A Siege of Bitterns

by Steve Burrows

  “A nice bottle of red, you think?”

  Jejeune roused himself from his reverie.

  “Well, I’m ready to celebrate your success, even if you’re not.”

  Success? Really? He could name the killer, but the motive still troubled him. But then, finding out who killed Cameron Brae was all they had ever asked of him; the family, the DCS, the media. Motive was nice, but it was a luxury, like ambition. Find the right suspect and they would tell you why they did it. Eventually. They always did.

  “There are still a lot of unanswered questions,” he admitted.

  “Well, perhaps when you bring in your murderer,” said Lindy archly, “he’ll be kind enough to clear them up for you.”

  He was impressed, and perhaps even a little bit surprised, that she had been able to follow so closely the self-imposed rules they had hashed out when she had left the national daily to join the magazine. No more inside track. No more ducking under the police tape for an update, formal or otherwise. Until the arrest was announced, he wouldn’t say, she wouldn’t ask. Still, it must be difficult for her.

  They stood up, drinking in the last of the setting sun together. At the far end of the path, the cottage was just visible. The kitchen light had been left on, and burned brightly now in the gathering gloom. Dinner would be a while coming tonight, but that was okay. Jejeune had no real appetite anyway.

  27

  Domenic Jejeune was hardly ever aware of how he came by his insights, or how he had made connections between them. Certainly, there were the occasional flashes of inspiration, bolts of lucidity right out of the blue, but those moments were rare. Most often, ideas just materialized, like water droplets condensing from the mist of details in his head, so that they were already there, fully formed, when his conscious mind stumbled upon them. He had no way of controlling the process, or marshalling it at will. All he could do was keep accumulating facts until his brain pieced together the various parts of the puzzle. And then the answers came.

  The problem was, in this case there had been no blinding flashes of insight, no mystical moments of inspiration, but there had been no gradual distillation of ideas either. Any answers that had come his way seemed to have dropped into place neatly, conveniently almost. It gave him a vague, uneasy feeling that the entire picture might not be as clear and complete as it now appeared.

  He looked down at the scrap of paper on which he had scribbled his notes. In murder investigations elsewhere, he knew, this would all have been outlined on a whiteboard in the incident room. But Jejeune was more interested in the end result than its skeleton, and he didn’t like to see his thought patterns unfurled on the big canvas until they had reached their final destination. But had they? On one level, it all made sense. The marsh had been contaminated somehow. That was why the birds had disappeared. Jejeune wasn’t sure what sort of contaminants might be involved, but it wouldn’t take him long to find out. Clean power the turbines may be, once they were erected, but he was sure there were plenty of opportunities for things to go wrong during their transportation and installation. The bottom line was, it didn’t really matter. Whatever the pollutant was at Lesser Marsh, Largemount hadn’t reported it. Of that much, at least, Jejeune was certain. By now, he was familiar with every piece of official correspondence concerning Peter Largemount’s property; certainly enough to know there was no police report, municipal record, or ministry alert of any toxic spill.

  There would be hefty fines for a spill large enough to drive away entire populations of wading birds. So Largemount had simply covered it up, kept quiet, and carried on with business as usual. But Brae had pieced together the truth from the bird lists, and he had threatened to inform the authorities. Failure to report a spill was in itself a crime. But even if the authorities allowed the wind farm to continue operating, news of the original contamination would be enough to end Largemount’s expansion plans, no matter what sort of high-powered political backing he had managed to assemble. So Brae had found his lever to stop Largemount draining the marsh. And Largemount had killed him to silence him.

  But was it really enough to kill for? Murder was like the release of a spring wound too tightly. But this motive didn’t seem to carry enough of that tension within it. It was weak, incomplete. Certainly, it could have been at the root of tensions between Largemount and Brae, but Jejeune couldn’t help feeling there was something more, something significant that he was overlooking.

  He stared down at the paper again. There was one other thing missing, of course. That one piece of solid, irrefutable evidence that DCS Shepherd had been asking for. But that could take days, to get the warrants and then to get the results of the soil and water tests; days when other things could happen, events could spiral out of control. And Jejeune wasn’t prepared to let that happen in any of his cases ever again. He would take the risk, gamble that some crucial piece of evidence would turn up, or that the circumstantial evidence would look more compelling when he sat down and actually confronted Peter Largemount with it. But however things unfolded, Domenic Jejeune wasn’t going to risk any more casualties by waiting too long. Not this time.

  He walked down the corridor to the incident room, where Maik, Salter, and Holland were starting their day as they had finished the previous one, by poring over the survey results from Lesser Marsh.

  Holland rolled his eyes. “Sir, these reports, if you could just tell us what it is we are looking for exactly.”

  “Let’s leave those for now. Where are we in other areas?” He turned to Maik. “Have we filled in any gaps? Anyone’s movements, witness come forward?” After Shepherd’s unexplained familiarity with the four-hundred list, Jejeune wasn’t ready to confide this theory to them just yet. But if he could get something else firm on Largemount, there would be no need to sweat the soil and water analyses.

