A Siege of Bitterns

by Steve Burrows

  “Have everything from the desk bagged and bought to the station. Don’t let anyone else near that room until it’s been fingerprinted. You’d better check that the station has my prints on file. If not, have a set sent over from central records.” He should have worn gloves, he knew, but no one had offered him any at the scene, and he hadn’t been expecting to be handling any evidence up here in the house.

  In his absence, an uneasy truce had been reached. Both Maik and Brae were silent now, the only sounds coming from the fireplace, where the flames were spitting out impurities in the wood with angry crackles.

  Maik approached Jejeune.

  “The victim had been home alone for the past couple of days. With his wife away, he saw no need for the staff to be here, so he dismissed them. He and the son apparently had a row about something a couple of days ago, too, but I get the feeling that’s not unusual.”

  Jejeune nodded. He addressed the man in the chair. “Did your father entertain people in his study?”

  Malcolm Brae turned to look at Jejeune. The detective was standing just far enough behind the chair to force Brae to twist his body in order to face him. Jejeune made no move to make the man’s pose any more comfortable.

  “No, it was his private sanctuary. If he wanted to talk to anyone, he did it out here.”

  Malcolm Brae seemed to catch on something, perhaps his use of the past tense. It was a moment before he was able to recover himself.

  “The nature of your father’s work,” said Jejeune softly, “I imagine he consulted scholarly papers, species lists, things like that, quite often.”

  It was clear to Maik that the interview was now no longer his, but he didn’t put away his notebook. Instead, he seemed to decide it was an ideal place to rest his gaze.

  “I rarely saw my father without a book or journal of some sort. Face buried behind one at the breakfast table, absorbed in one in front of the fireplace at night. People forget, beyond all that television celebrity nonsense, he was first and foremost an academic.”

  “You didn’t approve of his television work?” asked Jejeune.

  “We didn’t see eye to eye on many things. My father had a very singular view of the world, Chief Inspector, and if you didn’t agree with him, there was very little room for compromise. Few arguments measured up to his standards. Few people either.”

  Brae’s temples were shining with sweat now, and right on cue, he began to shiver. Maik motioned the constable over and told him in a discreet murmur to go upstairs and tell the doctor that Mr. Brae was beginning to go into shock.

  Jejeune needed Malcolm Brae to stay with them for a few moments more, and he hurried into his last question. “I wonder, do you happen to know what your father’s county life list was?”

  “Somewhere around 385, 390? I’m afraid I can’t …”

  But Malcolm Brae was gone. He returned to his sullen examination of the fireplace. He was trembling now, beads of sweat forming on his brow, his hair damp at the temples and collar. As soon as the doctor arrived, Jejeune signalled to Maik and the two of them left the room in silence.

  They paused on the front steps. Despite the lights and activity in the marsh behind the house, only stillness lay across the dark fields in front of them.

  “Brae didn’t seem to take to your questions overly, Sergeant. Why do you think that was?”

  Maik turned his collar up against the night. For a moment, there was silence between the two men.

  “I don’t imagine it’s easy, being the child of a television personality,” he said finally. “You spend your life in their shadow. Then, when they’ve gone, the first thing you find yourself doing is answering more questions about them. Of course, I’m no psychologist, but it could be something like that.”

  Jejeune nodded almost imperceptibly. “Aggression’s a handy thing, though, if you want to deflect unwelcome questions. There’s some psychology in that, too, isn’t there, Sergeant?”

  Of course, it could just be that the poor bugger has just had his world cave in on him, on account of his old man being found swinging from a tree in his back garden. Who knew how anybody would respond to such a situation. Maik had seen grown men laugh out loud at the sight of a dead colleague, only to see the same men crushed by grief a few hours later. Normal responses take a holiday when Death comes calling. But he didn’t say any of this. Jejeune’s handling of the inquiry had left him feeling vaguely uneasy, but he was unable to put his finger on why. Right now he just wanted to go home and get some sleep. He did have one further thought, though.

  “His county life list? Are you talking about birds, sir?”

  “His lifetime list of species seen in the county.”

