A Cast of Falcons (4 page)

E
ven
to Maik's normally uncritical eye, the university complex's prosaically named New Building was a structure of soul-destroying ugliness. The sparse steel and concrete addition had been appended onto the glorious ivy-clad redbrick of the earlier nineteenth-century building almost as if it was the architect's intention to provide as sharp a counterpoint as possible between the sensibilities of the two eras.

It was the usual way of things, thought Maik. Unable to match the achievements of a previous generation, the pendulum had swung violently, deliberately, to the other end of the arc. Music was a perfect example. The exquisitely crafted Motown songs of the sixties, with their seamless harmonies and impeccable musicianship, had left no room for improvement. So what had the world ended up with? Punk, the antithesis of all that Motown stood for. No proper singing, no pride of musicianship. In short, no discernible talent of any sort, at least in Maik's view. And here it was again, as he approached the entrance to the building, a confrontation with the same sort of reactionary disaster: architecture's punk rock, in steel and concrete.

Maik stood for a moment in the stark, unwelcoming foyer, orientating himself. Following the direction pointed by a sign on one of the walls, he headed down the corridor, his mood a mirror of the unrelenting cheerlessness around him. He reached his destination and paused in the hall, drawing a breath before he knocked on the door and entered. Xandria Grey was at a desk, poring over some charts when he entered. She stood and came toward him. She tried for a smile of greeting, but seemed to lack sufficient will to pull it off.

“Thank you for coming.” Her gratitude was genuine enough, even though Maik could see the sadness in her eyes. Despite the advice Smokey Robinson had given him on his drive over, the sergeant didn't have to look very much closer to see the tracks of her tears. They had been there, he knew, since she had first been informed about her fiancé's death. She seemed too frail and childlike to be taking this on. Her pale, round face, her soft brown eyes, robbed of their light by sorrow. Even her hair, a neat, face-framing pageboy style, seemed too young, too innocent, to be on a woman who had suffered such an adult loss. Despite his resolve on his walk along the corridor, Maik couldn't bring himself to broach the subject of his visit just yet.

“I never did ask,” said Maik. “Your name, Xandria …?”

She gave her head a small shake. “Dad said he never knew where Mom came up with it,” she said, almost apologetically, “and we lost her when I was still too young to ask.” Her sadness seemed to deepen a little. “She travelled to Egypt just before she had me, so perhaps it's a name she heard over there.” She tried a careless shrug, but like her smile, it lacked conviction. “It does tend to be a bit of a distraction at times. Look at us, discussing it now, when there are other things we need to be talking about.” Her brisk, businesslike tone suffered the same fate as her other efforts at artificial sentiment.

“It's a nice name, all the same,” said Maik awkwardly. To his ear, he could not have told Xandria Grey any more eloquently that he wanted to avoid the other subject, that it was precisely the nature of those other things that kept him lingering out here among the light, before descending into the darkness that he knew awaited them both. He hesitated.

“Ms. Grey,” he began uncertainly, “these questions you have, about the details of Mr. Wayland's death; it's not always best to know. Sometimes it's better with unanswered questions than —”

“Than the truth?” The guarded look suggested he had already given her the answers she was seeking, but she persisted anyway, as if something inside was urging her on, compelling her to come face-to-face with her own horrors. Maik knew he was not in a position to deny this fragile, broken woman the details of her fiancé's death any longer, and with a look, he gave her permission to finally ask her question.

“These rumours about Philip, about … about the way he was found. The ones everybody is whispering about when they think I can't hear. They're not true, are they?”

Maik was silent for a moment as he searched for a soft couching of hard truths, though he knew there would be none. With an expression of genuine regret, Maik told Xandria Grey, as quickly and concisely as he could: Philip Wayland had been decapitated.

The look on her face was not one that Maik had ever seen before. But then he had never delivered this kind of news before, even from the theatre of war, with the horrific injuries so many of his colleagues had suffered. Denial, shock, revulsion; they were all there in Xandria Grey's face as she listened to Maik's deliberately sketchy account of the condition in which Philip Wayland's body had been discovered.

“I'm very sorry,” he said. He took her arm gently and guided her back to the desk. “Why don't you have a seat?”

