A Cast of Falcons

by Steve Burrows

Shepherd had taken to wearing her gold-rimmed glasses on the end of her nose recently, perhaps to make it easier to peer over them intimidatingly when she needed to. “Do you want me to make it an order?”

  She was eyeing him carefully. Was her earlier suspicion still lingering in her gaze? Domenic knew any further resistance might set her wondering, might send her mind rolling back over this business about the man with the beard. With a tilt of his head, he conceded defeat. After all, a couple of dozen people coming to his cottage, where his fugitive brother had taken up residence; what could possibly go wrong?

  18

  Jejeune didn’t waste much time after the morning briefing. He wanted to get out to speak to Xandria Grey as soon as possible, and he asked Maik to accompany him, so the sergeant could fill him in on the details of his previous visit along the way.

  Maik had told him everything; a slow, steady monologue that soundtracked their route as Jejeune guided the big Range Rover along the narrow lanes. The sergeant gave his account unguardedly, though he would undoubtedly have felt more at ease about it if he didn’t have the impression that Jejeune was listening for the messages behind the words, the parts left unsaid, undetected, perhaps, even by Danny himself.

  Jejeune wheeled into the car park at the university’s research facility. If he made no comment about the building, it was clear from his expression that he was no more impressed with its outward appearance than Maik had been. They walked along the putty-coloured corridors until they arrived at Xandria Grey’s office. She looked up from a desk untidily strewn with papers as the two men entered. The neat bob of her hairstyle still framed her face, but it did nothing to hide the pallor of her skin.

  “I hope we’re not disturbing you,” said Maik. “This is Chief Inspector Jejeune. He’s running the investigation into Mr. Wayland’s death.” Ostensibly, the introduction was for Grey’s benefit, but given Jejeune’s recent performance at the Old Dairy, Maik thought it wouldn’t hurt to remind the DCI of his role, either.

  Jejeune took a step forward. “I’m sorry for your loss, Ms. Grey.”

  “You can call me Xandria.” She flashed a look at Maik. “It seems to help when there are difficult matters to discuss.”

  “I understand it’s hard for you to speak about things at the moment.”

  Grey held up a weary hand, as if to stop Jejeune. “I will try to answer any inquiries about Philip you may have, Inspector, no matter how troubling they might be.”

  There was an emptiness about her, a desolation, as if in denying herself access to her emotions, she had been unable to fill the internal spaces with any other feelings. Almost in front of Maik’s eyes, Xandria Grey’s personality was becoming a wasteland.

  “I understand Mr. Wayland was an expert in the undersea storage of captured carbon,” began Jejeune gently. “Is that what he was working on here?”

  She nodded. “Though possibly not in the way you mean. Philip was looking at ways to promote CO2 sequestration through the use of carbon-fixing algae. If you can create an algal bloom, you get large chains of diatoms, a type of phyto­plankton. These use carbon to build shells for themselves, absorbing it from the atmosphere in huge amounts. Research shows that when these organisms die, they often sink as deep as one thousand metres. At those depths, the carbon they take with them could be safely and harmlessly stored in seafloor sediments and deep-water columns for centuries.”

  Perhaps because of his discomfort in previously having to stand at the front of the incident room with no new leads to offer, Maik now tended to view all information through a lens which had him presenting it to the rest of the task force. He was trying to imagine a scenario where he explained to them that the solution to global climate change, as proposed by one of the top thinkers in the subject, was to have microscopic creatures build themselves tiny shells of carbon and sink to the bottom of the ocean with them. As dutiful as Danny was, this could be one time when he might simply step back and insist that Jejeune leave his perch at the back of the room and handle the briefing himself.

  Jejeune, though, didn’t seem to share Maik’s skepticism. “I assume he hadn’t done any research on this while he was at the Old Dairy,” said Jejeune

  Grey shook her head. “Even if he did, any work he did there is considered proprietary. It would have all been protected under the confidentiality agreement he signed.”

