A Dance of Cranes, page 22
“Fifty bucks less than two separate rooms, I could let you have the Honeymoon Suite,” the receptionist had told them with a lascivious grin. “Got no champagne, but I could throw in a nice free ice bucket.”
There had been a sense of inevitability in their shared glance. The timing felt right, and they held hands as they left the lobby with the single set of key-cards. “Just so you know,” Verity had told him as they stood on the threshold of the Honeymoon Suite’s battered doorway, “there won’t be any guns under my pillow tonight.”
As the restaurant owner brought them coffee and menus, Traz looked out at the Buick. Set against the faded facades of the abandoned stores along the empty, brick-surfaced road, the glittering tangerine car looked like an alien spacecraft. They gave the owner their orders and watched him trudge off dispiritedly to the kitchen to begin the second act of his one-man show.
“Sorry about this,” said Traz. “We could keep going if you like, maybe find somewhere better.”
Verity leaned across the table and took his hand. “It’s fine, okay. A world-famous omelette is just what I feel like. Just so long as it’s made with free-range eggs.”
“I certainly hope not,” said Traz with mock horror. “You know chickens will fight to the death when they’re allowed to run free. Behind every free-range egg there’s a trail of spilled chicken blood.”
He felt a pang of guilt at the alarm she showed at his news, but he suspected there would be no lasting damage. She would continue to order free-range eggs whenever she had the chance. It’s what we do, he thought, with the things we like. We manage to find a way to accept their failings. When it suits us, forgiving is easy.
While they waited for their food, Traz called a map up on his phone. “It looks like the next set of coordinates are about fifty miles due north of here. After that, it’s Scenic. And some decisions, I guess.”
As the owner set the plates on the table, his eyes drifted towards the Buick outside, as if it represented an escape route from this place that he would forever be denied. Presentation wasn’t the man’s forte, but the taste of the omelettes almost made them worthy of their global billing. Traz was two bites in when the ringing of his phone echoed jarringly through the empty room. He reached for it with annoyance and thought about shutting it off until he noticed the number was international. He had been expecting a call from the car’s owner to check on the progress of his precious toy. Traz would have been calling hourly if it had been his car being driven up this route by a stranger, so he felt he owed the man at least an update.
“Is this Juan Eduardo Perez?” asked the caller formally.
“Not usually,” said Traz. “But I suppose a little extra decorum might be called for when I’m travelling with such a stunning travel companion as this one.”
He winked at Verity, as he had done before, but the comment didn’t receive the light-hearted response from the caller that he’d anticipated. Instead, there was a beat of silence. “This is Sergeant Roy Ducannon. I’m with the RCMP up here in Canada. I’m Domenic and Damian Jejeune’s brother-in-law.”
“Is everything all right? Has something happened?” Traz sat up straighter and clenched the phone more tightly to his ear. Alerted by his body language, Verity leaned in to listen.
“Domenic has missed a deadline to check in to the Wood Buffalo National Park offices. He had gone into the park looking for Damian, who we now believe is also missing. Damian’s last recorded contact was with you. I wondered if he had told you what his plans were.”
“They’re out in Wood Buffalo? Both of them? Have they started a search yet?” Traz was standing now, the puzzled owner staring at him in surprise. Opposite him, Verity was also rising.
“One has already been organized. It will be going out first thing in the morning.”
Traz looked out at the Buick, gleaming under the sun. “Tomorrow? They still have daylight up there now. Why aren’t they going out today?”
“They’ll be out as soon as possible.” Roy’s calm tone suggested he understood that the frustration in Traz’s raised voice wasn’t intended for the messenger. “Did Damian say anything that might shed some light on where he was heading?”
“No,” said Traz, flapping a hand at his helplessness. “His text was to ask me to check out the coordinates of some Whooping Crane stopovers along their migration routes. Oh man, if they’re lost out there at this time of year, they could be in big trouble.”
“These stopover sites, are they in the park itself?”
“No, in the U.S. I’m in Southern Nebraska.” Traz saw the owner still staring at him and he waved the man over, fishing in his pocket for cash. Verity put her hand on his arm and reached into her purse instead.
“Domenic was aware you’d spoken to Damian,” said Roy. “Did he also contact you?” The tone had taken on the nature of a police inquiry. Which was what it was, realized Traz: a missing persons inquiry. He thought he and Roy may have crossed paths once or twice over the years, at social functions at the Jejeune household, perhaps even a family barbeque one time. But whether Roy remembered him or not, the man’s tone suggested informality was not going to be getting in the way of his questions. Traz was okay with that. He wanted a professional police officer on this, not some headless-chicken relative tearing around in a panic.
“He wanted to know why Damian had been in touch,” Traz said, “so I told him. I think he was already worried about him.”
“Worried about anything in particular?”
Traz thought about Verity Brown’s encounter with the soldiers. Could it be that there was some military connection to the coordinates Damian had sent him after all? He knew if he mentioned it to Roy, it would lead to more questions, detritus that might slow up the process of searching for the two men. And that was all that was important now.
“He just said he felt something bad might have happened.”
