When Detective Inspector Leo Farrow arrived at work the next morning, someone had taped a picture of a nightjar to his door, with WANTED written underneath in black marker.
He stood looking at it for a while.
The name was in every newspaper he’d passed on the way in, and one of them had printed it across its front page: WHO IS THE NIGHTJAR?
He had nobody to blame but himself.
He’d been watching birds since he was a boy, so when the reporter asked him about the second thief, the word had simply slipped out.
He’d only meant to say how quiet they had been.
Now the whole city was using that damned name.
He took the picture down, though he couldn’t bring himself to throw it away.
It was a good photograph, so he put it in his desk drawer instead.
His office was a single room on the third floor of police headquarters, with most of one wall taken up by his board.
This morning, it had almost nothing on it.
In the middle was a gold-foil chocolate in an evidence bag, taken from the pillow in Emeric Vidal’s bedroom.
The Gentleman had left one at every job for years.
Last spring, a guest had cheated a waiter out of a month’s tips.
When the waiter opened his locker, he found the money inside, with one of these chocolates on top.
Leo had never managed to dislike the Gentleman as much as he was probably supposed to.
Next to it was a photograph of a knot.
The second thief had tied it around a radiator pipe in Vidal’s study and left the rope hanging out of the window.
The rope itself was ordinary climbing rope, sold in any shop in the city.
The knot, though, seemed to be a sailor’s, since it had held the thief’s weight all the way down to the garden.
Above them was a catalogue page showing the stolen ring.
That was all he had.
Rupert Vidal’s guests had filmed the whole party on their phones, yet the only thing anyone had caught clearly was the peacock.
Leo still couldn’t tell whether the two thieves had been working together or against each other, so he had put them up side by side with a space between them.
Of the two, it was the second thief he kept coming back to.
The Gentleman seemed to want people to know he had been there, but the other thief had made sure nobody noticed anything at all.
That was what made Leo more interested in them.
He was still looking at the knot when Commissioner Ashby came in.
The Commissioner had never come down to his office before.
Five years earlier, when Leo was a young policeman, he had recovered a stolen painting because he’d recognized the birds in one corner of it.
Ashby had read his report himself and recommended him for promotion to detective that same month.
Leo was pleased to see him, though a little nervous too, since he still wanted to prove him right.
“How’s our bird doing? Anything yet?” Ashby asked.
“Nothing. Only a couple of things that don’t amount to much at the moment.”
Ashby glanced at the photograph, then moved on to the catalogue page, where he stopped.
“Emeric was a friend of mine,” he said.
For a moment, Ashby looked lost in thought.
Leo felt sorry about the nickname then.
Thanks to him, the whole city was laughing about the burglary, when the Commissioner’s friend had been treated with such disrespect so soon after his death.
“I’m sorry. I didn’t know.”
“I’d like you to handle this one yourself, and to come straight to me with whatever you find. There’s no need to go through anyone else.” Ashby turned to look at him.
“Find the ring, Leo. Quietly.”
He smiled and left as unhurriedly as he’d come.
Leo heard him stop in the hallway on his way out to wish one of the workers there a happy birthday.
Leo was embarrassed, suspecting that “quietly” was the Commissioner’s kind way of saying there should be no more television.
He supposed Ashby also wanted the ring back for his old friend’s sake, which Leo could understand.
Being asked to report to the Commissioner directly was an honor, and he was determined not to waste it.
After a while, he took the picture of the nightjar out of his drawer and pinned it above the knot.
If the city was going to call the second thief that, and the Commissioner didn’t mind, he might as well do the same.
He wanted something to show the Commissioner, though there was no sign of the ring anywhere.
The chocolate was the only real object he had, so he spent the afternoon calling the city’s chocolate shops.
He described the gold foil and sent photographs to anyone who asked, but most of them had never seen it.
“Are you the bird man from the news?” one of them asked.
“I’m a detective inspector,” Leo said.
“So that’s a yes.”
Leo thanked him anyway and crossed him off the list.
It was nearly six when an old chocolate shop owner called him back.
“That’s our foil,” he said.
“I’d know that fold anywhere. Has somebody been stealing my chocolates?”
“Something like that,” Leo said.
“Well, we only make those for the hotels. Four of them, to be precise, the big ones.”
He read the names out slowly while Leo wrote them down.
“The Voss orders more than the other three put together,” the old man added.
So the Gentleman took his chocolates from a hotel rather than buying them directly, which meant he either worked in one or stayed in one.
Leo pinned the list to the board beside the chocolate.
The Voss belonged to the Commissioner’s oldest friend, so he’d have to be careful not to step on the wrong toes.
Still, it seemed reasonable to begin there since it seemed to be the biggest buyer of those chocolates.
He would go at night, when the Gentleman did his work, and talk to whoever was on duty.
If anyone at the Voss was going to notice anything, it would be the night staff.
He took a pen and circled the first name.
“Start with the Voss,” he said to himself.