A Pitying of Doves Read online

  Maik considered the girl’s clothes carefully: well-worn shoes, a short skirt, and a skimpy baby-blue top with tiny embroidered flowers around the neck. The top was bunched and one of the spaghetti straps had been torn as her killer grabbed her and thrust her onto the branch. Maik wondered what she had been thinking about when she got dressed the previous morning.These birds? The tasks that awaited her? Excitement about what the new day might bring? All for it to end like this, kneeling on the floor of a locked cage, amid bird droppings and spilled seed, in a pool of her own blood. Yes, Lindy, it was a bad one.

  To Maik’s right, Detective Constable Lauren Salter was pressing her face against the cage, gripping the wire with her fingers. She seemed unable to pull her eyes away from the scene inside, terrible as it was.

  “Everything all right, Constable?”

  “He’s not from around here,” said Salter, “I’m sure of it.” She seemed distant, distracted. Sometimes, the nervous system put mechanisms in place to shield a person from shock. But Salter had seen her share of traumatic deaths. Maik wondered if it might be something else. She nodded toward the well-dressed man with his dark complexion and jet-black hair. Even in death, he was startlingly handsome. “Trust me, quality like that would have stuck out a mile from the local gene pool.”

  Tony Holland readied himself for a response, but he seemed to think better of it. Sergeant Maik liked a bit of decorum around his murder scenes, and he could get very testy if he thought people weren’t taking things seriously enough.

  “An out-of-towner and a local, then,” mused Maik. “So what were they doing here together, I wonder.”

  Holland smirked. “You’re kidding, right? He’s away from home, meets plain Jane here; game over.”

  Holland held up his hand to fend off the looks he was getting from both Maik and Salter. “What? I’m just saying, a no-frills number like her, with her maybe outfit on, just to let you know it was a possibility. If he had the chat to go with his looks, it would be a foregone conclusion. I’m just saying,” he repeated.

  Maik was silent, which was probably the safest response Holland could have hoped for from him. But Salter wasn’t in the mood to indulge Tony Holland’s singular view of the world. “And they chose this place why, exactly, Tony? The ambiance? Believe it or not, there are other reasons a man and a woman could be together. That is, unless the man is a complete brain-dead moron with a one-track mind. Oh, wait …” said Salter with heavy irony.

  Salter’s outburst was so out of keeping with her normal demeanour around Danny Maik that both he and Holland shot her a surprised look. But while Maik had always put her previous self-control down to simple professionalism, Holland had long ago identified a different cause. When you had been striving as long as Salter had to get Maik to even notice your attentions, let alone respond to them, you didn’t want something as unattractive as a temper tantrum spoiling your chances.

  “What’s up with you, then?” asked Holland. “Touch of the hot flashes?”

  “Oh, for God’s sake, grow up.”

  Both fell silent under the sergeant’s stony stare. In his present mood, if Danny Maik decided to start banging heads together, the lab team would have more than one mess to clean up when they got here.

  “I’ll go see if I can light a fire under that lazy bugger, Saxon,” announced Salter, striding off angrily toward the doorway. Maik stared after her retreating form, but neither she nor the silent Tony Holland met his gaze.

  Maik considered the bodies carefully once again; the man’s smart black attire, the girl’s clothing. What had Holland called it, her maybe outfit? A little low up top; a little high down below. At this stage anything was possible, but a romantic pairing looked off to him. Death was the ultimate leveller, but appearances suggested that in life these two would have inhabited very different worlds. Still, Danny Maik was hardly an expert on what attracted people to each other. More the opposite, truth be told. And he had known stranger relationships in his time. If somebody came up with a sighting of the two of them huddled together over G and Ts in the local bar, he wouldn’t dismiss it out of hand.

  But, regardless of why these two people had come here together, or what they intended to do, one thing was clear. They hadn’t been alone. Someone had killed them both, then deliberately manipulated the evidence before fleeing the scene. As to whom that someone might have been, the only person Maik knew who might be capable of working that out was currently occupied with other matters — specifically, the spring migration of birds along the north Norfolk coast.