  “Not really. Christian’s whereabouts are still vague. We do know that Largemount could have managed the run to Norwich in time, just barely.”

  Jejeune nodded. He had heard about Maik’s white-knuckle ride as a passenger in Holland’s Audi that had established this.

  Salter stirred. “There is this mileage thing. Brae had his car serviced two days before he was killed. We had been assuming he took it straight home afterward and parked it, but there are extra miles on the clock.”

  “Too much to hope it had a GPS, I suppose?” asked Maik.

  “That pile of junk?” said Holland with a sarcastic laugh. “You’re lucky it had an odometer.”

  “But it was definitely a local trip. He couldn’t have got as far as Norwich, say, or Yarmouth,” continued Salter. “Taking out the mileage from the service station back to Brae’s house, there’s twelve extra miles — six each way, as I figure it, you know, there and back.”

  “You’ll have plotted the radius from Brae’s house already, then, Constable Salter, what with your mathematical wizardry and all,” said Maik. “So let’s look for destinations around that six-mile mark.”

  “I’d be willing to do some runs,” said Holland. “You know, just to verify the exact distances and such.”

  “Really?” asked Maik with mock surprise. “You’d do that for us, Constable? Drive that convertible of yours around north Norfolk in the sunshine, and bill the department for expenses afterward? How selfless of you.”

  “Could he have gone to Lesser Marsh?” asked Jejeune.

  Salter shook her head. “Not on its own. It’s probably no more than a couple of miles, tops, from Brae’s house to Lesser Marsh. If he did go there, he went somewhere else as well.”

  “Nevertheless, we can’t rule out Lesser Marsh as a destination, or at least the property it’s on.”

  Maik tapped the file he was holding against his chin thoughtfully. “So, let’s get this right. His last call is to Largemount. He gets no answer, so he gets in his car and drives over to his house. If your call was unanswered, there’s only one reason you would do that.”

  “Because he thought Largemount was home and he wasn’t pic
king up,” said Holland, with the certainty of someone who had been on both ends of such situations.

  “And why might Largemount not want to pick up? Because he knew what the call was about and he didn’t want to talk about it.” Maik answered his own question before anybody else could get there.

  In the silence that followed, Holland turned to Jejeune. “Oh, by the way, sir, the DCS has been popping in lately looking for updates. Usually when you’re not around, funnily enough. Anything I should tell her if she comes by?”

  Jejeune considered the question for a moment before answering. “You can tell her that within the next twenty-four hours, we will have somebody in custody for the murder of Cameron Brae.”

  A stunned silence fell over the room. Perhaps this was just an example of some hitherto unseen Canadian deadpan humour. He couldn’t be talking about Largemount, surely. Maik knew that Largemount had been on Jejeune’s radar right from the start, but to Maik’s mind, their interview with him had been about as colourful as that light grey matte paint until the confrontation over the gull. It was not impossible that something the developer had said, or more likely the way he had said it, had triggered a flicker of suspicion in Jejeune’s mind. But to arrest him, on the basis of this evidence? Flimsy didn’t even begin to cover it.

  A telephone rang. Maik listened for a moment and then hung up. He stood up and reached for his jacket from the back of his chair, as if aware that he was going to need it soon. Jejeune was almost at the door when Maik spoke.

  “That arrest, sir. If it was going to be Peter Largemount, I’m afraid you’re too late. He’s been murdered.”

  28

  Jejeune looked around the site and allowed himself a long sigh. He didn’t need anybody to point out that proving guilt was a lot more difficult when your suspect was dead. The motive he had come up with was plausible enough, barely, and Largemount certainly had opportunity to kill Brae. But there still were plenty of holes in his case against the developer, and he knew the DCS would require more answers before she would be able to bring herself to believe, either professionally or personally, in Peter Largemount’s guilt. Jejeune hadn’t been hoping for a confession right away: Largemount wasn’t the type. But once you knew somebody was guilty, you could keep probing until they eventually gave themselves away. He looked over at the inert form lying beneath the blue sheet. Whatever revelations Peter Largemount could have provided, they had died with him.

  Jejeune watched Maik march off toward the constable standing nearest the body. He knew it would not take the sergeant long to gather the pertinent information and get back to him. He was good at his job, and his report would be succinct but thorough. Jejeune would soon know everything they had on Peter Largemount’s death. The angry red text daubed across the brickwork below the bay window would undoubtedly feature prominently in the report.

  Jejeune walked to where the gravel met the meticulously kept lawns at the edge of the forecourt, and looked out over the fields below. The grey forest of wind turbines turned silently. A man’s death had had no effect on them. Like nature, they continued their cycles, dispassionate and inexorable. A benign sun shone down from a cloudless china-blue sky. It was the type of day that generally brought Jejeune a feeling of calm, as if the world was in balance. But the world was not in balance today. Just a few feet behind him lay a body from which the life had been taken, not naturally, not as part of any natural pattern or rhythm, but as an act of violence; taken because in some way someone else drew benefit from this death. Money, silence, gratification. Every murderer gained something from their victim’s demise. Jejeune took a final look at the peaceful lowlying landscape. He would find no answers there.