She nodded vacantly. She would not have resisted, it seemed, anything Maik might have suggested. He sat opposite her. He would have preferred to remain standing, but he sensed she needed the comfort of an equal now, a confidant, rather than an interrogator hovering over her. She stared blankly out the window, her brown eyes moist with repressed emotion. Perhaps she intended to save her response for later, for the privacy of her own home, rather than this unfeeling concrete bunker of a university research facility. But perhaps, too, this was the only face she ever intended to show to the world now. Perhaps she would try to deny her emotions from this point on, in the hope that, if only she could push them down deep enough inside her, they would cease to exist. Maik hoped not. It was an approach he knew was doomed to failure.

“Philip was such a decent man,” she said, without turning her gaze from the window. “Really, always thinking about the bigger picture, the greater good.” She seemed unable to look at him, this messenger who had brought her such horror. Instead, she stared with a strange detachment at a world outside this room, a world that held promise, and life, and joy. One that perhaps held no place for Xandria Grey anymore.

Maik reached for his usual balm in these stilted situations. “This work you're doing here,” he said, “its importance goes beyond the normal realms of academic curiosity, I understand.”

Grey nodded vacantly, and then seemed to rally slightly, as if recognizing Maik's intent to coax her from her sadness, and willing herself to respond to it. “Carbon capture and storage is going to be our primary defence against climate change in the future, but while there are many methods to recover industrially produced carbon, we were … we
are
looking at a new approach to storing the carbon once it's been captured.”

“Was Mr. Wayland close to a solution?”

Grey bit her bottom lip, fighting to hold on to her composure. “Philip was leading a project to explore the viability of sequestering it through the use of carbon-fixing algae. He was convinced it would change the way we approach carbon storage.” Maik watched as she drifted off, gazing at a place beyond the papers on the desk, seemingly lost in her thoughts.

“Perhaps we should wait until my DCI gets back,” he said softly, standing up. “I'm sure he'll be interested in hearing about all this. I should probably be going, anyway. If you're sure you're going to be okay?”

Grey stood up abruptly, as if to fight off the sorrow that was threatening to overwhelm her once again. “I'll walk you back to the car park.”

Maik began to protest that it wasn't necessary, but she insisted. “It can be a bit of a rabbit warren out there,” she said, trying another of her pathetic smiles. “Besides, it will do me good to get out of this place for a while.”

She grabbed a sheaf of paper from her desk and fell into step beside Maik. They walked in silence for a few moments, their footsteps echoing hollowly off the walls of the corridor.

“Mr. Wayland was well respected in his field, I understand,” said Maik tentatively, as if wary of highlighting the importance of his loss.

Grey looked at him. “It's all right, Sergeant. It upsets me to talk about Philip, but I can't help that. You must ask whatever questions you need to. Philip was an acknowledged expert on the subject of carbon sequestration. It's fair to say it was something of a coup for the university to land him, especially considering his long-standing relationship with Abrar el-Taleb.”

“And nobody here resented his star status, anything like that?”

Grey shook her head. “Perhaps some might have, if he had been thrust upon us as the new Messiah, or presented himself as the man on whom all our futures depended. But it wasn't like that at all. For Philip, the problem of removing carbon from Earth's atmosphere came first, last, and every position in between. He saw no room for egos or personal glory. Philip's only interest was finding a viable industrial-scale solution to carbon storage. How that breakthrough came about, or by whom, he didn't really care. He was happy to be one part of the team here. He was the leader, undoubtedly, but he saw himself as a member of the research group all the same.”

Maik nodded thoughtfully. “And this research he was working on, it's all still here? You're certain none of it has gone missing?”

Grey nodded certainly. “It was the first thing the University Oversight Committee asked us to check when they heard about Philip. There are backups on various drives, but a lot of this material is also in hard copy, stored in the vaults. Philip was very old school. Three-ring binders and manila file folders.” Grey stopped for a moment. In the washed-out light, everything looked sallow: her lab coat, her papers, her skin. She shook her head slightly, and a wistful smile softened the corners of her mouth. “I used to tease him that going down to the vaults was like taking a trip back into the seventies.”

Maik didn't necessarily think that that was such a bad place to be, but Grey misinterpreted his silence. “I can show you. I haven't been down there myself since Philip…” She took a shallow, steadying breath. “
Redolent
, that's the word, isn't it? A reminder of death?”

