A Cast of Falcons (24 page)

“S
ergeant
Maik,” said Catherine Weil with undisguised pleasure. “I thought I might be seeing you here, now that you've been given you the old red card from the property.
Persona non grata
these days, I hear.”

She was wearing figure-hugging blue jeans and a loose cotton blouse of dazzling white. With her cascade of red curls draped over her shoulders, she cut a striking figure.

“I think it's the DCI who's non grata,” said Maik, “I'm what they refer to as ‘collateral damage'.” He gave her a small smile to show he was going to be able to live with the disappointment, and stepped into the hallway as she stood aside for him.

She crossed to the sink and filled the kettle without asking. An ex-army type, of Maik's age and sensibilities? He could forgive her for being presumptuous. It gave him the chance to look around the flat. It was very small. The sparseness and frugality in which some people lived never ceased to amaze him. The apartment was immaculately clean and tidy. He would have expected no less from a woman with such a meticulously ordered mind and crisp, no-nonsense demeanour. He couldn't imagine much tolerance for clutter, physical or intellectual, in Catherine Weil's world. But there was little evidence that any personal investment had been made to turn the tiny living space into a home, no little touches that claimed it from the anonymity of a dwelling space and marked it as Catherine Weil's own. Maik would be the first to admit that his view of the world could be somewhat dated, at times, but it looked to him like the living quarters of a woman waiting for the man of her dreams to arrive and carry her off to somewhere better.

On a shelf above the built-in washing machine, Maik saw a small pile of neatly folded laundry. Weil turned in time to see him avert his eyes from her underwear. She smiled as she handed him his tea.

“Don't worry, Sergeant, nothing to get your pulse racing. More like Queen Victoria's Secret, these days, unfortunately.”

“No time for romance?” Maik had no idea where the question had come from, and it seemed to distress him far more than Weil. She simply rolled her narrow shoulders easily.

“You've come to tell me once again that I was mistaken about seeing Philip that night in the woods. That nice Constable Salter of yours has already had a bash.” She took a sip of her tea. “I wasn't. It was Philip I saw.”

“The other man is very similar,” said Maik reasonably. “In build, general appearance. He was even carrying a similar leather satchel. It does seem likely …”

“It was Philip. I worked closely beside the man for over a year, Sergeant. I identified Philip's body at the mortuary. It was him I saw entering those woods that night.”

Maik shrugged his shoulders. Jejeune had told him she would insist, and that he shouldn't push it. In fact, he had the distinct impression he had been told to come here and ask more for form's sake than anything else.

“We can go out onto the balcony, if you like,” said Weil, without the slightest hint of lingering offence. It was how she was, thought Maik, she dealt with something and brushed it aside, moved on. She stepped out onto the narrow balcony and leaned against its waist-high railing. Even from this modest height, barely one storey above street level, Saltmarsh took on a different perspective. With its trim front gardens and clay-tiled roofs, it looked like a village from a postcard. If you stood beside Maik up here and told him Saltmarsh had never seen a crime, he might almost have believed you. Up on a hill in the distance, he saw a faint glint of light. Concealed as it was behind its bank of dense yew trees at ground level, he hadn't considered the Old Dairy office building would be visible from other vantage points.

He turned to see Weil looking in the same direction, her hand held up at her brow like a visor against the high sun.

“Forgive me, but, it strikes me you're not particularly happy up at the Old Dairy.”

“Not particularly, Sergeant. No.”

“Then why do you stay? I mean, Philip Wayland found a way to make the move. Could you not have followed him?”

“To the university?” She let out a delighted laugh. “I have to say, I don't think Philip's fiancé would have cared much for that.”

“Is that because of your own previous relationship with Mr. Wayland?”

She snapped her head around, as if to deny it, but then seemed to resign herself to something and simply smiled.

“You had met his parents,” said Maik simply, “you knew them well enough to want to spare them the sight of their son's body. It was a caring thing to do. A brave one. The sort of act that might go beyond friendship.”

“It was something that happened,” she said matter-of-factly. “Sometimes a physical attraction is the first link in the chain of intimacy, sometimes it's the reverse. Shared interests, experiences, hopes can lead you there.”

Maik nodded. Though Jejeune had suggested she wouldn't deny it when he told his sergeant to ask, Danny had been quiet­­ly hoping that for once, his DCI might have been wrong.

