The Birdwatcher (13 page)

‘Come on then, Billy. Your mammy will be waiting.’

And as he pulled away up the hill, he saw Rusty waving at him, smiling, like he was off on a jaunt or something.

EIGHT

The site investigation was done. His house was his own again.

Because he worked Saturdays, Thursday was a day off. He spent it sea watching in the beach hide with Eddie and two other birders. Over six hours they counted around fifty sooty shearwaters, almost nine hundred gannets and a single Balearic shearwater; but his heart was not in it. Today, they were just birds. For the first time, it seemed like a pointless activity; a habit he had acquired but couldn’t lose. He decided to end the watch early as the wind came up. A couple of times he called the police station on his mobile to see if they’d made the arrest yet, but there was no news.

He lay awake in his bed that night, still tasting salt from the wind on his face, still hearing the thump of the waves on the beach.

Since arriving here as a child he had loved this place, but now, the killing made him wonder if it was time for him to move elsewhere. It was as if whoever had killed Bob had taken something important from him too. It wasn’t just the threat of violence, the idea that the killer was out there still; something dark had been stirred up.

His duvet was knotted around him by the time he finally fell asleep and was woken, it seemed like only seconds later, by someone knocking at his door.

‘Bill!’ Someone was calling through his letter box.

Thick-headed, he stumbled downstairs. It was light already. Through the glass he could see a haze of yellow; one of the fishermen, he guessed.

‘What’s wrong, Curly?’ he asked when he opened the door.

‘Some cunt’s nicked my fuckin’ boat.’ Curly had a full set of oilskins on; even the sou’wester, all shiny with rain.

There were only a handful of men left who fished off Dungeness now. Though there was still good cod offshore, the effort of towing boats onto the shingle was too much; the boats that you could launch here were too small to be profitable any longer.

‘Give me a minute.’

South dressed, put on a waterproof and followed Curly down to the edge of the beach.

‘Came down this morning to catch the tide and the boat was bloody gone.’

‘Blue Plymouth Pilot?’

‘That’s the one. Eighteen-footer.’

One of the smaller boats. Fishing was as much of a hobby to Curly as anything. His father had been a fisherman here, and if you asked him he’d say that’s what he was too, but the truth was he earned his money working as a builder and decorator. The rain was thick, trickling into South’s eyes as they walked towards where Curly had kept it.

He stopped. ‘Fucking cocks,’ Curly said.

South looked down at his feet. The galvanised chain lying there had been cut clean through. South knelt and examined the end of the chain. It looked like someone had used wire cutters.

‘Insured?’ said South.

‘Not enough,’ said Curly.

‘Got a tracker fitted?’

Curly shook his head.

South looked up the road. ‘Well, they’ll have passed CCTV cameras,’ he said. ‘We should get a pretty clear view of the vehicle that towed it.’

‘Don’t think so,’ said Curly. ‘They took it out to sea.’

‘You’re joking?’

‘Fuckin’ not,’ he said. ‘Look.’

Sure enough, behind where the boat should have been there were still deep tracks in the pebbles leading down to the high-tide mark. Someone had used a vehicle of some sort to drag the boat and its trailer down to the water.

‘They took it out to sea?’

‘I know.’

South looked out at the water. It was one of those early mornings when the sea still seemed to be sucking all the light from the sky. ‘You called the coastguard yet?’

‘No. I just came straight to you.’

‘When did you last use it?’

‘Three days ago.’

Tuesday. The day they had discovered Bob’s body. South tried to remember if he’d seen the boat since then. The theft could have taken place any time between then and now; last night, probably, as no one had noticed it missing until now and the ruts were still clear in the shingle.

‘You were here on Monday, then?’

‘Maybe. Don’t know.’

‘Either you were or you weren’t.’

Curly scratched his chin. ‘Yes. Think so.’

‘Did you take the boat out?’

‘Actually, yes. May have.’

South said, ‘May have? Don’t you remember?’

‘What’s all this shit about Monday? I definitely saw it Tuesday. Isn’t that good enough?’

‘Think about Monday, Curly. Did you see anyone else around here?’

Curly crossed his arms. ‘Nope. Don’t think so. What about my boat?’

South looked at his watch. The tide was halfway out. High tide would have been around three in the morning. If they’d stolen it last night, they wouldn’t have had far to tow it to get it into the sea.

‘Where’s the trailer?’

‘No sign. My guess is that they left it in the water. The tyres were inflated so it would have floated. Probably halfway to Folkestone by now, reckon. Fuckers.’

They stood there looking at the open sea, as if expecting the boat would suddenly appear on the water before them.

South was in the car when the officer at the station called him up on his mobile to update him with what had happened over his day off.

He pulled over in the lay-by and opened his notebook. ‘Minor burglary at Littlestone. Hit and run RTC on the 259 involving two vehicles. Minor injuries. Sending you the description of a red Honda. A resident on the Wiccomb caravan park has been complaining about the dogs barking. Usual old bollocks.’

‘I got a fishing boat nicked here. I’ll come in with the details this afternoon. About twenty grand’s worth. Wiccomb you said?’

‘Yes.’

South considered that, then said, ‘Any news on the Rayner murder?’

‘Nothing I heard.’

Cupidi would be frustrated, he thought. She’d wanted to wrap it up fast but it was now the fourth day after the body had been found. How hard should it be to track down some homeless man? But this was not London where there was a CCTV on every corner. There were plenty of places where a man could hide, if he hadn’t fled the county already. All the same, it made South uneasy that Bob’s killer had not been arrested.

