraby pulled a face. “Be easier these day
s to have a database of people who don’t have a tattoo.” He stroked his chin with his fingers “So the safe is in plain sight; the intruder must know any valuables are going to be in there, yet there’s nothing on the body to suggest any attempts at coercion or torture. Why kill the woman without at least even trying to get the combination from her? I can well imagine they’re not the most sophisticated bunch of villains you’ll ever find, out here in a picturesque little spot like this, but still….”

  Salter flashed a look at Maik. What the hell was Laraby on about? Killers made illogical choices all the time. Panic, fear, a loud noise outside; there were any number of reasons why he might have killed her if he didn’t have the luxury of time. He was just a bit too full of himself, this bloke, with his picturesque this and his quaint that and his pretty the other. How many ways was he going to find to tell them he thought they were just bumbling village coppers whiling away their time in some picture postcard irrelevance out on the edge of nowhere? She searched out Danny Maik’s eyes for some sort of agreement. But Laraby hadn’t finished speaking yet.

  “That bolt is up high on the kitchen door, very odd place for it. I don’t remember seeing one in that position before. And yet there was just the single hole cut in the glass, right next to it.” He shook his head. “I despair sometimes, the luck these villains have? Why can’t nice coppers like us get breaks like that?” Laraby thought for a moment and turned to Maik. “It’s a problem, isn’t it, Sergeant? Do you want to tell the good constable here what it means, or am I still being put through my paces?”

  Maik looked at Salter. “Whoever cut the hole knew where to find the bolt. It suggests they’d been here before.”

  Laraby nodded. “But expecting there to be valuables hanging about when there’s a perfectly good safe in here? Now that suggests otherwise.” Laraby leaned back slightly and slid his hands into his trouser pockets. He looked at Salter. “You see my point.”

  She did now. Deliberately or not, somebody was sending mixed signals. And that meant investigating the murder of Erin Dawes was not going to be anywhere near as straightforward as it had once seemed.

  5

  Jejeune stood on the sidewalk outside his hotel and watched his taxi disappear into the miasma of traffic. The heat was building, and there was a steady bustle of activity on the streets as people hurried to get their tasks completed before the warmest part of the day arrived. Soon, things would slow to walking pace as Bogota drifted toward its afternoon somnolence. The city would wait for the heat to lift once again from the mountain-rimmed plain with the advent of evening.

  After checking in, Jejeune hefted his pack with one hand and ducked into the darkened, air-conditioned bar off the hotel lobby. He ordered a coffee and settled on a stool in the far corner, a place to observe unobserved. On the other side of the room, a man was leaning forward in a low-slung wicker chair, forearms resting on his knees. His dark hair was slicked back, framing a lean face with strong, defined features. The seats facing him were all occupied by people leaning in to listen. The man was addressing the group casually, making sure he engaged each of them in turn; a man giving instructions he expected to be followed. He was about Jejeune’s age and build, but he had the raw muscularity and weathered features of a man who spent his days outdoors. The tanned arms showing beneath his short-sleeved khaki shirt hinted at special toning; martial arts training, perhaps.

  The man had registered Jejeune’s entrance, and he turned to look at him now. There was no hostility in his gaze, only a deep, intense interest. He was not wondering why Jejeune had come to Colombia, or why he had chosen this tour company. He thought he knew. But did he? Even Jejeune wasn’t entirely sure himself. There was more to it than just the need to be here, as Lindy said, to see it all for himself, so he could understand, somehow, the heartbreaking truth of his brother’s predicament. Whatever you find. Or don’t. This country had been on his radar since his earliest days of birding. Part of him wanted to believe that he might be able to immerse himself in this birding tour, to experience the joy of it as the other participants undoubtedly would. But perhaps that, too, was just the shadowy wish of a mind awash with whispered questions and travel fatigue.

  Jejeune raised his coffee cup in a small gesture of acknow­ledgement, but neither man made any effort to close the gap between them. The detective regretted slightly that he’d lost the opportunity to study Armando Perea unobserved, to note his tells, the little giveaways in his gestures and habits. For reasons he couldn’t have explained, Jejeune had a sense that any advantage he could gain over the man who was going to be his guide for the next few days was going to be important. With a final nod in Perea’s direction, Jejeune drained his coffee, picked up his pack, and headed up to his room.

  Emptying out his pockets, he took out a crumpled sheet of paper and stared at it: the bird list, in Lindy’s handwriting. A few scribbled words that had made this trip possible, because of the assurance it had allowed him to give Deputy Consul Rojas: I am not in contact with my brother. I don’t know where he is.

