The Birdwatcher (25 page)

He knew all the roads and tracks around here better than they did. This was where he came to go birding.

It would be dark soon. It would be harder to find him then. He could use the night to try and put as much distance as possible between himself and the town.

It took him half an hour to reach a small wood where he’d once seen crossbills. It started to drizzle so he reached in his backpack and pulled out his cagoule. Why did his mother have to buy him a yellow one?

He sat with his back to a tree, sheltering from the drizzle, and realised he was still panting even though he was no longer short of breath.

FOURTEEN

He didn’t know it, but Saturday would be the last day William South worked as a policeman.

The vehicle had been uninsured; he was on shift, so the Roads Policing Officer asked him if he’d drive out with him to interview the dead girl’s parents.

It was a nice house; detached, with new fashionable wood cladding. The father was quiet and sat at the shiny, polished wood dining table, hands in his lap. The mother wept freely into tissues which she discarded into a wicker waste basket. ‘She told us she was babysitting,’ she said. ‘The policeman who called round last night to tell us she was dead said it would have been instant.’

Two lies within no distance of each other. The officer just nodded, but as he did so South caught the father’s eye. He was shocked by the pure fury he saw there; the man was struggling to control himself. The Roads Officer took what details he needed and hurried away, to leave them to their grieving.

His work done, South remembered it was Saturday and he had not done his weekly shop yet, so he pulled into the car park of a Tesco Superstore just off the M20. Inside, he drifted aimlessly, pushing his trolley, trying to remember what he needed but his brain was fogged with fatigue and horror of the previous nights. Did he have bleach?

Normally he was methodical; he went to the same supermarket every week with a list, and checked off everything as he went. The layout here was unfamiliar; he couldn’t find what he wanted. His hands shook as he reached for a packet of rice. A young woman in a denim jacket was buying ready meals with a boyfriend who kept leaning down to kiss her, and when he looked at them he couldn’t help thinking of the couple in the car. He was familiar with this; the delayed shock.

In the household goods aisle, looking for detergent, he was conscious of a woman in a plain blue dress standing next to him stretching to try and reach something on the top shelf, so he reached up and handed the box to her. It was the last box of dishwasher tablets.

‘Thanks,’ she said.

And then he looked at her for the first time. He could see the shock in her face as she saw his, her smile vanishing instantly.

It took a second to realise who it was, by which time the woman in the blue dress was already tugging her trolley full of goods away behind her and making her way towards the tills.

Gill Rayner. Or whoever she was.

The woman who had pretended to be Bob’s sister.

‘Wait,’ he shouted. A mother with an infant in the trolley looked up, startled at the loudness of his voice.

The woman who had called herself Gill Rayner paused, a panicked look in her eyes.

‘You weren’t his sister,’ he said.

She shook her head slowly, but he wasn’t sure whether she was agreeing with him or not.

‘What were you doing there? Were you his lover?’

Her eyes widened. She backed away into a throng of children who were chattering and giggling in the aisle. ‘Leave me alone,’ she said. ‘Please.’

‘What’s your name? I just want to talk.’

One of the teenagers, a boy with low-slung trousers, was laughing at something.

‘You were so upset. What did he mean to you? Please. I want to know.’

Her eyes flickered, and he thought she was about to answer, but instead she turned and started to push her trolley away from him, through the crowds packed at the tills. When he tried to follow, she broke into a run, dodging bewildered shoppers, almost tripping over the front of a mobility scooter.

South dropped his basket and followed, trying to keep an eye on her in the Saturday throng. Seeing a uniformed policeman running towards them, the shoppers parted, but by the time he reached the sliding doors at the front of the shop, he had lost sight of her.

He looked left, then right.

‘Went this way,’ shouted a heavy-looking security guard, pointing towards the right.

Without thinking, South followed him, accelerating into a sprint. He passed the security guard easily but didn’t see the woman. At one point he slipped on something shiny on the ground. And again. He realised they were packs of sliced ham lying scattered on the pavement in front of him. What were they doing there? He didn’t have time to think about it. Just past the disabled bays, a couple of startled-looking Turkish youths cowered behind a trolley shelter.

‘There,’ shouted the security guard, catching up. ‘Get ’em.’

South stopped.

‘We done nothing,’ protested the lads.

Confused, South scanned the car park again. On the opposite side, a green Volkswagen Polo was driving away fast.

‘I saw you. Empty your pockets for the copper.’

‘You saw us what?’

‘Go on, arrest them. They’re thieves.’

South was looking away at the exit down which the green car had disappeared. His police car was parked over a hundred yards away. There was no point trying to catch her now.

‘It wasn’t them I was after. Did you see a woman running? Blue dress? About forty?’

‘What you on about?’

South turned back towards the youths. ‘Never mind. What did they take?’

‘Meat. They take it to sell. I’ve had my eyes on them.’

‘You’re joking us,’ said the tallest of the pair. ‘We weren’t even in the shop.’

‘Make them turn out their pockets,’ said the security guard.

South sighed. ‘Go on then. What’s in your pockets?’

‘Can’t search us without a warrant.’

‘If I have reasonable grounds to suspect you of theft, yes, I can.’

‘Go on then,’ said the security guard, urging South on, wondering why he was hanging back.

