Palmer-Jones 01 - A Bird in the Hand (3 page)

Then quite suddenly:

“His mother left, you know, when he was a child. She was a lot younger than me, of course. Things were different then, and because she left, because of the circumstances surrounding the separation, I got custody. I don’t know if it was the right thing. We’ve never been very close. Sometimes I wonder even if he’s my son. He’s always been a weak sort of boy.”

Palmer-Jones sensed the disappointment of the man whose whole life had been competitive, who had needed to prove that he was fitter, stronger than his friends and whose son would not or could not compete with him at all.

“I’m sorry. I don’t understand how I can help you.”

“Adam and I don’t pretend to be very close, but I’m not so insensitive that I can ignore him when he’s distressed. This business in Norfolk has distressed him. I can tell that. I want it cleared up.”

There was a touch of petulance in his manner. He was used to getting what he wanted.

“I see,” said Palmer-Jones lightly, “and of course it would be very embarrassing for you, a magistrate, to have Adam involved in a murder inquiry.”

“Of course it’s embarrassing.” The man’s voice was still flat, reasonable. “I’ve survived more than embarrassment in my career. I’m not asking for your help on my own account, but because of my concern for my son. I seem to have little authority over him, but if you discover any illegal or unsavoury element in this twitching, which wastes all his time and energy, I’ll prevent him from further participation. In my own way I care about Adam. He’s not the sort of boy who can look after himself. You’re an intelligent man. I know the kind of work you were doing in the Home Office. Clear up this matter for me. If you come to the conclusion that no birdwatcher had any part in this young man’s death, I’ll trust your judgement. That’s all I want to know.”

Despite a residual cynicism about the man’s motives, Palmer-Jones was impressed. It was not easy for Anderson to ask for help. Yet he said:

“Surely you, of all people, can trust the police not to make a mistake.”

The magistrate’s quick, almost hysterical response showed, for the first time, the extent of his anxiety.

“Have you heard these birdwatchers talk to each other? It’s like another language, as if they belong to a secret society. When I listen to Adam talking on the telephone to one of his friends, I can’t understand a word. How could an outsider persuade one of these fanatics to talk to him reasonably and rationally?”

“And as a fanatic myself, you feel that I may have more success?”

“I want to know what happened. Because Adam is unhappy and because you appear, in some way, to be a friend of his, I’m asking for your help.”

He stood up and spoke with stilted formality, as if he were in court. He had already given away too much.

“If you do agree to act for me in this matter, I will of course pay all your expenses and any fee you consider to be reasonable.”

In a mocking voice, talking almost to himself, Palmer-Jones said:

“I could extend my list considerably with unlimited resources.”

He stood too, and said quietly in an off-hand; dismissive way:

“I’ll think about it and let you know.’

It did not take George Palmer-Jones long to decide that he would accept Anderson’s offer. He was not even sure that there was a decision to make. He wondered for a short time if it was sensible to become involved, but knew that the speculation was pointless, because he already was. He would accept Anderson’s offer as an investment against boredom. It seemed sometimes that a fear of boredom had shaped his entire life; he felt that he was haunted by a childhood of unrelieved tedium.

He had been brought up in a small town in Herefordshire, only a mile from the Welsh border. He was the only child of a moderately prosperous local solicitor. His mother had died when he was an infant, but the town seemed peopled by elderly female relatives who enjoyed the sacrifice of caring for his father and himself. The countryside in the district was magnificent, but until he was old enough to explore it himself he hardly saw it. With his wife’s death his father had become preoccupied with the trivial events of the town, the safe everyday events. George still remembered with dread Sunday afternoons in the gloomy parlour, the identical spinster aunts, his father lifeless and grey, becoming animated only when the aunts began to gossip about petty misdemeanours, property and wills. If the talk approached scandal his father would withdraw, bring the conversation to a close, and George would be left with a tantalizing sense that he had missed something of interest. There had been a clock in that parlour with a loud, distinctive tick. When he experienced the panic of approaching boredom George could still hear the clock ticking in his head.