  “What did he say? Three hundred and eighty-five? Sounds like a lot.”

  “Or 390. It is. An extraordinarily high number.”

  “Whatever it was, it won’t be getting any higher,” said Maik matter-of-factly. He got into his car and drove off, leaving the inspector staring up at the star-filled sky.

  Jejeune took in a deep breath of the sweet night air. Dysfunctional families, a policeman’s insecurities, rare bird sightings. Where, beyond the shadowy recesses of a few human hearts, did any of them register in the grand scheme of things? But murder, that mattered. Murder introduced a terrifying dissonance that knocked the whole world out of its equilibrium. Murder set everybody’s alarm bells jangling. And now, once again, it was to him, Domenic Jejeune, that the daunting task of silencing them had fallen.

  5

  The incident room at the Saltmarsh division of the North Norfolk Constabulary was filled to capacity for the morning briefing. Detectives and uniformed officers, many of them still bleary-eyed from their overnight exertions, had scattered themselves around the desks, but there were also a number of other bodies, community support workers and clerical staff, who found a reason to be in or around the station at this particular time. Some stood in small clusters near the windows, others leaned against corridor walls and door jambs.

  The new DCI has some pulling power, thought Maik, I’ll give him that. If Maik could have put a name to the mood, he would have gone for curiosity rather than anticipation. He was already aware of one or two rumblings from those who had seen Jejeune in action at the crime scene. Now they were wondering if that performance was a one-off. Maik doubted that anybody had gone so far as to make up their mind about him just yet, but anybody who came to Saltmarsh with this kind of fanfare wasn’t going to get the benefit of the doubt for long. Reputations didn’t count for much in this part of the world. They were going to want to see some proof that the DCS’s star recruit was worth the blaze of publicity that had accompanied his appointment. Perhaps in a moment they would get to see the magic that was the real Domenic Jejeune.

  Certainly, Jejeune’s entrance raised a few eyebrows. He was the last to arrive, but he made no move to take control of the briefing. Maik took up a position in front of the whiteboard, and as the sergeant gradually brought the meeting to order, Jejeune hopped up onto a desk at the back of the room and began leafing through a battered book. Perhaps it was a Canadian thing, thought Maik, this lack of formality. But no, Jejeune had been in England long enough. He knew how these briefings went. So this casual attitude was just his own particular approach, then.

  The inspector looked up momentarily from his book and gave a slight nod toward Maik, to indicate he should begin.

  “Right, let’s get on with it. The victim has been formally identified as Cameron Brae, television presenter of the show The Marsh Man, author, environmental activist, part-time lecturer at the university, but most importantly of all to you lot …” Maik spread his hands out invitingly.

  “Mr. Mandy Roquette,” chorused two or three of the assembled choir near the front.

  “The Party Animal herself. Enough to see anyone off, that would be,” offered Tony Holland, to a laugh or two.

  “In her prime, maybe. Well past her sell-by date now, though,” added a robust blond constable perched on th
e edge of a chair, who obviously felt more than comfortable about her own shelf-life. There was more derisive laughter, until Maik shut it down.

  “Cause of death: hanging. Still to be confirmed by the M.E., but it should be straightforward enough. No other evident wounds. Crime scene a wash. No useable physical evidence, bar one impression of the foot of a stepladder, presumably the same one found in the victim’s shed, forensics to confirm. No witnesses. No apparent motive. No suspects.” He looked around the room. “That about it? Right, so where do we start? With the backstory, Sergeant Maik, that’s where. Now, thanks to television, I doubt that there is anybody here who is not familiar with Dr. Brae’s work, especially in and around these parts.”

  Maik paused and looked significantly in Jejeune’s direction, but the inspector’s attention seemed taken by something in the book.

  Maik moved on. “And thanks to our friends in the media, we know a fair bit about our victim, for once. Talk to anybody and the message is the same: With Cameron Brae, what you saw on TV was what you got; a person who cared deeply about the environment and dedicated his life to sharing his knowledge and his passion with others. As far as anyone can tell, ‘Leave it for the next generation’ wasn’t just a TV mantra, it was the philosophy that governed his life. So it looks like our biggest problem in the short-term will be coming up with a list of suspects. All indications are that Cameron Brae was a well-respected and admired man, much loved by one and all.”

