The Birdwatcher (33 page)

On an impulse he picked up the phone and dialled 1471. Bob’s house had been called an hour earlier, but the number had been withheld. Could it have been the woman he had spoken to last night calling him back again? There was no way of telling.

He sat in front of the fire, watching the flames build. Around three in the afternoon, his mobile rang. It was a man with an Asian accent who called him ‘sir’. ‘Of course I remember the house I picked the young lady up from, sir,’ he said, as if the suggestion that he had forgotten it offended him. South noted down the name of a road to the west of Sandgate. ‘She was very sad,’ the taxi driver said.

‘What kind of house was it?’

‘A big house.’

‘New. Old?’

‘New. Like James Bond would have.’

‘What do you mean?’

‘You know. Like James Bond.’

He left the fire to burn itself out and walked to the beach. Curly’s boat was out there, bobbing in the ocean. That was the boat that dumped Judy Farouk’s body, he thought. The forensics team would want to impound it now, to search it for traces of the victim and her killer.

It was one of those bright days of early winter. The sun was low and caught the shape of the hill that rose above him. It was a private road, neatly hedged. The houses were set back, with large leaf-bare trees silhouetted against a bright sky. He walked down the road trying to guess which house the party would have been in. If he did find out which house it was, what was he planning to do? He was not sure. People here had money. This was an enclave of the rich.
Excuse me, but are your friends bullying a policeman’s daughter?

Reaching a gateway, he peered in. A large, yellow-bricked house with a green tiled roof looked deserted. The next, a mock-Tudor mansion had four cars parked outside it on gravel. Was this the driver’s idea of a James Bond house?

He doubted it. But there were not many homes in this road; it had to be one of them. The next house had a solid gate, steel and pale wood, with an entryphone to the right. He approached the centre of the gate, hoping to find a gap to see through.

It was a low, white, modernist house, glass doors extending out towards a swimming pool. The lights were on. Cool Danish chairs were arranged around a free-standing stove, in which a wood fire burned. He could see no people though.

A James Bond house, thought South.

He rang the doorbell and waited. A woman’s voice came through the intercom. ‘Hello?’

‘Sergeant William South,’ he said. ‘Kent Police.’

Something buzzed gently, and the gates swung slowly open. He walked up a short drive towards the neat house. Even the pale ochre gravel seemed to have been tastefully chosen.

In a stone wall, a big plain door opened: hinged towards one side so that while one part of the door swung out, the bigger part swung back inside the house. Holding it was a cool-looking woman in her late fifties. She was dressed in black; reading glasses tucked into her hair.

She looked puzzled. ‘Yes?’

‘Are you the owner of this house?’

She looked him up and down. ‘What’s this about?’

He held out his warrant card. ‘We’ve had reports of some suspicious youngsters hanging around this area. May I ask your name?’

She had perfect, uniform teeth that showed as she smiled. ‘Suspicious youngsters?’

It was a poor invention, but it would have to do. He looked from left to right, along the long low building. ‘Have you seen anyone suspicious in the neighbourhood?’

‘Are you expecting to find them in my house, officer?’

‘Do you have any children?’

‘Yes. Why?’

‘What were they doing on Friday night at round midnight?’

‘My name is Olivia Gemmell JP. Justice of the Peace. I would expect you to know that if you want to ask questions like that about a minor, you would need to tell me the reason. I would also expect you to be in a uniform unless you’re with CID and I doubt this is a CID matter. If you don’t explain what this is about, right now, I shall ask you to leave. And I shall call the police.’

A magistrate; she knew the way these things were supposed to work. He would be in trouble now, but he had come this far. ‘We have reports of some young people in the area after dark. Of a nuisance.’

‘Young people? Whatever next?’ She sneered at him. The middle classes were always the worst. ‘Oh,’ she said then. ‘Don’t say you’ve had complaints about my son’s party?’

‘Your son’s party? Was that last night?’

‘Who complained? Did someone complain?’ He looked past her. On the wall was a family portrait. He recognised her in it; there was also a man with hair down below his ears and a young son.

South smiled. ‘I really can’t say, madam. Is your son in?’

She reddened. ‘No. He is not. He’s back in . . .’ She looked at her watch, then changed her mind. ‘Have you finished?’

‘I can wait till he’s back, if you like.’

‘I don’t think so,’ she said. ‘Can I ask you to leave now?’

He kept his smile. ‘Thank you for your time.’ He turned and walked back down the immaculate driveway.

‘Which bloody arsehole complained?’ she called after him.

He returned to his car, the gate closing behind him. Releasing the handbrake, he let gravity take him a little further down the hill. Sure enough, around the corner as they approached the golf course, there was Vincent Sleight’s house. They were neighbours.

He sat watching it for a while.

‘Bungalow’ was not sufficient to describe it. It was only one storey high, but the house sprawled across at least an acre, with a swimming pool to the left that was sheltered from the far side by a separate guest house. With its terracotta tile roof and its arched portico at the front, the house looked like it should be in Spain, not here in Kent. To the far side was a huge garage.

The house sat in an immaculate garden of rolling grass that curved around the house, dotted with neatly clipped shrubs.

