The Birdwatcher (17 page)

Ferguson nodded. ‘Right then. Good. Understood. And he talked about your dad, then, I expect?’

Billy stayed there, cheeks all primed to make a loud noise, but he didn’t. Everything Ferguson had said so far was true.

‘He knows who killed your dad, though, doesn’t he?’

Billy sucked loudly.

Ferguson raised his eyebrows. ‘He doesn’t? So he wasn’t there to make sure you kept your mouth shut?’

Billy sucked but this time only air went up the straw. Sergeant Ferguson tipped the last dribble of his own milkshake into Billy’s glass to give him something to work on.

‘So I get it. He was asking you who killed your dad?’

Another suck. ‘Sorry,’ said Billy, letting the straw fall from his lips. ‘Didn’t mean to do that. Yes. That’s what he was asking.’ He put his hand over his mouth. He hadn’t meant to speak.

‘Jesus, Billy. You have any idea what this means?’

Billy picked up the straw again and slurped.

‘No. I don’t expect you would.’

Ferguson took out a packet of cigarettes and lit one. He leaned forward across the table and spoke quietly, seriously, man-to-man. ‘A world of trouble, that’s what it means. Protestants fighting Republicans is one thing. We’ve been getting used to that. But Protestants fighting each other is another. And McGrachy himself doesn’t know who’s behind all this? Does your mother have friends anywhere away from here?’

Billy thought for a while. ‘We used to go to stay with her schoolfriend in Warrenpoint, only they stopped talking after she had a row with my dad.’

‘No. Somewhere further than that.’

‘Away from here?’ Billy said.

‘This place is finished,’ says Ferguson. ‘Until all the Troubles are done. It’s no place for a lad, growing up. The barbarians are at the gates. You stay here and it’ll suck you in. Has your mother got money?’

The question surprised Billy. ‘Reckon.’

‘Enough to move somewhere?’

‘You mean, go somewhere else to live?’

This was his world. This grey town was all he had ever known.

‘Would you need a lot of money for that?’

Fergie didn’t get the chance to answer. A shadow fell on the tablecloth. Then,
bang bang bang
.

Billy jerked his head up and saw the man outside the window who had just thumped on the glass with the flat of his hands; he was dressed in an army surplus jacket. It was the one from the car who was called Donny. Startled, Billy jumped back in his chair and knocked his empty milkshake glass onto the floor.

‘Heya, Billy,’ shouted Donny, grinning. ‘Heya, Sergeant Ferguson,’ he called through the glass.

‘Jesus,’ said Ferguson.

Donny looked from one to the other meaningfully. He pointed two fingers of one hand at his eyes, then at the pair of them. ‘I seen ye, Billy McGowan,’ he said. ‘Right? I. Seen. You.’

And then he strode off down the street, swinging his arms like he owned the place.

Billy looked down. The milkshake glass was broken, its base snapped off.

‘I’ll pay for it,’ Ferguson told the waitress, who was squatting down to pick up the pieces.

‘Doesn’t matter,’ said the girl.

Ferguson looked at Billy, pale in his chair.

‘Was he one of the fellows in the car, Billy?’

Billy said nothing.

‘I’ll protect you, Billy. Don’t you worry. I’ll protect you.’ He put his hand on Billy’s shoulder. ‘You and your ma. I promise. I’ll do anything it takes.’

Billy felt trapped. By not talking, he was answering Fergie’s question. He was shopping Donny, either way.

Ferguson said, ‘I know him. He’s a builder on the council. And he’s UVF too. Isn’t he?’

Still Billy said nothing.

Ferguson paid the bill. ‘I’ll walk you home if you like,’ he said.

Billy shook his head vigorously.

His mum woke him, switching on the light.

He blinked in the painful glare.

‘I heard you calling out for me.’

‘I was?’ He looked around him. The room was normal. Just as it should be; his birds all around the walls.

‘You were having a nightmare.’ She was dressed in her blue nylon nightie, hair down.

‘Sorry, Mum.’

‘It’s not your fault,’ she said, and she walked to his bed, knelt down and kissed him on the forehead. Though he was too old to be kissed by his mum, he wouldn’t have minded, but he didn’t deserve this kindness.

‘You and me, Billy,’ she said. ‘You and me.’

She stood and returned to the doorway. When she had switched off the light again she turned, about to go, then stopped and asked him, ‘What was the dream about?’

He turned away to face the wall. ‘Nothing. I don’t remember.’

‘Go back to sleep then, little one,’ she said, and though he was hardly little any more, secretly he liked it when she called him that.

In his nightmare, he was in a dark wood. And the trees all seemed to have faces in them. There were eyes and open mouths, lurking in the curves and crevices of the bark. And as he stared at them, he realised that one of the trees was his father.

The eyes blink open. And as he watches, a hole appears in the face’s forehead and blood starts to gush out of the hole in the bark. And Billy wants to run away but he can’t. And his tree-father starts shouting, ‘Which of your degenerate little fucken friends did this?’

That’s when he screamed for his mummy.

‘It’s not your fault,’ Mum said again.

But it was. It was all his fault.

TEN

He sat up in bed suddenly. Dreaming of his father was something he had not done for years.

He was covered in sweat too. Was he coming down with something? He wondered where the thermometer was; he couldn’t remember the last time he’d had a day off sick. But in the end he decided that would be worse; at home, he’d just be brooding about Bob Rayner.

He spent the morning at the station, finally finishing the last of the MG11s he had to complete and was grateful when the duty sergeant begged his help to follow up on a brawl there had been last night in a pub in Ashford, even though it was outside of his area. ‘I wouldn’t ask, but I’m desperate.’

For an hour and a half he took witness statements from the bar staff.

