A Cast of Falcons (14 page)

But before anyone could concur, or otherwise, a loud crash at the far end of the hallway stunned the party into an ominous silence.

“W
hat
the hell was that?” asked Colleen Shepherd.

“Probably just one of Dom's feeders,” said Lindy, over-casually. “Always getting blown over, aren't they, Dom? So, Eric, you were saying …”

“But it came from down the hall, surely?” said Shepherd, ignoring Lindy's efforts to kick-start the party again.

“Outside,” confirmed Domenic. “This place is a bit of an echo chamber at times.” He looked at Lindy for confirmation.

“It probably wouldn't hurt to check it out anyway,” said Shepherd dubiously. “Budget numbers are tied to crime statistics, you know, Domenic. If we can get an attempted burglary collar, I might be able to buy you a new stapler.”

It was pitched perfectly. Insistent enough to show Shepherd was taking it seriously, but with a tone that wouldn't even send a shimmer through the party atmosphere.

“I'll go and have a look around,” said Danny Maik, setting his drink down on a side table.

Jejeune seemed to hesitate a moment before offering to accompany him. Maik declined the offer, but it became clear that it wasn't up for discussion, and with a quick glance back at Lindy, Jejeune joined him at the door.

“Go, we'll be fine,” said Lindy, waving. “Eric's an ex-colonial. He knows enough to shoot all us womenfolk if any rampaging hordes burst in and threaten our virtue.”

Taking its cue from Lindy, the party picked up steam again as the men left, to the point that no one would have even noticed the worried looks she involuntarily flickered toward the hallway whenever she let her guard down.

O
utside, an unnatural stillness seemed to hang in the darkness. From the surrounding fields came the hiss of silence. Apart from the muted sounds of the party in the house behind them, everything was quiet. Not a breath of wind disturbed the still night air. It was all well and good Lindy banging on about Dom's bird feeders getting blown over, but this night was as tranquil as any that Maik could remember out here on the coast. Whatever it was that had knocked something over out here, it wasn't the wind.

The sergeant moved stealthily along the side of the cottage, pressed in to the narrow shadow cast by the lights of the party inside. Jejeune followed closely behind, moving with the same silence, even if, it seemed to Maik, not at all the same caution. At the corner of the building, Maik crouched lower and paused, rocking slightly, steadying himself for an entry that was quiet, fast and low. He motioned with a hand for Jejeune to stay back, but by the time he had completed his spin around onto the rear porch of the house, his DCI was already on his way round.

Nothing. Maik looked out over the porch railing. The sea was out there, he knew, just beyond the cliff edge. But there was no moon tonight, and the dull black sky seemed to hunker low, so he could not see any horizon line, or even any light reflected from the dark water. From far below came the faint sound of the sea lapping against the shore. Still, not even the lightest of breezes disturbed the night air. Maik eased himself back from the railing and looked around the porch. Whatever had fractured the silence out here had gone now, leaving just a ringing emptiness.

He slowly let out a breath. “I don't see that feeder that fell over,” he said. “These all look okay to me.”

“Something else, then. One of Lindy's plant pots, perhaps. A passing animal …” said Jejeune from behind him. “It's hard to tell in the dark. I'll have a look around in the morning.”

“Unless you want to switch the porch light on now,” suggested Maik. In the darkness, he couldn't see his DCI's face. But he could hear a voice untroubled by the same tension he had felt. Maik turned to face the cottage, all greyness and shadows, and froze for a moment. Jejeune was behind him and Maik couldn't tell which direction he was facing, but he had the impression the DCI had half-turned away from the sea, and had been looking back at the house, too, in the same direction he was. Above him, the two square glass eyes of the rear windows, somehow darker than the rest of the house, stared out blindly over the sea. The far one was the kitchen, he knew. This one? He stared at it and waited. Waited.

From the front of the house, faint strains of music drifted toward them, and now and again a voice was raised in laughter. “Time we went back in, I suppose,” said Jejeune. But he seemed to be waiting, too, just that extra heartbeat, until Maik could drag himself away from staring at the window to join him. The two men made their way along the side of the house to the front door, and the party. Neither found anything worth saying on the way back.

“False alarm,” said Jejeune as they came back in to the room, seeking out Lindy's face in particular to offer his reassuring smile.

