A Cast of Falcons

by Steve Burrows

  Domenic looked surprised.

  “He was anticipating some kind of reaction from me. Delight, maybe hostility even, but something, certainly not surprise. He thought I knew he was coming, Dom, and I would have already prepared myself. But I didn’t know. And he could see that. He could see you hadn’t even talked to me about any of this. Do you have any idea how much that hurt me, that another man could see that you didn’t even trust me that much?”

  “It wasn’t that,” said Domenic emphatically. “It’s this situation. There are … circumstances.”

  “Your brother was in trouble with the law. I know that, Domenic. Your friend Traz told me when we were in St. Lucia. So you see, there was really no reason to keep anything from me.” She turned away from him and picked up the knife again, ready to work away her anger.

  Jejeune sat down in a chair by the kitchen table and spent a long time looking at the flagstone floor. “Is,” he said eventually, so quietly that Lindy turned around to look at him again. “Not was in trouble with the law. He is, Lindy. Damian is a fugitive from justice. There’s an international warrant out for his arrest.” He felt adrift, unable to find a starting point for his explanation. He realized Lindy hadn’t spoken, and he looked up. She was staring at him, her face a mask of astonishment. But her voice, when it came, had lost its harshness. Her calmness was almost a force, now, like a defence mounted to repress the panic welling inside her. She held up a hand.

  “Whatever it is, Dom, whatever he’s done, I don’t want to know, okay? But he has to leave. He’s got no right to put you in this situation. It’s not fair. You’ll have to deal with it. I don’t mean you should turn him in, obviously, but he can’t stay here.”

  Jejeune stood and moved to the window again. But the vast, heaving sea held no answers for him, no arguments against Lindy’s relentless, measured logic. She joined him at the window and stood beside him, gently stroking his shoulder with the palm of her hand. “I’m sure he’s already worked it out for himself. He knows what you do for a living. A quick word and he’ll be on his way.” A thought seemed to strike her. “Or I can do it, tell him, if it would be too difficult for you.”

  “It’ll just be for a short time,” said Domenic, as much to his own reflection in the window as to the woman standing beside him.

  Lindy shook her head, drawing a breath to suppress her frustration in favour of a more reasonable tone. “You have to decide who you want to be in this, Dom, the policeman or the brother. Because you can’t be both, and if you faff about trying to decide, the authorities will make your mind up for you. Even failing to report his presence is a criminal offence. He can’t be here, in this house, under the same roof as you. Not even for a night.”

  “A few days, that’s all I’m saying, a week at most. Just enough time to let me get to the bottom of all this.”

  “All what?”

  “Damian came here for a reason, and I need to find out what that is. I think it may have something to do with Gyrfalcons, but I’m not sure.”

  “Gyrfalcons? Bloody hell, Domenic, this is serious. You can’t risk everything we have over some birds.” She looked around her with a kind of wild desperation, as if it all, this kitchen, this cottage, this life, might be taken away from her at any moment. “Harbouring a wanted criminal, it could mean prison. Do you have any idea at all what that could be like for an ex-policeman?”

  The impact seemed to arrive only now, the truth of the risk they faced. Now, as she spoke it aloud for the first time, the effect of the ice-cold wave of realization on her was almost visible. “I’m sorry, Dom,” she said, shaking her head, “he has to leave.”

  “There’s a reason he came here,” said Domenic, “I need to find out what it is.”

  “Then ask him, for God’s sake, and send him on his way.”

  Domenic shook his head. “That’s not the way it works with us. It never has. We need to work up to things. It’s like we both have to keep manoeuvring around until we find a safe place, and then we can talk.”

  “We don’t have time for you two to be playing musical chairs, Domenic. He’s out there now, sampling the delights of the north Norfolk countryside. Who knows who’s taking notes?”

  Jejeune shook his head. “He’s careful. He won’t attract any attention to himself. I doubt anybody will even give him a second glance.”

