Palmer-Jones 01 - A Bird in the Hand (7 page)

“Some of the twitchers care enough about the place to want to live here.”

“We don’t want them.” He was shouting.

“What about Tom French?” George asked. “Didn’t you want him either?”

“No,” he shouted. “ I bloody didn’t. I know what you’re thinking and I don’t care.”

The man hid his face in his hands. George felt dirty. He knew that he had provoked the outburst, but he listened and registered every detail.

“You speak as if you hated him.”

“I did bloody hate him.”

George spoke very quietly. “ You didn’t hate him enough to kill him?”

The man looked at him in astonishment, but he did not question George Palmer-Jones’s right to ask. The shock of the question seemed to calm him.

“I didn’t kill him,” Cranshaw said. “ I treated him like a son when he first came to stay here. I’m not married, and he never got on very well with his family. He came to see me at my house, and asked if I could show him around the marsh. He asked if there was anything he could do to help. I was pleased. No one here has ever shared my interest. Not really. No one that I could get on with. All my friends have moved away to find work. I made an effort to include him in everything I did. Most evenings he came on to the marsh with me. I thought that he cared about it. But he brought all the others, all those twitchers who came here and laughed at me. He spoiled it for me. I hated him. But I didn’t kill him.”

“You wrote a letter about him, didn’t you, to some of the parents in the village?”

“It was my duty.”

“In the letter you said that Tom French was a drug addict. How did you know?”

“I know things about him that you would never believe.”

“What sort of things do you know about Tom French?”

But the man was silent and empty now, staring out of bleak, fearless eyes over the marsh. The sky was grey and overcast and the wind from the sea blew into the hide. It was quite cold.

“My mother will be expecting me,” he said. “I must go now.”

“I’d like to talk to you again,” George said quickly. “Where do you live?”

“In the lane behind the Anchor,” said Cranshaw automatically. “Anyone will tell you.”

George Palmer-Jones watched him walk away through the marsh. In places he was hidden by the tall reeds, so that all which could be seen was the heavy brass telescope which he carried over his shoulder.

George sat for a long time in the hide. No one disturbed him. There was no sun and no sunset, but the light seeped out of the marsh until he realized that he was staring at birds he could no longer see. Bernard Cranshaw’s vulnerability had shocked him. He knew that later he would analyze the conversation, make use of the incident, but now he felt vulnerable too, as though he had been contaminated by the other man’s weakness. He longed for Molly. The sounds of the marsh were unfriendly and disturbing. It was an effort to leave the hide.

As soon as he had clambered down the short wooden ladder to the boardwalk he heard voices. He thought that there were just two people, men, talking quite quietly. It seemed to him that the men had come from the small hide, nearer the road, and that now they were walking ahead of him towards the village. They were other birdwatchers perhaps, dedicated birdwatchers who had waited until there was too little light to see.

On impulse, as he passed the small hide, he walked in. The flaps had been shut and it was very dark. Suddenly, quite tangibly, he was back in Afghanistan, in Kabul, where young Europeans and Americans on the hippie trail to Katmandu sat in cafés no Afghan used, sat with their beads and bells and guitars, smoking cannabis. In the hide the smell of cannabis, mixed and enhanced with damp wood and creosote, was unmistakable. He stood for a moment, taking it in, and as he did so other unrelated memories of India returned, memories which evoked the same response as the experience had done, the same astonishment that a country could live, so easily with magnificence and poverty. He was perfectly sure of his identification of the smell. Rob had smoked it occasionally in the Land Rover. He supposed that twitchers had been using the hide. He was not shocked. He was, in a way, grateful.

The couple must have been walking very slowly, because he could hear them still ahead of him on the marsh. If he walked quickly he should be able to catch them before they reached the village. The use of cannabis was so widespread that it would probably add little to his investigation, if he were to find out who they were, but he was interested. Besides, he needed to hurry now, to keep warm. He nearly ran the last few hundred yards, which was a firm sandy track, but when he reached the main road there was no sign of anyone. To the right the street ran straight for over half a mile to the village. There were no lights and until it reached the Blue Anchor there were no houses. There was not even a barn or a shed where a twitcher might be sleeping rough. To the left the road curved sharply, towards the White Lodge hotel. Whoever had been smoking cannabis on the marsh had headed for the hotel.

