A dance of cranes, p.32
A Dance of Cranes, page 32
Jejeune managed to raise a smile from somewhere. “She’ll love that.”
She returned her gaze to Jejeune. “I’ve seen it achieve some remarkable results, but it will take time … a long time. You’ll need to be patient.” Shepherd paused. “I suppose what I’m saying is, you might want to prepare yourself for the fact that she may not be ready to pick up where you two left off, at least not yet.”
Jejeune looked at his DCS to see if there was anything behind her words, to see if, perhaps, Lindy had already said as much to her. But there was nothing in Shepherd’s look beyond the concern for the well-being of one of her officers, concern for a person she thought of as a friend.
Shepherd softened her tone. “There is one other thing.” She looked reluctant to continue, but Jejeune could anticipate what was coming. He tried to give her an expression that would make it easier for her. “The RCMP wanted a word, and I got the impression that sooner would suit them better than later. I did explain that you’d just got back, and there were a number of personal matters you’d need to attend to, but I suggested we might set up a video call here for tomorrow afternoon. I’ll be available.”
They would have asked for a senior officer to be present at the interview, thought Jejeune, and the here meant they wanted it conducted in a controlled setting. It explained how Shepherd had such up-to-the-minute information about Damian’s condition, too, when he had only just received the news himself. But he nodded at Shepherd’s suggestion anyway. If the meeting had been scheduled for the morning, he would have asked for a postponement, but by the afternoon Domenic would be able to tell the Canadian police everything he knew, as his duty required. Whether it was his duty, too, to share the things he merely suspected was a question he was still struggling with. By tomorrow, he would need an answer.
He looked out of Shepherd’s window one last time. The Kestrel had gone, moved on to more fertile hunting grounds. The sky held no birds now; it was a wide, white emptiness, with not even a single fold in the cloud cover. A blank slate to start over? Or a shroud to lay over what had once been his life here? He didn’t know the answer to that yet, either. But he soon would.
55
“You just missed the DCI.” Maik peered past Salter as if checking whether Jejeune’s car might still be in sight. He remembered his manners and stood aside to let her enter his house. She was carrying a hold-all, which she set down in the hallway without explanation. Maik helped her out of her jacket and hung it on the coat rack, ushering her into the living room. Standing behind her as she entered, the room suddenly seemed dull and uninviting to him. It was as if Salter’s entrance brought light and vitality, and it had only served to highlight the drabness of the room’s decor. Time to redecorate, he decided; a project he could look into during his forced recuperation.
“Wine?” he asked. He held up a hand. “I know, your fitness regimen and all that, but surely a small glass is in order, to celebrate closing your first case?”
“Go on then. A small one.”
He returned from the kitchen and handed her a glass. He hadn’t poured one for himself. “Still got a tea going,” he explained.
She was sitting facing him, and leaned forward slightly. “I see Norwich had a good result today.”
“It was yesterday, and a goalless draw against that mob is hardly a good result. They’re bottom of the league by five points. Any other test questions?”
She smiled sheepishly. “Concussion is serious, Danny. Pretending otherwise could be a big mistake. Somebody is supposed to keep an eye on you overnight, just in case. I doubted there’d be a long lineup of volunteers, so I thought I might as well put my hand up. I brought a bag. I can use the couch if the spare room’s not made up.”
“It is,” said Danny simply. “So, tell me, Detective Sergeant Salter, how did you crack it, in the end?”
With later cases, he wouldn’t ask, and Salter wouldn’t say. Her deductive reasoning would become apparent as one read through her report. Seasoned officers were content to let it stay there. But this was her first case, the first time she’d trusted her cleverness to lead her to her conclusions, and Maik knew she’d want to share it. He knew, too, that she’d be shy about it, and get that lovely rosy glow on her neck and cheeks before she told him.
