Palmer-Jones 01 - A Bird in the Hand Read online

  Unrepentant, the young man refilled his cup and led his friends to a table to sit down. As he stood to let them past him, he noticed that the sun was shining.

  The fog had remained dense throughout the afternoon, when suddenly, at five, like a vast blind rolled back to the sea, it cleared. So the line of observers lying against the shingle bank, their telescopes unused on their knees, could see Adam running along the straight flat track from the main road. His running was thrown out of balance by the optical equipment he was carrying, and he ran like an excited schoolgirl, legs flying. They sensed his urgency and slid down the shingle and ran too, towards the Windmill. The few people still walking slowly and hopefully through the marsh saw the line of black figures on the bank disappear and they also began to run. When Adam pushed into the hut with so much energy and excitement that it seemed that the room could hardly contain him, there was a crowd behind him jostling him further in. Adam tried to speak, but he was out of breath and the background music was so loud that no one could make out what he said. Ella knew what was expected and turned off the radio. Then there was silence. They all heard when, still fighting for breath and with a slight stutter, he said:

  “Bimaculated lark. On the lawn behind the hotel. I’m sure it is.”

  With tolerance and affection Ella watched the snack bar empty and on her knees to sweep up a cup and plate broken in the confusion, said to her assistant:

  “You’d best get some more bread out of the freezer, Sandra. We’ll be busy tomorrow.”

  Then: “ He’s such a gentleman, Mr. Palmer-Jones. He was a civil servant before he retired. Do you know, he used to work for a minister? He told me once. Fancy young Adam finding a bird like that.”

  All the birdwatchers went inland, to trespass on the parkland surrounding the hotel, and there was no one to disturb the peace of the marsh, where a little boy was playing with his boat in the sun.

  Mr. and Mrs. Palmer-Jones lived in a pretty and tidy village in Surrey. Their house was neither pretty nor tidy. It was a red-brick Victorian vicarage with flaking paint and a garden of tangled undergrowth, with a pond full of newts and toads. A battered old swing had been left to rust on the lawn for the benefit of grandchildren, and the latch on the front gate was always sticking. Mrs. Palmer-Jones shocked the village by standing unsuccessfully each year as a candidate for the Labour Party in local authority elections and going on CND marches. Over the years these idiosyncracies were forgiven, but she refused to join the WI, and that never was. Until she had retired at the age of sixty she had worked as a senior social worker in Guildford. This had been viewed as a respectable occupation for an elderly lady, like working for the WRVS, until Molly Palmer-Jones had made the mistake of describing some of the details of her work. Then it became common knowledge in the village that she worked “ not with the needy or old ladies or orphans, but, my dear, with youths, criminals and drug addicts.”

  Mr. Palmer-Jones was a naturalist of the old-fashioned type, who knew about plants and butterflies as well as birds. His weekly article on natural history in the local paper made him something of a celebrity in the village. He was a founder member of the Surrey Conservation Trust. But even he began to behave a little oddly as he grew older. He went to India in a Land Rover. When he retired he sold his Volvo and bought a Morris Minor van, in which he and Molly travelled all over the country looking for and watching rare birds. Strange people were seen to visit the house, people who were dropped in the village by lorry drivers after hitch-hiking from the motorway, young people, carrying nothing but a sleeping bag and a battered telescope. Yet unlike his wife he maintained decent standards of dress and speech. There was sustained criticism by a member of the Conservation Trust with journalistic ambitions of his newspaper articles, which now reflected his trips to see rare birds, but he continued to be respected. He had an air of authority, of sadness, which encouraged people to keep their distance. They were, perhaps, a little frightened of him, despite his polite friendliness.

  Clive Anderson was also something of a local personality, in a conventional, squire-like way. He was a magistrate. He could be seen in church and at county functions. He had travelled into London on the same train as George Palmer-Jones before George retired, so the men were acquaintances. Molly Palmer-Jones had fought with him and pleaded with him in the juvenile court where he had often sat as chairman. The families had been neighbours for many years but there had been no contact between them; they had nothing in common.

