The Birdwatcher (7 page)

‘Good. Where?’

‘At a preparatory school in Eastbourne. I told this to the other policewoman already. I’m very, very confused and tired. I just want to go home now.’

Cupidi reached out and took her hand. ‘I’m sorry. I’ll let you go in just a minute. You visited him here regularly?’

‘I visit him every fortnight.’

‘Had you spoken to him over the last few days, to make arrangements about your visit? Had he mentioned anything out of the ordinary?’

‘We didn’t speak. We didn’t need to. It was an arrangement.’

‘I know that this is hard for you, but can you think of anyone who would have any reason to use violence against your brother?’

She shook her head hard, then wiped her eyes with the back of her hand.

‘Think about it in your own time. Anyone with a short fuse?’

South watched Gill’s hands shaking gently. She looked destroyed.

‘Had he expressed any concern about anything? Any money troubles?’

‘He was OK for money. He never borrowed.’

‘Do you have any tissues, William?’ Cupidi asked.

When he returned with some toilet paper from the downstairs bathroom, Cupidi had moved her chair next to Gill’s and was hugging her, enfolding her completely in her arms. Gill’s shoulders were shuddering as she cried. When he handed DS Cupidi the wad of tissue he’d torn from the roll she rolled her eyes, as if to say,
Is that all you’ve got?

‘Any friends. Old teaching colleagues?’

She shook her head.

Cupidi frowned. ‘No one?’ Cupidi made a note on her pad, then said, ‘A girlfriend or lover? Divorced? Some big ex?’

She shook her head, pulled her chin in a little. ‘No. Why would you think he would?’

‘It’s just a standard question, Gill. I mean, it’s not always usual for a man to live on his own, unless there’s some reason for it.’ Cupidi paused, looked at South. ‘Present company excepted.’

‘He was just a very private man.’

Cupidi leaned forward. ‘What about anyone else? When you arrived there this morning, did you see anyone else around?’

The woman frowned. ‘I don’t think so.’

‘Try. Please.’

Gill Rayner snapped. ‘Look, I wasn’t expecting to find Bob dead. So, I’m sorry, but I really wasn’t paying any attention.’

Cupidi recoiled, startled by sudden loudness of the other woman’s voice. ‘You live in London?’ Cupidi asked. ‘We have your address and contact details?’

‘I left all my details at the station.’

Cupidi said, ‘We can drive you home if you like. You can pick up your car another time.’

‘No. I’ll be all right.’ She opened her handbag and stuffed the wet tissues into it.

South said, ‘It’s not always a good idea to drive after you’ve had such a shock. I can drive you to a station.’

She looked up, eyes pink. ‘I just want to go home now. I just want to be on my own.’

South stood. ‘I’ll walk you to the car, then,’ he said.

‘Right,’ said Cupidi. ‘Good.’

Gill Rayner’s car was parked just inside the police tape; the constable had to untie it to let her out.

As she opened her handbag to look for the keys, he said, ‘I was wondering. What did you think they had stolen? If you looked in the box, you must have been looking everywhere.’

Gill Rayner frowned, as if surprised by the question. ‘To be honest, I can’t even remember why I looked in it. It seems odd now, doesn’t it? I suppose something must have been wrong with it,’ she said. ‘Maybe the lid wasn’t down properly. I really can’t remember.’

He nodded. ‘If you ever want to talk . . . not just as a policeman.’

She looked down at her plain brown shoes.

‘I’m sorry. It’s probably not appropriate,’ he said. ‘But he was my friend. I’m going to miss him a lot.’

Turning away, she said, ‘Maybe,’ but the word was mangled, as if she was trying not to cry again.

He stood in the lane as she drove away in an old green Polo. A thin drizzle was starting, though this would just be the beginning. It would rain hard this evening.

As she drove past him standing by Bob’s gate, she turned her head and gazed at him. He gave her a little wave, but she looked away.

She knew more than she was saying, he thought to himself. Had Cupidi noticed it too? Was she the kind of woman who spotted things like that?

He could see Gill Rayner looking in the rear-view mirror now, back at her brother’s house as she drove down the rutted road.

When he got to the house Cupidi was pinning an Ordnance Survey map to his wall. She looked at him, guiltily. ‘I’ll fix it up later, don’t worry.’

‘You should have used tape,’ he said.

‘Sorry. I couldn’t find any. We’re going to have to do a fingertip search for the murder weapon.’ She stood back and looked at the map. ‘Christ. It’s huge, isn’t it?’

Twelve square miles of shingle and scrub stretched to the north and west of them. It was called Denge Beach, though little of it was anywhere near the sea. ‘We’ll need someone to help the Police Search Adviser. Can you do that?’

‘Whoever did it could have just chucked it in the sea. Or in one of the pits.’ The shingle was dotted with old gravel pits that had filled with water.

‘We’ve still got to try, haven’t we? They’ll be back from the door-to-doors any time now. Start the search as soon as there are enough of them.’ Tongue between her teeth, she pressed a red pin in, marking the location of Bob Rayner’s bungalow. South heard the plaster crack beneath the paper.

