The Birdwatcher (39 page)

When he’d gone to stand outside in the corridor, South took his chair by the boy’s bed and said, ‘You did absolutely the right thing.’

‘He killed Mum.’

‘I know. I’m sorry,’ said South. ‘She was a good woman.’ Moving his jaw to talk was painful. The consultant had said they were going to operate in a couple of hours.

‘Putting up with all his shit for all those years. I suppose, you know, I’m an orphan now,’ he said.

South nodded. ‘Is your leg going to be OK?’

‘They said they think so. They arrested me. I’ve been charged with murder.’

‘They have to do it. You’ll be OK. You did what you had to. You were incredible,’ he said.

‘I killed him.’

‘I gave them a statement last night. I’ll back you up. As a matter of fact I came to thank you. You know you saved my life?’

‘I thought he’d killed you too.’

‘The doctors say I’ll be fine. Just not as good-looking.’

Cameron looked away. ‘I keep going over it in my head,’ he said.

‘Me too. That’s what happens. You’ll try and think of ways in which it might have happened differently. You could spend your whole life doing it. But you have to come to terms with it in your own way. Find someone you can talk to about it. I never did.’

The boy was frail, thought South, but that was no surprise, given what he had been through. But he was a handsome boy; he had his mother’s face.

‘That thing you said. Was it true? You said you’d killed your own father,’ asked Cameron.

‘Yes. I did.’

‘Did you go to prison for it?’

‘No. I didn’t. They never found out,’ he said.

‘Oh. Was it supposed to be a secret?’ He coloured. The police would have questioned him already, thought South.

‘Not any more.’ South smiled at him. ‘No harm done.’

‘Will I go to prison?’

‘No. You won’t. I promise,’ said South.

When he walked back out into the shiny, polished hospital corridor, Alex Cupidi was there waiting for him, hair a mess and make-up rushed. He was pleased to see her. She was wearing the same bad linen suit as she had done the first time he had met her. There was another uniformed constable standing awkwardly next to her. He looked embarrassed to be there.

‘I went to look for you, but they said you were here,’ she said. ‘Then I saw you two were talking and thought I should leave you alone till you’d finished.’

‘Thank you. You come for me, then?’

‘I’m afraid so,’ she said quietly.

They stood in the busy hospital corridor, a couple of feet from the bustle of the nurses’ station.

She sighed. ‘I don’t like doing this, William.’

‘Just do it, OK? It’s your job.’

She closed her eyes and then opened them again. ‘William South. I am arresting you for the murder of your father, William “Billy” McGowan on 11 July 1978. You don’t have to say anything but it may harm your defence if you do not mention, when questioned, something which you rely on in court.’ She took a deep breath. ‘Sorry. I’m crying now. I didn’t mean to.’

‘Anything you do say can be given in evidence,’ he prompted.

‘Yep,’ she said. ‘That.’

‘Did the boy say?’

She nodded. ‘But I had my suspicions before. I just kept them to myself.’

It all made sense. ‘Right. That’s why you were being such an arse to me?’

‘Yes. I had to keep my distance. If I found out for sure . . .’

Because if she was right, she should have arrested him then. Or if the force had found out she’d known all along, she could have been chucked out too.

‘You’re a good copper. A good man. And I’m sure you had reasons.’

‘How?’

‘Because when you said you thought that Donald Fraser didn’t do it, I took a good long look at the files from PSNI. Given what was happening back then I thought they’d be a right mess, but they weren’t. There was a sergeant there who had put together the evidence about the gun that killed your father. His notebooks were in there. Nobody had ever even bothered looking at them, as far as I could see, I suppose because the case against Fraser was open and shut. But it was all there. Within a couple of days of the murder he had worked out that the gun was your father’s. It was never Donald Fraser’s. But then all of a sudden the gun’s at Fraser’s flat. I couldn’t work it out.’

‘The sergeant planted the gun on Donny,’ said South. ‘I suppose he was going to fix his notes later, but he never had the chance. He was killed.’

‘Why?’

‘Long story. How did you guess it was me?’

‘So if it wasn’t Fraser, it had to be somebody in your house. You or your mum. So I assumed your mother. And you were protecting her.’

‘That’s what Sergeant Ferguson thought too.’

‘But you wanted so badly for me to know why you thought Fraser was innocent, why he wasn’t the kind of man who would have killed Rayner. It was going round in my head. Why didn’t you find some way of telling me that you knew for sure Fraser hadn’t killed your father? Because your mother is dead. No harm would come to her. So I began to wonder if it was the other person who could have got hold of that gun.’

‘That’s right. You worked it out.’

‘I’m so sorry,’ she said.

‘I’m glad, really,’ he said. They walked down the corridor and waited for the lift.

The lift took a long time to arrive. An elderly woman lying on a trolley was there with them, the hospital porter gently stroking her hand as they waited for the doors to open.

‘You know, I think I always knew you’d figure it out,’ South said. ‘Moment I saw you, that first day.’

‘Really?’ she said.

The lift doors opened and they waited for the trolley to be pushed into the lift before they too stepped inside.

They caught the ferry to Stranraer. Billy had never been on a ship before. The air was full of new smells: diesel fumes, fresh paint and salt. As they left the loch and entered open water the boat started to judder and roll, and to Billy, it felt like it was shaking the whole old world away.