  2

  Chief Inspector Domenic Jejeune flattened himself against the wall as the forensic team squeezed past him in the narrow passageway. He watched the team enter the cage, ready to begin their work as soon as he gave the word.

  Jejeune leaned forward to peer into the cage, and felt something seep from him, like fluid escaping from a wound. The transition from the scene he had just left — the bright, fecund promise of a spring bird migration, to this theatre of fluorescent-lit tragedy — was almost overwhelming. Perhaps if they had been with him, the sergeant, the forensic team, the constables now staring at him with such expectation, perhaps if they had been there to witness that glorious sunrise breaking over the coast, the soft light of morning dappling the north Norfolk countryside, with the calls of a thousand birds filling the air, perhaps then they would understand his reluctance to be here, to be a part of this world. But he’d been alone that morning, as alone as he felt now, despite the presence of the others.

  He stepped back from the cage and sighed inwardly. He knew that it was his job to make sense of these senseless killings, to provide answers as to why two people should die amongst discarded bird feathers and overturned seed dishes. And he knew, too, that regardless of his personal desolation, these two people deserved the attentions of someone who was engaged, focused on the task, determined to pursue it to a result. So Domenic Jejeune quietly folded away the pleasures of the previous hours and resigned himself once more to the job that life had chosen for him.

  Sergeant Maik approached cautiously. “Anonymous tip,” he said. “A note left on the windshield of a car in the hotel car park down the road.”

  Jejeune looked dubious.

  “The side door was open when we got here,” said Maik. “We’re thinking some local roustabout probably found it like that and had a wander in, looking to help himself to anything that was lying about. Found this scene and wanted to let us know, without having to explain what he was doing in here in the first place.”

  “Still, they could have called from a pay phone. Just how good do they think the voice-recognition skills of the switchboard operators are?”

  “I don’t think they wanted to find out. Criminals in these parts tend to have what the American talk shows call ‘trust issues’ with coppers who have sent them away in the past,” said Maik drily. “The girl’s flat is upstairs, whenever you like,” he said, though he knew the inspector would want to look around a bit more down here first. “Her name is Phoebe Hunter,” continued Maik. “Constable Salter has gone to the car rental company to see if we can get an ID on the man.” He knew Jejeune liked to have identifications as soon as possible. It was obvious enough that these people were victims without having to constantly refer to them as such.

  Jejeune nodded. He saw the emotion behind Maik’s eyes, in sharp contrast to the dry, measured statements of fact he was delivering. He was aware that he was yet to offer any meaningful contribution of his own, but he seemed unable to find any words worth saying.

  “Uniforms weren’t able to find any wounds on the man. Not that that means very much, of course.”

  Jejeune made a face to acknowledge Maik’s point. There were plenty of ways to kill a man without leaving any obvious signs. He regarded the bodies carefully again. He knew that he was expected to shut out the horror, to push it aside, so that only the facts remained. For him, this was the worst travesty of all, to consider these deaths only as an event, a crime, s
imply because you couldn’t allow your judgment to be clouded by emotion. As if reacting to scenes like this was evidence itself, of weakness, or an inability to do your job. As if expressing sadness at the sight of a young woman kneeling in her own blood was somehow a bad thing, a negative thing. So he would do it the way his police training had taught him, filtering out the revulsion, the horror, even if he would never offer that final insult to these people; that of treating them merely as cases. He would pay a price for offering them his compassion, for continuing to regard them as people, this young girl, this handsome man before him. He knew that. But with murder, everybody paid a price.

  Jejeune spent another silent moment staring at the bodies before waving in the forensics team. With Danny Maik in the building, nobody would have to remind them to show the victims the proper respect.

  Tony Holland approached carrying a book. “Uniforms found it under the front seat of the car,” he told Maik, handing him the book. “Oh, hello, sir,” he said, feigning to notice Jejeune for the first time. “You found us okay, then? Pity this lot aren’t parrots, eh? Might have been able to tell us what happened.”

  “You’ll be wanting to see this.” Maik handed the book to Jejeune. It was a well-worn bird guide with a bookmark protruding from between the pages. “Two birders? A meeting of the minds?” asked Maik. “Perhaps he was interested in whatever work she was doing here, and she invited him to see it first-hand.”