“Glad to hear it,” said Eric heartily. “Still, it never hurts to check.”

To Maik's eye, Lindy's efforts to enter the party spirit had gone into overdrive while they were away. She was a whirlwind now, circulating, connecting, and pouring her bubbly personality into every corner of the cozy living room.

As the people began to break off from the crowd in small knots again, Shepherd drifted over.

“Everything all right out there?”

No. But yes
. “There was nobody prowling around,” said Maik simply. “It looks like the DCI is going to have to wait for that new stapler, after all.”

Shepherd eyed him uncertainly. “Then I suggest you pick up your drink and get back into the party spirit. One senior detective looking ill at ease in social situations is quite enough, thank you very much. We don't want people thinking it's a departmental directive, do we?” She offered him a smile and went to rejoin a small group where Eric's booming laugh suggested he was still holding court.

Danny would do what he could. But looking at them now, both Jejeune and Lindy seemed to carry a kind of guarded relief that told him he may not have been wrong. In the darkened window of that room from the porch, that guest bedroom, Maik fancied he had seen, just for the briefest of moments, a faint flash of light. He had waited, but it hadn't reappeared, and in the darkness and shadows at the back of the house, there was no way to be certain. Besides, Maik was all but sure Inspector Jejeune had been looking directly at the window at the time, too. And if one of the most observant men Maik had ever known chose not to comment on anything he might have seen, then Danny Maik wouldn't either — not tonight, anyway.

L
indy
and Domenic stood together in the doorway of the cottage, silhouetted against the lights of the living room. They watched as the last of the cars departed, the tail lights disappearing down the lane until they were finally swallowed up by the night. She turned to him and linked her hands behind his neck, stretching up to give him a kiss. “We can't do this again. I feel like I have been through a tumble dryer.” She looked at him seriously. “I mean it, Dom. No more visitors while he's still here. I don't think my nerves could take it.”

She seemed to be expecting opposition from Jejeune, though he couldn't imagine why. Surely she knew he had been every bit as much on edge throughout the evening. Lindy closed the door with her foot and started to move toward the kitchen. “Well, I suppose we'd better let the cat out of the bag,” she said.

“You go on to bed,” said Domenic. “You must be exhausted. I'll tell Damian you'll see him in the morning.”

Lindy didn't argue, and padded away down the hall to their bedroom. Domenic took the guest room key from the kitchen shelf and went along the hallway. When he opened the door, Damian was sitting on the bed, propped up against the headboard with his knees drawn up to his chest. They were supporting a book, which he was reading by penlight.

“What did Mom tell you about that?” said Domenic, flicking on the light. “You'll ruin your eyesight.”

Damian set aside the book:
King Lear
. He noticed his brother's look. “It was on the desk,” he said. “It's been a while, so I thought I'd give it another go.” He pulled a face and got off the bed. He headed for a whisky bottle on a nearby table, holding it by the neck and waving it at his brother. Domenic nodded, and Damian grabbed a second glass from a shelf and blew the dust from it before pouring two healthy shots.

Domenic picked up the book and set it on the top of an untidy pile teetering on the desk.

“I was going to ask you about that,” said Damian. “Are you building a tower?”

“Lindy stacks them up like this to encourage me to re-shelve them, even though half the time I haven't finished with them. She thinks if she piles them up on the desk like this, eventually I'll get tired of the mess and cave in.”

“It's obvious you haven't told her about your bedroom when you were a kid,” said Damian. “Don't worry; I'll put them away in the morning for you.”

“Don't do that, whatever you do,” said Domenic in mock alarm. “I think she's only a couple of books away from her own breaking point. Any day now she's going to come in here and do it herself because she can't stand it any longer.”

Damian handed his brother a glass and sat back down on the bed. “I never did get these head games that partners play,” he said. “Maybe that's why I've never been in a long-term relationship myself.”

“Could be,” agreed Domenic. “Then again, it could just be because you're ugly and not very bright.” He gave his brother a wan smile and settled in the room's only armchair.

“Good party?” asked Damian.

“Tiring. I had to take a walk outside at one point, too.” He looked at his brother through the amber liquid in his glass.