“Had it ended by the time Mr. Wayland left?”

She nodded. “God, yes. Long before. Months. Professional differences, I suppose you could call it, but in reality, we had just drifted apart. After he moved on, Philip just thought it was better if we kept it quiet. He was getting engaged.” She shrugged. “It didn't really matter to me one way or the other.”

“But if not the university, then surely you could still find a job somewhere else. I mean, you're a bright woman … person,” he said awkwardly. If this was how he was going to conduct himself at interviews from now on, he thought, it might have been better if Salter hadn't dragged him back aboard the boat after all. “I'm just wondering why you would stay there if you're so unhappy.”

She met the question head on, frank and seemingly not offended. “The simple answer, Sergeant? Money. Filthy lucre. I'm not under any illusion that the project can ever be successful, not within the parameters they have set, but if someone is willing to pay me to prove it, then I may as well get as much as I can for wasting my time. We'll get there with the capture, eventually, but we're still miles away with the storage challenges. Abrar el-Taleb is no Philip Wayland, and it's his expertise that would be needed to make any undersea carbon storage plan work.” She leaned her elbow on the balcony rail as she turned to look at Maik directly. “Just in case you're wondering, though, I'm not completely mercenary. I have voiced this opinion a number of times.”

“And they weren't willing to listen?”

She turned away from him. “It was politely pointed out to me that my opinions are exactly that, and while they graciously acknowledged that I was perfectly entitled to have them, the Old Dairy board of directors sees no reason to share them.”

Maik leaned on the railing and drank in the scene before him. There were so many things he found to dislike about his job at times, and the obvious deception and evasiveness of a DCI he had come to trust and respect was high amongst them these days. But a sunny morning tea break with a woman like Catherine Weil could do a lot to restore you enjoyment of your job. She was such easy company, so open and honest, with a disarming frankness that took on a much more appealing quality when she wasn't bristling under the slights, perceived or otherwise, of the Old Dairy executive or DCI Jejeune.

“Niall Doherty thinks the al-Haladins will walk away at some point?” said Maik, still looking at the glass building. “Do you think he's right?”

Weil shook her head. “Prince Ibrahim has a personal stake in this.”

Maik looked confused. “Forgive me, but how exactly does a ruler from an inland desert kingdom have a personal stake in global temperature increases?”

“With the warming in the Arctic and the melting of the polar ice caps, which creatures do you think are going to be most vulnerable?”

“Those which live there,” said Maik. He nodded, understanding. “Like Gyrfalcons.”

“Men like the prince need a project big enough to fit their egos, important enough to be worthy of their resources, and the animals of the polar regions are under the greatest threat of any creatures on Earth from the direct effects of climate change. But when you have the resources to put your support behind just about any cause you want to, I think there has to be some spark, some glimmer of personal interest. Prince Ibrahim could have any hunting birds he wanted, even eagles. And yet he chose Gyrfalcons, exclusively. I think he truly loves those birds, Sergeant. Perhaps they represent a freedom, a spirit that even he, with his vast fortune, still can't control.” She shrugged. “So no, I don't see him walking away.”

In the cobbled street below, people passed by utterly unaware they were being observed from on high. They continued with their tics, their traits, their unturned collars and hitched up skirts. So much of humanity's foibles were there to see, thought Maik, if a person wasn't aware they were being observed. He finished his tea and looked around for somewhere to set the empty mug. “Best be off,” he said. Weil held out her hand and he passed the mug to her.

“Sergeant,” she said, as he turned to go, “this brilliant DCI of yours. Is he going to catch Philip's killer, do you think?”

“Any day now, we expect,” he said, returning her smile. “Well, hope, anyway.” But there was something in the way he said it that made Catherine Weil think that hope wasn't a commodity Danny Maik had in particularly strong supply these days.

T
he
music, so often a balm on their drives together, seemed to miss the mark today. Whatever Maik had managed to dig out of the Motown archives, it was setting Jejeune's teeth on edge. With evenings at home now a steady diet of tunes from his darkest past, the DCI was rapidly tiring of musical nostalgia. And now Maik was apparently intent on subjecting him to more dreck from half a century ago.

“For God's sake, doesn't anybody listen to music by people who can still chew their own food?”

