The Birdwatcher (2 page)

He remembered. Bob had said his sister was coming to visit. She arrived there once a fortnight; it was an arrangement the two of them had.

‘God. I’m sorry. Are you going to be OK to do this? I mean, if he was a friend . . .?’

‘I shouldn’t be involved,’ he said.

‘But you are, though, aren’t you?’

The flats on their right-hand side gave way to council houses, then to semis and bungalows and caravan parks, the flashing blue light reflecting off their windows. The further they travelled, the more open the land became.

On the left, occasional gaps in the breakwater gave glimpses of shingle running down to the sea. The traffic thinned and Cupidi gunned the engine. Overtaking, she flashed her lights at an oncoming car.

‘You actually like it here?’ she asked.

‘I’ve lived here almost all my life,’ he said.

‘Not that there’s anything wrong with that.’

‘But what?’

She was concentrating on the road ahead. ‘But nothing. I just can’t imagine it, really. It’s very . . . flat, isn’t it?’

They were passing through the marshland, its grass burnt brown by the wind. ‘So why did you move here?’

‘Oh, you know. Just fancied a change,’ she said, but a little too lightly, he thought.

‘Slow down,’ he said. ‘The turning’s any minute.’ He shifted in the seat. Something was poking into his behind. ‘Left,’ he said.

The thinner road was pitted. At the shoreline, loose stones crackled under the tyres. Flat land to the north; flat sea to the south. Weather-beaten houses with rotting windows and satellite dishes dribbling rust-marks down the paintwork. An oversize purple-and-yellow UKIP flag flapping in the wind.

‘Must be bitter in winter,’ she said.

‘Bitter all year round.’ It was a wide low headland extending south from the marshes, exposed to winds from every quarter.

As they drove towards the point, South noticed some people sitting round a fire on the shingle.

‘Go slowly,’ he said to DS Cupidi.

‘Why?’

South looked out of the passenger window. The low light was behind them and they were too far away to see their faces clearly; he didn’t think he recognised any of them, anyway. Fires on the shingle were always a risk. The flints exploded sometimes in the heat, shooting hot stone splinters out at the drunks.

‘Rough sleepers?’ she said.

‘They come down here, break into the old fishing huts and burn the wood. They haven’t been around for a while though,’ he said. The vagrants were huddled close to the fire, trying to warm themselves in its dying heat.

‘Can’t stop now,’ said Cupidi. South pulled his notebook from his vest and wrote ‘
3 men, 2 women?
’, then replaced the elastic band around it and put it back in his pocket.

They were nearing the end of the promontory. The road veered suddenly to the right, away from the sea.

‘Now left,’ he said, and she turned again.

‘God, it’s bleak.’

‘It’s how we like it.’

A track led away from the main road. DS Cupidi looked ahead, at the massive buildings in front of her. ‘Jesus. What the hell is that?’

‘Nuclear power station,’ said South.

‘Wow. I mean . . . I didn’t realise it was here.’

Behind the black tower of the old lighthouse, the metal and concrete blocks that surrounded the two reactors rose, unnaturally massive in the flat land. These colossal shapes were surrounded by rows of tall razor-wire fences. As Cupidi and South approached, the buildings seemed to grow still larger. Their presence made this landscape even more Martian. To their north, lines of pylons marched inland across the wide shingle beds.

‘Aren’t you worried it’ll blow up?’

This was where he had lived since he was fourteen. A freakish, three-mile promontory of loose stones built by the English Channel’s counter-currents.

The single track road led to Bob Rayner’s house and, beyond, to the Coastguard Cottages. Under the looming geometry of the power station, small shacks were dotted around untidily, as if they’d dropped accidentally from the back of a lorry. In recent years, the millionaires had arrived. Some huts had been rebuilt as luxury houses, with big glass doors and shiny flues. Others still looked like they were made from scraps pilfered from a tip.

‘People live in those?’ said DS Cupidi.

‘Why not?’

South pointed to the row of houses, an oddly conventional-looking terrace a little further away from the reactors. ‘My house is over there,’ he said.

The car slowed. A dog was lying in the road. Alex Cupidi honked the horn at it. The dog got up slowly and sauntered off into the clumps of mint-green vegetation.

William South felt something vibrate as they bumped over the potholed road. His phone? But when he pulled it out of his pocket, the screen was blank; no one had called or texted. He was just putting it back when DS Cupidi said, ‘That must be the place, then.’

He looked and saw Bob Rayner’s bungalow. A small wooden construction, with two small gables, like a letter M, facing the track. A couple of chimneys stuck out of a tiled roof. The wood had been painted recently in red preservative, but it was already starting to flake. It sat on its own on the shingle, sea-kale and thin grass struggling to take hold around it. Like most of the shacks here, it would have been built originally almost a century ago as a poor man’s getaway, long before the nuclear power station had arrived.

Today, there were police cars and vans parked outside the small building. Half a dozen, crammed on every available piece of the narrow track.

‘Shit,’ he said, quietly.

Bob; his friend.

‘Are you going to be all right?’ said Cupidi, peering at him as she pulled up the handbrake. Not sure if he was, he looked away towards the sea, avoiding her gaze.

A memory. Police cars outside the house . . .

He was thirteen years old, late for his tea and running hard up the hill. He should have been home half an hour ago. Usually his mum wouldn’t have been bothered, but after everything that had happened, she’d have been going mental.

