A Dance of Cranes, page 20
Domenic shook his head. “Hayes won’t lose interest. He’ll want to see it through.”
“But you have another plan, right?” said Damian uncertainly. “One that will see you and Lindy safely into the happily ever after? I mean, my brother Domenic Jejeune always has a plan.”
“There is no other plan,” said Domenic. The emptiness in his voice caused Damian to stare at him for a long moment, as Domenic’s thoughts took him off to a place where his brother could not trespass.
Damian regretted having reminded his brother about the girlfriend he had not seen for so long. He should not have brought the topic up. It was time to introduce a different one.
“I’ve been thinking about what you said about Annie.”
The sudden announcement seemed to snap Domenic back to the present.
“If what you’re saying is true, it explains why she was in such a hurry to get to those birds. If she wasn’t working under a wildlife permit, she’d need to get that tracking equipment off them before the park staff began their early-season breeding surveys.” He paused and gave a small, rueful smile to himself. “I knew something was wrong. It’s so hard to trap adult cranes. It would have been the perfect opportunity to gather all that other data; blood samples, measurements, fat stores. That she wasn’t interested in any of it just didn’t sit right. It didn’t make any sense.” He looked up at Domenic. “I sent Traz an inReach message, Domino; the coordinates of the cranes’ stopover points. I asked him to check them out. I guess I just wanted to know what was so special about these particular birds.”
He stood up abruptly. “Come on. Those clouds will be on top of us before long. We don’t want to be out in the middle of nowhere when they eventually decide to let loose.”
The storm struck like a judgement from the gods. It swept across the low land unchecked, driven by north winds that carried all the Arctic fury of the high latitudes in their wake. Blasts of chilling air brought ice pellets that raked across the flat terrain like machine-gun fire, stinging the men with their force. Sleet swept through in ragged, swirling sheets, turning the air grey and blocking out the light. All around them, the icy rain pelted the surface of the water, hammering down as they paddled frantically in search of cover. As the waters had begun to rise, the two men had tried to outrun the storm, driving the canoe across the fast-flowing waters. Now exposed, out in the centre of a lake of floodwater, the fierce winds brought the storm lashing in on them from all sides, pummelling them, rocking their craft until water slopped over the gunwales with each tilt. At the front of the canoe, Damian swivelled towards his brother. The rain was streaming unchecked down his face, plastering his hair to his forehead. His tiger-stripe jacket was open, billowing in the wind, saturated inside and out. “We have to get off this water,” he bellowed over the sounds of the storm. “That lightning is headed this way.”
As if to emphasize his point, a jagged fork lit up the horizon and a deep-throated growl of thunder echoed across the basin. “This wind is going to push us around like crazy if we don’t find shelter,” he shouted, his words all but snatched away by the winds and the rain. He pointed to a low fringe of vegetation far out into the water, barely visible through the curtain of rain. “Head for that,” he yelled. He took a deep breath before turning back into the teeth of the wind. But even as they dug in with their oars, hauling the heaviness of the water back with frantic strokes, the wind swirled once more, crashing waves against the bow, driving them back.
The sudden juddering stop almost pitched Damian into the water. Domenic saw his mouth move and knew he had shouted out a curse, but over the winds he couldn’t hear his brother’s voice anymore. Not until Damian turned to him directly. “Sweeper. It’s torn right through the hull. Keep paddling. I’ll try to bail.” But Damian’s hand scooping seemed to have no effect, and the water level in the bottom of the canoe continued to rise steadily as the grey fluid poured in through the ragged hole in the bow. Damian shook his head. “It’s hopeless,” he shouted. “She’s going down. We have to get out.”
Their twin leaps over the side breached the canoe’s last resistance against the inflowing water, and the craft pitched along its axis and rolled over. It had sunk from view before the two men had even surfaced from their plunges.
