A Siege of Bitterns

by Steve Burrows

  No, it wasn’t the case. It was the job, the stifling, pointless, endlessness of poring over statements, sifting through evidence, when you knew the answers were never going to come from there. The work that had to be done, because it had to be done, for no other reason than because it met the expectations of those in command.

  But how to put that into words, to someone who had shown so much faith in you, gambled a career, some might say, to bring you on board, and still reassure them that you would work to the absolute limits of your ability to solve the case. So Jejeune said nothing beyond assuring Shepherd that everything was okay.

  Shepherd nodded absently. “Just a thought, of course, but you could try looking a bit more engaged. Just until they’ve gotten more used to your style, you know.”

  Jejeune promised he would. Try, that is.

  19

  At first glance, the home seemed to be unoccupied. There was no car in the driveway, and no signs of movement behind the wispy lace curtains. But Jejeune heard noises coming from the back of the house, so he made his way around to the garden and peered over the fence. A slightly built woman in her sixties was bending over a flowerbed, plucking weeds by hand and dropping them into a small plastic bucket. She straightened when Jejeune cleared his throat, her hand automatically moving to support her back.

  “Chief Inspector Jejeune. How nice. I expected you would be coming by sooner or later. Come in, please. I was just about to stop anyway.” She smiled and patted her hip. “These old bones don’t take kindly to my gardening calisthenics these days, I’m afraid. Why don’t you have a look around while I go and put the kettle on.”

  Jejeune wandered around the garden, taking it all in. The small, neat lawn was surrounded on all sides by planted borders; the shrubbery carefully arranged by height so that it seemed to slope up and out like the stands of a small stadium. The plants and foliage, an array of fruit trees, berry bushes, and smaller ornamental shrubs, had been chosen with care. It would have been difficult, thought Jejeune, to provide garden birds with a greater choice of habitat and food sources in such a small area.

  Katherine Brae emerged from the house carrying a tea tray. She set it on a small wicker table and eased herself into one of the chairs. She patted the seat beside her and Jejeune joined her.

  “I hope you’re enjoying it out here,” she said as she poured. She looked up at Jejeune. “If it makes you feel any better, you never really had a choice, you know, not once Colleen had set her sights on bringing you here. I was her teacher at junior school. She always tended to get what she wanted, even then. How is she? Any closer to revealing this mysterious new love in her life?”

  Jejeune inclined his head to one side.

  “No, and even if she were, you would keep it to yourself. Quite right, too. One hears things in a community this size, it’s inevitable. But one does one’s own position no good at all by repeating them.”

  Jejeune commented on the beauty around them. Until he came out to Norfolk, he had thought English country gardens like this were a thing of the past.

  “Yes, I think Cameron probably found it more difficult to leave his garden than he did to leave me,” she said with a soft smile, to show there were no hard feelings. “I’m not sure he was ever truly happy in that big new house. He liked being so close to the marsh, of course. He always hoped to live near it, but I think he would have preferred a smaller place. Not that he got much say, I imagine. I understand his new wife is a woman who is used to having things her way.”

  “Your son seems to have an uncomfortable relationship with her. That’s hardly unusual, of course, but I get the sense there may be more to it.”

  “He thinks she is unworthy of his father’s attention, and who can blame him, especially since he didn’t get all that much of it himself. My husband was a man who found being a parent very difficult. But despite that, perhaps even because of it, Malcolm still wished for his father’s approval. Which son doesn’t? I always felt that was why he was always trying so hard with his environmental activism.”

  “He told us all that ended with his university days.”

  “His formal academic pursuits, certainly, but as for his involvement with grassroots organizations, as far as I am aware, he is as committed as ever. I don’t think you leave a group like Earth Front that easily. He used to say it’s like the mafia. Once you’re in, you’re in for life. I do worry about some of the activities they have been associated with, but Malcolm assures me they only ever indulge in forms of protest that are legitimate within a democratic society.”