The burglary was a theft from a garden shed. Some power tools and a transistor radio. It turned out that the homeowner hadn’t been to the shed for over a fortnight, which made it hard to pin down when it had happened, anyway. He took a few more notes, drank tea.

From there he drove to the Wiccomb caravan park.

It was a while since anyone had complained about Judy Farouk’s dogs. They had learned not to.

He parked in the same place as they had before, but when he stepped out of the car, the dogs weren’t barking at all, they were both lying down by the door of the caravan.

The man who had called the police lived in a static caravan close to Judy Farouk’s. South got out and rapped on his door.

A thin, elderly man with papery skin and a dewdrop on his nose opened the door. He wore a brightly coloured hand-knitted tank top and complained, ‘Don’t let the heat out,’ as South stood on his step. ‘Shoes off,’ he ordered. South sat on a small pink stool and pulled off his police boots.

The front room had nets in the windows. His large wife was sitting in an armchair with a Sudoko puzzle. She struggled up to put the kettle on as South walked in.

‘You took your time, didn’t you?’ said the man.

‘It was my day off yesterday,’ said South. ‘What’s the problem? They don’t seem to be making much noise now.’ Which was odd in itself, he thought.

‘Should have heard them yesterday,’ said the man’s wife. From their accents they were from the Midlands. One of the many couples who came south with their small pile of retirement money. She gave South his tea, then went to the window and peered through the curtains.

‘They were hungry, see?’ said the man. ‘Now they’re exhausted from all the yapping and barking.’

South went to the window next to the woman and looked through. Judy’s static was pale yellow, with a small wooden deck built at one end. There were broad muddy semicircles of worn grass at the boundary of Judy’s plot, where the dogs had struggled at the full lengths of their tethers.

‘Starting to smell now too, all that dog do,’ the thin man said.

‘She’s not been clearing it up?’

The woman snorted.

‘What?’ said South.

‘She’s gone, isn’t she?’ said the man. ‘Just buggered off.’

South pulled the curtains further back. Her expensive-looking Audi was still there, parked in front of the caravan.

‘Good riddance to bad rubbish. Hope she never comes back,’ said the man.

‘When?’

‘Wednesday, I reckon.’

It was Tuesday he had brought Cupidi here. ‘So they’ve been chained up outside since then?’

‘Yes. Making a right bloody racket.’

By his leg, an automatic air freshener released a puff of something sweet and sickly.

‘She’s ruddy gone, finally,’ said the woman.

‘Ding-dong, the witch is dead,’ said the man.

The woman giggled.

‘What do you mean?’ said South. ‘You think something has happened to her?’

‘You can hope though, can’t you?’

Under the caravan, one of the dogs shifted, trying to get comfortable in the cold.

‘Did anyone hear her leave?’

‘Cars coming and going all the time. Nobody pays any attention.’

‘There’s been a string of druggies turning up. They knock on our door too. We had one this morning, didn’t we? Young woman with her baby bawling her head off in the car. “Know where she’s gone? I need to see her real urgent.” Pathetic.’

South thought for a while. ‘And who’s been feeding the dogs?’

‘No one, of course. Bloody monsters. Everyone here hates them.’

‘So the dogs haven’t been fed in, what, over forty-eight hours?’

The woman sucked at her teeth. ‘Keeps them quiet though, doesn’t it?’ she said, giggling.

Back in the car, South called the RSPCA, then sat, waiting for them to arrive. Huddled together now, the dogs sat shivering in the lee of the caravan, whining quietly to themselves.

When the dogs had been collected, pelts matted with rainwater, tails between their legs, whimpering and snapping, South finally approached Judy’s caravan. He knocked on the door, then tried the handle, then called her name. Locked. From one of the other residents, he borrowed a small step ladder, climbed it, then peered into Judy’s front-room window.

The front room was empty. There was a small table lamp on, light shining through a pink fringed shade. Everything looked quiet and tidy, lace mats on the table, artificial flowers in a vase.

‘You’d know it if she was here,’ called the man in the tank top, standing at his door. ‘She’s gone. Hang out the flags, I say.’

South sat in his car for a minute, unsettled.

This week had been a succession of unexplained events. People don’t just leave their expensive car and dogs behind.

He felt heavy-headed and anxious, as though his body was reacting physically in some way to the strangeness of it all. Maybe he was just coming down with something.

Starting up the car, he rolled forward and was looking to the left for oncoming vehicles when a sudden, raucous blaring made him put on the brakes. A massive articulated lorry roared past from the right, inches from his bonnet, driver still pressing on the horn as the vehicle shot down the road away to the north. The police car rocked in the lorry’s wake.

South’s heart jumped in his chest. If he’d been a foot further forward the lorry would have smashed straight into the car.

He had been sure he’d looked; but he couldn’t have. Fumbling with the gearstick, he reversed the car back and sat in the small lane, sweat breaking through his skin. It took him another minute before he felt calm enough to drive again.

Later, on the journey home, he saw ahead of him an old black Rover 90. Normally he wouldn’t have even noticed the car. Today it looked shiny and malign. Familiar.

It was driving at 40 m.p.h. along the clearway. As he passed it, South’s hands tightened on the wheel and he felt his stomach turning somersaults, but when he looked left, all he saw was a woman of about seventy dressed in a pink lace hat, hands on the steering wheel. She turned and smiled at him.

What was wrong with him? It was just a car.