The Birdwatcher (29 page)

It was Thursday morning when the radio he had left on for company jolted him awake. He blinked. It took him a second to realise he was in Bob’s chair again. Something about the Dover lifeboat and a body. By the time his eyes were fully open, to see the first light bleeding red at the edge of the horizon, the presenter had moved on to the weather forecast.

He was at Dover by 8.30, unshaven. There were four police cars parked behind the lifeboat station on a harbour arm, just past a pontoon of yachts.

South parked a little way off, got out of his Micra. To the sound of rigging tinking on the swaying aluminium masts, he jogged towards the lifeboat station. At the best of times, there was nothing pretty about Dover; the port was huge, grey and functional. The lifeboat station sat in the middle, a small pitched-roof building dwarfed by the white liners that lay along the two cruise terminal quays on the far side of the south docks.

The orange lifeboat was moored alongside the station. The craft was an ungainly one, designed with a high prow at the front and a low sheer-line to the rear, to make it easier for the crew to pull bodies out of the water, thought South. And right now they were heaving the body-bag off the back. Six crew members, all brightly dressed in yellow drysuits and fluorescent lifejackets, and a single black bag, three handles on each side.

They laid the black shape on the jetty; the forensics team were there again with the white van.

Cupidi was talking on her phone. South waved at her. She frowned, shook her head, turned her back.

South approached the huddle of forensics officers and lifeboat crew as they were lifting the bag onto a gurney, ready to slide it into the van.

‘Why didn’t you call me?’ said South.

Cupidi was standing with her arms crossed. ‘Why are you here? This is nothing to do with you,’ she said. There was a frostiness in her voice he had never heard before.

‘I heard about it on the radio.’

‘You’re completely out of order, Sergeant,’ she said. ‘Even if you weren’t off sick, you’re a neighbourhood policeman. This is not your responsibility. You need to leave.’ This coldness was new; only last weekend, he had been looking after her daughter.

‘What’s the problem, Alex?’

‘This is a crime scene. You are not a serving officer right now.’

‘And just when did you become such a stickler for the rules?’ he said. ‘I’m here . . . so I might as well look.’

‘You shouldn’t be.’

‘What’s wrong? Something’s happened.’

She didn’t meet his eye. ‘I’m sorry, William. This is a serious development. The DI will be here any second. Please go.’

Herring gulls swooped over the lifeboat; the regular beat of dull metal travelled across the water from docks where coasters were being unloaded. He stood his ground, looking at the bag they were lifting out of the gurney. ‘Man or woman?’ asked South.

‘Woman,’ said one of the crew, a tall bearded man with long curly hair. Cupidi glanced at him.

‘Young? Old?’ she said.

‘Hard to tell.’

‘Decomposed?’

‘No. Just all wrapped up in wire.’

‘Chicken wire,’ said another.

‘A trawler pulled her up in the nets just a mile out,’ one of the men said. ‘Called us out.’

‘Beam trawler,’ said the bearded man. ‘So she must have been close to the bottom.’

‘What do you mean?’ said South.

‘When we pick bodies up they’re always on top of the water. Swimmers, suicides. Beam trawlers scratch their way along the bottom. Complete fluke.’

Cupidi approached the long dark bag.

‘Can we open it?’ she asked.

The pathologist was a young woman whose pink lipstick made her look too feminine for the kind of work she did. ‘Do you think you know who she might be?’ she asked.

‘Maybe,’ said South.

‘Though I doubt you’d be able to recognise her. Shall I?’ The pathologist directed the question at Cupidi.

Cupidi rolled her eyes. ‘I suppose it’s possible one of us might know who she is.’

‘I want to see,’ said South. The young woman shrugged, leaned forward and unzipped the top of the bag, then rolled down the black plastic.

The body had been wrapped in wire. There were stones too, as if they had been added when the body was encased to help weigh it down.

‘Shingle,’ said Cupidi.

South nodded. The corpse was naked; the skin the yellow of marzipan. She’s fat enough to be Judy Farouk, South thought; but it was hard to tell. The body was bloating, pushing at the criss-crosses of wire that held it in.

‘What happened to her face?’ he asked.

‘Most of it’s been eaten away already,’ she said. ‘If it was on the bottom, sea lice and crabs will do that. Is it someone you’re looking for?’

He stared at the pale shape of nibbled flesh beneath the wire. There were dark holes where her eyes had been. He had seen too many dead people already these last few days. ‘It could be,’ he said.

‘Now get lost,’ said Cupidi. ‘Don’t call me. Stay away.’

‘Look. If it’s Judy Farouk, I’m right. We should be doing something.’

‘Fuck off, William. OK? Go home. Don’t do anything.’

‘What’s got into you?’

‘Nothing. Look at some birds. Don’t call me. Don’t. OK? Please.’

Even the lifeboatmen looked shocked at the sudden anger in her voice. South walked back to the car, hurt and confused. When he passed the turning north, towards the Army Cadet Force hall where he’d stopped, he U-turned and drove back towards it. He parked at the gates facing the hall and turned off the engine hoping for thoughts to form, but they didn’t.

He reached in his jacket and pulled out the book of poetry.

I love you as certain dark things are to be loved,

in secret, between the shadow and the soul.

He looked for meaning but couldn’t find any. But when he closed the book and threw it onto the seat next to him, he found it. He saw a sticker with the name of the bookshop and the price: £10.99.