Despite the music, the silence in Maik's Mini was deafening, and Jejeune regretted his outburst immediately. “I'm sorry, Sergeant. Bad day at the office. Several bad days, as a matter of fact.” He rubbed his forehead and tried an ingratiating smile. It didn't really come off, but Maik was in an indulgent mood.

“I'm sure Mary Wells has heard worse.” said Maik evenly. “Eddie Holland would have approved, though. He always had an ear for a good line.” He leaned forward to turn down the volume, but Jejeune held up a hand.

“No, Sergeant, leave it. It's fine.”

He turned to look out the window at the passing countryside. Maik knew the outburst wasn't really about Mary Wells. But then again, he doubted it was about a bad day at the office either. The DCI had experienced bad days before, without ever showing this kind of reaction. Plenty of them. They both had. In fact, Maik was hardly going to put a circle around today's date on the calendar himself. Solicitous questions from DCS Shepherd into his well-being had a way of making Danny's day turn sour in a hurry.

“You're sure you're okay, Sergeant,” Shepherd had asked earlier that morning, her concern genuine, but no less annoying for all that. “No need to talk to anybody about what happened? I can book you an appointment if necessary.”

“I got a bit wet, that's all. It was nothing. I'm fine.”

“But you have a fear of boats, I understand. It must have been traumatic for you.”

Maik had sighed irritably. This was how rumours got started. “I don't particularly like being on boats, but I'm not afraid of them. I don't much like the current Norwich City lineup either, but I wouldn't say it scares me. Mind you, that defence they've got at the moment …”

But Shepherd wasn't buying levity. This was her element, caring for her staff, showing compassion, making sure they were fit for the job.

“It's just you've been in the wars a bit recently. The head …” She touched her own. “Everything still okay there, I take it?”

“Still got just the one,” said Maik. He had recently had stitches removed from a severe gash near the crown of his head, received when he tried to arrest a suspect, and Salter hadn't been the only the only one surreptitiously watching Danny Maik's gait and speech for signs of lingering effects.

She nodded. “And the other business?” she tapped her fingers delicately against her sternum, the protector of the heart. Against external threats, anyway.

“Still just the one of those, too.”

Maik's pleasant smile indicated that he wouldn't be answering any more questions about a heart condition that it took all of his willpower to even acknowledge, let alone discuss. To her credit, Shepherd read the signal immediately.

“Well,” she said, switching gears, “all I can say is thank God you had the good sense to take another officer with you. I need hardly point out how this reinforces the importance of having backup on these kinds of operations.”

But hardly needing to point something out was Shepherd-speak for telling him she would be soon be giving them all a lecture about the importance of staying partnered up whenever they went out on a call. Maik had felt another sigh building. As if he didn't feel bad enough, now he was saddled with the knowledge that he would be responsible for inflicting one of Shepherd's pep talks on them all.

“
So what are we going to be doing up here?” Maik asked, as casually as he could manage. It took Jejeune some time to turn from his examination of the fields.

“Chancing our arms, Sergeant. Trying to see if we can make something happen.”

There were probably responses that could have made Maik feel worse, but just at the moment, he couldn't come up with any.

“It's the inconsistency. I'm not getting the same story from the people at the Old Dairy. Prince Yousef claims never to have seen Wayland's proposal, and yet Catherine Weil appears to know a great deal about it. El-Taleb claims they were not given the time to consider it, not the
chance
, Sergeant, the
time
. You see my problem?”

“Still, sir, el-Taleb's English, as fluent as it is, it's an easy mistake to make.”

Jejeune made a face to suggest he wasn't convinced.

Maik drove for a moment in silence, the music turned so low only the heartbeat of the rhythm section was audible. “The person playing bass on this track, it's a man named James Jamerson,” he said.

Jejeune looked less than interested.

“He was Motown's top bass player in the sixties. I mean, widely acclaimed as being one of the best there has ever been. He played on a lot of great songs.” Maik paused and looked at Jejeune for emphasis. “A lot. Around the same time, though, there was a top-flight session musician by the name of Carole Kaye, and she claimed she had played bass on some of these same songs.”

“Awkward,” said Jejeune, perhaps more interested than he expected himself to be. “So who was lying?”

“Neither of them. It turns out Carole Kaye played on recordings of some tunes to be used on shows on the West Coast and Jamerson played on the recordings for the tracks in Detroit. Of course, the story goes a bit deeper than that. You can only have one original recording. But the thing is, essentially, sometimes there are versions of the truth. Perhaps each person at the Old Dairy is only stating the version they know.”