  “Possibly,” said Jejeune. “Did you find anything about a meeting in her diary?”

  Maik’s expression suggested that if they had come across a detail of such significance, he may just have thought to mention by now. Jejeune riffled through the book with his thumb. Next to some of the images were notes: dates, locations, weather conditions. He turned to the bookmarked page. Maik peered over his shoulder, then looked up into one of the cages.

  “So these are Turtledoves, then?” he asked.

  Jejeune nodded absently. “Yes. Turtledoves.” He once again turned his attention to the bodies. “In every cage but this one. Locked from the outside, with the keys on the hook.” A thoughtful expression clouded his features.

  Holland looked at Maik incredulously and then back at Jejeune. And this was supposed to be the star of the North Norfolk Constabulary? “We were thinking that might have been the third party, sir. You know, after he killed them. Locked the cage and hung up the keys again. Just an idea, mind.”

  Jejeune nodded. It was impossible to tell if he had missed the sarcasm or was choosing to ignore it. “Not the work of somebody in a hurry, though, is it? Or somebody surprised in the act?”

  “And yet they didn’t bother to take the man’s jewellery,” said Maik, nodding to acknowledge Jejeune’s point. “But if robbery wasn’t the motive here …”

  “Then they came for something else.”

  “Came for?” Holland looked at Jejeune carefully, as if trying to read where exactly the DCI might have come up with the idea that somebody had entered these premises with the intention of taking something. And anyway, what else was there here to steal, other than … no, surely he wasn’t suggesting …

  “Juan Perez,” announced Salter from the doorway. She pronounced it Ju-an. “Saxon’s description of him is an exact match. I can get a photo over to him, if you like, but it’s definitely our victim. He gave his address as The Pheasant. It’s that hotel just down the road. I told you he wasn’t local.”

  Jejeune was silent. He seemed to be playing his mind over the information Salter had just brought them. “Juan Perez is the equivalent of John Smith in many parts of Latin America. If he has no ID on him, perhaps it’s because he’s trying to hide his real identity.”

  “There are actually people called John Smith, you know,” said Salter testily. She seemed annoyed that her information hadn’t met with the gratitude she expected from Jejeune. “And people do occasionally leave home without their wallets.”

  Maik shot Salter a glance. She was normally among the more circumspect of the constables when confronted with the oblique meanderings of Jejeune’s mind. But today she seemed to have little patience for the inspector’s outside-the-box musings. Or anything else, for that matter.

  “Well, I suppose I had better get over to his room and see if he left any ID laying around, fake or otherwise,” said Holland, unable to keep a note of amusement from his voice. Maik watched him leave. A quick smoke, a chat to the housemaids, a casual look around the hotel room to confirm what he had already decided — that the Chief Inspector was completely on the wrong track. It was a job made for Tony Holland. If he played it right, it would be worth an hour away from the crime scene, at least.

  “The rental car,” Jejeune said to Salter, as if returning from another place, “was Mr. Perez the only named driver?”

  “Yes.” She seemed to hesitate. Falter would have been Maik’s word.

  “Your views on the John Smiths of the world notwithstanding, Constable, is there anything else you’d like to share with us?”

  Perhaps it was Holland’s departure, or just Maik’s encouraging tone, but something seemed to free Salter of her burden. “I, I had a call, yesterday. From this woman, Phoebe Hunter. She told me Wild Maggie had been making threatening phone calls. Something about the shelter having Maggie’s doves. She didn’t sound worried, but she said she thought she should report it anyway …”

  “Wild Maggie?”

  It was unclear to whom Jejeune had directed the question, but it was Maik who supplied the answer. “Margaret Wylde. Local character. She’s a bit off, a serial complainer.” His tone seemed to imply that if he had taken the call himself, he would have taken the investigation no further either. But it didn’t seem to be doing much to relieve Salter’s sense of guilt.

  Jejeune thought for a moment. “Did she work here?”