  Lindy pulled away from him slightly and gave him a wild-eyed look, astonishment mixed with exasperation. “What village have you been living in? You can’t get your front room decorated in Saltmarsh without it being the subject of the day at the fish and chip shop. If nobody knows he’s here now, I can guarantee they will by the end of tomorrow. This lot makes the BBC look like they’re still relying on the pony express for their news.”

  “The area is built on tourism. New faces show up here every day. One more won’t raise any eyebrows.”

  “It will if they see the two of you out on the town together.”

  “They won’t. I’ll make sure we’re careful.”

  He had won. He could see that the fight had gone from her eyes and been replaced by resignation. He had countered her arguments and he had won. She knew that whatever objections she raised, he would match them, until she had none left to offer. They had argued like this before — quietly, insistently, relentlessly — on other important topics, the ones that really mattered. And this was when they reached their resolutions, when one of them saw how vitally important something was to the other and decided that this was what mattered, the sheer overwhelming significance of it. It meant that Lindy was on his side now. Whatever misgivings she might have, it was their shared decision. All that remained was the fine print.

  “A week?” She looked at him warily, distrustful almost, and Domenic recoiled from it. He knew he deserved such a look, had earned it, even. “That’s all? And then he’s gone? Even if he hasn’t told you what he wants, and you haven’t been clever enough to work it out? Even then, he leaves?”

  Jejeune nodded. “A week. I promise.” And he did, fully and unreservedly. The time had come to stop lying to Lindy. And it began now.

  17

  The pall of unease that had hung over the interview room since they had begun investigating Philip Wayland’s murder was not lifted at all by the return of Chief Inspector Domenic Jejeune. Perhaps it might have been, if he had taken a position at the front of the room and locked them in with that intense stare of his, imperiously declaring that they had a definite lead or two; that there was a chance that he could now guide them, literally and figuratively, out of the woods and toward the light of truth in this case. But he did not. Instead, the inspector retreated to his customary perch on a desk at the back of the room, making only minimal eye contact on his way.

  So it was left to Danny Maik to part the clouds, at least a little, by delivering the news that Philip Wayland’s death was not quite as it had first appeared, after all.

  “There is evidence of teeth marks on the neck tissue. According to the ME, the blow was enough to sever muscle, ligament, and bone to the extent that the head could later be detached by foraging animals. Foxes, he would suggest. He also confirmed the marks on the leather shoulder strap indicate the blade, whatever it was, skidded off it, meaning the initial blow probably wasn’t aimed at the neck.” Maik looked around the room significantly to make sure nobody missed the message, “In other words, Mr. Wayland was not intentionally decapitated by his killer.”

  The information was greeted with such relief, Maik would not have been surprised to hear a slight smattering of applause. In the strange world the detectives inhabited, it was an important distinction. The murder was a violent, ruthless act, certainly, but somehow less macabre, less inhuman now. In a way that none of them would have been able to explain, it made an important difference to know that their quarry had suddenly been downgraded to a more human prey.

  There was other news awaiting them, too. Lauren Salter was gearing herself up to deliver it, primping a set of note sheets into alig
nment on her knee. She had taken to adding a touch of drama to her reports recently, and her preparations now were a signal that something significant was on its way.

  “You know you asked me to do a bit of digging into carbon capture and storage? Well it’s only relatively recently that governments and global organizations have begun paying any serious attention to it. But I think we could say they certainly are now.”

  “Could we?” asked Maik, playing along in order to get to the crux of her report as quickly as possible. “And why might we say that, Constable?”

  “Because they’ve started doing what they always do with big global problems. They’re throwing money at it. They’ve made a fund available — essentially a cash prize, I suppose you’d call it — for anyone who can come up with a viable method of capturing and storing carbon on an industrial scale.”

  “You’re talking about the CCS Commercialisation Programme,” said Jejeune from the back of the room. “I understood that had been cancelled.”