Molly was still up when he got home but she was asleep, deeply asleep in the chair in the kitchen in front of the stove. She stirred when he touched her shoulder and drank the tea he made, but did not ask what he had been doing. Only as they were preparing for bed did she remember the phone call.

“It was a girl called Sally Johnson. She said that she was a friend of Tom’s, and she wants to talk to you.”

Every night since Tom’s death Sally had been the victim of the same nightmare. She dreamed that she was trying to run across the marsh, along one of the narrow tracks through the reed bed. It was nearly dark. She could feel the wet rushes catching against her legs. She was pushing Barnaby, not in a pram but in a small, square, wooden cart. It was a great effort. She could feel the dampness of the fog on her face and in her throat and lungs. The fog was thick, tangible, with a smell and a taste. She did not know why she was there, and only wanted to get Barnaby home as soon as she could. Slowly she became aware that she was being followed and that she was frightened. She tried to run faster, but the cart was heavy and the wooden wheels were tangled with weed and would not move round. The hunter, for this was how she thought of the person who followed her, was coming closer and was calling after her. She could not breathe. She was not sure if she were moving. The marsh and the fog seemed to be invading her body and she could not fight them off. She knew that the hunter would catch her, so she stopped to face the attacker, and stooped to lift Barnaby into her arms to comfort and protect him. But Barnaby was no longer there. Sitting in the cart like a bonfire night guy was Tom, one side of his head battered and distorted, so that he stared at her with one blank, incriminating eye. In that instant she knew that she had killed him.

She would awake, trembling. She would switch on the light, leave the safety of her bed and go to the baby’s cot as if she believed that her fear was catching and he must be troubled by it. He would be lying warm and still where she had put him to sleep. She knew that she had not killed Tom French, but at the instant of waking, in the middle of the night, the image of his body and the scent of his death were so strong that she knew, too, that in some subconscious passion she could have done it, and the dream might not be dream, but memory.

The first letter had arrived the morning that Tom died. It was in a plain brown envelope with a second-class stamp and an indistinct date and place mark. Written in childish capitals it said only: “You are a whore.”

It had worried her, that someone should dislike her so much to go to all that trouble, but she had thought that it had been sent by someone in the village. She was an unmarried mother and her boyfriend often stayed the night. She knew that her morals were the subject of discussion. And at that time she did not know that Tom had died.

The second letter was delivered by hand nine days later, while she was out at the shop, late in the afternoon. In the same writing it said: “Nasty things happen to whores like you.”

By then she knew that Tom was dead. She sat at her kitchen table, staring at the letter, while Barnaby emptied the contents of her shopping bag on to the floor. Panic made her thinking slow and confused. Looking back she remembered the sequence of her thoughts like a slow-motion film. She should phone the police … Then into her mind came the faces of the policemen who had called a week before to interview her. In their eyes had been judgement and suspicion. Perhaps they would agree with the sentiment of the letters. She should phone Tom … Then there was the sudden sick realization that Tom was dead. She would phone Jenny Kenning … That had brought some relief.

She had looked away from the letter—watched detached, unable to stop him as Barnaby tipped a bag of sugar on to the floor—stepped over the mess to the phone. A friendly, polite voice on the other end of the line said that Miss Kenning was not expected back that afternoon and then would be unavailable. She would be interviewing in the office the following morning and would be at a team meeting in the afternoon. But if it was urgent, perhaps someone else could help? Sally put the phone down without replying.

In the kitchen Barnaby was earnestly tipping flour on to the sugar and looked at his mother with such pride in his creation that she laughed. She cleaned him up and fed him and survived the evening by inventing new games to entertain him. For the first time since he was a very small baby, that night she took him to bed with her. It did not stop her dreaming. As she ran across the marsh the hunter called after her: “Whore! Whore!”

She had woken, still tense and tired, with the same feeling of guilt which always followed the dream. Barnaby was still asleep, curled up against her. The sun came through the bedroom window and made the baby’s skin warm, peach-coloured. It reassured her to feel him there and she lay back, trying to rest before he woke. She listened to the early-morning sounds of birds in the garden and of cows being led from a nearby field to be milked. She and Tom had never enjoyed this early-morning time together. If he had been with her he had been restless. Dawn was the best time for bird watching.