  “I doubt it,” said Maik. “She used to be a nurse, I believe, but she has been unable to hold down a job ever since her husband died a few years back. Serious mental health issues. It takes some that way, I understand, the death of a loved one.”

  “I see. Can we find out? Any history of employment at this sanctuary or any other facility like it?” Jejeune turned to Salter. “Phoebe Hunter said this woman was asking about her birds? That the sanctuary had her birds?” There was no admonition in Jejeune’s tone, no hint that Salter should have reacted differently to the phone call, pursued matters, made further inquiries. But then, it was clear from Salter’s expression that there was no need for anyone to try to make her feel any worse than she already did.

  She nodded.

  Wordlessly, Jejeune began a slow walk down the corridor, peering into each of the cages in turn. He appeared to be studying the birds intently. Maik and the constable stood in an uncomfortable silence, suspended between the DCI’s absence and the uncertainty of his return. Tears weren’t Salter’s style, but she found something other than the sergeant’s intense gaze to occupy her eyes as she spoke.

  “I was going to contact the animal rescue service to see if they had even brought Maggie’s birds to this shelter. You know how she is; it wouldn’t have been unlike her to get her story completely backward. But I … Max had a doctor’s appointment. I was going to get onto it as soon as I got in this morning.” Salter touched her fingers to her lips, but their tremor only mirrored the one she was trying to disguise.

  Jejeune returned along the corridor and paused once more in front of the cage where the forensic team was working around the bodies.

  “We need to bring in Maggie, I take it,” said Maik. He reached for his phone.

  “I can do it,” said Salter quickly.

  It was obvious to Maik that it meant a lot to her, but if it was as obvious to Jejeune, he chose to ignore it. “Uniforms can handle it,” he said. “What I’d like you to do is contact the British Trust for Ornithology. Ask them for any recent reports of ringed birds sent in from this sanctuary.” Jejeune checked his watch. “Their offices should be open by now. In the meantime, the sergeant and I
will be upstairs.”

  Danny Maik had spent a lifetime disguising his surprise at orders from his superiors, but judging from the expression on Salter’s face, she either had less practice, or less interest, in masking her true feelings. Both watched the departing form of Domenic Jejeune in silence. Based on past experience, they knew the reasons for the inspector’s unusual request would eventually become clear. But just at that moment, neither one of them would have cared to speculate quite when that might be.

  3

  Danny Maik stood on the landing and looked around. “Well you could hardly fault her for variety.”

  Jejeune nodded in agreement. The four rooms above the sanctuary that together constituted Phoebe Hunter’s living quarters opened off the landing. From the detectives’ vantage point at the top of the stairs, it was possible to see into each of the rooms. From the startling tiger-stripes of the bedroom to the stark white Scandinavian economy of the living area to the delicate pastels of the kitchen, each room presented a bold, dramatic alternative in décor. Exploring her boundaries, thought Jejeune; the exuberant self-discovery of someone emerging from the chrysalis of youth. It was yet another reminder of what had been taken away by the killer; an unfolding life, now stilled forever, one floor below them, kneeling in a pool of still-drying blood.

  Salter arrived on the landing behind them. “No answer at the BTO, so I’ve texted them.” She consulted her smartphone. “According to Phoebe Hunter’s Facebook page, she was doing post-grad research on bird migrations. Tracking Turtledoves. Running the shelter was a volunteer position, but it came with these digs.”

  Jejeune looked around at the slight disarray, the coffee cup in the kitchen sink, the half-opened mail on the dresser, the general lived-in feel of the rooms. It was as if Phoebe Hunter had just stepped out for a moment. Which, of course, she had. Only she would never be stepping back in.

  Jejeune headed into the living room while Maik took the kitchen. Salter hesitated uncertainly on the landing, watching. Maik, methodical as ever, lifting and replacing items with precision, making his notes as he went; the DCI, wandering around aimlessly, dragging a fingernail absently across the spine of a book now and then, but mostly just letting his eyes do the work. Opposites attract, thought Salter, but surely, you had to bring them together first. From what she could see, these two were about as distant as it was possible to be in the confines of this small upstairs flat.