  “Vandalism and arson are not legitimate forms of protest in any society. Earth Front has a pretty strong track record of violence and criminal activity.”

  “There are extremists in all organizations, Inspector, as I’m sure you know. As passionate as Malcolm is at times, I doubt he would ever become involved in anything illegal.”

  Jejeune looked around the garden. In the almost idyllic calm of a late summer’s morning, it was hard to imagine how much turmoil and anguish this house must have seen when Cameron Brae had announced that he was leaving his wife for a newer model.

  “If I asked you to talk about your husband, where would you start?”

  The question was so direct and unexpected that Katherine Brae’s hand shook a little as she put her teacup down.

  “He was not always an easy man to live with,” she said cautiously. “You had to be prepared to defend your position at all times. How could you enjoy chain store coffee and at the same time support sustainability, for example? He couldn’t always appreciate the subtle shades of grey, those compromises that make us human. He was relentless in his pursuit of clarity. He really, genuinely wanted to understand your point of view, and the reasoning behind it, and he wanted to be sure you did, too.”

  She sighed, as if unwilling to go on, but she had not yet finished purging herself of the well of emotions she had kept to herself until now. “It was wearying, at times. If someone made an inconsistent statement on TV, for example, I’m afraid there was no one else around to hear Cameron’s rebuttal except me.”

  “Still, there must have been some satisfaction in seeing the finished article, the crystal-clear intellect we all saw on TV, and thinking you had helped to hone it.”

  Katherine Brae smiled softly. “An anvil contributes greatly to the making of a horseshoe, Chief Inspector, but I doubt it gets a great deal of satisfaction from the final product. It’s funny, though. I always felt there was an element of vengeance to his television interviews, as if he was trying to make somebody pay for something. What, I have no idea.” She paused. “I just don’t think it really brought him any real happiness. I’m not sure anything did, apart from that marsh. He really did love it, you know. Worshipped it in an almost spiritual way. He would leave before breakfast to watch the sunrise there. And at this time of year, the glimpse of a Spotted Redshank on its way down to its wintering grounds, or even a passing Ring Ouzel, it all was wonderful to him. He would come home for breakfast and sit there, where you are, with the kind of look that a wife could only dream of being able to bring to her husband’s face. Well, this wife anyway.”

  Jejeune seemed to find something interesting about his tea cup. He turned it carefully in his hands, as if trying to memorize the delicate floral pattern around the rim. “Did he ever try his questioning techniques on Professor Alwyn?”

  “I would doubt it. Professor Alwyn is one of those men who think professional achievement absents one from the need for any social skills. I’m sure he would have been quite forthright in rebutting any challenge to his beliefs. Besides, providing you were able to defend your position to Cameron’s satisfaction, he was perfectly willing to let you hold it. Of course, that is still very hard criteria to meet. Not many people could hold opposing points of view to Cameron and yet maintain his respect. I suspect Professor Alwyn was one, though. Certainly at one time.”

  “Do you know why they stopped working together?”

  “Cameron
never really spoke about it. All I can tell you is that he was never quite the same man after they parted ways. He was still as committed to his work, of course, but there was more urgency, as if he needed to achieve something tangible in a hurry. Haste had never been an issue before. Cameron had always been so methodical, so patient. Of course, it was just after they parted company that he got his TV show. And then, a short time later …”

  She offered a small apologetic smile, though for whom the apology was intended, Jejeune didn’t know. “There is not much more to say about it. In truth, I suppose our marriage had ended a long time before she appeared. It was just that neither of us had noticed. They just found each other, working on the show, and then at a few charity events. Once she bought that house by the marsh, I suppose their liaison was inevitable. Cameron was astute enough to realize the value of her celebrity status in promoting his causes. And for his part, I really do believe he saw her as his personal reclamation project, a little lost wilderness all of her own. Cameron could be remarkably naive in some ways.”

