The Birdwatcher Read online

  By William Shaw

  The Breen and Tozer series

  A Song from Dead Lips

  A House of Knives

  A Book of Scars

  First published in Great Britain in 2016 by riverrun

  an imprint of

  Quercus Publishing Ltd

  Carmelite House

  50 Victoria Embankment

  London EC4Y 0DZ

  An Hachette UK company

  Copyright © 2016 William Shaw

  The moral right of William Shaw to be identified as the author

  of this work has been asserted in accordance with the

  Copyright, Designs and Patents Act, 1988.

  From 100 Love Sonnets/Cien Sonetos de Amor by Pablo Neruda,

  translated by Stephen Tapscott, Copyright © Pablo Neruda 1959,

  and Fundacio Pablo Neruda, Copyright © 1986 by the University

  of Texas Press. By permission of the University of Texas Press.

  All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced

  or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical,

  including photocopy, recording, or any information storage

  and retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publisher.

  A CIP catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library

  HB ISBN 978 1 78429 722 0

  TPB ISBN 978 1 78429 723 7

  EBOOK ISBN 978 1 78429 721 3

  This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, businesses,

  organisations, places and events are either the product of the

  author’s imagination or used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual

  persons, living or dead, events or locales is entirely coincidental.

  10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1

  Typeset by Hewer Text UK Ltd, Edinburgh

  Printed and bound in Great Britain by Clays Ltd, St Ives plc

  For my brother Christopher

  and all the other boys who climbed trees

  Contents

  ONE

  TWO

  THREE

  FOUR

  FIVE

  SIX

  SEVEN

  EIGHT

  NINE

  TEN

  ELEVEN

  TWELVE

  THIRTEEN

  FOURTEEN

  FIFTEEN

  SIXTEEN

  SEVENTEEN

  EIGHTEEN

  NINETEEN

  TWENTY

  TWENTY-ONE

  TWENTY-TWO

  TWENTY-THREE

  Acknowledgements

  ONE

  There were two reasons why William South did not want to be on the murder team.

  The first was that it was October. The migrating birds had begun arriving on the coast.

  The second was that, though nobody knew, he was a murderer himself.

  These were not the reasons he gave to the shift sergeant. Instead, standing in front of his desk, he said, ‘God’s sake. I’ve got a pile of witness statements this deep to get through before Thursday, not to mention the Neighbourhood Panel meeting coming up. I haven’t the time.’

  ‘Tell me about it,’ said the shift sergeant quietly.

  ‘I don’t understand why it has to be me anyway. The constable can do it.’

  The shift sergeant was a soft-faced man who blinked as he spoke. He said, ‘Ask DI McAdam on the Serious Crime Directorate. He’s the one who said it should be you. Sorry, mate.’

  When South didn’t move, he looked to the left and right, to see if anyone was listening, and lowered his voice. ‘Look, mate. The new DS is not from round here. She needs her hand holding. You’re the Local District lead, ergo, McAdam says you’re on the team to support her and manage local impact. Not my fault.’

  It was still early morning. It took South a second. ‘Local impact? It’s in my area?’

  ‘Why else would you be on the team? She’s outside now in the CID car, waiting.’

  ‘I don’t understand. What’s the incident?’

  ‘They didn’t say, yet. It’s just come in. Fuck off now, Bill. Be a pal and get on with your job and let me get on with mine.’

  It was an ordinary office in an ordinary provincial police station; white paint a little scuffed on the walls, grey carpet worn in front of the sergeant’s tidy desk from where others had come to haggle about the duties they’d been allocated. The poster behind his desk: Listen. Learn. Improve. Kent Police.

  ‘Could you delegate it to someone else?’

  ‘It was you he asked for.’

  ‘So if I show her round today, will you get someone else on it for the rest of the week?’

  ‘Give me a break, Bill,’ said the shift sergeant, blinking again between words as he turned to his computer screen.

  Over twenty years a policeman; a reputation as a diligent copper: but South had always avoided murder.