  It was with some embarrassment that Molly opened the door to him, just as it was growing dark on the Thursday after their return from Rushy. Anderson was a small, slight man, whom Molly had sarcastically described after a particularly hard-fought battle in court as “a typical psychopath, totally devoid of affection or emotion.” His diffidence, his obvious discomfort now were so unusual that Molly forgot her hostility and automatically, professionally, tried to make him feel more at ease. He moved into the house with the contained energy of an athlete, and she realized that although he was in his mid-sixties he was very fit. She remembered that he had been a member of one of the Everest expeditions. He did not look at her, but moved impatiently, restlessly, as she spoke to him. Not recognizing that they had had any previous contact, he interrupted her and asked abruptly to speak to her husband. With uncharacteristic tact she left them alone in the big, cluttered kitchen where George was reading the final proof of the Surrey Bird Report. With distaste, Anderson refused a glass of home-made beer, but he accepted a scotch.

  “My son tells me that you’re one of these twitchers.”

  There was accusation in his voice, as if Palmer-Jones had betrayed their generation.

  “But not, I’m afraid, in Adam’s class,” Palmer-Jones replied immediately and smoothly.

  “He never talks to me about it. He’s good at it then, is he?” Anderson spoke blandly, but could not quite disguise his interest.

  “He’s the best birdwatcher of his age that I know. He found a bimaculated lark at the weekend.”

  The praise pleased Anderson, and seemed to give him the confidence to admit to an interest in his son’s activities, though he hid his curiosity in aggression.

  “Perhaps you could explain to me what a twitcher is. Adam seems to think me incapable of understanding.”

  George Palmer-Jones ignored the sarcasm and replied as carefully as if he were presenting a paper at an academic seminar.

  “Twitching is derived from the Wessex phrase ‘twitching like a long dog,’ which Hardy used and which is still common today in rural counties. A long dog is a greyhound. It could be interpreted as ‘straining at the leash,’ perhaps. So a twitcher is a person who is in that state when he hears the news of a bird which he has never seen before, and remains in it until he has ‘ticked it off’—another bird watching term—derived, I suppose, from the habit of placing a mark by the new species in the field guide.”

  “It never seemed much of a hobby to me,” Anderson Said. “Perhaps I never encouraged him enough. He took no interest in the things I cared about. I thought he did it to spite me. Like the long hair and running away from school. He’s in the local comprehensive now, and doesn’t spend much time there. They tell me he’ll pass his A-levels, but he won’t apply for university. He’s only just eighteen.”

  Then quite suddenly:

  “His mother left, you know, when he was a child. She was a lot younger than me, of course. Things were different then, and because she left, because of the circumstances surrounding the separation, I got custody. I don’t know if it was the right thing. We’ve never been very close. Sometimes I wonder even if he’s my son. He’s always been a weak sort of boy.”

  Palmer-Jones sensed the disappointment of the man whose whole life had been competitive, who had needed to prove that he was fitter, stronger than his friends and whose son would not or could not compete with him at all.

  “I’m sorry. I don’t understand how I can help you.”

  “Adam and I don’t pretend to be
very close, but I’m not so insensitive that I can ignore him when he’s distressed. This business in Norfolk has distressed him. I can tell that. I want it cleared up.”

  There was a touch of petulance in his manner. He was used to getting what he wanted.

  “I see,” said Palmer-Jones lightly, “and of course it would be very embarrassing for you, a magistrate, to have Adam involved in a murder inquiry.”

  “Of course it’s embarrassing.” The man’s voice was still flat, reasonable. “I’ve survived more than embarrassment in my career. I’m not asking for your help on my own account, but because of my concern for my son. I seem to have little authority over him, but if you discover any illegal or unsavoury element in this twitching, which wastes all his time and energy, I’ll prevent him from further participation. In my own way I care about Adam. He’s not the sort of boy who can look after himself. You’re an intelligent man. I know the kind of work you were doing in the Home Office. Clear up this matter for me. If you come to the conclusion that no birdwatcher had any part in this young man’s death, I’ll trust your judgement. That’s all I want to know.”