South was wondering how much a house like this would cost when he saw a figure at the window looking back at him. He squinted but could not see if it was a man or a woman.

He looked at his watch. When he had asked about her son, the woman in the James Bond house had done the same, as if she was expecting him home at any minute. He would give it another hour, he thought.

He waited. Every now and again, as the evening darkened, the figure returned to the window as if checking he was still there.

It was dark by the time he heard the motorbike approaching up the lane. It was one of those 125cc bikes made to look like it was something bigger, and on it sat a young man with black helmet and a full-face visor. He paused, headlight playing on the gates of the James Bond house as he leaned over to the keypad.

‘You. Wait.’ South got out of the car and ran back towards him, holding out his ID.

When he lifted up his visor, South saw he was only a boy of seventeen or eighteen.

‘A word,’ said South.

‘What?’

‘You had a party here on Friday.’

‘So?’ the boy said warily.

‘There was a young woman here called Zoë.’

The man took off his helmet and put it on the petrol tank. He was good-looking, dark-eyed and deliberately unshaven.

‘I don’t know all the names of the girls that were here. News got around, you know?’ He talked slowly as if he couldn’t be bothered to hurry the words out.

‘Were you providing the Class A drugs, or did someone else bring them?’

The boy didn’t miss a beat. ‘I don’t remember there being any drugs at all,’ he said. He smiled at South; the young and the rich thought nothing could touch them.

South stared into his eyes. ‘Which is odd. Because you took photos of your guests taking drugs.’

The young man’s gaze flickered for a second.

‘I didn’t. I suppose someone might have.’

South nodded slowly.

‘Let’s hope they don’t make it onto the internet then. You being a young man who probably knows about these things would know that any photos your friends take on a smartphone would probably have location data on them, wouldn’t you?’

‘Yes,’ said the youngster. ‘I mean . . .’

‘And your mother’s a magistrate, I understand.’

The boy nodded.

‘Location data can be pretty accurate these days.’

‘Right.’

‘Word to the wise.’ South leaned forward. ‘It would be in your interest to contact everyone who came to your party and insist they delete their photos. OK? Imagine what the local press would make of it.’

‘Right,’ said the boy again, sounding less cool by the second.

‘I’d get straight on to that, if I were you. Call up everyone you know and beg them not to put anything they took at your party that shows anyone doing anything illegal onto the internet, OK? Tell them that it’s for their own protection.’

‘Right. Um, thanks.’

South winked. ‘And I wouldn’t tell them that a copper told you to do this. That would be embarrassing, wouldn’t it?’

The boy giggled nervously. He suddenly looked quite young.

‘And between you and me, a colleague of mine is monitoring the social media of some of the girls who turned up here last night. And if they post anything that’s relating to the party, it’s going to come straight back to you.’

The boy nodded.

‘Good lad,’ said South, and continued to stare at the young man as he waited for the gate to open.

And he felt pleased with himself. Smug even. He had enjoyed the power he wielded, for that second. And in his pocket, his phone vibrated but he didn’t want to look at it in case it spoiled the moment.

The moment did not last long. He was just returning to his car when he heard footsteps behind him. He turned; lit by street lamps, Vinnie Sleight was striding towards him.

‘Sergeant South? What are you doing in our neighbourhood?’

‘Your neighbourhood, Vinnie?’

‘This isn’t your usual sort of area. I know it isn’t.’

‘Complaints of noise. At a party,’ South lied.

Sleight squinted at him. He seemed to be considering what South had said. ‘But like I said, this isn’t your patch, is it? Is there something else going on that I should know about?’

South ignored the question. ‘Did you hear any noise of a party? Last night?’

Sleight wrinkled his nose and shook his head. ‘It’s the trouble with people round here. They think they’ve bought the whole area.’ He smiled.

‘It was teenagers, from the sound of it. Your son’s back from college, isn’t he? Maybe I could ask him?’

‘I don’t approve of snooping,’ said Sleight, eyes narrowing.

‘It’s my job.’

Sleight stared at him. He stepped closer. ‘I’m not sure it is your job, Sergeant. Why aren’t you in uniform?’

And as he leaned forward, South saw something vicious in his expression, and caught the hint of orange in his aftershave. Just for a second. And then Sleight’s face was calm again.

The roaring came from far away, pulsating and low. His first reaction was annoyance; the sound would scare the birds away. But as he looked, the pure white buzzard launched itself from a fence post on the hillside opposite, heading high into the air, hovering for just a second, then dropping away out of sight behind a rocky outcrop.

He saw it long enough to be sure. An albino. A freak.

He raised his face into the drizzle and felt the rain dropping on the balls of his eyes.

The racket was suddenly closer now, no longer a single continuous brash note, but a noise broken into little tiny pieces, an angry stuttering. Billy’s heart beat faster.

He could not make any sense of it. He looked around but couldn’t see the source, only knew that it was coming towards him.

And then from behind the crest of the ridge, the rotors appeared, then the bulbous nose of the Army helicopter. It was close; only a couple of hundred yards away.

He ducked straight down again, flattening his body into the grass as the machine rose up, not daring to look for showing the white of his face, but surely it must have been above him now. All round him the wildest wind he had ever been in was knocking the grass round him flat in ripples, spreading away from him.