“I asked myself how they knew — Albert Ross and Jennie Wynn. Wattis Wright wasn’t going to broadcast the fact to Wynn that he had successfully stolen her rights, and if he did intend on backing out on his investment plans, he wouldn’t have asked Ross round to see him. He’d have gone to Ross’s to deliver the news. It’s the proper way to do it, the way you … that type of man … would handle something like that. So, if there were to be any fireworks, they’d have been at Ross’s house, not Wright’s.”
Danny nodded. “So, it must have been Susan Bonaccord who told them both the deal had been concluded.”
“Two people with a history of IED, each receiving news that would make them angry, at the very least. Their motives provided Bonaccord with all the cover she needed. I never even looked in her direction.”
“That business with the remote phone command,” Maik shook his head in admiration, “that would have had any of us old dinosaurs spinning around in circles. And then, at the other end of the technological timeline, that old photocopier Wright had. All things considered, you had your work cut out for you. It can’t have been easy coming to terms with the cutting-edge stuff at the hotel and the wonders of prehistoric equipment like that.” Danny held up his mug. “Anyway, to closing the case …” he paused and looked at her significantly, “and leaving doors open.”
Salter’s colour turned slightly deeper. “Oh, you heard about that.”
At some point Susan Bonaccord had offered her confession. Perhaps she had done so while Salter and the DCS were at the hospital. Perhaps the two officers had needed to work on her some more once they got back to the station. But if Maik’s grasp of the timing might be slightly off, the details of what Salter had done afterward had made it through the station’s grapevine clearly enough. She had gone to see Albert Ross at the nursery. She told him Wattis Wright had foregone a larger potential payout through future royalties in favour of a smaller lump sum up front. It was the kind of thing you might do, Salter had suggested, if you needed ready cash, like if you planned to make an investment in something. It wasn’t that his will had failed him, it was simply that he had decided Jennie Wynn should have the chance to invest in Ross’s nursery, too. In the end, unless Ross made peace with his other demons, Salter’s visit wouldn’t change much. But somewhere down the road, in the quiet hours, it might be enough to convince Ross that someone once had enough faith in him to want to back his enterprise And if it did, then it might make a difference. A small one perhaps, but sometimes that was all you could hope for. The gesture told Danny that Lauren Salter had what she needed to become a successful detective sergeant: a concern for the dead, but also for the living they left behind.
“It’s not that I don’t appreciate you coming,” said Danny, “but I’d have thought you’d have better things to do with your weekend.”
She shook her head. “Max is sleeping over at a friend’s house.” Perhaps it was the thought of the upcoming stream of such lonely moments that encouraged her to take such a long drink of her wine. She looked into the empty glass, then set it down self-consciously.
“Another?” asked Maik.
Salter smiled her refusal. “So, what did the DCI want?”
“He wanted to know what I could remember.”
“And you told him you were concussed, unconscious in fact, so you couldn’t really remember anything of what went on.… Just like you told us in the official questioning, right?” Salter looked at Danny frankly, watching for his reaction.
“I told him I wouldn’t be able to add anything to the official record.”
Salter continued looking at him for a long time, trying to decide if that was the same thing, but she found the blankness of Danny’s expression disconcerting, and eventually turned away. “Perhaps I will have another one after all,” she said. “Want another tea?”
He shook his head and watched her leave. It was good she was staying, he thought. A night on his own would have had him mulling over his reaction to the DCI’s visit. Try as he might, a quiet, empty house was no place to avoid troubling thoughts. The hesitancy at the doorway had been strangely at odds with the DCI’s usual confident knock. A brief greeting, and then into the living room to get down to business. Except this was no normal business. This was DCI Domenic Jejeune asking questions to which his eyes suggested he might not want answers. And although Danny recognized this, he had no intention of withholding anything, or misleading his DCI. It would have been pointless, anyway. By this stage in their relationship, Jejeune could read him better than any man he had ever known, and Danny knew that he would not have been able to conceal the truth from him.
