A Siege of Bitterns

by Steve Burrows

  Maik sat for a long moment on the top of the rise, feeling the blustery wind wash over him, alone with his thoughts. He had had time to think during his enforced break. Think, and read. Who was he kidding; he had been in a position to do little else. Life listers, county listers, fly in/fly out to get a checkmark listers, he had studied them all. He knew more about bird listing than he ever imagined he would want to, probably even more than Jejeune by this point. But he couldn’t find murder in it. He had read about the world’s top listers, the eight-thousand-species merchants. These were the hard-core birders, where all the joy of the pastime had long since evaporated, and only the quest of adding ever more species to the list remained. He had become familiar with the stakes, with the current trend of defining subspecies, so that the bird you saw in Anglesey, and then again in the Orkneys a few years later might now be two different entries on your list after all, driving that lifetime tally even higher. He knew about the serious rivalries, the petty jealousies. He knew about the mischief and the rancor, and the resentments, and the outright anger of some birders toward their competitors. But try as he might, Danny Maik could find nothing to support his boss’s premise that it might all lead to murder.

  Maik knew a lot of the local birders personally, and as obsessive and obsessed as they could seem to an outsider, he couldn’t find a murderer among them. He knew he had done his duty. He had taken his superior’s idea seriously, done his research. He had explored the idea, and examined it, and given it far more time than it deserved, really. He was disappointed for Jejeune, who had invested so much in this. Maik would have liked it to have been about these bird lists, but he knew now that Cameron Brae’s murder had nothing to do with his quest to see four hundred birds in Norfolk. He wondered if, in his heart of hearts, Jejeune had ever really believed it himself.

  Maik stood and looked out over the landscape once more. He hadn’t brought binoculars, but even with his naked eye he could still pick out the landmarks. The university, with its solid stone towers puncturing the skyline to the north; Archie Christian’s hilltop house, looking down on all around it; a little farther to the east, Largemount’s wind farm; and just beyond, the telltale glint, even from here, of the waters of Great Marsh. There it was, in one great, sweeping vista, the canvas on which the tragedies of the recent past had been painted. The answers were down there, too, somewhere. But where? He turned away from the view, and began the slow descent to his car.

  41

  Taking their lead from the chief inspector, there were only the most muted of greetings for Danny Maik on his return to the station. Salter squeezed his hand gently as she walked by, and Holland delivered a steaming mug of tea to his desk. They all knew that, given the slightest encouragement, Salter would have been all over an occasion like this — cakes, cards, a little present in a shiny gold gift bag. But they also knew Danny Maik would not be comfortable with that kind of attention, from her or anybody else.

  The DCI’s presence in the incident room today seemed mainly to oversee Maik’s return to duty; in other words, to see that they didn’t dwell on it. Jejeune himself made only the slightest of acknowledgements that Maik had ever been away, and judging by the sergeant’s response, that was just fine with him. The briefing itself had been little more than a series of updates, with nothing new on offer, and no new leads or directions. This case was bogged down, going nowhere, and petering out into an unsolved quickly, and it appeared there was nothing anybody could do about it. Maik had already suggested he start going through everything again from the start, a suggestion to which Jejeune readily agreed. But they all knew that there would be nothing new to find. Danny Maik wasn’t the kind to miss anything important the first time around. And much as they begrudged admitting it, Jejeune wasn’t, either.

  “The data set from that monitoring station at Great Marsh, the readings Alwyn sent over to Brae, any joy there, Sergeant Maik? Any little rays of sunshine to brighten our morning?”

  But it didn’t suit Jejeune, this forced lightheartedness. It was all Salter could do to keep from looking away. Holland simply rolled his eyes.

  “I’ve spent all morning going over them, and, from what I can see there are no changes between the previous records and this last set. All the concentration levels are the same. I’m no expert of course, but there’s nothing to suggest that there was any contamination entering the marsh from Largemount’s property.”