‘Excited?’ she said.

‘Can I go outside?’

He found a door and when he opened it, wind flattened his cheeks. It was brutal. Out on the deck, he tried to spot gulls but it was too rough. He watched the low green hills disappear into the gloom and felt exhilaration and fear; he had never been anywhere different. Would they talk in hard accents and eat strange food? Where would he go to school? He would miss his friends; some of them, at least. He had known them all his life. How did you go about making new ones? He had no idea. What kinds of birds would there be? Everything was being ripped away.

‘Hungry?’ His mum was at the door to the deck. Others were looking pale and miserable; she looked great.

‘Starving now,’ she said. ‘Fancy egg and chips?’

The cafeteria was on the next deck down; they sat at a table of lorry drivers who crowded round her, offering to buy drinks.

‘Guinness? Hate the stuff,’ she said.

‘Bloody hell, girl. Don’t think they sell Babycham on this boat.’ And they were all laughing and she was laughing with them.

‘Don’t get him another Coke, lads,’ she was saying. ‘He’s had two already. All his teeth will turn black.’

They were loud, friendly men who pulled out battered black-and-whites of their own sons and daughters and waited as his mum complimented each one for having such handsome and good-looking children, even though some of them weren’t.

By the time they arrived at Stranraer she had accepted a lift in a lorry from an old man with naked women tattooed on his arms who was going to Birmingham. ‘In one go? That’s miles.’

‘Don’t worry about him. He’s got them pills that make him stay up all night.’

‘Pills for his VD most like,’ joked a younger man with long hair and sideboards.

‘Cheeky fuck.’

By the time Billy went out on deck again, they were already sailing down another loch, the water calm again.

They sat side by side in the cab of the big blue Bedford lorry, high above the other vehicles, Billy passing the driver lit cigarettes whenever he asked for them. He had wanted to sit by the window but his mum said he had to sit in the middle.

‘Why?’

‘Just do it,’ she’d said. ‘OK?’

They drove into the night, on winding roads. To be up here, above all the cars, felt special, like they were arriving in this new country in style. Lights of towns and cities appeared in front of them; they passed closed shops with strange names, their windows still bright, and pubs, doors wide open so you could see the men all packed inside. Everything looked fresh and different; the street signs seemed bigger, the roads wider.

Around midnight they stopped in an all-night cafe by a dark roadside. Where he was from, nothing stayed open all night.

The driver drank two cups of coffee and wrapped a meat pie in tissue, then they were off again. Billy fell asleep in Scotland and woke in England.

In Birmingham, they spent two nights in a bed-and-breakfast run by a black woman. Billy had never seen anyone black close to before and was fascinated. He helped her with the washing-up while his mother dried.

‘Such a polite, handsome young man,’ the woman said.

‘Are we going to live here?’ he asked, when the landlady went to finish clearing the tables in the front room.

‘I don’t know. What do you think?’

‘What do I think?’

‘Why not?’ she asked.

‘I don’t know neither,’ he said, thinking the fact that she was even asking him showed how lost they were. She had no idea what would become of them. All he wanted was for her to know what would happen next, and she didn’t.

‘What about London?’

‘London?’

‘We’re the lucky ones, you and me, Billy. We are free of it all. We can go anywhere. I’ll have to earn some money of course. Find a job.’

‘Get a job? You?’

‘What did you think I was going to do?’

He thought about how Donny would be telling the police how he didn’t do it.

In a Wimpy in London they met a woman who wore a feather boa and who had a dachshund called Nathaniel. She laughed at everything Mum said and looked shocked when Mum admitted they didn’t have anywhere to stay yet.

‘Oh crikey. I have a whole empty flat in my house. Why don’t you come and stay for a couple of days?’

‘Oh no. I wouldn’t like to impose,’ Mum said. Billy was relieved, because he didn’t like the woman’s loud voice, and from under the table, the dachshund was growling at him.

‘Quiet, Nathaniel,’ the woman said. As she yanked on the dog’s lead, he noticed how dirty the woman’s fingernails were. ‘It wouldn’t be any trouble at all. It would be fun, wouldn’t it, Nathaniel, some company? You finish your dinner and I’ll just put the bags in the boot of my car. I’m parked just outside.’

‘You’re so kind. I really hadn’t expected the English to be so kind.’

‘Oh no. We’re a terrible lot, mostly.’ The woman laughed.

‘You help her with the bags, now Billy,’ said Mum.

‘No. You finish your meal, son. It’s not a problem. I’ll be back in one minute.’

Billy wiped the remains of the egg up with his last chip and the waitress took the plate away.

Ten minutes passed.

‘Did she mean for us to meet her outside?’ Mum wondered.

When she went to the counter to pay, she found that the woman had not paid for her meal; it had been added on to their bill.

‘No problem at all,’ said Mum.

Outside, they looked to the left and right but they couldn’t see her, or her dog. Mum walked a little way up the street, standing on her toes to look past the crowd, then returned and did the same in the opposite direction. They peered into all the parked cars but after an hour Mum said, ‘You know, I think she robbed us.’

Billy had been thinking this for a while.

‘All your drawings, Billy,’ Mum said sadly.

‘They weren’t very good,’ answered Billy.