It’s the blood, Danny, Jejeune had told him, the blood that’s not on the gunstock. Even without the DCI’s body language, the uneasy pacing, the constant looking around the room, the rare use of Maik’s first name would have signalled to him how important the issue was to the DCI.
His response to Jejeune had been what he told Salter. He was dazed, completely out if it for the most part. He couldn’t confirm anything that had happened. But he couldn’t deny Jejeune’s unspoken premise either. He couldn’t offer him explanations about the absence of blood, or how a gun that must have landed in one place could have ended up where it did instead.
He couldn’t explain any of that, and he knew that meant Jejeune would leave his house carrying all the same doubts he had arrived with, perhaps more firmly entrenched given that Danny had failed to offer any alternatives to them. He had no idea what his DCI would do now, with his unprovable theories and his unanswered questions. The man who had left these shores had been so certain of things, but this one who had returned seemed different somehow. It was as if his time away had taught him something about the imperfections of this human world of ours, about where a person had to make a stand, and when he should stand aside. About priorities and compromises, and what parts of yourself you needed to hold on to, and what parts you had to be willing to let go of in order to let life in. Danny knew all this because he, too, had struggled with these questions recently. He had looked into his coming death, staring at the cold, dark openings of the twin barrels in Peter Mahler’s hands, and he had realized that he had no more chances left. This was his time to die. Something had changed within him when he came back from that moment, something profound. Now Jejeune had his suspicions and Danny knew what they were. But as soon as the DCI had left this house, the startling realization came over Danny that it no longer mattered to him. Even if he shared Jejeune’s suspicions, as he believed somewhere in the back of his mind he might, he was willing to make his peace with them. He wasn’t sure if Domenic Jejeune could live with his uncertainties, but Danny knew he could. His priority now was to make the most of the reprieve he’d been granted. There was nothing he could do that would change what had happened at the cottage. All he could do was to get on with what happened after.
Salter returned from the kitchen carrying her glass of wine. She set it down and rummaged through her bag. “I thought you might like to see this,” she said, producing a DVD. “The original dance routines of the Shammalars. I had tech burn a copy for me. You probably don’t have a DVD player, though. Or do you?”
“It’s over there by the phonograph,” said Maik. Once more, the blandness of the room struck him as he looked around. But he knew it would take more than a few licks of paint or some bolts of wallpaper to transform this room. There was more to be overcome. This room, this house, held the past. He stood up to take the disc, but Salter squeezed in front of him. “I’ll do it.”
She slid the disc into the slot as Maik clicked on the TV, and the grainy black-and-white footage came to life. The music swelled, pouring into the silence of the room, and Salter began swaying slightly, holding her wine glass loosely off to one side as she danced. “I suppose you’re going to tell me they took these moves from old Motown routines,” she said over her shoulder, her gaze still fixed on the screen.
“If they did, they’ve changed them a bit,” said Maik. Salter realized he was standing behind her, but she didn’t turn. “The hips, for one thing, and that shoulder turn.” She sensed his body close behind her and felt his hand on her shoulder. “More like this.” He eased her shoulder forward slightly, and rested a hand on her opposite hip. “And this.” From behind, he brought his cheek alongside hers and she felt his soft breath on her neck. He wrapped an arm around her waist and together they swayed gently to the music, Danny leaning comfortably against her, and Salter still resolutely facing the screen as the tears flowed down her cheeks.
56
Domenic Jejeune walked along the coastal path, buffeted by the familiar greeting of the onshore winds. The soft whisper of the waves breaking against the rocky shore rose up from somewhere at the base of the cliff. He stopped when he saw the figure ahead of him. Lindy was sitting on the edge of the path, feet dangling over the side of the rock face, looking out to sea. She looked as sad as he had ever seen her. For so long, his dreams had revolved around this moment. But in them, Lindy greeted his return by running up to him, long hair flying behind her, a delighted smile on her face, to fling her arms around him in a hug. Even from this distance, he could tell there would be no delighted smile, no hug. Not even Lindy’s newly cropped hair would be flying in the breeze. His heart flinched at the thought of approaching her, but he knew he had to.