  “Maybe the contaminant was dumped into Great Marsh directly,” said Salter. “Let’s say Brae found out who it was, caught them in the act even. He storms off to report them …”

  “And they follow him back to his house and finish him off. A hanging, making it look like a ritual killing, to throw us off the track.” Holland finished her premise, though not with any particular conviction. “Sorry, remind me again why we even think that Great Marsh is polluted.”

  He already knew the answer. All they had was Jejeune’s missing birds. The species lists, the Scolopacidae of Great Marsh. That’s what they were basing this entire line of inquiry on. Even Maik, still struggling to play catch-up, was aware of that much.

  To end the deafening silence that followed, Jejeune tried a couple of half-hearted efforts to cajole Maik back into the fold, but after a few uncomfortable exchanges the DCI retired to the sanctuary of his office, to his own review of the case files, for the umpteenth time. The tension eased noticeably when Jejeune left the room.

  Tony Holland got in early with his explanations to Maik.

  “So as soon as I mention I might have a few minutes to come and see you again, what does he do? Drops more files in my lap. So now, instead of another visit to my favourite sergeant, I’m chasing all over north Norfolk trying to trace where the waterways run.” He turned to Lauren. “What about you? Did you ever find out why those sand lice stopped having it off? Headaches, was it? Perhaps they need advice from somebody who’s been getting some action lately.”

  Tony Holland was getting frisky again. It was about that time for Salter to rein him in, but she wouldn’t do it today, not on Danny’s first day back. “I’ve moved on to the fascinating world of organotins, now.”

  “Organo …what?” asked Holland, throwing in a look of incredulity toward Maik as if to say see what you’ve been missing while you have been away?

  “Antifoulants, to you lesser mortals. They kill copepods, along with a fair bit of other marine life, from what I can gather, which isn’t much,” admitted Salter. “My dad tells me he used to use this kind of thing on the hull of his boat, to clean off the barnacles and limpets.”

  “Must be strong stuff,” said Maik. “I did a bit of that work myself as a kid, down on the quay. We only used scrapers, though, back in those days. Useless, really. You couldn’t have shifted those things with dynamite, some of them.”

  Holland came over and scooped one of the ring-bound folders off Lauren’s desk. “Organotins: Environmental Annihilators. Oooh. Scary. I shan’t be able to sleep when I get home tonight.”

  “Yeah, it’s all very well for you, all young and fit and full of yourself. But I’ve got a six-year-old boy whose idea of heaven is going down to play in the tide pools. If these reports are anything to go by, I shouldn’t let him anywhere near the seashore ever again.”

  “You don’t want to believe all this rubbish. They’re always trying to scare you with something. It’ll be toxins in fish and chips next, or somebody will discover that sea salt causes impotence. Who writes this dreck anyway? Greenies, no doubt.”

  “Only the leading experts in the field,” said Lauren testily, snatching back the file. “Not everybody’s in it for their own purposes, you know. Some people do this because they actually care. There’s tons of this stuff all along the coastlines of Britain, and the highest concentrations, wouldn’t you know it, are from the Wash to the Thames Estuary.”

  “Here, wait a minute.” Holland took back the file for a moment and flipped through until he reached the page he was looking for. “This tributyltin, what t
hey call TBT? This is one of these antifoulants? If you want to know about this stuff you should have a word with Traffic. They picked up a bloke from Hull a couple of months ago, travelling with some big drums of it in the back of his truck. Did him for transporting hazardous without a permit. Funny how that works, isn’t it? You go through your whole life without ever hearing about something, like this TBT, and then it crops up twice in a few weeks.”

  “What was he doing driving around with it?” asked Maik, approaching from the far side of the room.

  “They suspected he was looking for somewhere to get rid of it. Apparently with the regulations and red tape involved these days, it’s a very expensive proposition to have this stuff properly disposed of. But he wouldn’t say where he was going with it, and they didn’t have enough to hold him, so they had to let him go after they had ticketed him. They did impound the stuff though.” He turned to Lauren. “If you fancied having a first-hand look, it’s probably still out in the storage unit. Unless they’ve already had it picked up by the Hazardous Squad.”

