The Birdwatcher (41 page)

But Zoë will be here, he thinks. Eddie’s girlfriend and her will get on fine. She will watch the birds for him, she says. That is good.

The house on the beach will stay locked up. They will keep it ready for him. It will be here for when he comes back.

Acknowledgements

Firstly, I must thank many people from the UK’s extraordinary birding community who freely offered their advice. The exceptional Anne Cleeves kindly put me in touch with the excellent birder Tim Cleeves; Grace Packman put me in touch with Mary Faherty of the RSPB at Dungeness. Jonathan Cook, also of the RSBP, was my saviour on warblers, dusky or otherwise, and had some great insights. Sylvia Patterson put me in touch with Chris Hocking, whose suggestions were consistently thoughtful and clever, and reminded me why I admire naturalists so much. Thanks too to Neil Ansell, Mark Adams and my old Palimpsest pal Al Kitching and for their extremely useful observations.

Thanks to the great Roz Brody, Mike Holmes, Janet King and Chris Sansom for strong-arming me into returning to a half-finished manuscript and for their input into it over several incarnations. Graham Bartlett kindly offered wonderful advice on policing detail; I’m looking forward to reading his book. Una Conway, Deborah Sharpley and my colleague Steve Cavanagh all offered wise, though conflicting advice on the ending, which is to be expected as they all work in the law. The title was given to me by fellow writer Cal Moriarty.

The errors that remain are all mine. And finally huge thanks again to my editor Jon Riley and Rose Tomaszewska of Quercus, to Nick de Somogyi, to Jane McMorrow and to my agent Karolina Sutton.