  Maybe it would only be for a day or two. Once the new DS had found her feet, he’d go back to normal duties, back to the reassuring bureaucracy of modern police work, and back to getting things done in his patch. He was a good copper. What could go wrong?

  William South paused before walking through the glass door at the front of the station. Outside, the blue Ford Focus was parked in the street, engine running. Behind the wheel sat the new woman, and right away the sight of her made him nervous.

  Late thirties, he guessed, straight brownish hair, recently cut; a woman starting a new job. Her fingers tapped on the steering wheel impatiently. She would be running outside inquiries for the murder investigation; a new arrival, first case on a new force, keen to get on, to make a go of it. Lots to prove.

  A good copper? There was a part of him already hoping she wouldn’t be.

  He sighed, pushed open the door. ‘Alexandra Cupidi?’ he called.

  ‘And what should I call you? Bill? Will?’ she answered.

  ‘William,’ he said.

  ‘William?’ Was she smirking at him? ‘Well, then, William . . .’ She stretched his name to three syllables and nodded to the empty seat beside her. ‘I’m Alexandra, then.’

  He opened the passenger door and looked in. She wore a beige linen suit that was probably new too, like her haircut, but it was already crumpled and shapeless. And the car? It was only Tuesday, so she could barely have had it for a day so far, and already it was a tip. There were empty crisp and cigarette packets in the footwell and wrappers and crumbs all over the passenger seat.

  ‘Sorry,’ she said. ‘Bit of a late one last night.’

  He sat down in the mess, buckling the seat belt around his stab vest. She’d been with the Met, he’d heard, which was enough to put anyone on their guard.

  DS Cupidi reached out, took a gulp from the coffee cup in the cup holder, then said, ‘So. You’re Neighbourhood Officer for Kilo 3, yes?’

  South nodded warily. ‘That’s right.’

  ‘Good.’ She switched on the engine.

  ‘And there’s been a murder there? Shouldn’t I have been informed?’

  ‘You’re being informed now. What’s the quickest way?’

  ‘To where exactly? It’s a large area.’

  ‘Sorry.’ She dug into the pocket of her linen jacket for a notebook, opened the clip and flicked through until she had found the most recently scribbled page. ‘Lighthouse Road, Dungeness,’ she said.

  He turned to her; examined her face. ‘You sure?’

  She repeated it.

  Right now, he thought, he should just get out of the car and walk back inside the police station. Say he wasn’t feeling well. ‘This is the address of where it’s supposed to have happened?’

  ‘What’s wrong?’ she asked.

  ‘The
y’re not pulling your leg or anything? First week on the job?’

  ‘What are you on about?’

  ‘That’s my road. That’s where I live.’

  She shrugged. ‘I suppose that’s why the DI said it was so important you should be on my team.’

  South thought for a second. ‘Who is it?’

  She indicated and pulled out into the traffic, glancing quickly down at the open notebook and trying to read her own notes. ‘No name. Address is . . . I can’t make it out. Arm Cottage?’

  ‘Arum Cottage.’

  ‘That’s it.’

  ‘Robert Rayner,’ said South.

  She raised her eyebrows. ‘That must be it. The woman who reported the crime is a Gill Rayner.’

  ‘Bob Rayner is dead?’ William blinked. They pulled up at a zebra crossing where a woman in a burqa pushed an old-fashioned black pram very slowly across the road.

  She turned and looked. ‘I’m sorry. You knew him?’

  ‘A neighbour. A friend.’ South looked out of the side window. ‘Arum Cottage is about a hundred yards away from where I live.’

  ‘Good,’ she said. ‘I mean. Not good, obviously, sorry.’

  South said, ‘So I shouldn’t be part of the investigation. Because I know the deceased.’

  Cupidi pursed her lips. ‘Shit,’ she said. The woman with the pram finally made it across to the other side of the road. DS Cupidi drove over the crossing, then pulled the car up on the zigzag lines on the other side, hazards flashing.