  “What you need to do, young Holland,” said Maik closing the gap between them ever so deliberately, “is to get on to your source in Traffic and find out all you can about whoever it was who was transporting this stuff.”

  Holland scratched his head slowly, making his blond locks bounce. “Yeah, might be a bit of a big ask that, Sarge. We’re not really talking anymore, Sheila and me. Didn’t exactly part on the best of terms, if you know what I mean.”

  Salter did.

  Holland shook his head slowly, as if he was actually considering the idea for a moment. “Nah, can’t see it happening, to be honest.”

  “Oh, it’s going to happen, Constable,” said Maik, close enough now to Holland for him to see the results of that morning’s fresh shave with a new razor. “It’s going to happen, even if you have to take her a nice box of chocolates and a bunch of flowers and ask her if she can ever forgive you for being such a prat. Because we need that background, Constable, that info that never finds its way onto the official arrest docket: how he acted, what he didn’t say. And you are going to get it for us. Am I right? Of course I am.”

  Holland watched Maik grab his jacket and head out the door. “Chocolates and flowers?” he said to Salter after the sergeant had left. “Blimey, I can see why he doesn’t get much these days.”

  Lauren, however, simply watched Danny’s retreating form with a sad, sympathetic smile.

  Jejeune entered the room moments later, carrying a sheet of paper.

  “Anything I can do for you, sir?” asked Holland. At this point, he was even willing to consider washing the DCI’s Range Rover, if it meant getting him out of having to read any more reports on drainage patterns.

  “No, I don’t think so.” Jejeune crossed to Salter, her desk awash with scientific papers and charts. “Anything?”

  “Well, there’s obviously a strong connection between the antifoulant levels in the water and the decline in the copepods in the mud, but honestly, there’s so many big words, most of them look like Max’s set of wooden alphabet letters after he’s dropped the box. I think I’m getting the overall idea, but there’s still a lot of things that I’m not clear about.”

  “Then why don’t you call the people who wrote the reports?”

  “I can’t do that. You’re talking about some of the world’s leading experts. I can’t go calling them like I know what I’m talking about.”

  “You’d just be asking the questions, Constable. They would be the ones giving the answers.”

  “But that’s just it, what if I don’t understand their answers?”

  “Then clearly, I’ll have to start looking around for somebody with a fancy college accent.”

  After Jejeune left, Holland looked over with a disgusted expression on his face. “What was all that about? Beneath him, is it, to pick up a phone himself? Typical, leave us to do all the grunt work, while he swans off to look for the Lesser-spotted Whatever.”

  But Lauren Salter, Detective Constable first-class, was still smiling as she reached for the telephone and began to dial.

  42

  “You’ve ruled out Senior?” asked Salter.

  She and Maik were alone in the incident room, sifting through the details one more time, the Motown song from Maik’s laptop their only company. Maik nodded. “His only motive is that list. And if he was going to kill Brae, he would have had the ideal opportunity on that Monday. Quiet morning, no one else in the house, no one knew he was going to be there. Why just drop off the list and then go back a couple of days later to kill him? That said, there is something a bit off about him.”

  “That’s what my dad says, too. Senior came down the workingmen’s club last year, trying to get up a petition for a statue to Sydney Long, the doctor who founded Cley Marshes. He gave a bit of a presentation, went on about the economic value of birding to the area, and the historical significance of Cley. He said he was going to put a suggestion to Beverly Brennan for a statue near the new visitor centre. Claimed he could get as many names as he liked from birders from all over the world, but he was looking to get as many local names on the petition as possible, birders or not. He thought they would carry more weight. Dad said he felt a bit sorry for him. He was obviously so passionate, so committed to this idea, but everybody in the club could tell that it was a complete non-starter. Mind you, that said, he must have made quite an impression. I remember Dad coming back and saying we should take Max out to Cley to see the place, let him learn a bit about his local heritage. So we all piled in the car one Sunday and went out there.”