  A charm of Goldfinches swooped in and settled on a stand of thistles, pecking at the down. It was a scene Jejeune had seen a thousand times on calendar pages, one of the most picturesque in nature. It still gave him a frisson of delight and he paused for a moment before speaking.

  “Beautiful, aren’t they?” she said with the quiet indulgence of a person who has seen someone’s attention stolen away on many such occasions. “Of all the birds that visit this garden, I believe the Goldfinches are my favourite. They seem so innocent, somehow, so …” she searched the air for a word, “harmless, I suppose.”

  “Did your husband ever have an affair while you were married?”

  There was, in Jejeune’s experience, no easy way to ask the question, and he suspected that Katherine Brae would be insulted by any attempt to wrap it in euphemisms.

  “The wife; the last to know but the first to suspect? No, Inspector, Cameron was never deceptive, even about her. He was perfectly candid about his intentions, right from the beginning. It wasn’t in his nature to be dishonest. It would have gone against so many of his principles. I used to tell him he was the only truly honest person I had ever known. Wouldn’t hear a word of it, of course. ‘No, Katherine, I don’t deserve that sort of respect.’ That was Cameron, you see, always harder on himself than anyone else.” She paused, to give Jejeune’s question one final consideration, and then shook her head. “No, I am sure of it. He was never unfaithful during our marriage.”

  She looked around at the garden. The Goldfinches had gone, leaving the thistles bouncing gently on their stems. “We worked on this garden together, tending it, changing it, even bullying it into shape when necessary. Even if we were pottering around in separate corners, I always felt we were linked in some way, working toward a common goal. But you know, I don’t think either of us really wanted to finish it. It was the process, you see, the working on it together, that we enjoyed.” She sighed. “I think that is what I find hardest to understand. How can you simply abandon something into which you have put so much time and effort? Cameron was a complex man, but he was never a callous one. Not before her.” She brightened. “Anyway, I suspect you have better things to do than listen to me chattering about my garden. And since you’re not going to tell me who Colleen is seeing these days, I’m sure you will need to be on your way.”

  Jejeune stood up to leave. “Thank you for the tea. I enjoyed it, and your garden.”

  “I’m not sure my ramblings have been any use to you, though, Inspector.”

  “On the contrary, you’ve been most helpful,” he said. And Jejeune meant it, too.

  20

  It has been like this forever, thought Domenic Jejeune. For a thousand years and more, men and women have been greeted by the same sights and sounds as they worked these coastal margins. The same play of sunlight on the waters, the same quiet rush of winds through the reeds. The ebb and flow of tides had changed the shape of the land over the centuries, but the essential rhythms of nature, the seasons, the weather patterns, those had remained constant for as long as humans had inhabited this land.

  From his elevated wooden platform, Jejeune surveyed the coastline in a slow pass, squinting against the light spangles that bounced off the gently rippling water. Not a single element of modern life intruded. No buildings, no wires, no pylons. Just birds, by the hundred, resting on the tidal mudflats, or wheeling lazily in the sky above. And the sound, the beautiful sweet silence, broken only by the crush of the waves and the occasional plaintive call of a seabird. It brought a feeling as close to peace as Jejeune ever found these days.

  Lindy shifted impatiently. “I do try, honestly Dom, but I just don’t get it. We could go for a nice walk along the beach together, get all the fresh air you like and see just as many birds. But just standing here, watching, I mean, it’s like fishing, without the excitement.”

  But there was excitement. Could she not feel it, the pent up energy surging through the stillness? It was, Jejeune knew, the strain of the hunter, the waiting, the stalking. Not now to strike with a bow, or a gun, but just watching, waiting for a flicker, a shimmer of movement in the tranquility of the landscape. But he was aware now that the spell had been broken and would not be recovered. He turned to Lindy and lent her his arm. They descended the wooden steps and began walking back toward the main intersection of trails.

  They were almost upon it before Jejeune noticed a movement at the water’s edge. Quentin Senior, his drab jacket gathered around him and a battered grey cap covering his white hair, melded into the reedbeds so completely it was a moment before Lindy could pick out what Jejeune was looking at.