  ‘Give me a minute,’ she said, pulling out her mobile phone. She dialled and then held the device to her ear. ‘DI McAdam? Something’s come up.’ He heard the DI’s voice.

  Amongst the noise of the traffic, he couldn’t make out what the DI was saying. Cupidi paused, turned to South. ‘He wants to know, were you a close friend?’ she said.

  ‘Close? I suppose,’ said South. ‘I saw quite a lot of him.’

  ‘Hear that, sir? . . .’ She looked at her watch. ‘Do I have to go and drop him back at the station?’ She listened some more, said, ‘I understand,’ a couple of times, then hung up.

  When she’d replaced the phone, she reached out, put the blue light on and swung back into the traffic, cars ahead scattering in panic, mounting pavements and braking, not knowing which way to move.

  ‘Well?’ said South.

  ‘He said you can stick with me, strictly on an advice basis. For today at least, while we find our bearings. Just don’t do anything unless I say, OK?’

  Unfamiliar with the local roads, she was cautious at junctions and the town’s many roundabouts. Only on the outskirts was she able to build speed, heading out towards the coast.

  ‘What happened?’ he asked when the road opened out in front of them.

  ‘I don’t know, yet. Call came in from a distressed woman about an hour ago. Scene of Crime are there doing their thing.’

  He remembered. Bob had said his sister was coming to visit. She arrived there once a fortnight; it was an arrangement the two of them had.

  ‘God. I’m sorry. Are you going to be OK to do this? I mean, if he was a friend . . .?’

  ‘I shouldn’t be involved,’ he said.

  ‘But you are, though, aren’t you?’

  The flats on their right-hand side gave way to council houses, then to semis and bungalows and caravan parks, the flashing blue light reflecting off their windows. The further they travelled, the more open the land became.

  On the left, occasional gaps in the breakwater gave glimpses of shingle running down to the sea. The traffic thinned and Cupidi gunned the engine. Overtaking, she flashed her lights at an oncoming car.

  ‘You actually like it here?’ she asked.

  ‘I’ve lived here almost all my life,’ he said.

  ‘Not that there’s anything wrong with that.’

  ‘But what?’

  She was concentrating on the road ahead. ‘But nothing. I just can’t imagine it, really. It’s very . . . flat, isn’t it?’

  They were passing through the marshland, its grass burnt brown by the wind. ‘So why did you move here?’

  ‘Oh, you know. Just fancied a change,’ she said, but a little too lightly, he thought.

  ‘Slow down,’ he said. ‘The turning’s any minute.’ He shifted in the seat. Something was poking into his behind. ‘Left,’ he said.

  The thinner road was pitted. At the shoreline, loose stones crackled under the tyres. Flat land to the north; flat sea to the south. Weather-beaten houses with rotting windows and satellite dishes dribbling rust-marks down the paintwork. An oversize purple-and-yellow UKIP flag flapping in the wind.

  ‘Must be bitter in winter,’ she said.

  ‘Bitter all year round.’ It was a wide low headland extending south from the marshes, exposed to winds from every quarter.

  As they drove towards the point, South noticed some people sitting round a fire on the shingle.

  ‘Go slowly,’ he said to DS Cupidi.

  ‘Why?’

  South looked out of the passenger window. The low light was behind them and they were too far away to see their faces clearly; he didn’t think he recognised any of them, anyway. Fires on the shingle were always a risk. The flints exploded sometimes in the heat, shooting hot stone splinters out at the drunks.

  ‘Rough sleepers?’ she said.

  ‘They come down here, break into the old fishing huts and burn the wood. They haven’t been around for a while though,’ he said. The vagrants were huddled close to the fire, trying to warm themselves in its dying heat.

  ‘Can’t stop now,’ said Cupidi. South pulled his notebook from his vest and wrote ‘3 men, 2 women?’, then replaced the elastic band around it and put it back in his pocket.