“Okay, thank you, Mr. Perez. I’ll be getting updates on the search, so I’ll keep you informed. In the meantime, if you hear anything from either one of them, anything at all, let me know immediately. I can be reached at this number day or night.”
The owner had waved away Verity’s offer to pay for their unfinished food. Even from his vantage point on the far side of the room, it had been clear the couple wouldn’t be staying once the phone call had ended.
“I have to go up there,” Traz told her as they moved towards the door.
“Traz, the people who do those searches are experts. They’ll find them.”
But Traz was shaking his head. “Damian is an experienced backcountry camper, and Domenic is one of the brightest guys I’ve ever known. Neither one would take any unnecessary risks. For both of them to have run into trouble up there, either separately or together, means it’s not going to be something as simple as wandering off track. There’s something going on, and that means a conventional search operation might not find them.”
“But what are you going to do?”
Traz held the door to the Buick open for her. “Whatever I can. I won’t know till I get there, but I can’t let those guys stay out there, even if it means going in after them myself.”
He got in the car and stared through the windshield for a moment, seeming to realize something. “I’m going to have to leave this car at the airport. You’ll be okay getting to Scenic from there? I’m really sorry. I’d let you take the car, but the owner is going to be mad enough as it is, having to come all the way down here to get it. If he found out I’d given it to an uninsured driver, he’d probably file criminal charges.”
“I’ll come with you.”
“What? Why would you do that? You don’t know these people.”
“I know you, and I know they’re important to you. If you need to be up there to try to help them out, then that’s where I need to be, too.”
Traz didn’t argue. In fact, any words were hard to find. For so long, he’d always been the one offering the help, providing the support. But if the situation in Wood Buffalo was anywhere near as bad as it could be, Traz suspected by the time they finally found the Jejeune brothers, he wasn’t going to be in a position to provide much assistance to anybody else. In fact, he was probably going to need all the support he could get himself.
37
Quentin Senior was silhouetted against the white sky hanging over the marsh; a shadowy sentinel looking out over a sea of tawny grass. As he approached along the gravel path leading to the berm, it struck Maik how many times on his visits he had found Senior alone like this. The man seemed content with his solitude, here among the quiet cells of water that faithfully reflected the skies, and the high, swaying vegetation that whispered the moods of the winds. Until very recently, Danny Maik had drawn the same comfort from his own company. But not today.
He watched Senior slowly sweep his scope across the cells. A survey, recognized Maik, rather than the focused intensity of a sighting. He understood so much of the world of birding now; its nuances, its language. Perhaps his education was coming to an end. If so, it had been an interesting experience, if not always a completely fathomable one. Once, he had considered if birding could even be something he might take up when he retired. It offered a world of tranquility and the chance to be out in the open air. But it was these aspects of the pastime that appealed to him, he came to realize, rather than the birds themselves. And there were other ways to experience the quiet pleasures of the countryside, ones that didn’t involve peering through a lens trained on motionless landscapes for extended periods of time. Maik might have had his fill of silent, solitary vigils by then.
Senior straightened at the sound of the sergeant’s measured, military stride on the path behind him. “Bad news if you’ve come for another look at the Painted Bunting, I’m afraid. It flew off shortly after you left and hasn’t been seen again since. There’s always the chance that it may resurface somewhere nearby, but of course it’s by no means guaranteed.” Senior gave Maik one of his splendid yellow-toothed smiles. “I do find the wonderful uncertainty of birding one of the most appealing aspects of the pastime. Although whether I’d be quite so sanguine about things if I’d so far failed to locate the bird, I’m not so sure. We seem so much more disposed to accept the vagaries of life once our own needs have been met, don’t you find?”
Maik did, but he wasn’t here to discuss philosophy. “I was wondering if you’d heard about any sightings of cranes lately, Mr. Senior?”
“Common Cranes? Grus grus? One or two. May one ask why? Much as I’d love to take all this new interest as a sign that you’re considering joining the birding fraternity, I suspect an ulterior motive.” He offered Maik another smile, but he left this one to linger slightly longer. “Not tied to your earlier inquires about the national bird of Hong Kong, by any chance? Did you ever discover what it was, by the way?”
“Eric Chappell is still out of town at the moment,” said Maik, more easily than he felt. He tried a smile of his own, but for two men treating each other so congenially, a considerable amount of uneasy silence found a place between them. “I was wondering if there might be such a thing as an organization that might have a record of where cranes have been seen in the U.K. recently.”
To someone outside the world of birding, Maik’s hope may have seemed a vague one, but in his experience, every tiny subbranch of birding seemed to have its own society. DCI Jejeune appeared to get newsletters from most of them.