  “Based on Catherine Weil’s guarded responses to my inquiries, I get the impression it is particularly restrictive.”

  The comment took Maik aback slightly. In the first place, as he remembered it, they were his inquiries. More to the point, he was surprised to learn Jejeune had even registered Catherine Weil’s responses, so preoccupied had he seemed at the time.

  Grey stood up and crossed to a counter to pour herself a glass of water. She waved the carafe at the two men, but both declined. “I doubt Catherine Weil would have shared much with you whether she was bound by her agreement or not. They seem to particularly enjoy the covert side of things up there. Secrecy for its own sake, Philip used to call it. I’m sure it was one of the things that drove him to leave, finally. That and the opportunity to pursue this entirely new branch of research here at the university.”

  Jejeune had gone quiet. Possibly it was just one of his usual thoughtful pauses, but given the DCI’s previous performance, Maik was taking no chances that this interview would sink into the desultory silences of the earlier one. “This new research, it doesn’t involve piping the carbon out under the seas, then,” he said. “Like they are planning to do up at the Old Dairy?”

  “Like they are hoping to do, Sergeant Maik. You have no doubt been treated to Catherine Weil’s breezy optimism on the subject, but I can tell you for a fact that unless they can find a way to stabilize the carbon first, the international community will never allow them to do it. Pumping captured carbon under the sea for long-term storage is fraught with dangers. Potential leaks, for example. And it will almost certainly make the oceans more acidic. There are a lot of people out there already looking to outlaw the practice completely.”

  “Secrecy for its own sake,” said Jejeune like a man returning from a dream. “What did Mr. Wayland mean by that, I wonder?”

  “That not only the research was restricted, but the raw data, too — even the simple things like measurements of tidal dynamics, meteorological readings. Philip always knew Old Dairy Holdings would own the findings he produced. I just don’t think he ever expected that he would be denied access to his own data.”

  Jejeune set off on a small circuit of the office, an action Maik found strangely comforting. DCI Jejeune was starting to do the things he normally did — thinking, probing, wandering about all over the place. Could it be a sign he might finally be starting to get somewhere with this case? It was about time.

  From the far side of the office, Jejeune turned and looked frankly at Grey. “Did you get the sense he felt he had been deceived, tricked into signing the confidentiality agreement in some way?”

  She shook her head. “Philip understood how the world of corporate science worked. But he felt that the protections should only apply to the research, the answers they found in the raw data. He couldn’t see how it could serve any higher purpose to keep a few tide charts and wind measurements out of the public domain. I always got the impression his insistence on keeping all these paper copies here was a reaction of some kind to what was going on up there. He wanted to show the world. If it had been up to him, the data at the Old Dairy would have been made available to the wider world, as it is here at the university.”

  For a moment, her eyes moistened and she seemed in danger of letting her memories overwhelm her. Maik saw her frame stiffen slightly, as if she was almost physically trying to force her emotions under control once again. The effort seemed to weary her. She looked spent, exhausted.

  “I wonder,” said Jejeune, “would it be possible to see this data?”

  Grey looked up and seemed to draw herself together, as if aware her private
sorrow had drawn her away from the men’s presence. She set down her glass and grabbed a set of keys and a remote control device from her desk drawer.

  The detectives followed her down a narrow concrete stairway and through a series of dimly lit corridors that seemed to switch back and forth upon themselves erratically. She stopped before a nondescript door and unlocked it. She fumbled for a switch somewhere on the wall and a bank of fluorescent lights blinked lazily to life, bathing the entire room in a ghostly pale-blue light. Across the far wall was a series of storage shelves stretching from floor to ceiling. The motorized stacks were pressed together at either end, with only a single opening between them. In the half-light, it looked like the entrance to a cave, ominous and forbidding.

  She offered the console to Jejeune. “The motor and the emergency cut-off beams are activated by this remote device. The protocol is that only the person entering the stacks can hold it, and no one may enter them without it.” Her voice was dispassionate, indifferent. More self-protection, thought Maik. He could not imagine the pain she must be feeling, the inconsolable sense of loss at being down here, so close to the nerve centre of her lost fiancé’s work. Her willingness to offer more commentary startled him.