The coldness of the water seized their chests, penetrating even the chill of the freezing rain pounding down around them. Domenic looked around, but saw nothing but frothing grey waters. He felt Damian’s hand grab his shoulder, spinning him around. “There! Those reeds!” Damian pointed, his head sinking under the water with the exertion. He was gasping when he surfaced again. “Go!”
They swam towards the bed of flattened vegetation and dragged themselves up onto it. The mound was waterlogged, barely strong enough to hold their weight. But it was wide enough for each of them to find a place to drag themselves onto and lie, exhausted while the rain continued to pound against their faces and bodies. When they had caught their breath, they rolled into sitting positions, drew up their knees and pulled the hoods of their jackets over their heads. Hunkered down, they sat in silence as the storm raged around them. And they waited.
33
The coffee shop in the Demesne at Saltmarsh was about as jarring a contrast to the building’s rustic stone exterior as it was possible to be. Chrome and glass reflected back at Lauren Salter wherever she looked, the polished surfaces dazzling in the bright light that flooded in through the room’s large picture windows. She patted the back of her hair and smoothed her skirt, but accepted it was probably too late to give the small details the kind of attention such unforgiving scrutiny would demand. If Susan Bonaccord spent much time in places like this, Salter could begin to understand the woman’s fastidiousness with regard to her personal appearance. There was nowhere to hide any flaws in a house of mirrors like this.
Bonaccord was seated at a small table near one of the windows. Although she was bent over her phone, she seemed to sense Salter’s arrival and looked up. Perhaps she’d caught a reflected image of the sergeant somewhere, thought Salter ruefully. She raised a hand in greeting and went over to join her.
“Isn’t it strange how you need to select the right method of contact these days,” asked Bonaccord as Salter sat down. “With some people, it’s email, others it’s voicemail. With this particular client, if I use anything but a text message, chances are I’ll never hear back from her.” Bonaccord set the phone down beside her place setting, where it would be in her direct eye line the moment it sprang to life. Even in the short time she had known this woman, Salter would have expected nothing less.
“Interesting place,” she said, looking around, “though I’m not quite sure what it has to do with the outside. If they were intending on changing the interior so much, I can’t really see the point of preserving the outside the way they did.” She indicated the room. “I mean, you’d hardly say they’d retained the character of the old place with this decor, would you?”
“It would have been a marketing decision to retain the exterior look. Based on the older demographic of this area, I would guess.” Bonaccord sighed. “I do despair sometimes at the amount of time and effort we put into trying to preserve the past. I mean, I fully understand that the nostalgia movement is inevitably going to gather steam as our population ages, but surely we’d be better off concentrating our efforts on improving the way things are, rather than harkening back to the way they once were.”
So even the Shammalars’ work, all those songs and dances that brought so many people so much joy over the years, was just another business deal to Susan Bonaccord, thought Salter. She felt unaccountably sad for a person to whom even nostalgia was nothing more than an entry on a balance sheet.
“Are you still doing okay?” asked the sergeant.
Bonaccord looked puzzled.
“That phone call. The things you had to listen to.”
“Oh, yes. Well, of course it was a terrible experience.” Bonaccord fell silent, as if she recognized the hollowness of her response. She seemed like someone searching around inside herself for memories of what emotions had felt like, when she still allowed herself to experience them. But perhaps she was taking solace, too, in the rarity of truly terrible things in this world, in the knowledge that she would likely never have to encounter such horrors again. Salter knew she herself would forever be denied that consolation. These things, the cruel, the terrible, the unthinkable, were part of the world she had chosen to inhabit. She didn’t get the chance to slough them off and go on with her life. They were her life.
“I was hoping we could talk some more about Wattis Wright,” she said, “specifically about his attitude toward the money. I’ve had our legal team look at the deal. They seem to think it’s a very good one from your company’s perspective. They speculate that if the Shammalars’ musical was even a modest success, Mr. Wright’s royalty earnings would have probably doubled the flat fee you paid for the rights.”