He had married Molly because he had known from the beginning that she would never bore him. He had chosen his work for similar reasons. His last post had been particularly demanding, because of its ambiguity: he had been neither policeman nor civil servant, but the decision to retire from it was the most difficult he had ever taken. In contrast, although he knew that his position as unofficial investigator would be awkward, his decision to accept the magistrate’s offer was made almost immediately.

The morning after Anderson’s visit he made two phone calls, both of which Molly disapproved. He still had influential friends in the Home Office, and from a contact there obtained the promise of the most recent police report on the French murder. The ease with which this transaction was completed shocked Molly. She would have felt easier if he had lied to gain the information. She gave him a lecture on corruption and privacy, but they had had such rows before, and there was an element of ritual in the argument.

Palmer-Jones phoned the University of Southampton then in an attempt to talk to Rob Earl, the young man they had met in the Windmill the weekend before. He was a postgraduate student there, but his assistant seemed surprised that anyone should expect Rob to be in the laboratory so early in the morning, and George could only leave a message.

George could understand Molly’s disapproval of Rob. He was self-centred to the point of rudeness and ruthless in his determination to live his life just as he wanted. He sought new experience in a selfish, self-confident way which took no heed of his own danger or other people’s inconvenience. George sometimes suspected that much of this was affectation, but could never be quite sure. He liked Rob. Before his retirement they had gone to India together on a bird watching trip. Rob was easy company, entertaining. And he was a vivid storyteller, reliving and sharing his travels. His tales, whether of being chased by an elephant in India or delivering a baby in New Guinea, were always nearly true. He was an impulsive, intuitive birdwatcher and, when his travelling allowed, a fanatical twitcher.

Molly answered the phone. They were eating lunch, and she felt that it was typical that Rob should interrupt them. In his lazy, charming, arrogant voice he asked to speak to George and she answered abruptly. Rob liked her and enjoyed fighting her and teasing her, but he ignored her rudeness.

“It’s urgent, Molly. Can I speak to him now?”

So she called her husband, secretly disappointed at being deprived of the usual banter.

“Anything about?” George asked. It came automatically, the shorthand question used by every twitcher.

“Greenish in Cornwall, at Trekewick. And six golden orioles. I was thinking of going tonight.”

“I’m surprised that you need greenish.” It was not exceptionally rare. He had been unlucky himself not to have seen it.

“I’ve got a lot of catching up to do after that last trip to the States, and I dipped out twice last autumn. You
are
going?”

George hardly had time to reply.

“You can give me a lift then. I might have to bring a friend.”

“I wanted to talk to you anyway.” George spoke quickly. Rob had got what he wanted and would be expecting to ring off. “It’s about Tom French.”

“I can’t stop now. I’ve got an experiment to finish before I leave. I’ll see you at about five thirty at the flat.”

He knew that they would be there and did not wait for confirmation.

They went to London first, to Queen Anne’s Gate, where George had worked, and collected the report from a plump and giggling secretary. Molly was driving. She enjoyed the drama of driving through London, and her temper improved as they left the centre of the city. She drove fast and not very well.

“What is it that we’re going to see?” she asked.

“Greenish warbler.”

“Is it pretty?”

“Not very, but it’s a tick. It’s not even very rare.”

“How can we justify driving all the way to Cornwall to see a bird that’s not even pretty?”

“You enjoy it.”

It was true. She did enjoy it. She had no interest in the birds, but had become passionately enthusiastic about twitching. Each trip she became tense, excitable with panic, worried that the rarity they had travelled to see had disappeared, but then she hardly bothered to look at it. It was the chase which she enjoyed. When she was a child, the youngest in a county family, she had been taken each year to Scotland where her parents and their friends shot grouse. She had hated the friends and the blood, but even then had been fascinated by the hunt.

George read the report as she drove towards Southampton. He did not discuss it and she knew better than to ask. He did not speak at all until they stopped outside the big, ugly terraced house where Rob had a flat.