  Despite a residual cynicism about the man’s motives, Palmer-Jones was impressed. It was not easy for Anderson to ask for help. Yet he said:

  “Surely you, of all people, can trust the police not to make a mistake.”

  The magistrate’s quick, almost hysterical response showed, for the first time, the extent of his anxiety.

  “Have you heard these birdwatchers talk to each other? It’s like another language, as if they belong to a secret society. When I listen to Adam talking on the telephone to one of his friends, I can’t understand a word. How could an outsider persuade one of these fanatics to talk to him reasonably and rationally?”

  “And as a fanatic myself, you feel that I may have more success?”

  “I want to know what happened. Because Adam is unhappy and because you appear, in some way, to be a friend of his, I’m asking for your help.”

  He stood up and spoke with stilted formality, as if he were in court. He had already given away too much.

  “If you do agree to act for me in this matter, I will of course pay all your expenses and any fee you consider to be reasonable.”

  In a mocking voice, talking almost to himself, Palmer-Jones said:

  “I could extend my list considerably with unlimited resources.”

  He stood too, and said quietly in an off-hand; dismissive way:

  “I’ll think about it and let you know.’

  Chapter Two

  It did not take George Palmer-Jones long to decide that he would accept Anderson’s offer. He was not even sure that there was a decision to make. He wondered for a short time if it was sensible to become involved, but knew that the speculation was pointless, because he already was. He would accept Anderson’s offer as an investment against boredom. It seemed sometimes that a fear of boredom had shaped his entire life; he felt that he was haunted by a childhood of unrelieved tedium.

  He had been brought up in a small town in Herefordshire, only a mile from the Welsh border. He was the only child of a moderately prosperous local solicitor. His mother had died when he was an infant, but the town seemed peopled by elderly female relatives who enjoyed the sacrifice of caring for his father and himself. The countryside in the district was magnificent, but until he was old enough to explore it himself he hardly saw it. With his wife’s death his father had become preoccupied with the trivial events of the town, the safe everyday events. George still remembered with dread Sunday afternoons in the gloomy parlour, the identical spinster aunts, his father lifeless and grey, becoming animated only when the aunts began to gossip about petty misdemeanours, property and wills. If the talk approached scandal his father would withdraw, bring the conversation to a close, and George would be left with a tantalizing sense that he had missed something of interest. There had been a clock in that parlour with a loud, distinctive tick. When he experienced the panic of approaching boredom George could still hear the clock ticking in his head.

  He had married Molly because he had known from the beginning that she would never bore him. He had chosen his work for similar reasons. His last post had been particularly demanding, because of its ambiguity: he had been neither policeman nor civil servant, but the decision to retire from it was the most difficult he had ever taken. In contrast, although he knew that his position as unofficial investigator would be awkward, his decision to accept the magistrate’s offer was made almost immediately.

  The morning after Anderson’s visit he made two phone calls, both of which Molly disapproved. He still had influential friends in the Home Office, and from a contact there obtained the promise of the most recent police report on the French murder. The ease with which this transaction was completed shocked Molly. She would have felt easier if he had lied to gain the information. She gave him a lecture on corruption and privacy, but they had had such rows before, and there was an element of ritual in the argument.

  Palmer-Jones phoned the University of Southampton then in an attempt to talk to Rob Earl, the young man they had met in the Windmill the weekend before. He was a postgraduate student there, but his assistant seemed surprised that anyone should expect Rob to be in the laboratory so early in the morning, and George could only leave a message.

  George could understand Molly’s disapproval of Rob. He was self-centred to the point of rudeness and ruthless in his determination to live his life just as he wanted. He sought new experience in a selfish, self-confident way which took no heed of his own danger or other people’s inconvenience. George sometimes suspected that much of this was affectation, but could never be quite sure. He liked Rob. Before his retirement they had gone to India together on a bird watching trip. Rob was easy company, entertaining. And he was a vivid storyteller, reliving and sharing his travels. His tales, whether of being chased by an elephant in India or delivering a baby in New Guinea, were always nearly true. He was an impulsive, intuitive birdwatcher and, when his travelling allowed, a fanatical twitcher.

