A Cast of Falcons

by Steve Burrows

  “Darla Doherty.”

  He and Jejeune were halfway to the doors of the Grand Hall before any of the others had moved.

  30

  They had received updates as they raced along the narrow lanes toward the Old Dairy property; reports from Abrar el-Taleb, direct to Prince Yousef, translated over a phone to the detectives by an unknown voice, possibly one of the suited assistants. So by the time they arrived, they knew. It had been less than thirty minutes since they had seen the video of Darla Doherty lying on the ground. And now she was dead.

  Holland was waiting for them when they pulled up on the gravel pad in front of the Gyrfalcon facility. He was so distraught he could barely speak. “He won’t let her go, he won’t let me have her,” he said. “He’s destroying the crime scene.” He looked helpless, disoriented, close to tears.

  “Who won’t?” asked Maik gently.

  As Holland moved aside, Maik could see Niall Doherty sitting on the ground, the upper body of his daughter cradled in his lap. Doherty was rocking back and forth, his head bent low over his daughter’s limp form. They had heard nothing of Doherty on their updates. He must have appeared recently, in the small window between the last of the messages and the time they had pulled up. The detectives went over to the scene, crossing the uneven field at a jog. As they got nearer, they could hear Doherty’s voice. He was speaking to his daughter in a low, hushed tone. Maik wondered if it might be a prayer, but when Doherty heard the detectives approaching, he looked up. Tears were running unchecked down his lined, weathered cheeks. “She’s still alive. Please help her. I can still feel her breathing. Help her.”

  But they knew they couldn’t. Maik called Salter quietly over to one side and asked her to set about the task of removing Niall Doherty from the scene. “Gently, mind, and take as long as you need. But we need him away from here. Even if the scene of death is already shot as far as evidence is concerned, there may be things we can still salvage.”

  Salter moved off and Maik went over to where Jejeune was standing, near the prince’s Rolls. In the distance, Maik could hear the alarms of other emergency vehicles approaching. At least one ambulance; no one had told them that there would be no need for a siren.

  Jejeune stirred as el-Taleb finished giving his report through the open window of the prince’s car, and readied himself for the other man’s approach. The expression on the project manager’s face suggested he knew he was going to have to give his account all over again, this time in English. He reached Jejeune at the same time as Maik, and the sergeant could see that he was still dealing with the shock of what he had witnessed.

  “It is not possible to believe,” he said. “She was standing over there by the hedgerow when I came down the hill. She was twirling the lure and I saw the bird come in for a strike. I was too far away to see what happened. I thought she had stumbled at first, but then I saw the bird on the ground beside her, and I realized something was wrong.”

  “Was she still alive when you got to her?” asked Jejeune.

  “I do not know. I did not approach her.” El-Taleb looked down, as if ashamed by his failing. “There was so much blood. I did not think it would be possible for a person to survive this.”

  Even if he had not told them, it would have been obvious to the detectives that he had ventured nowhere near Darla Doherty’s body. The girl’s clothing was soaked in blood, as was the surrounding ground, and the Gyrfalcon’s talons. But on Abrar el-Taleb’s sand-coloured suit, there was not a speck.

  “Who moved the Gyrfalcon?” From what Jejeune could tell, it was at least five metres farther from the body than the video had shown — the video he had seen less than half an hour ago, in the plush comfort of the Grand Hall.

  “The leash was lying free, so I tied it to the hedgerow, to prevent the bird from flying off. But the leash was long and the bird stayed next to the … woman. It was too close; it seemed to be … guarding her.”

  Jejeune nodded. Mantling, they called it, the classic behaviour of a bird of prey, defending its kill.

  “I wished to move it away, but these birds … I am not comfortable around them,” said el-Taleb, casting his eyes down in disgrace again. He looked up and indicated Niall Doherty, now being led away gently by Salter, the blanket around his shoulders held in place by the constable’s embrace. “This man climbed over the fence and moved the bird to where it could not reach the woman. It seems he knows of these things.”