Rob’s friend surprised them. He had been accompanied on their trips by a number of girls, but they had been beautiful and usually silent. Tina was big, not overweight, but tall and big-boned. She was very dark and had strong almost masculine features. She wore tight jeans tucked into long boots, and a leather jacket and beads. She was not silent. It very soon became clear that she was an obsessive ringer. She spoke in sharp, aggressive bursts about traps, nets and rings. More than the rest of them she was, Molly felt, a hunter.

So they drove south to see greenish warbler, and there was the same tension as on every trip, the same anxiety that it might be gone; and there was the same smell, as Rob, lying on his back in the van, smoked roll-up after roll-up, and the same sound as he sang tuneless Bob Dylan. Tina crouched beside him, aware and predatory. Then there was the same conversation about other trips they had made, birds missed and birds seen. No one mentioned Tom French. In Exeter they stopped for a pint and a Chinese meal. It was nearly midnight when they started again, and when they reached Cornwall George knew that it was too late for him to sleep. He would sleep when he had seen the bird.

There was a derelict cottage on the edge of the shore at Trekewick where birders always stayed. Only one bedroom had been left intact, but although this had no glass in the windows, the roof and walls were sound and it was dry and comfortable. Over the years pieces of furniture appeared. There were a table, an easy chair and a couple of mattresses. Sometimes there were more or less permanent residents, but it was always the best place to stay if there was a good bird in Cornwall.

As soon as they arrived Tina unrolled her sleeping bag on one of the mattresses and slept immediately, curled up like an animal. Molly, George and Rob sat around the stained table and talked, formally. It was a strange place for a conference. The sunny weather was over and as they had driven there had been hot, heavy showers. Now it was cooler, and through the glassless windows they watched a gusting breeze blow rain-clouds across the moon. When the moonlight shone through a break in the cloud and slanted on to the sea, the breaking waves were speckled with phosphorescence.

So at last they began to talk about Tom French, about the good friend he had been and the good birder, because here they could talk about him without being trivial. When they had diluted a little the horror of Tom’s death with words, George said:

“Adam Anderson’s father has asked me to find out if he was killed by one of us, a birder.”

“Why?” Rob was not questioning Palmer-Jones’s ability to carry out Clive Anderson’s request. It was the request itself which surprised him.

“He’s a magistrate. He doesn’t want Adam involved.”

“Did you agree?”

“I will do.”

There was a pause.

“Don’t you think I should?” asked George. He had expected Rob to be enthusiastic. He had thought it the sort of project which would appeal to him, and was puzzled by the lack of response.

Rob became charming. “Of course. If anyone can find out who did it, you can. It seems unpleasant to think that it might have been one of us. Tom was so popular.”

“I didn’t know him very well. I used to see him around, in Rushy, at the marsh.” He had a picture of Tom, thin almost to the point that he looked malnourished, curly hair, auburn like a girl’s. He saw him walking along the shingle bank, his telescope already mounted on its tripod on his back. It had been a familiar sight. Tom belonged to Rushy.

“We started bird watching together.” Rob spoke softly because Molly was dozing. “ We both lived in London and used to go on coach trips run by a group of old ladies teaching in our school. He didn’t get any A-levels. He was hooked on birdwatching at Rushy even then, and used to sag off during the week even if there was nothing to see. He even went in winter. So he couldn’t get into college and when he left school he started work in some office. I think he worked for the Social Security, but he didn’t stay there for long.”

Rob interrupted his reminiscences and nodded towards the sleeping girl in the corner.

“Tina could tell you more about that time. Tom was into ringing too, then. She would have been very young but I think she was a trainee in the same ringing group. She was playing with ringing pliers when she was still in nappies. By then I’d started to do more trips abroad and I didn’t see so much of him. We’ve been away a couple of times together. We went to Fair Isle, and to get the albatross on Hermaness last year, and the autumn before he had a cottage on St. Mary’s where I stayed for a few days. I usually saw him when I went to Rushy. Sometimes he let me crash out in his room at the hotel, sometimes I stayed with Sally in Fenquay.”