‘Have you seen it?’

‘What?’

‘Superb.’

‘Disgustin’.’

The morning of the 11th of July on the way to school, it was there for all to see. In big red letters next to ‘NO POPE HERE’.

‘Oh sweet fuck,’ said Billy.

The 12th and the days before it were always mad around these parts. Remember the Boyne. There would be fighting and marching and protests. But nothing like this. All the boys around him, swinging satchels, were thinking it was the most outrageous, most shocking thing they’d ever seen.

Even the timing could not have been more calculated to insult. To do something like this at the very height of marching season.

Just three words, but everything about it was brilliant: ‘LUCKY BLOODY POPE’. Unlike the stodgy letters his father inscribed all those years ago, which had been tidied and bodged over the years, this was beautiful. It was proper graffiti, all angles, swoops and swirls, like it was by some cool Bronx boy, not a lad from some shitty estate in Armagh. They had never seen anything like it.

‘Surprise me if someone’s not going to get bloody ’capped for that,’ said someone. Billy looked round and saw Wally, the eldest of the Creedy children. ‘Fair enough,’ said the Creedy boy. ‘I mean. You can’t go round sayin’ things like that, can you? It’s a disgrace.’ He peered at Billy. ‘You OK? You look like you just sicked something up.’

‘Nothin’. Leave us alone.’

‘Who d’ye think it was? They’ll be fucken creamed.’

‘Fuck off, Creedy.’

And he walked down the hill past the graffiti, feeling sick to his stomach. It wasn’t Stampy’s fault. He wasn’t to know that Billy had filched the paint off his own father.

EIGHTEEN

Harbour Books was on a one-way street next to a shoe shop, its windows full of birthday cards and local history. It was Friday; his week off work was drifting away from him, and nothing was any clearer. South held out the book of poetry.

‘We don’t take second-hand books,’ the woman on the till said. She was middle-aged, dressed in arty pinks and oranges.

‘Do you remember selling this?’ he asked.

The woman wore glasses on a silver chain that swayed as she shook her head. ‘I’ve only been here a couple of weeks,’ she said.

‘Would anyone else know?’

‘Is it important?’ She lowered her spectacles and peered at South.

‘Very,’ he said. He produced his warrant card from his wallet and showed it to her, though he had no right to.

She peered at the card, as if taking in all the details on it, then said, ‘I could ask the owner, I suppose, but it’s unlikely he’d remember.’

‘Never mind.’ South looked around him. Most of the small bookshops in the area had closed in recent years. This was one of the few that had survived, but it seemed to have been a wasted journey. Out of habit, he walked towards the Natural History section for anything that he didn’t already have, pulling out a book about British butterflies.

The woman was still talking to him. ‘We don’t really do much in the way of poetry. It’s so hard to sell; no one’s that interested. Certainly not Neruda. I’m wondering if it was a special order. Unlikely I suppose, these days. People just buy everything online, don’t they?’

He turned to her. ‘Do you keep a record?’

She stood up and bent over to open a drawer at the bottom of her desk and pulled out a blue hardback ledger of some kind. ‘If it was an order, it would have been in here, I think.’

He put the book back onto the shelf. She turned past lists of handwritten entries. ‘There,’ she smiled. ‘I was right, after all. Would that be it? February this year.’

February. Valentine’s day. ‘What name?’

‘Gail.’

Gill. Gail. Similar at least. He was sure. It was her. ‘What about the last name?’

‘No. She paid for the item in advance apparently. All she left is a contact number. I don’t suppose I should give that out, should I?’

‘This is important. It’s a murder investigation,’ he said, though he had no right to say it.

‘Ooh,’ she said, and without asking any more, she turned the ledger around and showed him the telephone number. It was a mobile. He wrote it in his notebook.

‘Do let me know if you catch him,’ said the woman. ‘Or her, of course,’ as if this was some game she had been invited to play. She waved at him as he left.

Outside, he pulled out his phone and dialled the number. It rang out, unanswered.

With nothing else to do, he wandered the high street, then went and sat in an empty tea shop for a while, wondering what he should do with the number. He tried calling it again but still no one picked up. He texted Cupidi: ‘
I think I have found Bob’s girlfriend’s number.
’

He ordered walnut cake because it was half-price and waited for her answer. On the opposite side of the road, on a boarded-up shop, someone had tagged the word ‘KILLJO’. He wondered who Jo was. And then he realised the vandal had just run out of paint or been disturbed before they’d finished.

A woman PSCO came into the shop for a can of Coke and glanced round. ‘Sergeant South?’ she said. ‘What are you doing skiving here?’

‘I’m on sick leave.’

‘Oh yeah?’ she winked at him. ‘Proper poorly.’

The phone vibrated in his pocket. He pulled it out and read the message: ‘
Don’t contact me again.
’

He blinked, stung.

‘I won’t tell if you won’t,’ said the PSCO.

He ignored her. When she’d gone, he walked out of the shop and stared at the graffiti on the opposite side of the road. The paint was red.

He must have been standing there a while before a small woman with a huge double buggy said angrily, ‘Excuse me. I’m trying to get past.’

He watched the white van through his binoculars. Lit by the low afternoon sun, it slowed, then sped up, then slowed again. Side on, he couldn’t read the registration, but he opened a notebook and noted the time: ‘
Fri.
4.28 p.m
.’