  The men looked over as one of the uniformed officers cautiously approached the bird, which was still tied to a branch in the hedgerow by its long creance. The bird shuffled, ruffling its feathers and swaying its body slightly away from the officer’s approach. It had that same dark, malevolent dead-eyed stare Maik had seen in the other bird taken from here only a few days earlier.

  “And you left your phone on the entire time? You never turned it off after you dialed for help?”

  El-Taleb shook his head dumbly. “I don’t know. I do not remember.” He seemed to think of something. “Yes,” he said firmly. “I turned it off only when Prince Yousef arrived and I went over to speak to him.”

  “With your permission, we will need to get that footage.” Maik held out his hand, but el-Taleb seemed hesitant.

  “We’ll try to get the phone back to you as soon as possible,” said Jejeune.

  “There is sensitive data on there, project data,” he said uncertainly. “But to help you to understand this terrible incident …” El-Taleb handed over the phone.

  “We would need a warrant to access anything else on there. At the moment, we have no intention of seeking one.” Jejeune seemed to be mulling something over. “Mr. el-Taleb. I may have to testify at an inquest that your phone could not have been compromised by any other electronic devices you have on you. Can you just give me a brief account of what else you are carrying?”

  The word may covered a lot of territory, but Maik couldn’t ever remember such a question at an inquest, and he would bet the DCI couldn’t either. But in his distraught, distracted state, such considerations were beyond el-Taleb. He patted his pockets absently, withdrawing only a wallet, a set of keys, and a handkerchief. If Jejeune found anything of interest among the contents of Abrar el-Taleb’s pockets, he gave no indication.

  Jejeune turned to Maik. “Can we see if there is a transport cage in the facility? Let’s try to locate an experienced hand­ler, too. If the ME decides he needs blood samples from the talons, we will need someone who can control the bird while he gets them.” He looked at el-Taleb. “We may have to ask Prince Ibrahim, even, if there is no one else.”

  El-Taleb nodded again, as if the information was unimportant. He wandered over toward Yousef’s car, presumably so he could inform him that his brother’s services may be needed.

  Jejeune and Maik went back over to the body. Salter was just returning from having shepherded Niall Doherty off to a newly arrived patrol car. He was now sitting in the back, with the engine running, even though it was a warm day.

  “Neither one of them can have been anywhere close when it happened, Sarge,” said Salter as she approached. “The blood from the severed artery sprayed in a wide arc, at least a couple of metres in all directions, based on the pattern on the grass. She must have twisted as she fell, probably thrashed about a bit. If anybody had been anywhere in the vicinity at the time, they couldn’t have avoided being hit. But you saw el-Taleb’s clothes, that pale suit, there’s not a mark on it. And Niall Doherty’s coveralls, they’re soaked from where he was holding her in his lap, but there’s no spray pattern on them at all.”

  Maik nodded. He could see a small piece of bloody meat lying on the ground at the end of a leather lure. Bait. The morsel the bird would receive as its reward for its strike. Salter came up next to him and pointed to the mankala Darla Doherty was wearing on her left arm. “Doherty just kept on saying how dangerous it was for her to have used this. You need to be really strong to hold a bird on there.” She thought for a moment. “I don’t know if it
could have contributed to what happened.”

  Maik saw Jejeune looking at the area immediately around Darla Doherty’s body. The area had been heavily trampled by both el-Taleb and Niall Doherty, but on the periphery there was no evidence of disturbance. There were no scuff marks or dragging, no broken wheat stalks, no trail between them through which a body might have been dragged. Maik could see the dark stains of blood on the soil where Darla Doherty’s body had lain until her father scooped her up. Small pools still lay on the black soil, but there was one larger spot, where her unconscious form had settled finally, and the blood had continued to pump out and seep into the soil until it could pump no more. From everything the evidence was telling them, the victim’s body definitely had not been moved. Darla Doherty had been attacked here, and this was where she had died.