  “Philip had the system set up as soon as he came. He spent a lot of time down here. He wanted to be sure he’d be the only one controlling the movement of the stacks.”

  Jejeune took the console and began edging his way down the narrow space between the shelves. Grey seemed to drift off toward inner thoughts as she watched him.

  “Was Mr. Wayland close to a solution in this new line of inquiry?” asked Maik, more to dispel the uncomfortable silence that had settled between them than out of any genuine interest.

  Grey stirred, seeming to free herself a little from the melancholy that had shrouded her since she first entered the room. “Philip was certain it was possible, and once he had convinced himself of that, he was willing to sacrifice any amount of time, conduct any amount of research, to find it. He would have found his viable industrial-scale process, Sergeant. I have no doubt of it.”

  Her emotions moved like water, thought Maik, flowing from her sadness into these tiny eddies of energy when she spoke about Wayland’s work. If anything was going to save Xandria Grey, it would be this, continuing her ex-fiancé’s research.

  Jejeune emerged from the stacks with a number of manila folders. He crossed to a small desk and switched on a lamp, spreading the files out in front of him so that their titles and dates were visible. Tiny tabs of coloured paper protruded from the edges of many of the sheets in the folders. He selected two at random and scanned through their contents. He seemed oblivious to the presence of either Maik or Grey, both hovering uncertainly nearby.

  “These sticky tabs,” said Jejeune, looking up from the desk, “are they significant?”

  “DNA markers.” Grey’s face softened a little as the memory brought back a smile. “Utterly unprofessional, let alone unscientific. Still, they seemed to work for Philip.”

  “ DNA markers? I’m afraid I don’t understand.”

  “His little joke,” she said with another small smile. “It means ‘Data Not Available.’ He marked the areas where there were gaps in his research.”

  Jejeune’s expression suggested he did understand now. A lot more clearly. He stood up and closed the folders, gathering them up and handing them to Grey. “Thank you. This has been helpful.”

  “It sounds like the Old Dairy project is going to run into a lot more resistance over their undersea storage pipeline than Catherine Weil would have us believe,” said Maik, as the two men made their way across the car park to Jejeune’s Range Rover.

  Jejeune nodded. “Hardly what you want to hear if you’ve already focused all your efforts on it, as the Old Dairy owners have, is it?”

  “On the other hand, there were a lot of those little tabs,” said Maik. “It’s hard to believe Wayland was as close to a solution as Xandria Grey seems to think he was, if each one represented an area where no research had been done.”

  “Oh, I don’t believe that’s what they said at all, Sergeant. You heard her. Wayland was a researcher from the old school. The good ones used to pride themselves on precision, in what they call “non-data ink” too. I’m pretty sure if there was no data, Wayland’s tabs would have read ND.”

  Maik had gone quiet, and when Jejeune turned to face him, he saw that the sergeant’s face had turned to thunder. He was angry with himself, furious, and Jejeune suspected he knew why. Under Maik’s guidance, the investigation had made little progress, and while in reality that was no reflection on the sergeant’s abilities, perception was rarely a faithful mirror of the truth. Now the sergeant was realizing that, in refusing Grey’s earlier offer to look at Wayland’s research, he had missed something significant, something that may have led the investigation forward in some way. Jejeune respected his sergeant too much to offer him any platitudes about it not being important, but he didn’t need him dwelling on it either.

  “You raise a couple of good points, Sergeant,” he said.

  “Glad to hear I got something right,” said Maik tartly.

  “It would be interesting to find out whether anyone at the Old Dairy shares Xandria Grey’s point of view. If they felt their project was in trouble, and at the same time believed Philip Wayland was close to a breakthrough on an alternative solution, I can’t imagine recent meetings of Old Dairy board of directors would have been a comfortable place to be.”