  “And?”

  “And it was a nice enough place for a walk, I suppose, but there are plenty of other places I would rather take Max if we were going out for the day.”

  Maik went back to his work, the music from his computer in the background, just barely loud enough to hear. The Four Tops.’ “I Can’t Help Myself.” Salter stood up and approached his desk, taking the chair opposite him. Maik finished the sentence he had been laboriously scrawling on the paper, laid down his pen, and looked up at her.

  “Sarge, I’ve been thinking …”

  “Have you, Constable? A lucky day for us.”

  “If the DCI is still trying to put Peter Largemount in the frame for Brae’s murder, shouldn’t we be looking at his movements a bit closer? You know, maybe checking his known associates, seeing if anyone could put him with Brae in the period just before the murder.”

  “We’ve checked all of his knowns, and nobody can put him anywhere near the victim or the murder site.”

  “All except one. Nobody has really looked into one of his known associates too closely, have they?”

  “No, Constable, they haven’t.”

  “Somebody needs to ask, though, don’t they?”

  “Yes, they do.”

  They both looked up as Tony Holland entered. There was something approaching reserve in the way he slouched over toward his desk and slumped heavily into his chair. He picked up a couple of papers and shuffled them around listlessly. Maik and Salter waited patiently.

  After a couple of moments, with only Levi Stubbs and the boys taking the edge off the silence, Holland turned around to look at them, his face still slightly flushed. “Some people, honestly. You go there all friendly, ready to let bygones, and all that, and all they want to do is bring up ancient history.”

  Maik raised his eyebrow.

  “Sheila. I got your info. But I think it’s safe to say, I won’t be getting any more from her. Info that is. Or anything else,” he added with a grin. He was back already.

  “Our info, Constable,” said Maik. “Not mine. The division’s, society’s, the wider world’s.”

  Lauren crossed over and took the sheet of paper from Holland’s outstretched hand. She passed it to Maik and went to sit back at her own desk. But not before she had slipped him a significant glance. Not about this paper, he knew, but about their earlier, interrupted conversation.

&nbs
p; If they did question DCS Shepherd, thought Maik, and she did have something to tell them this late in the case, she would never get out from under it. Even if it was something benign, with no impact on the case at all, the fact that they had had to ask, instead of her volunteering the information in the first place, or at the very least when Largemount became an active person of interest, would be enough to warrant a further look at her conduct. It would be a situation for the Special Investigation Unit. They would question her officially, and if she was anywhere within touching distance of this thing and had kept it secret, it would be as good as over for her. She might survive the investigation, likely would; the DCS was tough, and clever, and a good police officer, but her career would never recover from it.

  But if a slow-as-molasses sergeant like him, just back from an enforced layoff and still half-hopped up on medications could figure all this out, how long ago did Domenic Jejeune get there? And at what point would his desire to solve the case overcome his reluctance to entangle the DCS in it, and go beyond these recent lukewarm, ever-so-casual inquiries about DCS Shepherd’s private life. It had better be soon, thought Maik, because as far as he could see, putting it off like this wasn’t going to make it go away. And now Salter had gotten here, too, and if she didn’t see any results from this little off-the-record chat with him, it wouldn’t be long before she went to somebody higher up the ladder, somebody outside the division, perhaps, and sat in a chair across the desk from them to tell them she had been thinking …

  Maik laid Holland’s paper beside his computer and machine-gunned a few strokes onto the keypad. He stared at the results on his screen intently. He scribbled a note on the pad beside him and then opened up a new window. After more rapid-fire keystrokes, he grabbed Salter’s report on organotins and began leafing through it, looking for a particular passage. When he had finished, he checked one more thing on his computer before disconnecting his radio station feed and lowering the screen of his laptop. Slowly, but with great purpose, he eased himself out of his chair and reached for his jacket.