  They were nearing the end of the promontory. The road veered suddenly to the right, away from the sea.

  ‘Now left,’ he said, and she turned again.

  ‘God, it’s bleak.’

  ‘It’s how we like it.’

  A track led away from the main road. DS Cupidi looked ahead, at the massive buildings in front of her. ‘Jesus. What the hell is that?’

  ‘Nuclear power station,’ said South.

  ‘Wow. I mean . . . I didn’t realise it was here.’

  Behind the black tower of the old lighthouse, the metal and concrete blocks that surrounded the two reactors rose, unnaturally massive in the flat land. These colossal shapes were surrounded by rows of tall razor-wire fences. As Cupidi and South approached, the buildings seemed to grow still larger. Their presence made this landscape even more Martian. To their north, lines of pylons marched inland across the wide shingle beds.

  ‘Aren’t you worried it’ll blow up?’

  This was where he had lived since he was fourteen. A freakish, three-mile promontory of loose stones built by the English Channel’s counter-currents.

  The single track road led to Bob Rayner’s house and, beyond, to the Coastguard Cottages. Under the looming geometry of the power station, small shacks were dotted around untidily, as if they’d dropped accidentally from the back of a lorry. In recent years, the millionaires had arrived. Some huts had been rebuilt as luxury houses, with big glass doors and shiny flues. Others still looked like they were made from scraps pilfered from a tip.

  ‘People live in those?’ said DS Cupidi.

  ‘Why not?’

  South pointed to the row of houses, an oddly conventional-looking terrace a little further away from the reactors. ‘My house is over there,’ he said.

  The car slowed. A dog was lying in the road. Alex Cupidi honked the horn at it. The dog got up slowly and sauntered off into the clumps of mint-green vegetation.

  William South felt something vibrate as they bumped over the potholed road. His phone? But when he pulled it out of his pocket, the screen was blank; no one had called or texted. He was just putting it back when DS Cupidi said, ‘That must be the place, then.’

  He looked and saw Bob Rayner’s bungalow. A small wooden construction,
with two small gables, like a letter M, facing the track. A couple of chimneys stuck out of a tiled roof. The wood had been painted recently in red preservative, but it was already starting to flake. It sat on its own on the shingle, sea-kale and thin grass struggling to take hold around it. Like most of the shacks here, it would have been built originally almost a century ago as a poor man’s getaway, long before the nuclear power station had arrived.

  Today, there were police cars and vans parked outside the small building. Half a dozen, crammed on every available piece of the narrow track.

  ‘Shit,’ he said, quietly.

  Bob; his friend.

  ‘Are you going to be all right?’ said Cupidi, peering at him as she pulled up the handbrake. Not sure if he was, he looked away towards the sea, avoiding her gaze.

  A memory. Police cars outside the house . . .

  He was thirteen years old, late for his tea and running hard up the hill. He should have been home half an hour ago. Usually his mum wouldn’t have been bothered, but after everything that had happened, she’d have been going mental.

  It was all Miss McCrocodile’s fault. She had spotted him lurking in the Spar and been all over him. ‘Ye poor wee snipe, Billy McGowan. The people who did this terrible thing will not escape the wrath of the Lord. For God shall bring every secret thing into judgement, whether it be good, or whether it be evil.’

  She bought him a packet of Smith’s Crisps, at least.

  Now he ran, past the hum of the electricity substation, past the playground where the climbing frame there had been recently painted in red, white and blue (and not by the council either), past the bored squaddies on the checkpoint, rifles pointed towards the tarmac, and finally on to the estate: NO POPE HERE, touched up only a few days earlier. The black ring on the grass of the field where the bonfire had been.

  The McGowans’ house was at the top, where the town ends and the fields begin.

  When he reached the start of the cul-de-sac, he stopped dead, panting.

  There were two police cars outside his house. One of those big new Ford Granada Mk IIs with the orange stripe down the side, and an old Cortina that had seen better days. They were back again. He ducked behind the Creedys’ chip van.