A Pitying of Doves (22 page)

“U
seless
, that Saltmarsh library!” Tony Holland slapped his bag down onto his desk.

“What's up, Tony?” asked Salter. “All the colouring books checked out again?” She looked across at Holland and smiled. Their periodic spats notwithstanding, they had presented a more or less united front in the past against the varying moods and whims of the North Norfolk Constabulary's upper echelons. She knew part of the tension between them this time had been that, if ever there had been a case primed to blow up in their faces, it was this one. And, as always, it would have been the lower ranks — the Lauren Salters and Tony Hollands of the policing world — that would have suffered the most. Fortunately, though, if the rumour mill was to be believed, they had new DNA evidence that linked Waters to the sanctuary murders, and Nyce's conviction in Waters's death was little more than a formality. Things looked to be resolving themselves nicely in the cases, despite Jejeune's efforts to complicate matters.

“There's not a single Mexican phrasebook anywhere in that library,” said Holland peevishly, continuing his earlier complaint. “They've got everything else — German, French, Italian.”

Maik made a small tutting noise. “Probably Spanish, too, I imagine,” he said, pointedly avoiding eye contact with Salter, who was discreetly covering her mouth with her hand. “That's how it is in these parts,” continued Maik. “Too little contact with the outside world, see. Mention foreign culture to most of this lot and they think you're talking about Greek yoghurt. Who were you planning on speaking Mexican with, anyway?”

“Now that this case is just about sorted, I thought I would tell Luisa Obregón I'd be willing to look into her husband's disappearance again. On my own time, of course. See if I can provide her with a bit of closure.”

“That case is as cold as Obregón himself undoubtedly is,” said Maik. “If he had wanted us to find him, we would have done so by now. He took himself off somewhere so we couldn't prove suicide. He wanted his family to get the insurance money.”

“Still …”

“Never mind
still
, Constable. You'll want to be bringing your towering intellect to bear in the investigation of more recent cases, like this open one before us. There's still plenty to be done — putting Nyce at the Waters murder scene, for one thing. Since he doesn't seem particularly inclined to do it himself, it looks like we're going to have to do it for him. Inconvenient, I know, but that's the life of a village copper sometimes.”

Salter had recovered her composure enough to look at Holland. “Luisa Obregón is not one of your starry-eyed community service temps, Tony. If she suspects even for a minute that you're using her old man's disappearance to get her into bed, she's going to give you some closure of your own, probably with one of her threshing machines. Not to mention that her son likely wouldn't take very kindly to your intentions.”

Maik nodded his head sagely. “A man without fear is a dangerous prospect, young Holland. Your warrant card wouldn't even make him think twice. You want to be giving that family a wide berth.” It was clear that, whatever jocularity had gone on before, Maik was deadly serious now. He wasn't offering this as a piece of advice; it was an order.

Any response Tony Holland was intending to make was stilled by the sudden entrance of Domenic Jejeune. He looked harried and a little more ruffled than usual. Normally, no matter how much was going on around him, the DCI exuded an air of calm, as if he could retreat to some distant inner core and observe everything like a spectator, perched on one of the desks at the back of the room. It was where he headed now, as the reason for his discomfort followed him into the incident room in the person of DCS Shepherd.

She was elated, and made a point of ignoring Jejeune's obvious discontent as she informed the rest of the investigating team assembled in the room exactly how she felt. They had a match between Jordan Waters's DNA and the broken bits of fingernail under Phoebe Hunter's lapels. It put Waters not only at the scene, but with his hands on the actual body of the victim. Add to that a syringe covered with Waters' fingerprints and traces of Ramon Santos's blood on the needle, and the laboratory's earlier DNA test results of the birds' feathers, both recovered from the wreckage of Jordan Waters's transit van, and you had your classic three-point tie between the suspect and victims. Unequivocal evidence didn't get much better than that in murder cases.

“All we need now is to secure David Nyce for Waters's death and we can all go home and get a good night's sleep.” She looked around the room expectantly. “I take it we aren't quite there yet.”

“No, ma'am, but we are getting closer,” said Maik. “For the first attempt on Waters's life, at least. The onboard EDR in Nyce's Jag shows that after leaving his home address that morning, the car went to Stiffkey, where it was stationary for a while before taking the road to Carter's bridge, registering a collision, and ending up in the pub car park where we found it.”

