A Cast of Falcons (31 page)

Jejeune laid a hand on Danny's shoulder and reached over him to turn up the volume on his laptop again. The searing harmonies were rising to a climax, the smooth, interlocking voices seeming to drive each other on to ever greater heights.

“I'll leave you to your Motown, Sergeant,” said Jejeune. “Enjoy.”

It wasn't just ex-army types who recognized the wisdom of keeping a close eye on the things you valued.

D
omenic
noticed the manila envelope on the table as soon as he entered. He heard the echo of Eric's booming baritone at the party that night, in this same room.
“Big envelope: good news, small envelope: disappointment.”
No mention of the medium-sized envelope that sat there before Domenic now.

“Is this what I think it is?” he called, picking it up.

“Be out in a minute,” shouted Lindy from the office.

“Don't be too long. I could use some good news.”

“Or not.”

It was only now that their world was beginning to settle back on its axis again, after the tumultuous events of the previous days. The helicopter crash had taken hold of Domenic's senses more than anyone had realized at the time, and more than once Lindy had come into a room and found him sitting, slightly hunched forward, staring into nothingness, starting wildly when she called his name. A doctor friend had told her not to discourage his flashbacks. As he revisited them, the shock would wear off; his visions would lose their intensity. Domenic would gradually become desensitized to the horror he had witnessed. The memories would begin to fade. In time.

But perhaps the other demons would not be so quick to disappear. Without Damian's presence, there was a palpable emptiness to the cottage, and in it rattled around Domenic's unspoken words to his brother, his intentions, his regrets. Lindy and Domenic had not talked about any of it yet. She knew he realized it could only have unfolded as it did, that it is never really in the power of one person to shape the destiny of another. But that did not make the ragged, untidy way the brothers had been forced to part any easier for him. The open wound of their unreconciled relationship would take a long time to heal.

Lindy and Dom would talk, she knew, as time passed, as the immediacy of Damian's presence, and the pain of his departure, receded. But it was still too soon, and she knew that for all the distress his brother had brought, all the turmoil and anger and hurt, Domenic missed him.

Part of it was that he knew, they both knew, Damian would never risk getting in contact with Domenic again. Damian was clever enough to realize how close they had come to being discovered, and how finely he had cut his escape. He had enough of a survivor's instinct to avoid that kind of risk again. But he was aware, too, that some people in Saltmarsh knew with certainty that he had been here, and others suspected it. For this reason, he wouldn't call, or email, or send any letters that prying eyes may be alert for. He cared too much for his brother, for the career he had carved out here in north Norfolk, for the life he had built for himself and Lindy.

Domenic knew all this, and understood it. But he recognized that it meant that life, or even Damian himself, would never give him another chance to help his older brother. More than once since Damian's departure, Domenic had told Lindy of his fear: that he would never hear from his brother again. She respected Dom too much, cared for him too much, to pretend that it might be otherwise.

Unless. She typed in one more URL with flying fingers, tapping impatiently on the desk as she waited for the laborious, interminable load from the server.

“Are you coming to open this thing or not?” called Domenic impatiently from the other room. “I'd like to know, even if you don't want to.”

“Soon,” she called. “Pour us a drink. We can drown our sorrows. Or have a toast. I'll be there in a minute.”

On the webmail site, she entered the username:
spoon_bellied_sandpiper
. She paused. This was the last one, the last of five universal email sites she had used to set up a free email account. The name, she was sure, Damian would try. They had even joked about it. Almost. But the password, that they had never discussed. The cursor blinked its interminable patience from the empty box below, impassive, indifferent. Feel lucky? Take your chances. I'll give you three tries.
Password:

It could only be one thing. Surely? One shared, identifiable word that bound the brothers together. One word that would capture all that Damian was; his lovely sense of irony, his playful nature, his affection for his brother. She had chosen it so carefully, given it so much thought. But would Damian think to try it? Would he dare?

She hesitated a second before hitting the enter key after typing in the password:
Domino
.

The screen seemed to freeze for an instant, as if somehow aware she was holding her breath and wanting to draw out the moment. She closed her eyes for a second, not daring to look. And then the pixels melted and re-formed, and before her was her prize. There were no messages in the Inbox, read or unread; nothing in the Sent folder either. But she knew there would not be. The one item she had been hoping for, praying for, would not be in those folders. It would be in the Drafts. And it was. A single message, two days old, no recipient, no subject.