  “You know what else strikes me?” asked Maik. “We’ve now spoken to people involved in two projects that are competing against each other for a billion pounds, and no one has so much as mentioned the prize money. You don’t imagine it’s slipped their minds, do you?”

  The sergeant seemed to be returning to the point where he wanted to start holding other people accountable for their actions, instead of just himself. Jejeune was pleased. The way events were unfolding, in this case and elsewhere, he had the feeling he was going to need the sergeant’s support, possibly more than he had ever needed it before.

  They had reached Jejeune’s Range Rover, but instead of getting in, the DCI stopped and looked at Maik over the top of the vehicle. “ Troubling, Sergeant,” he said. “That was Xandria Grey’s word. We could ask her questions, no matter how troubling they might be. Just what was it that she was expecting us to ask about Philip Wayland that might be troubling, I wonder?”

  Jejeune opened the car door, but before he got in, he paused and looked back one final time at the washed-out facade of the research block. Whether it gave him any answers or not, the building held his gaze for a long moment before he finally slid behind the steering wheel and closed the door.

  19

  The low breeze sent gentle ripples over the dark surface of the water, the sunlight glinting off them as they lapped against the shore. The heads of the reeds tilted and rocked with an easy movement as the wind passed through them. Apart from a few dabbling ducks, nothing disturbed the quiet scene in front of the hide; but the men sat alert, ready for any flicker of movement that would prompt them to raise the binoculars clutched in their hands.

  Damian and Domenic had decided to occupy opposite ends of the hide, so it was inevitable that anyone entering would sit between them and assume they were not together. Domenic had been prepared for the possibility that Quentin Senior might make an appearance that day, but certainly not that his closest birding acquaintance would be accompanied by another man the inspector knew very well.

  The inspector’s surprise at seeing Eric was genuine enough to overshadow any unease he might have felt.

  “Eric?” exclaimed Domenic. “You’re here, birding?”

  “Just taken it up,” he announced. “Quentin is being kind enough to show me the ropes. Anything interesting?” he asked, bending to look through the narrow viewing slat. “I’m hoping for Little Ringed Plover today.”

  The others recognized in Eric’s comment the novice’s desire for new specie
s to add to his list, but Senior shook his head. “O, that way madness lies.” He smiled at Domenic. “Forgive me, Inspector, I’ve been reading King Lear again, in light of your young lady’s nomination. Wonderful stuff, truly moving.” He turned back to Chappell. “But if not madness, Eric, then at least disappointment. You’ll see one eventually, if you’re patient enough, and dedicated enough. But in these early stages, it might be better simply to let the birding world show you what it wants to.”

  “Can’t find you any Little Ringed Plovers, but there’s a couple of male Ruddy Turnstones in full breeding plumage on the far shore,” offered Damian. “Always a nice bird to see.”

  Eric raised his bins eagerly and began tracking along the shoreline until he located the birds. “Excellent,” he murmured, not taking his eyes from the bins. “Thanks.”

  Senior turned toward Damian, studiously peering out through a slat, his face turned away from the group.

  “It’s simply Turnstone over here, Eric. The ‘ruddy’ rather tips your hand,” he said to Damian amicably. “A Canadian accent, I would guess?”

  Damian did his best to lean farther into the shadows at the far end of the hide. “I like to call myself a citizen of the world,” he said easily.

  It was the sort of fatuous statement that would put most people off, and Domenic suspected that was the point. Senior, predictably, took it with his customary good nature.

  He nodded. “You see, Eric? People travel thousands of miles for the privilege of birding this magnificent north Norfolk coast, and here we have it all on our doorstep year-round. We really don’t appreciate how lucky we are sometimes.” Senior raised his bins, and tracked a small duck as it weaved in and out of view behind a curtain of reeds. “Garganey, female, over to the right.” The men all raised their binoculars and followed Senior’s directions to find the nondescript bird upending for weeds.

  “A good duck, Eric,” said Senior. “Especially for our North American friend. Friends, forgive me, Inspector. I sometimes forget you’re from that part of the world too.”