Jejeune thought for a moment. “Then I'd say we need to get up to the Old Dairy compound as quickly as possible, Sergeant.”

Maik sighed. It was typical of his luck that introducing a harmless topic like the Motown bass controversy had now, in some strange way, led to this urgency for them to get to the Old Dairy, in direct contravention of DCS Shepherd's directive to him that morning.

“Everything fine with the inspector?” The segue from the value of partners had not been subtle, but then, Maik doubted Shepherd had intended it to be. “He doesn't seem a little bit guarded to you, secretive?”

“More than usual, you mean?”

He had given her as innocent a stare as he could manage.

She had returned it with a casual smile. “He does so like his obtuse angles,” she said.

“They say he's at his best when he's thinking laterally.”

Plain-speaking Danny Maik reverting to reportage might have been a sign of something, even if neither of them seemed sure quite what it was. Shepherd had picked up a paper from her desk, as if she might want to diffuse the directness of her next question. If so, she had thought better of it at the last moment, laying it down again and fixing Danny with a look from over her glasses.

“You don't think he's distracted by anything?”

“Anything?” Maik shifted his eyes a little from Shepherd's gaze, as if he was trying to will the conversation to another place. But this morning, DCI Colleen Shepherd was not for turning.

“This business with the Kazakh woman, and this man, the birder. He seems to want to not pursue it. Any idea why?”

“No,” said Danny. There were a couple of half-formed thoughts, perhaps. But nothing that Danny Maik would classify as a fully-fledged theory.

“Do you think he needs some time off?” Shepherd was staring at him when he finally looked up again.

“I think he needs some answers.”

She had treated him to one of her special looks, as if suspecting behind all these short responses a desire to avoid telling her something more. “You know he wants permission to go back up to the compound? He doesn't have anything, does he? Anything firmly tying Prince Yousef to Wayland's murder?”

“No ma'am, he doesn't.”

Shepherd mulled this over for a few moments. “I want you to stay close, keep him out of trouble.”

“What kind of trouble?” Maik had asked warily.

She looked down at her desk and then back up directly into his eyes. “He's a wonderful detective, Sergeant, but he doesn't always seem to understand where his own best interests lie. If he even looks as if he's about to go up there and accuse the prince of being involved in Wayland's murder, I expect you to do something about it.”

Shepherd had a way of ending interviews sometimes that left Danny Maik wondering if there was any more to come. He hovered uncertainly for a few seconds before making his way to the door.

“By the way,” she said, not bothering to look up from her correspondence, “in case you were wondering, we won't be docking your pay for dropping an expensive piece of police kit in the drink.”

Maik had toyed with the idea of telling her that he knew exactly where the video camera was, if she fancied going to retrieve it. But instead he just left her office, her instructions still ringing in his ears.

J
ejeune's studied silence as they drove unnerved Danny Maik. The DCI often sat beside him without speaking, scanning the passing countryside for any birds that might be up and flitting about. But this was different. There was an edge to this quiet, a brooding, troubled intensity that went beyond Jejeune simply mulling things over. He had seen the DCI like this before, and it meant he was close to something. But what?

Maik didn't like babysitting jobs at the best of times, but this one Shepherd had saddled him with had the potential to go wrong on so many levels that he found it easier just to push the possibilities to the back of his mind. Even with a normally functioning Jejeune, matters were never quite as straightforward as you might like them to be. The DCI's erratic attention span and wild theories often led them into territory where they had no right straying. Maik had the scars to prove it. But trying to intercept a Domenic Jejeune in this distracted, unpredictable mood from embarking on his latest attempt at career suicide was going to be doubly difficult. DCI Jejeune was, in Maik's considered opinion, teetering on a tightrope these days. And the high winds were blowing.

As Maik negotiated a tight left onto the narrow single-lane road that led out to the Old Dairy compound, he tried the same nonchalant vein he had struck earlier. “I just wanted to confirm, sir, we haven't come across any evidence tying anybody up here to Philip Wayland's murder?”

Having given Shepherd a bulletproof assurance a scant few hours ago, Maik thought it might be nice to find out whether it was true. But far from reassuring Maik, the strange, almost disconnected way Jejeune delivered his answer left him feeling more uneasy than ever.

“Not yet. But we haven't quite finished looking.”