She thought of Barnaby’s father. She could remember all that without bitterness now, the memories were a pleasant dream, an indulgence. It was sad that it had all ended so messily. When Barnaby was born things had started to go wrong. She was still convinced that it was not his birth which had caused her depression, but the sense that as her pregnancy ended, so did all contact with the man she had loved. She did not know what had made her decide to kill herself. She knew that she would not do it again. She could not remember taking the overdose. She was never sure if that forgetfulness had been caused by the drugs she had been given in the hospital. There had been so many drugs. Despite her attempts to conjure pleasant and restful memories her thoughts returned to the hospital. She had hated it. It was ugly, a collection of bleak Nissen huts, grey-painted, which only emphasized the feeling of imprisonment. Tom had brought colour with him at visiting time: flowers, posters which she hung on the wall above her bed, the wool which she had knitted into the jumper he was wearing at the time of his death. She owed Tom so much, and wasn’t that just what had made her resent him?

She got out of bed and walked to the open window. The bare floor was cold to her feet. It was a sunny, gusty day, an early-spring sort of day, a day to be busy. Her movement had disturbed Barnaby. He stirred and woke. When he saw her he smiled. She carried him to the window and stood with him, looking out. She suddenly wanted to get out, to get away from the cottage and from Fenquay. She felt trapped in the cottage by the guilt which was the cause and the result of her dream, and knew that if she were to lead a normal life she would have to go out now while the impulse was still strong.

She dressed herself and Barnaby and they had a hurried picnic breakfast as she gathered together spare nappies, bib, orange juice, so that they could stay out all day. She hurried because she wanted to catch the bus to Skeffingham, and her only anxiety was that they would miss it. The postman was late. The mail arrived just as she was pulling the baby into his outdoor clothes. There was a plain brown envelope, with her name and address written in scrawled capitals. She left it on the mat where it was, carefully stepping over it, to open the door and carry Barnaby outside.

It was market day in Skeffingham and the bus was crowded. She felt very safe among the country women with their big, motherly bodies and their talk of the farm, children and home. She did not mind the stares and the whispered explanations from one woman to another behind her, that she was the girlfriend of that birdwatcher from Rushy that “got himself killed.” Surely none of these women would send threatening letters in plain brown envelopes. The bus conductor had winked at her, and carried Barnaby’s pushchair on and off the bus. She felt very safe and at home.

In Skeffingham the stalls spilled out from the market hall into the wide streets. The houses were tall, red-bricked and stately. The town was crowded. Friends from different parts of the county met and talked, and the purchase of vegetables, cloth, a cake, was less important than the gossip. Some of the stalls had been taken over by incomers, young people who sold home-made things—jewellery, basketwork, leatherwork, clothes. At first Sally was suspicious of anyone who looked at her, or jostled into her, or bent to talk to Barnaby. But the market was full of pretty things. It was a kaleidoscope of colour, and her attention was caught by the bright things and she was cheered by the sense of celebration. She spoiled herself and bought an Indian silk scarf, and a pair of quilted dungarees for the baby. With a wonderful and wicked sense of extravagance, she decided to treat herself to coffee.

When Ella saw her she was sitting in the cramped tea shop in the High Street, feeding Barnaby illicit chocolate buttons to keep him quiet while she ate a toasted tea cake. So fortified, Sally felt able to face the older woman. Even through the window she could tell that Ella was preparing a performance. As she swept into the shop towards her, Sally prepared herself to be a good audience. Ella was genuinely upset by Tom’s death—before starting work at the White Lodge he had spent a lot of time in the Windmill, and had been one of her favourites—but she expressed her grief through a flamboyant mix of compassion and curiosity which in anyone else would have been offensive. She reminded Sally, loudly, of all Tom’s virtues, then wiped her eyes at the thought that Barnaby would be deprived of such a wonderful father figure. In this there was an element of question which Sally refused to answer. At last the performance was over and Ella felt able to sit with Sally, slip off her shoes, drink tea and pass on all the news and gossip relevant to Tom’s death.