“What's at Stiffkey?” she asked. Both she and Maik had pronounced it
Stewkey
as the locals did, and she could tell from Jejeune's expression that he was remembering Holland's uncontrolled mirth when the inspector had first given the word its phonetic pronunciation.

“Waters's grandmother had a house there. It's derelict now, but somebody mentioned that Waters had taken lady friends up there on occasion.”

“Another graduate from the Tony Holland Academy of Romance,” said Salter. “You must be so proud.”

Holland's smile said he would let her have these pops, what with her being just back from sick leave and all. Despite her misgivings, she was obviously making some progress in getting over her guilt over Maggie Wylde, especially now that matters seemed to be resolving so clearly in other directions.

“I never even thought about his granny's place,” said Holland. “It's barely standing now. But if Phoebe Hunter had ever mentioned those rumours to Nyce, he might have thought to look for Waters there.”

“Which is why he was able to locate Waters so easily when we couldn't, you mean?” said Shepherd, a touch more indulgently than might have otherwise been the case if they weren't all so buoyed by these new developments. “Well then,” she said brightly, “let's get Nyce in and wrap this up. Unless you have any contributions to make, Domenic?”

It was over, he knew. They had their killers, and they had their motives, however weak and incomplete they seemed to him. Any other unanswered questions would be swept away as soon as the case was declared closed. But he couldn't allow that yet. They were so far from the truth.

“I believe Constable Salter has some information on the doves in Obregón's aviary,” he said. It was irrelevant now, he knew, but it would buy him some time to come up with an objection to delay the closure of the case. “Constable?” he invited.

Salter shuffled through a sheaf of notes on her knee and sighed, like someone not knowing where to start. “The dove species you saw at the aviary are all part of something called a nested clade,” she said. “But two of them, the Eared Doves and the Mourning Doves, are also part of something else, called a superspecies.”

“Come with a cape and mask, do they?” asked Holland to some general laughter from the rest of the room. But Salter was not about to be sidetracked. Since Jejeune had approached her and asked her to take on this research, she had put in a lot of effort, and for a time it had looked like it might have been in vain. Even if this stuff was all gibberish to her, she was grateful to be given the opportunity to present it. “There's a third species that's also a part of this dove superspecies,” she said. “Socorro Doves.”

She concentrated on Jejeune, studiously avoiding all the other eyes on her, including Shepherd's. “Honestly, sir, when you asked if I had any interest in biology, I thought you meant helping Max collect tadpoles so he could watch them grow legs. None of this makes the faintest bit of sense to me.” She offered a smile. “Even without the painkillers, I doubt I'd be able to understand it.”

“What does any of this mean, Domenic?” Shepherd's tone was testy, but for once, Jejeune's reply matched it. He was fighting for his life here, as far as any further inquiries into this case were concerned, and he wasn't prepared to roll over just because it suited everyone else's sense of convenience.

“Well, it explains the presence of all these species in Obregón's aviary collection, for a start. Nested clades share a great many genetic similarities, and I'm assuming superspecies must be even more closely linked genetically. Obregón must have been using the birds in his studies somehow. We need to get a genetic specialist in to look at all this.”

Shepherd took a short intake of breath to steady herself. It was clear that her patience had run out. Whether it was Jejeune's inability to explain the significance of Salter's findings or something else, in a way that none of the others could quite understand, something had tipped the balance for her.

“It's time to bring this whole sorry episode to an end,” said Shepherd. “Pick up David Nyce and bring him in, Domenic. If he's as fragile as you say, he'll confess to Waters's murder soon enough, and I want you to stay on him until he does.”

Her look at Jejeune held a special message, one meant exclusively for him. “You've had your chance,” it said. “I've given you all the time I could to make a connection, to bring me something concrete. And you've failed to produce even one scrap of evidence to show Santos was implicated in any way. So now, it's up to me, to wrap up the case and save my job, save all our jobs.”

The problem was,
thought Jejeune
, if he was right, arresting Nyce wasn't likely to achieve any of that. In fact, it just might have the opposite effect.

T
hey
pulled into the car park at the sanctuary. Lindy wasn't surprised. Domenic had suggested a drive out into the country as if it had just occurred to him, but she had been with him too long to suspect that he was acting on impulse. Domenic always had a plan. It saddened her a little that he had so little capacity for spontaneity. It was part of what drove him to always follow the same route when he was birding, she knew. It was part of what was holding him back on committing to their holiday, even now that the case seemed to be drawing to a close.