“I’m sure the fine folks at the Great Crane Project could provide you with a list of recent sightings,” said Senior, his desire to assist the sergeant winning the battle over his curiosity. “There is still a great deal of interest in the birds in this country.” He descended the berm, uncomfortable at towering over the sergeant and having him squint up into the light. “The return of the Common Crane to our shores is a truly remarkable story. The birds are thought to have gone extinct as a breeding species in the U.K. around the time of Shakespeare. Wintering cranes would have occasionally turned up in the intervening period, of course, but these would have been anomalies, birds driven off their usual migration routes by storms. Nineteen seventy-nine; that was the breakthrough. Three cranes spent the winter in the Norfolk Broads. Whatever possessed them to do so, we’ll never know.” He smiled at Maik. “You and I have both spent enough winters here to know how inhospitable the Broads can be in the grip of winter. But remain, they did. At first, their presence here was one of the local birding community’s most closely held secrets.” Senior held a hand to his chest, mock-dramatically. “For my sins, I confess I was among those arguing for such suppression. It would’ve been a story of national importance, you see, cranes being such a charismatic species and all. We’d have had the media descending on us from all over, and the constant glare of attention, however well-meant, was the last thing a skittish group of new arrivals needed.” His great snowy mane caught the breeze as he nodded in satisfaction. “I’m delighted to say our initial caution was rewarded, as a population was eventually established, and then another, over at Lakenheath Fen, and yet another up on Humberside.”
Maik’s heart sank, but he tried not to show his disappointment. “So, they’re all over the place, then? There’s any number of spots one could have been seen recently?”
“Oh, they’re hardly ubiquitous, Sergeant. A crane sighting is still a thing to cherish, even in these parts.” Senior nodded shortly. “But yes, we are gradually witnessing what is surely the most wonderful of all of nature’s party tricks; the natural reestablishment of a species. None of that artificial reintroduction jiggery-pokery that’s going on all over the place. Whatever survival instincts these birds bring with them, they’ll have come by them honestly.”
The comment surprised Maik. “I’d have thought you’d be the last one to disapprove of efforts to reintroduce a species, Mr. Senior. From the little I’ve heard about it, I understand the practice has been vital to the survival of some birds.”
“Oh, I do appreciate the commitment, and the tremendously hard work such projects demand. I understand, too, the argument that we should be the ones to restore these species, since human activities have contributed so much to their decline in the first place. But I just feel nature should be the final arbiter of such matters.”
But Maik understood, more than Senior knew, the human compulsion to try to repair the damage you had caused. “If I could just get that contact information for the Great Crane Project, Mr. Senior, I can be on my way. If there’s anyone there who’d be particularly up on the sightings along the migration routes, I’d appreciate a name.”
“There’ll be a record of sightings, of course, but I’d doubt there’d be anything on migrations. There’s no need.”
“No need?”
“None at all, Sergeant. I’m sorry; perhaps I should have mentioned it. British Common Cranes are unique in that they are resident. Unlike all other cranes on the continent, ours do not migrate. There are a number of spots where roosts can be observed year-round.”
Maik couldn’t hide his welling optimism. “A map, Mr. Senior, do you have a map?” he asked earnestly. “One that shows where these resident sites might be?”
Senior withdrew a battered ordnance survey map of the north Norfolk coast from the satchel over his shoulder and jabbed at it with a leathery finger.
“This population is one of the largest,” said Senior, his curiosity stilled for the moment by the urgency of Maik’s request, “then this one, though we suspect it may be inactive now. And this one. Those would be the closest to our present location.”
Maik tapped the map with his own forefinger. This one. It was intuition that guided Senior so unerringly to his Painted Bunting earlier, when everyone else had gone in a different direction. Intuition was what made some people so good at what they did. And this was what Maik was good at. This site had all the hallmarks of a hiding place Ray Hayes would choose. It was clever. It was appropriate. And it was about as unexpected as you could get. He bade Senior a hasty goodbye and began a half-sprint back to his car. Senior might feel that reparations were best left to nature, but Danny Maik wasn’t going to let that stop him trying to make up for his own past sins.
38
In the milky half-light of the early morning, Domenic could almost have taken his surroundings for a field of ice — if it wasn’t for the thin wraiths of mist that whispered up from the surface of the water, curtaining the motionless landscape like ghosts. It was like a scene from an earlier time, he thought, an infinite, undisturbed natural world, patiently waiting for the coming of a new cycle of life, for the arrival of a new species called humans.
Beside him, Damian stirred. “Your turn for the coffee run, I believe,” he said, sitting up. “I’ll take a cheese croissant, too.”
Domenic forced a smile but he didn’t turn from looking out over the mirror-calm water. Nothing broke the surface between them and the low smudge of the treeline that hovered in the far distance. “I think the water is still rising, Damian,” he said. “There were a couple of snags out there yesterday, out past where those Common Goldeneyes are now. And a small mound of reeds, too. They’re not visible anymore.”
His brother looked at the uneasy grey lake around them. It stretched out across the plain as far as he could see. “That storm dumped a lot of water in the hills in the interior,” he said. “Once all that reaches this flood plain, too, it’s going to raise the level even higher. That search party better get here soon, or we’re going to be sitting in water by the time they find us.”
In the distance, the spindly reflections of the dead trees lay on the silvery surface of the water like cracks in a mirror. A raft of ducks poked around near the submerged roots. Buffleheads, perhaps? They were too far off for Domenic to tell. Above them, a pair of Whooping Cranes tracked across the white sky, necks outstretched, calling loudly.