It wasn't the definition as far as Maik knew, but perhaps death brought its own interpretation to everything.

“However, if you think it's necessary.”

Maik considered the idea, but the grinding oppressiveness of the building was already beginning to weigh on him, and more of the same, or worse, held no particular appeal. “Perhaps later,” he said. “I see we're almost at the car park anyway.”

They emerged into the daylight and Grey held out her hand. “I'll be all right, Sergeant. Eventually.”

Was it a woman making a statement, or someone looking for reassurance? If it was the latter, then Maik wasn't sure he could oblige. Not based on the broken shell of a person he had seen staring vacantly through the window a few moments earlier; the one trying so hard now to project feelings she seemed unable to locate within her, even as she watched him every step of the way back toward his car.

T
he
hulking form of the man in the olive green jacket was turned away from Lindy as she approached. He had binoculars up to his eyes, scanning a wide, reed-fringed body of water with care. Lindy halted on the dirt path, far enough away to avoid disturbing him. The man following close behind her did the same.

For a long moment, the two watched the man, noting the intensity with which he studied one area, before moving on to the next. Lindy knew such careful scrutiny was one of the reasons few birds in these parts escaped the notice of Quentin Senior.

“Still stalking poor defenceless birds to within an inch of their lives, I see, Mr. Senior,” she said when he had finally lowered his bins.

He spun around and his ruddy face broke into a broad grin. “Ms. Hey, how delightful. I hear your better half is in Scotland at the moment. I do hope he finds the time to get in some birding. There are some particularly wonderful spots up there.” He cast a curious glance at the tall, older gent standing behind her. “That is to say, if he still is your better half. Do forgive me. I shouldn't have assumed.”

He looked at the other man again uncertainly, as if coming to terms with the fact that Lindy could very well be in a relationship with a man twice her age, especially one as distinguished-looking as this. Lindy seemed to read his thoughts, and, to his relief, found the notion hilarious, letting out a genuine, unrestrained laugh.

“Quentin Senior, this is Eric Chappell,” she said, recovering herself finally. “Eric's my boss at the magazine.”

“Ah, indeed. Pleased to meet you.” A mixture of embarrassment and relief spread across Senior's features as he extended a huge hand. “I hear Ms. Hey has brought some welcome publicity the way of your magazine, Mr. Chappell.”

Eric smiled. “Any time a journalist gets nominated for a national award, it reflects well on the publication,” he said, “even if we so manifestly fail to meet her own high standards most of the time.” He turned to raise his eyebrows toward Lindy before brushing away the joke with a sweep of his hand. “We're all delighted, naturally, and very proud of her.”

“Something about King Lear?” Senior snapped his bins up at a shape on the water and lowered them again, so quickly it was like one fluid movement, over almost before Eric had realized what was happening.

“‘Distaff and Sceptre: Lear and the Prospect of a Female Royal Line,'” said Eric, still recovering from Senior's sudden action. “Lindy here tied in the recent changes to the Succession to the Crown Act to aspects of Shakespeare's play. It was quite brilliant,” he assured Senior in response to the older man's dubious look. “The nomination is well-merited.”

Lindy reddened slightly. “It was just a bit of noodling around,” she said modestly. “Besides, we're a long way from anywhere yet.”

Senior looked at Eric for clarification.

“The announcement's not for a couple of weeks,” he said. “No one knows quite when exactly. The committee adheres to the charmingly old-fashioned practice of notifying the candidates by mail. The conventional wisdom was always
big envelope: good news, small envelope: disappointment
. Though, of course, our magazine has never had a winner, so we've never actually been able to confirm it.”

Lindy had been doing her best to ignore the conversation, looking out over the landscape, drinking in the subtle shades of the swaying grasses as the light played over them. The surface of the water was still, an undisturbed mirror for the cloud-dotted sky. “Anyway, we're not here to talk about me,” she said briskly. “I'm afraid Eric appears to be suffering from some sort of mental breakdown,” she said, dropping her voice gravely.

“Oh, I'm sorry,” said Senior, as if he didn't know quite why Lindy would want to share such personal information with him.