  And the weapon? There was little doubt of that either. The deep tearing of the wounds he had been able to make out on the victim’s neck seemed to match the bird’s blood-stained talons. As unlikely as it seemed, all the indications were that this could only be a tragic case of a falconer having been struck by the bird she was flying.

  Maik could see Tony Holland a little way off, standing motionless, staring out over the horizon like the man on the prow of a ship. He followed the direction of his gaze and walked across the rutted, uneven field toward him. They strolled away shoulder to shoulder, pausing to rest on the fence that separated the Old Dairy property from Doherty’s next to it. Maik gazed out across the green unkempt fields. A group of birds were resting peacefully up on the hillside. He looked back over his shoulder at Jejeune. He would register the birds, thought the sergeant, if he was here, perhaps even search around for correct collective noun for them, whatever they were. Even in this moment of crushing grief for Holland, and the sadness and the turmoil of Darla Doherty’s death, he would note the birds, even if he would no longer announce them to Maik or anyone else. But Tony Holland, looking out over the field, did not notice them. He was not seeing anything.

  “What crime, Constable?”

  Holland stirred and looked at his sergeant, desolate, uncomprehending.

  “You said it was a crime scene. To everybody here, it just looks like an accident, a terrible one, but there are no signs of foul play that I could see.”

  “She was scared, Sarge. I mean, really scared. She told me she had got herself into some trouble. She tried to make it sound like it was a long time ago, but I don’t think it was. She said she wanted to clear it up, put it behind her now …” he faltered, “now that things between us were …” He snapped his head away, and Maik gave him time. He had seen many men’s tears in his time, but he had never met a man who was comfortable crying in front of another.

  “She said she wanted to get it sorted, and get on with the rest of her life,” Holland said finally.

  “The kind of trouble a detective constable couldn’t help her with, you think?”

  “I think it was about these birds. Every time I brought up the falcons, she would change the subject. It was subtle, but it was there once you started looking for it.”

  Maik nodded to himself. Despite his rawness, Holland was a good policeman. Over his shoulder, Maik saw the ambulance draw to a halt. Salter was walking toward it to give the crew directions. With a severed carotid, he thought, Darla Doherty had probably been dead before he and Jejeune had even reached Palm Hotel’s car park, but he knew they wouldn’t be able to move her until the ME had examined the body and pronounced death. By then, he hoped Holland would be long gone from here. But for the moment, Danny would do his best to preoccupy him, to keep him from realizing that the vehicle had arrived that was going to be taking away, for the last time, the person he had known. From now on, Darla Doherty would become something else — a victim, the subject of an inquest, but not a person. Not anymore. That part of her existence would cease when she left this place, the place her life had ended.

  “I liked her … you know,” said Holland to the fields beyond the fence. “I know it sounds ridiculous, I’ve only known her five minutes, but I really … liked her.”

  “I know you did, Constable,” said Maik. He knew too that things would change from this point on for Tony Holland. Things that once seemed important would pale into insignificance, while others, the throwaway moments, those little mementos of memory, he would learn to clutch those to his heart and cherish them. But such realizations wouldn’t come to Tony Holland yet. He was a long way from quiet reflection like that. He was still in the throes of grief for someone he had cared for, someone who was barely more than a stranger, but whose loss he would carry with him forever.

  31

  Damian came into the laundry room holding the kitchen utensil like a weapon. “I don’t think much of this spatula, Lindy. It’s too thick to be of much use. I suppose it’s better than nothing, though.”

  She looked up from folding the clothes. “I’ve got a man like that,” she said. “I wish Domenic was as handy with one of those.”

  “He’s not?”

  She shook her head. “I think it was his cooking that put the ‘hospital’ in hospitality.”

  She picked up something from the dryer and held out her hand to Damian. “I threw your jeans in to wash and these started rattling around.”