  His mind drifted to the clifftop path beside their cottage; a safe, quiet place to let his swirling thoughts return to normal. It was the only written communication he could ever remember that had left him literally speechless. He had looked at the sheet of paper for a long time out there, with the winds buffeting him, threatening to tear the precious note from his grasp and send it floating out over the sea. It wouldn’t have mattered. Because by then, he knew the contents by heart: Black Inca, Chiribiquete Emerald, Green-Bearded Helmetcrest, and two other names. Hummingbirds, he knew now, endemic to Colombia, found nowhere else in the world. At the time, their significance was not clear to him. But as a message, even then, the words had meant everything. They were a response to a statement, blurted out in frustration a few days before. “If I even knew Damian’s list of target species on the trip, that might tell me something.”

  It did. The list told him that Lindy had found a way to ask his brother, that she knew, somehow, how to reach him. Even now, he marvelled at Lindy’s guile in revealing it to him. Because inevitably, as soon as you received a list like this, your mind was going to be flooded with questions about how and when and where. But if Lindy had thrust the list into your hand just as she was leaving — Popping out to the shops for a bit — and had also, for the first time in living memory, left her phone behind, well, then, you might find yourself with time to reconsider exactly what you wanted to ask. Because you might realize, as you peered out over the sea, and the keening wind made your eyes water, that not knowing would allow you to keep a gossamer thin veil of deniability, so you could look into the eyes of your DCS, if she asked, or those of a deputy consul like Carmela Rojas, and be able to tell them honestly that you didn’t know where your brother was, that you were not in contact with him.

  So when Lindy returned, wearing that faint pirate smile that told him she was prepared to keep any secrets he allowed her to, all he could do was cup her face in his hands with a tenderness even he was surprised he possessed, and draw her in for a long, silent hug that could have gone on forever.

  Jejeune checked his watch, then took out his phone. The familiar voice answered on the second ring. “You got there okay then?” said Lindy, in that jaunty tone she seemed to reserve exclusively for him. “So, what’s Bogota like?”

  “Thriving. There’s new building going on everywhere — roads, services, office blocks.” Domenic strode to the window as they chatted and looked down onto the street below. Crowds of people gathered amongst the bodegas and the traffic, conversing, trading, negotiating; the beating heart of human interactions. “There’s a great enthusiasm about it all, too, like the country is heading in a new direction and everybody’s buying in.”

  “Sounds terrific. How was your flight?”

  The conversation moved on to this and then the weather, Jejeune countering Lindy’s description of the cold and dreary north Norfolk winter with an account of the bright, sunny cityscape he now found himself
looking out over. It was communication, nothing more; holding hands across the vast expanses of the globe that separated them.

  “Met anyone interesting?” asked Lindy.

  Jejeune could hear the uneven breathing patterns as she moved around the house, sorting through mail, folding clothes, putting away dishes, all with her phone resting on her shoulder, clamped into place by her cricked neck.

  “I saw the tour leader, but we haven’t spoken yet. How about you? Any new men in your life?”

  “Tons.” Lindy told him. “In fact, even today there was some geezer with a shaved head and an interesting line in neck art hanging around outside the office. If he’s there again tomorrow, I’m going to ask Eric if he wants me to interview him for a feature on prison tats.”

  “I meant at your events. Old flames.”

  The Circuit, they were calling it, the steady round of appearances that had come her way since winning a prestigious national journalism award. In the beginning, Domenic had accompanied her, but he had cut an increasingly isolated figure on the periphery of her circle, as she reconnected with colleagues from earlier in her journalism career. Though she denied it vehemently, they both knew she would enjoy her time much more without the distraction of having to flash solicitous glances his way every five minutes, so he had started finding himself unavailable when her appearances came up, until he had finally stopped attending them altogether.

  “I really do wish I could have been there with you,” said Lindy. “There’s just something so enchanting about that part of the world. No wonder all the great magic realist writers come from Latin America. Marquez, Allende, Uslar Pietri. You’d better be careful, Inspector Jejeune. Strange and wonderful things can happen in the world of magic realism.”

  “Like you becoming a birder, you mean?”

  “You’re confusing magic realism with fantasy, darling, and that’s one fantasy of yours that just ain’t a-happenin’. ” Lindy’s friv­olity seemed to give way suddenly, and there was a beat of uneasy silence. “Danny Maik dropped by,” she said finally. “He said he just wanted to check I was okay, see whether I needed anything.”