The Birdwatcher (6 page)

‘No.’

‘Gay?’

‘No,’ he said, a little more abruptly this time.

‘Sorry. Just curious. I am, as you probably guessed. Divorced I mean, not gay. God I envy you, living alone,’ she said. ‘So uncomplicated. You keep it very nice. Do you have coffee?’

Did he have coffee? He remembered a jar at the back of a shelf. ‘Instant.’

Cupidi made a face. ‘I’ll send out.’ She opened her laptop and placed it on South’s table, searched around for a socket, hitching up her skirt and then crawling beneath the table to plug it in. South took a little too long to look away.

As her laptop booted, she called the CID office, giving out South’s landline number. ‘Reception here is horrible,’ she told whoever she was speaking to. ‘Pass that number round, will you?’

When she put down the phone, she pointed out of the window and said, ‘Doesn’t it scare you, them being there?’

‘The reactors? Nope,’ said South.

She sat down at the table, glancing at her laptop. There was a splash of nail varnish on the keyboard. ‘Right. Let’s go.’ Looked at her watch. Opened up a document. ‘What are the chances of other people round here having seen him?’ she asked.

‘Him?’ said South.

‘I mean the killer.’

‘I know you said that at the briefing,’ said South. ‘But isn’t it a bit early to decide that it’s a man?’

‘Don’t look at me like that. I’ve been in the business long enough. It would have taken a lot of work to kill your friend. That kind of pattern of rage is a man. Completely sure of it. I’m not being feminist saying that, although I am one, if you want to know. It’s just that sometimes, some men do that. Not all men. Some men. But women? Women kill, for sure, but have you ever heard of a woman behaving like that? No. So, what are the chances that someone will have seen him?’

‘This time of year? Not great. Most of these are just summer houses. People come down for the weekends. In the week it’s pretty quiet.’

‘What about the people who work in there?’ She nodded her head towards the huge power station beyond the glass.

‘We can ask, but they don’t come this way. They get to work down Access Road which is separate from the rest of Dungeness, so unless they’re going for a walk after a shift or something, they wouldn’t go past Bob’s house.’

‘But we should ask, right?’

‘It’s a nuclear facility, so there’s a Met Police unit stationed there round the clock.’ The Met had been stationed there in case of a terrorist attack that had never come. ‘And they’ve nothing else to do. Get them to do it.’

‘Good.’ Her mobile phone rang. She picked it up and started talking. ‘When will she be here? Don’t let her go without me speaking to her.’ Then, after ending the call, she said to South, ‘OK if we bring his sister here to interview her?’

They had removed the body and Gill Rayner was on her way back to her brother’s house to pick up her car. Before he could answer, she said, ‘You have a lot of books.’

He smiled. ‘Too many.’

South followed her eyes.
Bird Populations
.
Essential Ornithology
.
Ten Thousand Birds
.

‘You used to go birdwatching with Mr Rayner a lot?’

‘I go whenever I can. He was the same. You get pretty hooked. There’s a lot to see around here.’

‘And what? You count them, or something?’

The reason he liked the company of other birders was that you never had to explain to them. ‘This place, it’s all about this time of year,’ said South. ‘And the spring too. You get to see all sorts coming through. Millions of birds come through here. Every year it’s different depending on which weather systems blow them across. And then there are the winter visitors.’

‘Clapham Junction for birds,’ said Cupidi.

‘Kind of.’

‘When did you last go out with him?’

‘Monday, I suppose it must have been. The day before yesterday.’

‘And . . .?’

‘We saw some redstarts. I remember because we’d never seen them this late in the year. A huge flock of goldfinches. Saw my first goldeneye of the season. Don’t laugh.’

‘I’m not. Honest. What I meant was, did he talk about anything? Was he worried?’

South tried to think back. ‘Thing is, we only ever really talked about birds.’

‘Men are so bloody weird,’ she said.

South said, ‘You’re talking from personal experience, then?’

‘Oh yes. Plenty of that. Think back. Anything at all that may have been different about how he behaved? Anything at all?’

South tried to remember. On the day before they had gone over Springfield Bridge to Christmas Dell hide.

‘Some people had left litter on the path there; empty vodka bottles and cigarette packets. Bob had been angry about it, I remember. It was unusual. He said something about how some people wreck the world for everyone else. But mostly he was pretty up. He was probably looking forward to seeing his sister. You could tell they were close. He was always happy when she was coming.’

‘Nothing else?’

‘He said that he wouldn’t be around for a couple of days. She wasn’t that keen on birds. To be honest, now I think about it, he never talked that much about anything else.’

She stood, looked at her watch. ‘Because he didn’t have anything to say? Or because he had something to hide?’

He would have to watch her, he thought. ‘The second, I think, maybe.’

‘Why?’

He thought for a minute. ‘There was so much he didn’t talk about, in retrospect.’

She returned his look with a curious smile on her face; he turned away to avoid her gaze.

Billy’s house was a two-up two-down on the edge of the estate. He had the back bedroom next to the bathroom, looking up towards the mountains.

‘Careful,’ Billy said to Sergeant Ferguson. ‘The carpet’s loose.’ Mum had kept badgering Dad to nail it back down but he never had.

Billy pushed the door to his bedroom open; the copper stepped inside. ‘So, I guess that you like birds?’

‘Yep,’ answered Billy.

‘I never knew that.’