“I can assure you I did go over the numbers with Mr. Wright, even though I was under no legal obligation to do so. He wanted the cash because he wasn’t prepared to put up with the world of rolling reserves, staggered reporting cycles and the like. He really didn’t seem overly concerned that his decision could potentially cost him a lot of money.”
“Did you get the sense he was in a hurry to get his hands on the cash?” The autopsy report had revealed no signs of serious illness, but that wasn’t the only reason someone might decide to take the money and run.
Bonaccord shook her head. “I just took it as part and parcel of the man’s antiquated attitude toward things; a bird in the hand and all that.”
Antiquated or not, it was an attitude Salter could appreciate. Especially if there was the possibility of a counterclaim to the rights you were selling. From the top of the window, a translucent white blind began to silently descend, stopping at a point about a quarter of the way down the pane.
“Photosensitive glass,” said Bonaccord. “It lowers the blind to prevent it from getting too bright.” Salter looked through the window. Three young boys were walking along the towpath, and she regarded them carefully. They were probably just into their teenage years, perhaps not even quite there yet. All wore scruffy pants and loose, billowing T-shirts. Each sported a different, but equally eccentric hairstyle.
“What do they look like?” asked Bonaccord, following Salter’s gaze and shaking her head.
They look like kids who a heartbeat ago considered their mum their best friend in the whole world, and just about the coolest person on earth, thought Salter sadly. Now they’d probably die of shame if she went up to give them a hug.
“You don’t have children yourself, I believe.”
Bonaccord shook her head. “My career always came first in the early days. By the time I might have been ready, any potential y chromosome donors had long since moved on.” She looked down into her coffee and took a small breath. “So, I put all my efforts into creating a better me instead. Not that I regret it for a minute,” she said brightly. “I’m very happy with the way things turned out, thank you very much. I mean, kids just tend to consume your whole life, don’t they?”
Yes, thought Salter. They do. If you’re lucky.
“And you?”
“One boy,” said Salter, “nearly nine. Of course, all kids are teenagers by the time they’re ten now, aren’t they?” But for all the heartbreaks and disappointments that her nine-going-on-nineteen boy was going to be bringing her, Salter would never have any regrets about Max consuming her whole life.
“I’m curious as to why Wattis Wright simply didn’t come over to speak to you in person. His place is not very far from here. It was a nice night. He strikes me as the kind of man who might’ve enjoyed an evening stroll along the riverbank.”
“He hadn’t been asked,” said Bonaccord simply. “Appearing at a woman’s hotel room, at night, uninvited? Hardly the sort of decorum one would associate with a man of his era, is it?”
It was a fair point, and Salter acknowledged as much with a slight tilt of her head. “Did he ever mention a man named Albert Ross to you?”
“I don’t believe so. There was a business associate of some kind that began to make a fuss, but that was a woman. Jennie, I think — Jennie Wynn.” Bonaccord shrugged slightly. “It happens. The scent of money wafts through the air and suddenly people dream up all manner of imaginative claims to it. I asked her to speak directly to Wright. I kept waiting to hear more, but then he contacted me to say he’d sorted it out. He could demonstrate sole ownership of the rights to the dance routines and so he was free to sign them over to us. Certainly, his was the legally registered name on the copyright notices.” A thought suddenly seemed to occur to her. “The contract we have has been thoroughly vetted by our legal department, Lauren,” she said amicably. “It’s a perfectly valid transfer of rights ownership. Having purchased them lawfully and in good faith from the rightful owner, I’m informed that our entitlement to them is legally incontestable.”
“I’m sure it is,” said Salter, but she’d never yet met a lawyer who’d issue such a blanket assurance about moral rights. She wasn’t convinced Jennie Wynn’s claim on the routines was quite so spurious. And from what she could tell from her conversation with the woman, Jennie Wynn didn’t feel it was, either.