“Yeah, I reached for the bottle and knocked the table over in the dark. Saved the English single malt though,” he said with a grin. “I haven't had this before. It's pretty good.”

And there, in a nutshell, was his relationship with Damian, thought Domenic. No inquiry as to whether his actions had caused a problem for his younger brother, because it simply didn't matter to Damian. Something had happened, Domenic had cleared it up, and Damian was ready to move on.
Ever it was, and ever more will it be
, thought Domenic wearily.

“That guy Eric sounded like he was enjoying himself. That's some laugh he has on him.”

Domenic nodded his agreement. “Can you imagine what it must be like to be him just now, getting into birding for the first time? To see all those new birds, to get that feeling, that rush,” he said.

“That's the thing, Dom. For me, that's how it is, still. Every time I see something special — a Painted Bunting, a Scissor-tailed Flycatcher — I get that same buzz I felt the first time I saw one.”

Domenic knew it was true. He had seen it in his brother with the Franklin's Gull at Cley. Even watching the Raven's barrel roll at Dunnet Head; his wide-eyed enthusiasm had been every bit as much in evidence as the boy he was sharing it with.

Damian's face softened with sadness. “You probably think it's the big things I miss, being able to travel wherever I want, walk down the street without looking over my shoulder. But really, it's nights like tonight I miss the most, having friends over, being able to tell them the truth about who you are and what you do.”

The truth? Domenic had spent most of the evening avoiding precisely that. But he let the comment pass. He knew what Damian meant. They sat for a few moments, sipping their drinks, thinking their thoughts.

Damian drained his glass and rose from the bed. “Another?”

Domenic nodded. “How did you manage to get the bottle, anyway?”

“Lindy brought it in for me when she locked the door.” He poured the drinks and brought one over to Domenic, standing over him. He smiled. “I think I'm in love with your girlfriend, Domino.”

Domenic smiled back. “She's easy to love.”

“High maintenance, though, I'm betting.”

“An entire department.” He looked at his brother. “I'm guessing she's been making subtle inquiries about our childhood?”

Damian nodded, “Subtle, like an open-pit mining operation, you mean?”

“It's okay. She's just trying to build up a picture for herself.”

“I read her article,” said Damian. “She's a smart lady. I can see how she might have some problems with an arrangement where the older male child had claim to everything, though.” He looked up at Dom. “Can you imagine if it still worked like that? All this would be mine.” Glass in hand, he spread his arms to embrace the vast expanse of this three-metre-square bedroom.

“Lindy, too, I suppose,” said Domenic.

“I'm not sure she'd take kindly to being classified as chattel.And I certainly wouldn't want to be the one to break it to her.” Damian suddenly became serious and looked at his brother with an earnestness Domenic hadn't seen for a long time. “I love what you have here; your career, this cottage, Lindy. Live it well, Domenic. For both of us.”

Domenic wondered if it was the whisky causing Damian's sudden lurches between moods. He sensed that it was close, the time when his older brother would be able to tell him the reason he had come, sought out Domenic with the siren call of that bird guide.
Close, but here yet?
He saw the dark square of the window over Damian's shoulder. Outside it was as still and quiet as before. In the house, too, nothing moved. The ticking of a distant clock drifted down the hallway, but otherwise there was silence.

“You have to tell her, Domenic,” said Damian quietly. “She needs to know about the person she has staying in her house.”

“Don't, Damian.”

“You can't let it go any longer.”

“I'll, it'll be …”

“It'll be what? It'll be fine? It'll be taken care of? Or it'll be the end of your relationship with her, if she finds out what her boyfriend's brother has done?”

“Stop, Damian. Okay. Just … I'll deal with it.”

“Just be sure you do, little brother. I've messed up enough people's lives already. I don't want any more sorrow on my conscience.” A wave of melancholy seemed to sweep over him.

“Why did you come here, Damian?”

Damian looked up from the bed and smiled, greeting the question like an old friend he had been waiting to arrive. “Simple, Domino,” he said. “You're the only person I know who might be able to keep me alive.”

He gave his brother a lazy smile. “Just words, Dom. I'm fine. Really. It's late. Get some sleep. We'll talk later.”

Domenic had stepped into the hallway before he paused and looked back. But Damian was already engrossed in
King Lear
again. He didn't look up.