  Molly answered the phone. They were eating lunch, and she felt that it was typical that Rob should interrupt them. In his lazy, charming, arrogant voice he asked to speak to George and she answered abruptly. Rob liked her and enjoyed fighting her and teasing her, but he ignored her rudeness.

  “It’s urgent, Molly. Can I speak to him now?”

  So she called her husband, secretly disappointed at being deprived of the usual banter.

  “Anything about?” George asked. It came automatically, the shorthand question used by every twitcher.

  “Greenish in Cornwall, at Trekewick. And six golden orioles. I was thinking of going tonight.”

  “I’m surprised that you need greenish.” It was not exceptionally rare. He had been unlucky himself not to have seen it.

  “I’ve got a lot of catching up to do after that last trip to the States, and I dipped out twice last autumn. You are going?”

  George hardly had time to reply.

  “You can give me a lift then. I might have to bring a friend.”

  “I wanted to talk to you anyway.” George spoke quickly. Rob had got what he wanted and would be expecting to ring off. “It’s about Tom French.”

  “I can’t stop now. I’ve got an experiment to finish before I leave. I’ll see you at about five thirty at the flat.”

  He knew that they would be there and did not wait for confirmation.

  They went to London first, to Queen Anne’s Gate, where George had worked, and collected the report from a plump and giggling secretary. Molly was driving. She enjoyed the drama of driving through London, and her temper improved as they left the centre of the city. She drove fast and not very well.

  “What is it that we’re going to see?” she asked.

  “Greenish warbler.”

  “Is it pretty?”

  “Not very, but it’s a tick. It’s not even very rare.”

  “How can we justify driving all the way to Corn
wall to see a bird that’s not even pretty?”

  “You enjoy it.”

  It was true. She did enjoy it. She had no interest in the birds, but had become passionately enthusiastic about twitching. Each trip she became tense, excitable with panic, worried that the rarity they had travelled to see had disappeared, but then she hardly bothered to look at it. It was the chase which she enjoyed. When she was a child, the youngest in a county family, she had been taken each year to Scotland where her parents and their friends shot grouse. She had hated the friends and the blood, but even then had been fascinated by the hunt.

  George read the report as she drove towards Southampton. He did not discuss it and she knew better than to ask. He did not speak at all until they stopped outside the big, ugly terraced house where Rob had a flat.

  Rob’s friend surprised them. He had been accompanied on their trips by a number of girls, but they had been beautiful and usually silent. Tina was big, not overweight, but tall and big-boned. She was very dark and had strong almost masculine features. She wore tight jeans tucked into long boots, and a leather jacket and beads. She was not silent. It very soon became clear that she was an obsessive ringer. She spoke in sharp, aggressive bursts about traps, nets and rings. More than the rest of them she was, Molly felt, a hunter.

  So they drove south to see greenish warbler, and there was the same tension as on every trip, the same anxiety that it might be gone; and there was the same smell, as Rob, lying on his back in the van, smoked roll-up after roll-up, and the same sound as he sang tuneless Bob Dylan. Tina crouched beside him, aware and predatory. Then there was the same conversation about other trips they had made, birds missed and birds seen. No one mentioned Tom French. In Exeter they stopped for a pint and a Chinese meal. It was nearly midnight when they started again, and when they reached Cornwall George knew that it was too late for him to sleep. He would sleep when he had seen the bird.

  There was a derelict cottage on the edge of the shore at Trekewick where birders always stayed. Only one bedroom had been left intact, but although this had no glass in the windows, the roof and walls were sound and it was dry and comfortable. Over the years pieces of furniture appeared. There were a table, an easy chair and a couple of mattresses. Sometimes there were more or less permanent residents, but it was always the best place to stay if there was a good bird in Cornwall.