  Jejeune looked up from his book, “Are we sure about that, Sergeant?”

  “No one we have talked to has had a bad word to say about him.”

  “Then perhaps we should look at some of the good words. Let’s do that, can we? Let’s have a list of all the adjectives we have heard about Cameron Brae. Everyone. Sergeant Maik can write them down as you call them out.”

  Maik, who looked like he would sooner consult a psychic than pursue this line of inquiry, said nothing. Gradually, the words came, first a trickle, and then suddenly a flood, as the group caught on, and saw their contributions validated in washable black marker. Maik scribbled rapidly to keep up with the input, some of the entries barely legible when he had finished.

  Jejeune looked up again when the participation had run its course, picking out a few of the words: Passionate, Zealous, Fervent, Dedicated, Committed, Devoted, Determined, Eager, Keen.

  “What does it say to you, that list?” he asked.

  “Somebody who loved his work and was very good at it,” offered Holland. “But we knew that already.”

  “Wouldn’t fancy working for him, though,” said the blond constable. “Sounds like a pain in the … er, neck.” She was obviously going to leave it to one of the others to find out how comfortable the new DCI was with his officers using the vernacular, as it were.

  Jejeune smiled. “Some might have an even lower opinion, Constable …” He hesitated.

  “Lauren Salter,” supplied Maik quietly.

  “But your point is well taken,” continued Jejeune smoothly. “Crusaders, the overly committed, the evangelists, are not always the easiest of people to get along with, in my experience. Professional admiration is one thing,” said Jejeune, “but it doesn’t mean people liked the man personally. And make no mistake, this was a very personal crime.”

  “There’s no human stuff,” said Maik. He surprised even himself by saying it aloud, but now he had, he felt compelled to continue. “All anyone wants to comment on with Brae is his work. There’s nothing about him up there. You know, what a laugh he was, how good he was to his family. That’s usually the first thing people talk about when somebody has died.”

  He stopped suddenly. Everyone in the room realized Maik was drawing on a well of experience that no man his age should have accumulated.

  Constable Salter, who had just finished mouthing the words lower opinion to Holland, picked up on Jejeune’s earlier point. “So the field’s wide open, then, really. We could be looking at colleagues, co-workers, just about anybody.”

  Maik looked at the board thoughtfully. “In the absence of any other obvious suspects, the best route we’ve got at the moment seems to be the family. Regardless of whether you think his wife can sing or not, and those of us who know what real music is have our own thoughts on that.…” Maik held up a hand against the furor. “Regardless, as I say, we know she has got a few quid of her own, making money an unlikely motive, even if she was, is, the beneficiary of Brae’s will. But a thirty-odd-year age difference between the spouses, now that has been known to produce a motive or two, so it might be nice to know if the grieving widow had any boyfriends. Lauren?”

  “On it,” said Salter in response to Maik’s gaze.

  “And the son …” began Maik.

  Jejeune looked up from his book again and shook his head slowly. “Yes, I’m not sure I can put family in the frame for this.”

  “With respect, sir,” said Maik, in a careful tone that the others in the room recognized as the first signs of danger, “fair enough that he may not have been as well-liked as we first thought, but we have no forced entry and the house conveniently empty. And family is the first place we would normally start in a case like this, even without those two.”

  “And normally it would be the right place to start. But in this case, I think we need to consider the nature of the crime. A hanging is a message. Traitors are hung, those who have sinned against society, or the common good. I can’t recall ever having heard of hanging as a means of murder in a family dispute. Poison, the slow route, weapons for the impulse murders, even strangulation or suffocation. But hanging? And think about the sack over the head. No, this killing was a humiliation, a public punishment. It doesn’t feel like a family member to me, not at all.”

  Holland blew out his cheeks and leaned toward Constable Salter. “Tell me he has actually run a murder inquiry before,” he whispered.