It was all Miss McCrocodile’s fault. She had spotted him lurking in the Spar and been all over him. ‘Ye poor wee snipe, Billy McGowan. The people who did this terrible thing will not escape the wrath of the Lord. For God shall bring every secret thing into judgement, whether it be good, or whether it be evil.’

She bought him a packet of Smith’s Crisps, at least.

Now he ran, past the hum of the electricity substation, past the playground where the climbing frame there had been recently painted in red, white and blue (and not by the council either), past the bored squaddies on the checkpoint, rifles pointed towards the tarmac, and finally on to the estate: NO POPE HERE, touched up only a few days earlier. The black ring on the grass of the field where the bonfire had been.

The McGowans’ house was at the top, where the town ends and the fields begin.

When he reached the start of the cul-de-sac, he stopped dead, panting.

There were two police cars outside his house. One of those big new Ford Granada Mk IIs with the orange stripe down the side, and an old Cortina that had seen better days. They were back again. He ducked behind the Creedys’ chip van.

He was getting his breath back now. But he stayed there, peeking out from behind the chipper, waiting for the police cars to drive off.

He started shivering, even though it was summer. He closed his eyes tightly, wishing he had never even existed.

He should just kill himself now. They must have known. He was in such trouble.

TWO

The boxes of blue paper overshoes and latex gloves sat by Bob’s shiny white fibreglass fishing dinghy. It was a good boat, a 16-foot Orkney, light enough to launch off the beach; South had helped him buy it and showed him how to use it. South dug his nails into the palm of his hand.

Cupidi didn’t look any keener about getting out of the car. She chewed the inside of her cheek. ‘Right then,’ she said eventually. ‘Here we go.’ But instead of reaching for a handle, she stretched across him for a packet of cigarettes.

‘You done a lot of this?’ asked South.

‘Quite a bit,’ said Cupidi. ‘It’s what I did in London. You?’

‘Not really. Never, in fact. Not like this, anyway.’

‘Really?’

South opened his door first, and as he did so, something fell onto the tarmac. All through the car journey he had been sitting on a mobile phone, he realised. He musn’t have seen it when he got in. It was pink and decorated in nail-varnish hearts and diamanté stickers. That’s what must have vibrated. He reached down, picked it up and held it out to DS Cupidi who was standing by the car, trying to light her cigarette.

‘Christ,’ she said.

‘Is this yours?’ he asked.

‘My daughter’s. She must have bloody left it behind.’ Cupidi’s eyes flickered.

‘In the car?’

The detective sergeant looked away. Was she blushing? ‘I know what you’re thinking,’ she was saying. ‘Personal use of a police car. It was an emergency. I worked late last night so took the car home. Then we were late this morning and I didn’t have time to go and swap the car for mine. She was going to be late for school. It’s her first week. In a new town. New school. I’ve only ever done it once. Cross my heart.’

‘I didn’t say anything,’ said South, holding his palms up.

‘I think she leaves it behind on purpose.’

‘Why would she do that?’ asked South.

‘You not got kids, William?’

‘No.’ He shook his head and handed the mobile to her. She put it in her handbag. ‘Right,’ she said. ‘Let’s get started.’

A constable South knew was keeping the site secure, standing just outside the cordon of blue tape, rubbing his gloves together to keep himself warm. Standing next to him, a couple of beach fishermen were chatting with him, rods in hand. One had a damp terrier circling around his feet. People always wanted to find out what had happened. It was understandable. The men tutted, looked concerned, tried to peer into the open front door of the house.

‘Shall I wait out here?’ South asked.

‘Have you ever been inside Mr Rayner’s house? Do you know your way around it?’ Cupidi said.

South nodded. He’d been here many times.

‘Would you come in with me, then?’ She stubbed out her half-smoked cigarette by the car. ‘I want your eyes.’

Through the windows, South could see silhouetted men at work inside the dead man’s house.

‘Hi, Bill,’ called the copper at the perimeter.

‘Hi, Jigger. You been in?’ asked South. The constable’s first name was James, but no one called him that.

The copper nodded. ‘I was the first responder. Been here all morning, waiting for you lot.’

‘What’s it like?’

The constable shook his head. ‘Fuckin’ horrendous. Go see for yourself.’

‘Is it Bob Rayner? Definitely?’

‘Yep. That’s what she said, the woman who called us.’

‘Was she still here when you arrived?’ asked Cupidi.

‘Yes. She’s at Ashford now. For the DNA and stuff.’

They would need to compare her traces to any others they found in the house, thought South. ‘Was she OK?’ South asked.

Jigger exhaled loudly. ‘Not exactly. Stands to reason. When we found him in the box, she just ran out the house screaming.’

‘The box?’

‘Where they’d hidden his body. She was halfway to the beach, wailing like a wounded animal before I caught up with her, poor cow.’

Cupidi chewed her lip. ‘What did they use?’

‘Blunt instrument, they’re saying.’

‘Any idea why?’ she said.

‘Don’t ask me.’

‘I am asking you,’ said Cupidi. ‘You were first on the scene.’

The copper looked stung. ‘B and E, isn’t it, I reckon.’

Breaking and entering. Cupidi nodded. She was zipping up a white coverall. ‘It’s what we’re all wearing this year,’ she said. ‘Get yours on, William.’