She nodded. “I'm afraid he's decided he wants to become a birder.”

Senior barked a delighted laugh. “Well, then, welcome to the most wonderful form of insanity you'll ever come across, Mr. Chappell.”

“It's been one of those areas that has fascinated me for years, to tell you the truth,” said Eric. “You know, what do you people see in it? Am I missing out on something? So I decided to throw myself in at the deep end. Lindy says she can't think of anyone better to show me the ropes.”

“I'm not sure about that, but certainly there could be no one more willing.”

“I thought I might like to turn it into a feature for the magazine, too, chronicling my experiences as I try to become a bona fide birder. That means we'd want to include some bits of your wisdom, a few tips, insights about bird behaviour, that sort of thing, if that would be okay.”

“Of course,” said Senior heartily. “If you're sure you want to expose your poor readers to my piffle, I'd have no objections at all.”

“I believe Eric had me pencilled in for the feature part of it,” said Lindy, smiling confidingly at Senior, “but I think we both know
that
was never going to happen.”

“You'll have to forgive Ms. Hey,” Senior said, turning to Eric with mock seriousness. “She's still fighting the call herself, you see. You strike me as a man of certain experience, Mr. Chappell. Is anything quite as tragic, I wonder, as watching a young heart deny its true destiny?”

Eric smiled, aware he had entered in the second act of an ongoing drama. But though he may not know Quentin Senior yet, he clearly knew Lindy well enough to decide that a middle ground was the safest. He marked his position on the matter with a measured silence.

“Right … birding,” said Senior brightly. “Let's get started. Rule one, I suppose, is always try to give a bird a decent look. I was out here one day and I saw a female Reed Bunting. Didn't even give it a second glance. And then I heard that distinctive
tic
. — Little Bunting, can you believe it? I'd have passed right by if it hadn't given that call, and I'd have missed one of the rarest visitors to these parts. Since then, I've seen plenty of birds I couldn't identify, and failed to get on plenty more, but it's never been for want of trying.”

As if to demonstrate the point, he snapped his bins up swiftly now, lowering them after a brief glance over the fields. Lindy couldn't help smiling. “Better buckle up, Eric,” she said. But she could tell he was already captivated by Senior's enthusiasm, as she always was.

“Why don't we take a walk down toward the beach, see if there are any gulls to work on? Might as well throw you in at the deep end,” said Senior breezily. “Would you care to join us, Ms. Hey?”

He undoubtedly already knew her answer, but she recognized it was courtesy, rather than mischief, that required him to ask. She had seen Quentin Senior stand as a woman left a dining table. Such old school manners would never have permitted him to take his leave today without first making his offer.

Lindy shook her head. “Other plans, sadly,” she said with mock regret. “Besides, I'm expecting Dom home any time, possibly this evening.”

From somewhere off to their left, a mixed flock of waders flushed suddenly, startling them. Senior raised his bins and tracked them as they flew off low across the exposed mudflat, peeping their alarm calls. Both Lindy and Eric saw the look of quiet contentment that spread across his features as he watched them go.

“And you could identify all those, I assume?” said Eric.

“Dunlin,” said Senior, “Green Sandpiper, a Sanderling or two. Though I was once told that it is novices who identify birds. Apparently, experienced birders
recognize
them.” He gave them a soft smile. “Or am I trying too hard to provide you with suitable copy? Curlew, Eric, behind you, flying to the left!”

Senior's sudden announcement caused the man to spin in time to see a large bird disappearing over the reed beds on low, lazy wing beats. As it rose over a distant berm, Lindy saw two other birders, in silhouette, standing to watch the Curlew's progress. It would have spoiled the scene a little for Dom, she thought, the presence of people. He liked his vistas pristine, empty of any evidence of humans. The non-natural things, he called them, as if human beings shouldn't be a part of this landscape, didn't belong. He was a man of such absolutes sometimes; it was difficult to see how life could ever satisfy such an exacting view of the world. But Domenic loved birding at Cley, and she knew he would come here as soon as he returned. Perhaps he would meet Senior, and Eric. Slowly, it seemed as if all the men she cared about were disappearing into birding. The thought made her strangely sad as she left the two men to their newfound friendship and made her way alone back along the trail to the car park.