Almost every spare inch of the walls was covered in pictures of birds, some from magazines, most drawn himself with coloured pencils. He preferred the photos. The ones he had drawn himself were a bit rubbish. And his handwriting underneath, naming each bird, was crap.

A sudden panic as he realises the can of Flamenco Red spray-paint is lying there, in full bloody view, right on his floor. Everything started with that can of red paint. He wishes he had never nicked it. Billy looks up anxiously, but Ferguson hasn’t spotted it. He is peering at a drawing of a pied wagtail. With a gentle kick, Billy nudges it under the bed, and hears the tiny ball bearing rocking back and forward in the can as it settles.

‘Nice,’ Ferguson said, pointing at the drawing.

How can Ferguson not have heard that?

‘What do you do when you run out of wall? Start on the ceiling?’ He grinned at the boy.

‘They don’t stick to the ceiling. They fall down,’ said Billy.

‘Course they do. Stupid idea. You know all the names and everything?’

It was just conversation, Billy thought, to make him feel better. ‘Yep,’ he said.

‘I never knew. And your mates at school? Are they into this?’

‘Not much. They don’t get it, really.’

‘Know what I heard? There’s a snowy owl been spotted up on the mountains there.’ He nodded towards Billy’s window.

‘I heard that too. I been going up there to look for it at weekends. Got soaked last Saturday. Mum says I’m mad.’ He grinned.

‘That would be something, wouldn’t it, seeing that?’

Billy nodded.

‘Did your father like birds too?’

Billy said, ‘Not much.’

‘No. I suppose not. Not that kind of fellow.’

Hated them, in fact; had thought his son was a fucken sissy for liking them, but Billy didn’t say anything. Dad had wanted him to like cars, like he had. Sergeant Ferguson shook his head and looked at him in a way that Billy thought meant he must be feeling sorry for him. That made Billy feel angry, embarrassed. No one should be feeling sorry for him.

He went over to his chest of drawers and fiddled with a Corgi car that sat on top of it and then turned. He could still just see the lid of the can of paint in the gloom under his bed.

If this was
Starsky and Hutch
the policeman would have spotted it now, thought Billy.

FOUR

‘What’s the matter? Why won’t they let me in?’ Gill Rayner asked. ‘It’s my brother’s house.’

They had walked down the short lane to Bob’s house to meet her there. ‘The Crime Scene team say they’re going to need a little longer, I’m afraid,’ said Cupidi.

Gill Rayner was what South’s mother would have described as a no-nonsense woman. Short, manageable hair, little or no make-up, a clear complexion and dark brown eyes. They were bloodshot, presumably from crying.

‘It’s frustrating for us, as well,’ said Cupidi. ‘We need to get in there too.’

Poor woman. South wanted to reach out and take her trembling hand and hold it. ‘Have they found something?’ she asked.

‘Too early to say,’ Cupidi said.

‘Oh.’ Gill seemed to be considering this.

South stepped forward. ‘My name is William South. I knew your brother. I liked him.’

She examined him. ‘He talked about you a lot,’ she said.

‘Did he?’ said South.

‘He always said he found you a very interesting man.’

Cupidi stepped in before South had a chance to say anything else. ‘William has a house up the road. Perhaps we can go there and have a cup of tea?’

‘Why?’

‘I would like to interview you about your brother.’

‘But I already spoke to a woman at the station. I need to go home. I’m very tired.’

‘I’m part of the investigation, Miss Rayner. I realise it’s difficult . . .’

‘Do what you have to, I suppose.’

South noticed that her accent was very different from her brother’s. His had been BBC English, the kind you’d expect from a public school teacher; hers was more estuary: Kent, or maybe Essex. Bob would have grown up speaking like her, he assumed, but disguised his roots as he grew older. Maybe that was another reason they had hit it off so well. Birders were practised at concealing themselves.

The three of them walked up the road. The grey clouds forming out at sea had a diagonal haze beneath them. Rain was coming.

‘I’m very sorry about your brother,’ said South. ‘He was a very good man.’

The woman gulped air, but didn’t speak. She looked fragile, as if she would fall to the ground at any moment, or the wind could blow her down. He reached over and took her arm and guided her towards the house, feeling her weight leaning into him for support. Beneath the wool of her jacket, he could feel her shaking, and he felt her immense sadness passing into him and, like her, just wanted to be alone with it. But he was a policeman; he was working.

Back at South’s house, the ground coffee had arrived. Cupidi returned with two cups. ‘It may have a few bits in it,’ she said. She had improvised with a pan and a tea strainer.

‘I don’t suppose I’ll sleep anyway,’ said Gill Rayner, taking one.

Out of her shapeless woollen coat, she was surprisingly slim. She was one of those women who dressed to hide their looks, rather than accentuate them. They sat on dining chairs in his bare front room, Gill Rayner staring up at the cramped bookshelves. ‘I see why Bob and you got on,’ Gill Rayner said, looking at his books.

DS Cupidi said, ‘What else did he like?’

‘DS Cupidi is not a bird lover,’ said South.

‘I need to know what kind of person Mr Rayner was.’

Gill Rayner was sitting very straight in her chair. She said, ‘I don’t know what to say.’

‘He was a teacher, apparently,’ said Cupidi. ‘What did he teach?’

‘English literature. The classics. Some maths too. And he is a science teacher too. Was.’