She remained still, staring out over the sea, as he approached. The flat morning light had coated the rippling surface of the water with glitter. On the horizon, a low bank of cloud was tinged with pale orange. The sight was as enthralling as it had ever been, but Jejeune had eyes only for the person looking at it.
“I’ve always thought that, in heaven, it’d be easy to tell the people who were from this part of the world,” said Lindy, still staring out. “They’d be the ones looking homesick.” She scrambled to her feet and looked at him.
He was right. There was no hug. No smile. “You look great,” said Domenic. “Your hair —”
“I’m growing it out. I made a couple of changes to my life I’m not sure I should have.”
“Was the diesel version another of them?” He looked over his shoulder, back towards the cottage at the far end of the path. “The Jetta’s parked in the driveway,” he said simply. Farther along the path, a small bird dropped into a gorse bush. Domenic thought he caught a flash of blue on the head. The light out here, it was always playing tricks.
Lindy looked past him, towards the cottage, and he saw the pain shimmer behind her eyes. “I can’t go in there, Dom. I told you that on the phone. Here’s okay, but not inside …” She shook her head. It was always windy up here on the path, their path, and sometimes it made Lindy’s eyes water. “I’ve decided to sell up,” she said. “In fact, there’s a note from my solicitor winging its way to Canada as we speak.”
The shock left Domenic without words. The sound of the wind baffled against his ears. Out on the water, the rising sun had shifted the sea through shades of colour and settled on a soft dove grey. Tiny flecks of white foam crested the waves as they gently rolled towards the beach.
He nodded. “I can understand —”
“No, Dom,” Lindy shook her head firmly, “you can’t. Something terrible took place in there, something horrible and evil. I don’t want to set foot in that place ever again, not even to clean it out. I’ll get a service in to do it, or something.”
“I can do it, Lindy. If you want to sell, we’ll sell. We can start again somewhere else.”
The fugitive shape popped out briefly from the cover of the bush, and Domenic was all but certain now. The size was right, the shape. And the colours. The chest was red. Surely, it was no trick of the light?
“We can’t just hit the reset button, Dom,” Lindy looked at him. “We just can’t go back to the way things were. Too much has changed for that. Things have happened. Things that can’t be undone.”
“I’m so sorry, Lindy,” he said. “I had to handle it like this. It was the only way.”
“No, it wasn’t. Not the only way. You wanted to deal with it for me, not with me. We should have discussed it, but of course you’re too bloody arrogant to even consider that somebody else might have a point of view that deserves hearing. So, you left me here, to go through … that …” She choked back her emotion and flapped a hand at him.
She had not raised her voice, but the words had landed like blows. He turned away from her, seeking escape. The dark shape of a Sparrow Hawk was approaching low over the fields. Along the path, his bird sat backlit on top of the gorse bush, readying itself to flee from the approaching predator. Was there blue? Red? He couldn’t tell, but he knew in his heart there was. And he knew that when the Painted Bunting flew off, it would not return. Once it had slipped away, it would be gone forever.
He turned back to Lindy. “Perhaps we could go away somewhere. I’ll be getting some time off. I took evidence with me. To Canada.”
She nodded. “The bookmark. Did you bring it back?”
He nodded. “I wanted to give it to you today, but they need to keep it for the inquiry.”
“You were going to give it to me? I gave it to you, Dom. That bookmark was my gift to you.” She managed a little choking laugh. “You never really did get the hang of that re-gifting thing, did you?”
“I’m looking at a suspension,” he said. “Thirty days at least, I would guess. Longer, most likely. We could go away somewhere, anywhere you like, just the two of us.”
Lindy shook her head. “It’ll just be window dressing. They’ll reinstate you as soon as a big case comes along. Despite everything, they’ll find they can’t get by without you.” The inference in Lindy’s flat tone was clear: perhaps some people could.