  Salter nodded. “The first competition was,” she confirmed, “but it has been reinstated. This time around, they’re providing something called competitive capital funding.”

  “Are we talking about a lot of money, Lauren?” Holland wasn’t the only person in the room warming to this new information. As motives for murder went, money was pretty much your default setting.

  Salter shrugged. “Depends on what you mean by a lot.” She looked around the room, milking the moment. At the back, she could see that Jejeune already knew the figure. The others, though, were hanging on, exactly where Lauren Salter wanted them. Even Danny Maik was leaning forward slightly, as if ready to catch the number when she supplied it.

  “How about one billion pounds?”

  The announcement was greeted by a stunned silence. A billion pounds was a lot of money to throw at any problem. How and why this prize money was connected to Wayland’s death might take some sorting out, but few in the room doubted there would be a connection somewhere. Most eyes turned toward Jejeune. Perhaps the inspector, with his processor-like mind, had already made a link. But if so, his bland expression gave no hint.

  “The first contest, Constable,” he said, “do we know why it was cancelled?”

  “All the entrants eventually pulled out. Carbon capture and storage research is extremely costly, and with no guarantees of success, they found they simply couldn’t carry on. You’d need almost unlimited resources to undertake a project like this.”

  “Enter Emirati princes buying up old dairies,” said Holland. A thought seemed to strike him, and he gave a self-satisfied grin. “Which I suppose makes them milk sheiks.”

  “Although only officers who wanted to spend their careers giving bicycle safety tips to the children at Saltmarsh Primary School would dream of referring to them that way,” said Colleen Shepherd from the doorway. No one was sure how long she had been there, but if she registered the atmosphere in the room at all, it came a distant second to her own agenda. She acknowledged Jejeune’s presence with an uncertain smile.

  “Welcome back, Domenic. And straight into the fray, I was glad to note. Catherine Weil was helpful, I take it?”

  “To us, or to Prince Yousef?”

  Shepherd decided to ignore the sarcasm. Perhaps it was a way of acknowledging that Jejeune had a point. Although he hadn’t checked in at the station before heading out to the Old Dairy, they both knew she could still have gotten word to him that he wouldn’t be meeting anyone in authority, if she had wanted to. “I’m sorry, but your request to interview senior figures at the Old Dairy could be interpreted as a sign that you consider them suspects. Perhaps even the prince himself.”

  Jejeune’s silence could have meant anything, but Shepherd was taking no chances. “You’re not saying he is, I hope. In case you had forgotten, the word alibi means ‘in another place’,” she said. “In the air, hundreds of feet above Saltmarsh, seems to me to be pretty bloody definitively ‘another place’ than a public footpath through a forest. Catherine Weil confirmed her previous statement, I take it, about seeing Wayland entering the woods around seven?”

  “You’d hardly expect her to do otherwise, given that she was the person the Old Dairy executive hand-selected to speak to us.”

  “It was felt she was best-placed to answer your questions. I did take into account that she is the one who provided the prince with his alibi. And also the person who identified Wayland’s body. I’m not completely oblivious to these things you know, Domenic. We did manage to get along here on our own, tie our own shoelaces and such, while you were off chasing around the Outer Hebrides.” It was all lighthearted and pleasant, but the message was clear. Shepherd was not asking for forgiveness. She had come in here prepared to fight her corner when it came to protecting the Emirati family from Jejeune’s investigations.

  “Right, on to other things,” she announced with customary briskness. “As you know, the Crown Prince arrives tomorrow. There are expected to be plenty of protesters on hand, so I want a full complement of detectives up there. Wayland’s killer might well be among these protesters, so I expect you all to put yourselves about a bit and see if anybody knows anything.”

  A shimmer of unease rippled through the room. It was clear now that she hadn’t yet been in the doorway when Salter delivered her bombshell. “It’s possible the protesters might not be our primary focus now, ma’am.” The constable’s comment was delivered casually, but not enough to disguise its importance. Shepherd looked at Jejeune and then at Maik.