That afternoon, dropping into the Over 60s club in Lydd to leave some leaflets about burglary, he got a call from control; an elderly man with Alzheimer’s was missing from one of the nursing homes in Littlestone. By the time he arrived there the man had been spotted sitting in a bus shelter. South drove a nurse – a young Filipina woman who hardly spoke English – out to pick him up.

The man said, ‘I’m not being arrested, am I?’

‘No.’

‘But she is, isn’t she?’ he said, pointing at the nurse.

‘That’s right,’ said South. ‘She’s a wrong ’un. Will you help me take her in?’

The nurse didn’t seem to think it was funny.

It was simple police work. The kind he liked; the kind that did good. After that he had half an hour free before his shift ended; not long enough to go and write anything up. So he drove to Wiccomb caravan site. He parked twenty yards from Judy Farouk’s caravan and sat in the car, watching.

The days were getting shorter. It would be winter soon. In other mobile homes, TVs and lights came on. The car was still there; Judy’s caravan remained dark.

He was about to call it a day and drive home when his mobile rang. It was the woman he’d spoken to yesterday about the break-in at the old Army Cadet Force hall. ‘Your policeman didn’t come,’ she complained.

He sighed, looked at his watch. ‘OK. I’ll drive over there now.’ He would be late home.

The Cadet Force hall had been disused for a few months now. White paint was already peeling from the walls. The front doors had been covered by a metal grille to prevent break-ins and the building was surrounded by a wire fence. The grass around it was choked with ragwort. He parked by the galvanised metal gate and walked up to it; it was secured with a bicycle lock.

He checked his notebook. The person who had complained about the children lived in the house opposite. He waited for a gap in the traffic, then crossed over.

The woman who opened the door was his age but almost totally bald; small patches of pale hairs sprouted from her scalp. He wondered if it was cancer.

Hoping she hadn’t noticed him looking at the top of her head, he said, ‘I came about the break-in at the hall.’

‘You better come in then,’ she said. ‘Wipe your feet.’

She led him into the living room, a small room crammed with furry animals: two pandas and a tiger sat on the best armchair, a row of meerkats lined the window ledge and there was a family of lemurs on the radiator.

‘Do you know who the children are? I could have a word with their parents if you like.’

‘I’ve not actually seen them.’

‘Them?’

‘More than likely, kids from the village. They don’t go to school or nothing. They’re always hanging around.’

Several refugee families had been housed in a local bed-and-breakfast over the last twelve months; they were mostly Somalis, but a large Syrian family had arrived more recently. The landlord had been happy enough with the business but locals had complained about children with nothing to do playing so close to this busy road. Hostility round here wasn’t as bad as it was in the towns, where fights between locals and immigrants or between groups of new arrivals were a regular occurrence, but he was keeping an eye on it.

‘You saw them breaking in?’

‘No. But I saw them in there.’

South blinked and tried to understand what she was saying. ‘You say it’s children, but you haven’t seen them?’

She backtracked. ‘It’s just an intelligent guess. I mean, I’ve nothing against those kids.’

‘So you saw people in the hall?’

‘I saw them in there. The night I first called. Only, no one got back. They haven’t been back since.’

He took his notebook out and checked the date. ‘When was this?’

‘Almost a week ago. Last Wednesday, I think. I didn’t think you were bothered.’

‘Sorry. For some reason I was only passed your call yesterday. So what exactly did you see?’

‘I’m telling you. I saw the kids playing in there. You could hear them banging about. They had a torch. You could see it shining through the windows.’

‘Did you go and talk to them?’

‘I wouldn’t. I don’t go outside. I’ve got agoraphobia.’

He walked to her window and peered through the curtains. ‘Thieves stripping the place, maybe?’

‘Nothing in there,’ she said. ‘The army took everything. Even the light fittings.’

‘Who has the key?’

‘The Army.’

It was dark now. Low cloud hung over the road. ‘I’d better go take a look,’ he said.

He went back outside and took his torch from the glove compartment and rattled the gate. The chain was rusty and didn’t look like anyone had shifted it in months.

Leaving his cap inside the car, he put on a pair of gloves and went to climb over the gate. There wasn’t anywhere obvious on the metalwork to get any purchase, so he moved towards the side, putting the toe of his shoe onto one of the hinges and lifting himself up on that.

At the top, he paused, one leg on either side. A speeding car came past, lights on full beam. In their sudden light, he noticed a mobile phone mast behind the shed. He frowned. A phone mast would need maintenance. There must be some other access road to the building from the rear. He could have saved himself the bother of climbing in this way but it was too late now; he was already most of the way over.

Swinging his other leg over, his trousers snagged on a metal burr on the gate as his weight carried him down.

He landed awkwardly on the ground, on all fours. Brushing his hands clean he looked down at his trousers and saw his left leg was ripped from the knee downwards.

‘Bugger.’

He switched on the torch and shone it on the front doors. They were firmly secured by the grille he had seen from the road, so he made his way down the overgrown pathway to the right of the building.

At ground level, the first windows he came to were covered by old curtains he couldn’t see through. Spiderwebs covered the glass.

He went further back, away from the road, and found another window, shining his torch inside.

At first he thought it was rags, dangling from one of the cross-beams below the roof. Some old curtain perhaps, abandoned and rotting.

And then he wiped the glass with the elbow of his jacket and peered in again. As a face emerged from the shape he had taken for rags, he stepped back, stumbling on loose bricks and rubble. A body, revolving slowly.

He had found dead bodies like this before; all coppers did. It was part of the job, but it was always a shock.

At the back of the hall, the back door had been broken open. Fresh splinters on the jamb. He stepped inside. A cool wind blew through open skylights in the ceiling.