  Jejeune lifted the police tape and stooped beneath it, making his way to the centre of the forecourt. No lights were on in the house, and the front door was locked. There would be reason enough to enter soon, but for now Jejeune’s work, and that of the other investigating officers, lay out here, at the crime scene itself. The body lay off to the right, near the beech trees, awaiting the arrival of the forensic medical examiner. Largemount’s Bentley sat where it had been left, slewed in at a careless angle; the driver’s door hanging open.

  Jejeune leaned in and turned on the car’s headlights briefly, and then turned them off again. He stood back and considered the scene. Largemount drives up, gets out of his car, sees someone spray-painting a slogan on the front of his house. He calls out, approaches, and is shot. No. Plenty wrong with that. The slogan was over there, on the far side of the car, the body was over by the trees. So Largemount didn’t approach the graffiti artist while he was at work.

  He interrupts him, then, takes him by surprise, and chases him over there when he runs, until the murderer turns and shoots. Again, Jejeune gave his head a single shake. Largemount’s driveway described a long sweeping arc up toward the forecourt, and the car headlights would have been on as he drove up. There was no chance he could have taken anybody by surprise. Plus the slogan was finished, not neatly, admittedly, but complete to the last word: silenced. No, whoever had written this had finished their work and then gone over there, in the shadow of the beech trees, to await Largemount’s arrival. Which at least solved one problem: Jejeune had been wondering what kind of person shows up to a crime scene with a gun in one hand and an aerosol can in the other. But this was clearly not about the slogan. This was premeditated murder.

  Jejeune walked toward the body. The Rooks in the great beeches at the edge of the clearing cawed and stirred restlessly as Jejeune approached, taking off to perform short circles of flight before swooping down again to nestle in amongst the other dark shapes in the rookery. A photographer was flitting around the body, the flash like bolts of weak lightning. He had folded back the sheet to get his photographs and Jejeune caught sight of what was left of Peter Largemount. He wished he hadn’t. When he had finished, the photographer delicately replaced the sheet and moved over toward the car.

  Maik approached, the gravel crunching loudly beneath his tread. Jejeune realized how quiet it was up on this ridge. He could hear the murmur of the sea, behind the house and far below, but other sounds seemed muted, as if all of nature was somehow holding its breath. Maik was consulting his notebook and began speaking as soon as he arrived.

  “Postman called it in. Found it when he came with the morning delivery, around nine. He got the impression the body had been here all night, though he couldn’t really say why. He knew enough not to touch anything, but from what I’ve seen, this one wouldn’t encourage much close examination anyway. The M.E. will be here shortly, but the young PC who was first on the scene says it was definitely a shotgun. Not much of the face left, apparently, but enough to identify him. I’ve sent the lad off to get some tea for himself and the postie. I think he could use the fresh air.”

  He cares so much about other people’s reactions to death, thought Jejeune. It was a legacy, he supposed, of having seen so much himself.

  “What do you make of that?” Jejeune indicated the slogan: For C.B: The defenders of the planet will not be silenced.

  Maik shrugged. “On the face of it, it looks like somebody else agreed with you about Largemount killing Brae. They need to make their mind up, this lot. Last week it was Christian, now Largemount.” Maik shook his head almost imperceptibly. “But I don’t know, it’s all a bit theatrical for me.”

  “Better get some people out to Earth Front to take a look around again, anyway. And let’s have a look at those threats Largemount received over the Ivory Gull, too.”

  Jejeune was no more comfortable than Maik with having the culprits dropped in his lap like this. It wasn’t impossible that Earth Front had killed Largemount and autographed their work; certainly they were fond enough of the outrageous gesture and the media attention it attracted. But in Jejeune’s experience, people cold-blooded enough to lie in wait for a victim and shoot them in the face at point blank range rarely felt the need to leave an explanation painted on a wall. But if the slogan was just a deco
y, then perhaps there was another reason someone wanted Peter Largemount dead.

  Jejeune approached the body. A large pool of blood had soaked into the gravel around the head, staining the pink stones. From Maik’s brief description, and his own snatched look at the body, he suspected that Largemount could have hardly moved at all once he hit the ground. Death might not have been instantaneous, but the wounds would have been too terrible to allow for much movement afterward.

  Maik called to him from the far side of the forecourt. “Constable Holland has something he thinks you should see.”

  He pointed to the stand of beech trees, beneath which Jejeune could see Holland stirring the leaf litter with his foot. The Rooks kept up their harsh, scolding commentary as Jejeune approached, fidgeting nervously above him from branch to branch. Holland was shovelling the body of a bird off to one side with his foot.

  “Don’t think you can count this one for your list, sir.”

  The bird’s head was twisted back at a grotesque angle, and its black wings were spread out like a cloak. Jejeune could see the distinctive pale base of the upper mandible glinting through the leaf litter. The eyes were already gone, sunken or stolen by scavengers, and there was blood matted over the bird’s chest. But there was still enough sheen to its glossy black body to show that it had died only recently.

  “There’s two more over here, both shot as well. And what looks like part of a nest, too.”