The boys were looking out of the side of their eyes, calculating whether they could leg it or not. South sighed. Now he looked he could see the remaining packets bulging beneath their baggy khaki trousers. He would now be called to give evidence in a prosecution that wasn’t even in his district. And it was a Saturday; he wasn’t even supposed to be at work.

After the local police car had arrived to take away the young men, he finally returned to the supermarket to find his basket. For three or four minutes, he walked the aisles, unable to find it before concluding that some staff member must have picked it up and tidied it away. He would have to start again.

So he was surprised to see her trolley, still there by the shampoos. He recognised it. The box of dishwasher tablets he had handed to her was there, sitting on top of a pile of groceries.

He was still standing looking at it when the security guard came up to him, grinning. ‘Result, eh?’

‘Yes,’ he said. He pushed Gill Rayner’s trolley to the checkout and started unloading the items, one by one, onto the conveyor belt.

‘Need any help, dear?’ said the woman at the till.

He didn’t answer. He was staring at the items piling up on the counter in front of him, trying to read their significance.

She held up a bottle of Head & Shoulders. ‘Two for one on them, if you want it, love,’ she said.

He shook his head.

‘Suit yourself,’ she said huffily. It came to £138.55. He never spent that much in supermarkets usually, but he took out his credit card and handed it to her, then slowly started to put everything into plastic bags. He was holding a box containing a bottle of aftershave and staring at it when he looked back and saw the queue of shoppers behind him, glaring impatiently.

He had stopped panting now. He needed to be calm, to get everything straight in his head. Feeling the bark of the tree pressing itself into his back, he looked up at the blackness of the branches above him and tried to remember everything that had happened; everything that had led him here.

The night he had stolen the Flamenco Red paint had been a week before his father was killed.

Dad had called up to say he was working late at the garage.

‘Oh yes?’ said Mum, on the telephone, like she didn’t believe him. ‘Urgent job, is it?’

Dad had been doing that a lot recently. Billy didn’t mind; it was better when Dad was not home. But Mum had cooked a beef stew and was annoyed that he couldn’t be bothered to even come home for it. She told Billy to take a Thermos of stew down to him, with bread and marge wrapped in tinfoil.

‘If he’s there,’ said Mum. ‘If he’s not there, then . . . then he won’t want the stew, now, will he?’

Why would he not be there if he had said he was? When Billy got there, the forecourt was dark. The electric sign that said
2
?
76.5 per gal
had been switched off, but the strip light in the office still shone through the glass door. Billy pushed it. It opened.

‘Dad?’

The smell was always the same: oil, dirt, petrol and the stink of the paraffin lamp that kept the room warm in winter.

If his mum had thought his dad was lying, she was wrong. Billy could hear his dad grunting at something in the workshop. He would be in his dirty blue overalls, straining at some rusted nut under one of his big Yank cars. Billy put the Thermos on the desk and tiptoed over to the paint rack.

Shiny cans of Krylon spray-paints, all different colours. Dad had them sent over specially from America. Quietly he pulled them out, one by one, then dropped them back in. Antique Gold Metallic, Eggnog, Bright Blue Poly, Tropical Orange. When it came to the Flamenco Red he took it out of the wire rack and held it up. He squeezed the lid and it came off with a small pop, then he held his finger on the nozzle, as if ready to spray.

This was Dad’s world, all dirt and grease. On the office wall, out of sight of the till so customers couldn’t see it, was a calendar from one of the tyre suppliers. Each month was a different woman with her bosoms out.

‘God there!’ His dad was shouting, now. When he worked, he often swore, Billy wasn’t surprised. Billy could hear him panting, as if straining hard at something.

July was Suzi. Suzi had long dark hair, head slightly to one side, with her hands clasped in front of her so they made her bosoms stick out more than they would have anyway. The skin was smooth and curvaceous, and seemed to shine like it had been polished. Billy stared at the nipples and the big dark circle of skin around them and felt a dull, unfamiliar ache form in his chest. But as he leaned in to get a better view, a clattering came from the workshop, some metal falling to the concrete floor.

‘Keep still,’ said his dad.

Then a laugh.

And Billy’s eyes went wide. It was a woman’s laugh.

‘Don’t move. I’m almost there,’ his dad was saying.

And then the panting again. And a woman’s panting too.

Billy stood listening to his dad’s noise. The breathing gathered pace now.

‘Hurry up, Billy, I’m getting cramp here.’ He’d have known the voice anywhere. Mrs Creedy wasn’t even a looker. She had a squinty eye and was fat from eating too many of her own chips.

Billy leaned forward to hold the spray-can up in front of July’s bosoms, and pressed the nozzle down. Instantly a red circle obliterated her chest, paint dripping down onto the grid of black dates below.

The noise of the spray was much louder than he thought it would be.
HSSSSS
. When it stopped, the noises from the workshop had stopped, too.

His dad’s voice: ‘Who’s there?’

And he ran out of the door all the way back home, can of paint still in his hand, not even thinking to pick up the Thermos of stew from the table next to the till.

FIFTEEN

He put the shopping away. Dental floss went in the bathroom cabinet; the frozen onion rings went straight into the bin. The shampoo and the aftershave looked like they were bought for a man. He wondered what kind of man he would be. A husband, a son, or another lover? He put them in the bathroom too. Whoever she was, she didn’t live alone.