  “Anything special?” asked the detective.

  Senior turned slowly and stared up at the two figures above him on the track. “Ah, Chief Inspector, and friend, I see. Another one who, if I may say so, bears the expression of a long-suffering non-birder. Really, Inspector, does none of your acquaintances share your passion for our pastime?”

  He smiled warmly to rob his words of offence and made his way up the steep slope. He extended one of his meaty paws to Lindy. “Forgive me, my dear, but I see that look a lot around here. Quentin Senior, at your service. Welcome to Holkham. A couple of months early for the Pink-footed Geese, but there’s plenty else to see. Whatdda they call ya, anyway?”

  Lindy had been prepared for the worst, but instead found herself immediately drawn to this hulking, avuncular man. Besides, anybody who greeted her in such an unabashedly manly way could surely be forgiven a “my dear” or two.

  After the introductions, Senior turned toward Jejeune. “I never did find your American Bittern at Great Marsh, Inspector, and perhaps more tellingly, there’s been no mention of one at all on the wires. As far as I can tell, not even the most notorious rumourmongers have gotten wind of it. As I said before, in these parts, that can only mean that Cameron never mentioned it to anybody.”

  Jejeune looked thoughtful, but said nothing. Senior looked as if he might want to say something else, too, but for some reason was having trouble getting around to it.

  Lindy felt the need to break the silence, which was threatening to become uncomfortable. “There’s something moving in the grass down there,” she said, pointing. Both men snapped an instinctive glance with their binoculars, but Senior didn’t need to dwell on the sighting.

  “Sedge Warbler. He’s been there most of the morning. God knows what he’s doing. Just keeps going up and down the reed stems. Just for the fun of it, I suppose.”

  “Do birds do that?” asked Lindy. “I thought there always had to be a reason for everything in nature.”

  “Is fun not reason enough?” Senior was shaking his great white head in mock chastisement. “Don’t you believe all that nonsense about the mighty mechanical machine that is nature. Birds know how to enjoy themselves just as much as you or me. I remember seeing an article about Ravens some time back. There they were, sliding down snowy hills on their backs, jumping into sn
owbanks and the like. The only possible explanation could have been the sheer joy of it. Crows, too, I suspect, have a well-developed sense of mischief, and no doubt there’s plenty of fun in that rookery near Peter Largemount’s house, if you cared to watch ’em for long enough.” Senior checked himself in mid-flight. “Forgive me, my dear, get me on the subject of birds and I could go on for hours. But I must get on, half a day here already and not much to show for it, I’m afraid.”

  “You’ve been here all morning? Here and I thought it was only senior police officers who could pinch half a day in the middle of the week to go birding.”

  Senior smiled indulgently. “Ah, but despite appearances to the contrary, my dear, you are looking upon a gainfully employed person.”

  “You’re working?” asked Lindy. She saw a shadow flicker across Domenic’s features, and realized a half second too late where this conversation was going.

  “Indeed I am. I’m gathering a bit of data for the ministry so they can put it into a report and store it on a dusty shelf somewhere.” Senior leaned forward conspiratorially and nodded toward Jejeune. “They all get that look, I’m afraid,” he said with a wink, his tone halfway between humour and genuine apology. “And this is normally where the significant others would like me to shake ’em out of it, tell them what it’s really like, the drudgery of sitting here for hour after hour studying birds. Wet Wednesdays in the wind and the rain, and all that.” He straightened up. “Can’t do it, I’m afraid. Birding for a living is every bit as wonderful as it sounds. To see a parcel of Oystercatchers sweep in first thing in the morning, wheedling and prodding away for their breakfast, or catch a glimpse of that shimmering green as a spring of Teal flashes by, I tell you, it’s enough to restore a man’s soul.”

  Lindy looked at Jejeune, whose expression had come to rest somewhere between sadness and rapture.