The interior of the sanctuary was dark when they entered, and as it flickered to life under the glare of the fluorescent lights, Lindy wondered if perhaps that had been no bad thing. A scene of sad desolation unfolded before them; unwashed dishes lay abandoned on the tops of cabinets, half opened bags of seed gaped forlornly on the floor. They picked their way through the debris and made their way to the cages. Jejeune looked at the birds, sitting perched, unconcerned. Their food and water dishes were full. Volunteers had been allowed back in for a few days now, and even if they showed no interest in the heartbreaking task of trying to restore the sanctuary to the neatness and organization it had known under Phoebe Hunter, at least they were taking care of the birds.

Lindy stood beside Jejeune and peered around at the mess.
This is his work,
she thought,
picking through the wreckage of other people's lives.
It must be a sad, haunting experience to have to face broken dreams and shattered promises over and over again. What a toll it must take on him.

“Why are we here, Dom? What are you looking for? I thought the case was as good as closed.”

“We have answers to the big questions, admittedly. But …”

But, for Dom, that wasn't quite the same thing as closing the case, Lindy knew. It was the answers to the small questions, the unasked questions, even, that would continue to trouble him. She looked at the birds in
the cages. What had they made of the dark pools of pungent liquid that had spilled on the floor of the cage beside them, she wondered? What had been their response to the stench of death? In the wild, it would have been flight. Spilled blood was a warning. Danger was present, you needed to flee. But these birds were caged; they couldn't escape the death next door. So how long had it been, then, before other instincts kicked in, to feed, to drink, to sleep? To carry on, in short, the way things were before death had interposed itself between them and the rest of their life?
If only it was the same for humans,
she thought,
that after a short period of shock we simply rebounded from the death of another person, to carry on as before. Why must it linger with us, become a part of our consciousness, our lives?

Jejeune picked something up off the floor and stared at it intently. It was a photograph, with sticky notes around the frame. Phoebe Hunter, smiling in the sunshine of Burkina Faso. The scene seemed such a stark counterpoint to the darkness Lindy felt spreading over her. She placed a soft hand on his arm.

“I'm so sorry, Dom. You do wonderful things. You bring killers to justice and solve cases. Only it's not enough for you, is it? I'm sorry that the only thing that could ever really bring you happiness is never going to happen.”

“It wouldn't be forever,” he said quietly. “The field work blocks are only about eight weeks long.”

Anger flooded over her, at his stubbornness, at his refusal to see reason. “It can't ever happen, Dom, surely you can see that. It's a dream, a fantasy. This is our world
here
. This is where our friends are, our home, our life. I have a career here. I can't just abandon it to trot around behind you carrying your safari kit, while you sit in swamps all day watching birds. What am I supposed to do out there? Maybe write a travel guide? Tell the readers where to buy all that authentic Burkina Faso craft work? How about a blog? ‘Burkina Faso is, like, such a cool country. They have different money and food and stuff. They even talk differently. LOL.'”

Jejeune hadn't asked her to sit around in swamps, or carry his kit. They had barely discussed the job at all, and even then only in the vaguest of terms. He sometimes felt as if Lindy used her own inner torment as a furnace from which the truth might emerge, pure and beautiful, purged of its impurities. But what was the truth in this case? Jejeune wasn't even sure he knew himself.

Lindy picked up on his look of uncertainty and confusion. “Or wasn't I even supposed to go? Perhaps I wasn't part of your travel plans. Perhaps I am not a part of your plans at all.”

Her anger spent, she moved to the far side of the room, not so much to be away from him, but to make sure he didn't try to comfort her. Because he couldn't, could he? He couldn't say he wasn't thinking about it, wasn't constantly working out permutations and possibilities in his head, wondering if it might, just might, be possible to grab this one last chance to have a career studying birds, before the dream finally faded into a younger man's world. And that was the only comfort she could have used just then.

The sound of a car door slamming fractured the heavy silence that hung between them, startling them both. Moments later, Carrie Pritchard appeared in the doorway carrying an open sack of bird seed. She seemed surprised to see them, even though The Beast was parked directly out front. Or perhaps it was just Lindy she was surprised to see. The lingering tension between Lindy and Jejeune seemed to hang in the air like a cloud, but if Pritchard noted it, she affected not to.