  “I think we’re into the realm of male intuition here,” she whispered in reply.

  It wasn’t in Maik’s nature to publicly question a superior, but he too would have liked some indication that Jejeune had the faintest idea what he was doing. “So everybody else is in the frame, just not the family?” Maik struggled to keep his respectful tone in check.

  “Oh, I’m sure the family will provide all sorts of interesting leads. No, we have a look at them, most definitely. I’m just saying it won’t turn out to be one of them who committed the murder, that’s all.”

  An awkward silence settled over the attendees. Jejeune seemed to realize that, having sucked all of the oxygen out of the room, the responsibility for kick-starting the proceedings had fallen to him.

  “Right, so, what else do we have?” he asked brightly.

  “Cameron Brae’s last telephone call was to Peter Largemount,” said Salter, sifting through her notes. She looked up at Jejeune. “He’s a local businessman, sir, owns a large wind farm near Brae’s property. Oh, and there’s an email from Brae to a Professor Alwyn at the university requesting some data. He didn’t use email very much, so this one kind of stood out. No evidence of any reply from the professor.”

  Jejeune nodded. “Very good. We should definitely have a closer look at anything Brae was working on in the days leading up to his death.”

  “Archie Christian should be one of our first stops, too,” added Holland.

  Jejeune raised a questioning eyebrow.

  “Local villain, sir. Hard core. He’s originally from down your patch. London, I mean, not Canada.…” A few smiles from the assembly accompanied Holland’s own. “He claims to be a reformed character these days, a legitimate businessman. Usual story, relocated city dweller, tired of the hustle and bustle, came up here for a bit of peace and quiet and the idyllic country life.”

  Holland didn’t dare catch Maik’s eye, but both men knew the others in the room wouldn’t have missed this little dig at Jejeune.

  “The thing is, he was a player in the organized crime scene, back in the day. He earned himself a bit of a reputatio
n with the serious crimes squad. Two stints inside, but nothing ever stuck. He’s certainly got the ‘skill set,’ as you might say, for this sort of thing, and he’s on record as having a number of run-ins with Cameron Brae over the years.”

  “Really? What about?”

  Holland looked around him at the others, as if perhaps this was information a new DCI should already know. “Well, sir, Brae blocked a number of development projects here, and at least a couple involved Archie Christian. I thought that might be, like, you know, a motive?”

  Before anyone could tell if Holland had pushed things too far, the door opened and all eyes shifted toward it.

  If Jejeune was surprised by the arrival of the chief superintendent, his body language gave no hint. Among the general shuffle that accompanied her entrance, Jejeune stayed perfectly still, his loose, informal pose unchanged. Only by looking directly into Jejeune’s face would you have been able to detect any flicker of emotion betrayed there. And Danny Maik was the only person in the room facing in that direction.

  DCS Shepherd swept her eyes over the white board as she entered. “I see they’ve started making a list of your qualities already, Domenic. I just dropped by to see how things were progressing. Arrested anyone yet?”

  “Sergeant Maik has just been leading us through the preliminaries,” Jejeune said, in a voice that suggested he felt that comedy was best left to the professionals.

  “Yes, well, an early result would go down very nicely. Very nicely indeed.”

  She turned to the room in general. “This one will be different from any murder case you have worked before. The media spotlight will be on us, and everything you do or say will be noted and pored over and held up to scrutiny. That’s okay, welcome even, as long as we get it right, but just as our successes will be noted, so will any cock-ups. And everything, good or bad, will be magnified out of all proportion. Just remember that. Fortunately, I have already recruited someone who knows all about the pressure of the media spotlight in a high-profile murder case, so we can all look to Inspector Jejeune as an example of how to handle ourselves. But for anybody who’s thinking that all this attention might be their road to stardom, just remember this: You and this story will be old news as soon the next big football transfer goes through. But your superiors won’t be as fickle, and if anybody’s been giving the media any behind the scenes tours, slipping them the odd tidbit of unauthorized information, just to get on their right side, I’ll make it my business to find out who it was.”