My guess? Big envelope.

It was all she needed. A single thread, a tenuous lifeline that could bind two brothers together across the world, across any divide. A way for Domenic to hold onto his brother. A way he did not even know existed. Yet.

“This is crazy,” called Domenic. She could hear him tapping the envelope against his chest as he approached the office. She quickly shut down the computer and spun in the chair to face him, just as he entered the room.

“Trying to heighten the tension?” he asked. He was holding the envelope in one hand and cradling two glasses of wine in the other. He passed a glass to her, but whipped the envelope away from her as she reached for it.

“You look as if you already know what's in here,” he said. He was smiling, just a little, as if the very possibility of good news was all he needed for now.

“I really don't,” said Lindy. But whatever it was, she knew it could never be as important as the discovery she had just made. The discovery she would share with Domenic when the time was right.

She set her wine down on the desk beside the closed up laptop. Domenic held his own glass aloft, ready for a toast.

With a sigh for dramatic effect, Lindy took the envelope from Domenic's outstretched hand and, drawing a deep breath, she opened it.
 

T
he
Gyrfalcon (pronounced jer-falcon),
Falco rusticolus,
is the largest falcon in the world, and arguably nature's most lethal hunter. In summer, the birds inhabit the circumpolar regions, breeding in Greenland, Iceland, Norway, Finland, Russia, and Canada. In some areas, Gyrfalcons share habitat with Golden Eagles, and despite being physically dwarfed by their formidable neighbours, Gyrfalcons will readily engage in spectacular aerial battles with eagles over territory. In winter, the search for food will often send Gyrfalcons south, and this time represents the best opportunity for most birdwatchers to catch a glimpse of these outstanding birds.

Despite the remoteness of its natural habitat, the Gyrfalcon has had a long association with humans, due to its hunting prowess. In twelfth-century China, Gyrfalcons were used for hunting swans, and the Liao emperor imposed an in-kind tax on some of his subjects, payable in Gyrfalcons. It is claimed that the Gyrfalcon tax was one cause of the Jurchen rebellion, which caused the fall of the Liao Dynasty. In Western medieval falconry, the Gyrfalcon was considered the preserve of kings, second only in the raptor hierarchy to the eagles of an emperor.

Gyrfalcon ecology has not been extensively studied, but research in Canada suggests climate change may be disrupting the predator/prey relationship between the Gyrfalcon and the Willow Ptarmigan. Population peaks for the prey species may be disappearing from the natural cycles. As a top predator in the food web, Gyrfalcons are also one of the species most at risk from the increasing accumulation of contaminants, such as chlorinated hydrocarbons, that are turning up in Arctic ecosystems.

Though many Gyrfalcons are responsibly and legally bred for the falconry industry, the mythical appeal of this magnificent predator means that there will always be a market for birds illegally taken from the wild, and this trade remains perhaps the greatest threat the wild Gyrfalcon population faces today.

Copyright © Steve Burrows, 2016

All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or other­wise (except for brief passages for purposes of review) without the prior permission of Dundurn Press. Permission to photocopy should be requested from Access Copyright.

All characters in this work are fictitious. Any resemblance to real persons, living or dead, is purely coincidental.

Editor: Allison Hirst

Design: Laura Boyle

Cover Design: Sarah Beaudin

Epub Design: Carmen Giraudy

Library and Archives Canada Cataloguing in Publication

Burrows, Steve, author

A cast of falcons / Steve Burrows.

(A birder murder mystery)

Issued in print and electronic formats.

ISBN 978-1-4597-3214-8 (paperback).--ISBN 978-1-4597-3215-5 (pdf).--
ISBN 978-1-4597-3216-2 (epub)

I. Title.

PS8603.U74745C37 2016 C813'6 C2015-905453-2

C2015-905454-0

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Canada Council for the Arts
and the
Ontario Arts Council
for our publishing program. We also acknowledge the financial support of the
Government of Canada
through the
Canada Book Fund
and
Livres Canada Books
, and the
Government of Ontario
through the
Ontario Book Publishing Tax Credit
and the
Ontario Media Development Corporation
.

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