Bonaccord didn’t seem able to let the matter go. Perhaps Salter’s assurance hadn’t been vigorous enough. “I still have a signed copy of the agreement in my briefcase, as a matter of fact.” She gave a short smile. “It just arrived in the mail. Wattis Wright must have popped a copy in the post to me after he signed it. I receive so few pieces of paper these days, I almost feel I should hold on to this as a souvenir. Perhaps a museum might be interested in it one day.”
Is that all that Wattis Wright has become now, too? wondered Salter. A museum curiosity; this man who had died in such terrible circumstances while this woman had listened to his last breaths on the other end of a telephone, an event she now seemed able to dismiss like a bad memory. She looked at Bonaccord carefully as the woman checked her phone again. I could have done this, she thought, after my divorce. It would have been so easy then, when her world was falling apart all around her, to seize onto those things she could control: her personal appearance, her career. She might have forged herself into Susan Bonaccord in the furnace of her bitterness and her anger, if it hadn’t been for Max, dragging her back into a human landscape of love and connection and caring.
She said goodbye and stood up. At the doorway of the café, she turned to wave, but Bonaccord had already taken out her laptop, immersing herself once more in the meticulous, ordered world she managed so tightly. But even when you had control over every aspect of your life, it wasn’t to say you always got your decisions right. Not many people would have chosen loneliness as their preferred state. Fewer still would have pretended they enjoyed it.
34
The defining moments of our lives come upon us so suddenly, thought Maik as DCS Colleen Shepherd entered the Incident Room. No warning, no time to plan, all you were left with to confront such moments were your instincts. But the consequences of your decisions could last a lifetime; in this case, the loss of a career, a reputation, of most things that Maik held on to, that defined him. All this weighed against a young woman’s life, decided in the time it took a human heart to skip a single beat.
Maik should have told Shepherd about Lindy. He should have reported the phone call; even reported his suspicions prior to it, when she disappeared. The DCS shared Maik’s concern for Jejeune’s girlfriend and was every bit as invested in her safety. She shared, too, Maik’s desire to see Hayes arrested, clearing the way for the DCI’s return to Saltmarsh. But the thing she didn’t share was Danny’s guilt. Inviting Shepherd and the team into his own personal quest for redemption would have made a lot of sense. They could cover a lot more ground than one man acting alone. But people made mistakes. Maik was living proof of that. He trusted his colleagues’ professionalism and their discretion, but it may only take one small slip to trigger Hayes into taking the action he’d threatened. It was a chance Danny Maik wasn’t prepared to take.
He leaned forward and turned the volume down on his computer, reducing the silken harmonies of the Four Tops to a whisper. “I was wondering if Mr. Chappell might be in town, ma’am,” he said as casually as he had ever said anything. But he stepped his tone up immediately. Like Danny himself, Colleen Shepherd had a finely-honed detector for deceit, and excessive nonchalance was often a key. “I ran across Quentin Senior and he mentioned asking him about a bird.”
Shepherd looked like she might be about to ask exactly where on earth Danny and the single most dedicated birder in Saltmarsh might have crossed paths, but she chose instead to let her eyes play across the mass of loose papers and open files on Danny’s desk. If something had taken him out to one of Senior’s birding haunts, it wasn’t free time.
“Eric’s in Scotland at the moment. He’s over the moon because he happened to be already on Fair Isle in the Shetlands when a Song Sparrow was found there. It’s a rarity from the inspector’s part of the world, apparently. Eric tells me at least five chartered planes have already flown in to see it. Can you believe it, renting a plane to go all the way up to Scotland to see a sparrow?” She shook her head in a show of the bewilderment she knew Maik shared at the eccentricities of the birders in their lives. “I came in to see if you had managed to catch up with Lindy. I understand you were asking around recently to see if anyone had heard from her.”
Maik paused.
Defining moments.
“I spoke to her yesterday,” he said.
“I’m glad to hear it,” said Shepherd with evident relief.