  She opened her hand to reveal two coins.

  “Two bucks, my life savings,” said Damian. He saw that she didn’t understand. “Those are loonies. One-dollar coins.”

  She held one of the multi-edged gold coins up between her finger and thumb and studied it carefully. “I’m guessing the Canadian government designed this one specifically so people would be able to remove it from Domenic’s grip with a spanner?”

  It was Damian’s turn to look confused.

  “A wrench.”

  “Oh.” He shook his head. “He’s still careful with his money, is he?”

  “That’s one word for it.” She smiled, but it was no more than a disguise for her thoughts. He had come from Canada. Across the high Arctic, on a ship, studying bird calls. Even if she didn’t know much else about him, she knew Damian Jejeune was a fugitive from Caribbean justice. Canada would have been a safe haven for him. Only something important could have been worth the risk of leaving it and coming here. What that could possibly be, she didn’t know. But she suspected Domenic might. Now.

  “I guess you and Dom chatted for a while the other night after I went to bed?” she said, letting the act of folding a shirt claim all her attention.

  Damian looked uneasy. The laundry room door was open, and a glorious sunny day was unfolding outside. Farther out, a calm blue sea stretched out to the horizon, its surface glinting as it gently heaved under slow waves. He wants to be out there, thought Lindy, away from my oh-so-casual scrutiny. But did she want to let him off that easily?

  She knew the brothers had spoken because Domenic didn’t tell her. He didn’t tell her there was nothing new, as he had every morning since Damian’s arrival, as he kissed her and headed out the door to the station. The day following the party, he hadn’t said anything, and his eyes hadn’t quite met hers when they kissed. But looking at Damian now, at the uncertainty in his face, the fear almost, she decided it wasn’t up to her to ask. They would come to her, one of them, or perhaps both, when they were ready. In the meantime, she would give Damian some respite.

  “I like who he becomes when he’s around you,” she told him matter-of-factly, still methodically folding the laundry. “He has to take a stand on positions, instead of just wafting around in the breeze, as usual. He has to make a bit more effort to define himself, because you challenge him. It’s good for him.”

  “He’s always been that way,” said Damian simply. He leaned back against the washer, letting the sunshine from the open doorway paint his left side with its warm, alluring light. “He’s a good guy, but I think his problem is that he’s never known exactly who he wants to be. We talked about it once, before … a long time ago.” Damian jangled the coins in his hand. “I told him no
thing can measure up to a vague idea of a perfect life. Everything is going to be found wanting if you don’t have definite ideas of what you’re looking for.”

  Lindy was quiet for a long time. How important it would have been for Domenic to have had his brother around when he was going through some of the times he had faced. How he must have missed him.

  She nodded at the coins Damian had continued to roll around absently in his hand. “Does your family know you’re here?”

  He shook his head. “They know I’m okay.” He gave her a lopsided grin. “Not dead, anyway. I think Suzette may have known I was in Newfoundland.” He looked down to the floor. “I got drunk once and called her, all maudlin and full of self-pity. I don’t remember what I said. She told me I couldn’t call her house again. I remember that part. It’s okay,” he said, seeing Lindy’s expression. “Her husband’s a nice guy. I wouldn’t want to put him in a situation where he needed to make a decision about whether he should call the authorities on me or not.”

  Though it was okay to put Domenic in that position, she thought with a momentary bitterness. But she understood. It was different. Suzette had made a separate life for herself and her family, apart from her brothers. Lindy didn’t know her; they exchanged Christmas cards, but other than that they had never had any contact, save for one brief phone conversation, when she had called looking for Dom. She had been polite, but no more. Lindy had always imagined her living on the periphery of Dom’s life, as her own sister did with hers. They would both be equally delighted if one made the effort to contact or visit the other. But somehow, neither of them ever did.

  “You said it was your mother’s side of the family that were police officers. So not your father?”