“Domenic … and Lindy. What a nice surprise. I just came down to try to tidy the place up a bit. As terrible as this has all been, we need to start getting things back to normal.” She stopped suddenly. Perhaps she had been about to say
Phoebe would have wanted it that way
, but if so, she thought better of it.

She set down the sack of seed and
stooped to retrieve an upturned dish from the floor. She set it on a desk, as if marking the place where she would begin her task. What she made of the awkward, stilted silence that greeted her remarks wasn't clear, but it wasn't enough to stop her from pressing on. “If there is to be continuity with Phoebe's research, a decision on her replacement will need to be made very soon. I haven't been able to contact David recently. He has a tendency to drop off the radar every once in a while, but the last time we spoke, he seemed more than willing to go with my recommendation. I can tell you we will very soon be inviting expressions of interest.” She stared frankly at Jejeune, as if checking to see whether he had anything to say.

Did she know, wondered Lindy. Had she sensed, somehow, the tension between them and guessed its cause? She could not have twisted the knife into Lindy any more cruelly, and yet, for all her many faults, Carrie Pritchard wasn't a malicious person. Calculating, certainly, and not afraid to use any of the weapons in her considerable arsenal to get what she wanted. But not given to wanton spite. Even in her current distress, Lindy was prepared to concede that much.

Pritchard toyed with the bowl, running her finger around the rim and letting her eyes follow the movement. “Since it appears the decision is pretty much mine to make, I should tell you that my philosophy is that it may be time for a fresh approach, a new set of eyes on the problem. Someone from outside the realms of academia, even.”

She looked up and tried a coy smile. It didn't work for Lindy, but she doubted she was the intended target anyway. She felt her emotions welling up inside her, but she would not give them the satisfaction, either of them, of seeing her in that state. She excused herself for a moment and went outside.

J
ejeune watched Lindy go, helpless to stop her. He saw the sack of seed on the floor at Pritchard's feet.
Brought in from the porch outside to protect it from marauding wild birds. And yet, if those same wild birds were brought into the santuary as rescues, they would be given all the seed they wanted.
How irrationally we guard our possessions,
he thought.
And how passionately.
Possessions and passions; take them out of the equation and you would eliminate just about every motive for murder there was. Perhaps even for these murders.

Pritchard surveyed the room and the corridor beyond. “I hear you've managed to find out who was responsible for all this …” she hesitated, “sorrow.” She looked sad. “I didn't know the boy at all, but still, you never dream it could be someone close like that, do you?” She walked a short way and let her eyes rest on the empty cage at the end of the corridor. “You haven't found the birds yet, I take it. Sadly, I suspect they're already dead.”

“The doves are worth a considerable amount of money on the underground market.” Jejeune's voice sounded uncertain, as if it was rusty from lack of use. His mouth felt dry, the residue of the anguish from a few moments before. “Whoever has them now, it would be in their interests to keep them alive.”

Pritchard shook her head. “Caged birds are extremely fragile. They adjust their metabolism to a regular food source, at regular times, and come to depend on it to a very great extent. Sometimes, even the slightest disturbance in their routine can be enough to send them into decline. That said, I'll keep my ear to the ground. If I do hear that a pair of Socorro Doves has surfaced anywhere, I'll certainly let you know.”

At Luisa Obregón's, she meant, where possessing a pair of birds stolen in the commission of a double murder would certainly be enough to have her aviary closed down by the authorities. “I've been wondering,” said Jejeune carefully, “that sighting in Hunstanton. How could you be so sure Luisa Obregón had Mourning Doves in her collection?”

Pritchard waved a careless hand. “Industry tittle-tattle I picked up from somewhere. I'm afraid I can't remember where exactly.” She looked at him significantly. “But I was not wrong. Whatever that woman may claim, she did have Mourning Doves in that aviary.”

Jejeune was sure it was true. But he was equally sure that someone who was purchasing birds from illegal sources would be very careful about letting information about her collection become industry “tittle-tattle.”

Lindy returned to the room, offering Pritchard a flicker of a smile but avoiding eye contact.

“I was just about to tell the inspector how impressed the community is with him, Lindy,” said Pritchard brightly, “for having solved this terrible crime so quickly. We are very fortunate. One gets the feeling Domenic could be a success at whatever he turned his hand to.” She smiled at him. “And yet, here he is, policing for us in our little community of Saltmarsh.”

Lindy smiled again but said nothing.
For now,
she thought sadly.
But for how much longer?