  “Constable Salter has just brought us the news that, in the field in which Philip Wayland was working, someone is offering a one-billion-pound prize for the first one to come up with a viable solution,” said the sergeant.

  Shepherd shifted uneasily. “I’m not sure that constitutes a link to the Old Dairy project itself, necessarily,” she said carefully.

  Maik felt a stab of embarrassment for his DCS. If she acknowledged the link, she could hardly refuse Jejeune permission to follow wherever it might lead. But she was fooling no one by pretending she could not see where all this was going. He looked across at Jejeune. It should be you doing this, he thought. But he could tell the DCI wasn’t going to respond, and, not for the first time, the dirty work fell to Danny.

  “If Philip Wayland started making some headway on this problem, all of a sudden he would become a threat to all the competitors for the prize money. Including those he used to work for.”

  Shepherd was silent for a long time.

  “A full complement of detectives, and plenty of uniforms up there, too. See to it, will you, Sergeant. Prince Ibrahim is a visiting dignitary. His safety is paramount, and I won’t have it compromised by some mob of layabouts.”

  Not to mention the show of goodwill such a police presence would provide, thought Maik, which might come in handy, if and when the North Norfolk Constabulary had to inconvenience Old Dairy Holdings with inquiries into the murder of a former employee. The short beat of silence that followed Shepherd’s orders suggested the others had picked up on her transparent motive, too, and as the meeting broke up, for the second time in a few moments, Maik felt slightly uncomfortable for his DCS.

  Shepherd stopped Jejeune on his way out, waiting as the clatter of noise from the still-clearing room subsided. “I take it this Scottish business was resolved to everyone’s satisfaction,” she said conversationally. Her pause wasn’t long enough for Jejeune to confirm or deny. “Though I see you couldn’t quite manage to stay out of the spotlight, even up there.”

  Jejeune wasn’t sure whether his look would have shown puzzlement or alarm. He felt both in equal measure.

  “The press office has just informed me you’ve been mentioned in the dispatches again. Apparently the woman whose son you rescued writes a local blog. She thanked you in it.”

  Jejeune shrugged uneasily. “Right place, right time.”

  “Yes,” said Shepherd. “The funny thing was, she described you as having a beard — a nice man with a b
eard, who talked to her son about Ravens.”

  Jejeune shifted, unable to keep his eyes on his DCS. “A couple of days’ growth,” he said, waving a hand vaguely in front of his chin. “She was busy looking after her son. She probably didn’t get a good look.”

  At the man who had just saved her son? Even to him it sounded implausible. Shepherd tilted her face up to him slightly, and her eyes seemed to be searching his. Another time, perhaps she might have had more questions, pursued things a bit more. But for now, she had decided to move on.

  “I’ve just been hearing on the radio about this award Lindy has been nominated for. I hadn’t realized it was quite so prestigious.”

  Jejeune nodded vigorously, happy to be able to redirect the conversation. “I’m extremely proud of her. Obviously.”

  “And you’ve shown her this, I take it?”

  The pointed question took him by surprise, and he gave Shepherd a blank look in lieu of an answer.

  “You should arrange something, a small party, make an event of it. Whether or not she wins the award, it would be nice for her to have something to remember the nomination by.”

  Jejeune gave an indulgent smile. “I don’t think she’d be that interested, to be honest.”

  Shepherd shook her head slightly. “You know, there are times when I find your ability to read people’s inner thoughts quite astonishing.” She paused. “This is not one of them. It will matter to her, Domenic, take it from me, regardless of how self-effacing she’s pretending to be. Just because you’re used to this sort of attention doesn’t mean everyone else is. Recognition like this comes so rarely to most of us, it is something to revel in, if only for a short time. I’m not saying you should rent out the Saltmarsh Hunt Club, but a small gathering in that lovely little cottage of yours, a chance to celebrate this moment with a few of her close friends, it would mean a lot to her.”