‘I was thinking. What if I get one of the specials to nip to the shop and get a couple of loaves of bread and some ham and put together some sarnies in your kitchen?’ She paused, looking at him. ‘I mean, I could just make them work through if you’re not happy about that.’

In situations like this, coppers would miss their breaks. Making a copper skip lunch never made the senior officer popular. Being new, an outsider, Cupidi wouldn’t want to be the one to tell them to work on.

‘OK,’ he said.

‘We could have the afternoon meeting here too. Save going back and forwards to Ashford.’

‘Here?’

‘We’ve got so few coppers on the ground, I don’t want them going back and forwards to the nick. We have to make the most of all their time.’

South looked around his room. It suddenly felt very small.

He noticed someone standing outside the window. Eddie, dressed in the same wax fishing hat he wore, inside and out, was peering at them both. He rapped on the glass. ‘Is everything all right, Bill?’ he called. ‘What’s going on down at Bob’s house?’

‘Who’s he?’

‘A local.’

Eddie was a young birder, eager to prove himself. He was writing a PhD on changing migration patterns and global warming and was going out with a dippy girl who made dreamcatchers and tried to sell them from the caravan he lived in, parked behind one of the old shacks. South stepped outside the front door. It was starting to rain. He told Eddie what happened, watching his face as he did so.

It was no good telling himself that a man like Eddie could never have done this. Eddie, an eager young biologist in his twenties, girlfriend in Dover. At times like this you had to suspect everyone.

‘Who? Why?’ The blood had left Eddie’s face.

‘Did you see anyone unusual around? A man? Any cars you didn’t recognise?’

Eddie was crying as he shook his head to each question, tears dribbling down his face into his scanty, dark, young man’s beard. Things like this didn’t happen here.

The coppers were ambling back from the door-to-doors now, miserable with cold, dripping wet footprints down the hallway, piling waterproof jackets onto the banister as they came in to report to Cupidi.

‘Wipe your bloody shoes,’ he complained.

‘Sorry, skip.’

But the next one came in and did exactly the same. South found a copy of the
Kent Messenger
and spread its pages out on the floor.

The coppers approached Cupidi one by one, notebooks open, turning over damp pages as they reported back.

Cupidi listened, making notes herself. As South had said, only a handful of the houses were occupied at this time of year. None of the occupants had noticed anyone at Rayner’s cottage. Apart from the rough sleepers, nobody had noticed anything unusual. Most of the people they’d spoken to didn’t even know who Bob Rayner was.

Cupidi chewed on her lip thoughtfully as the coppers perched on any free chairs in the kitchen. They had taken over the living room too, gnawing on the sandwiches and chocolate bars, dropping crisps on the carpet. There weren’t enough cups for everyone so there was a rota for tea.

Outside, the rain was beginning to come down hard. The sooner they got going the better. Time means everything in an investigation. The rain would be washing evidence away. Facts slipping away between stones.

Sergeant Ferguson sat down on Billy’s bed. ‘I want to ask again about your daddy. Is that OK? You found him, didn’t you?’

‘I told the other policemen about it loads.’

‘I know. But I just have to ask. I just want to try and work out what time it was.’

‘I don’t know.’

‘It must have been a shock.’

His daddy, strong as a JCB, sprawled out in the chair under the portrait of Her Majesty that hung above the fireplace, a half-finished bottle of Mackeson’s on the table next to him. He had been drinking all afternoon, stacking tyres onto the bonfire in the field.

‘Had your father been working in the garage?’

‘I suppose.’ Dad had been a mechanic. He was always in the garage. Loved the big American cars with all those Indian names, like Pontiacs and Cadillacs.

‘But he was home when you got back?’

‘Mm.’

‘I was wondering, was the telly on?’

Billy nodded.

‘Do you remember what the programme was?’

‘I don’t know, maybe the news?’

‘You sure about that, Billy?’

‘Don’t know.’

‘Your dad had enemies, didn’t he?’

Mum had told him to say nothing. Billy concentrated on the toy car he was holding, a Buick Regal, like the one Kojak had. ‘Wouldn’t know.’

‘Anyone unusual who came to the house in the few days before he was killed?’

Billy shrugged.

‘Did you hear him, maybe, speaking to someone on the phone? Was he up to anything, you know?’

Billy shook his head.

Ferguson sighed. ‘So. What had you been doing at your friend’s house?’

‘It was the bonfire. Eleventh Night. Only, Mum wouldn’t let me go because she said there was going to be aggro.’

Those days there was always aggro on Eleventh Night. Every July the older lads would burn Irish tricolours and look for Catholics to fight. ‘Mum was at the bingo, so she said I could go round to Rusty’s. So we was just watching the fireworks, you know? From my friend’s window. You can see them from his mum and dad’s bedroom.’

‘That’s just a couple of doors away, isn’t it?’

Billy’s bedroom faced towards the back of the house, so you couldn’t see Rusty’s house from there. ‘Over the road,’ he said.

‘And you didn’t hear the shot there?’

Billy shrugged again. Nobody heard the shot. There were fireworks.

‘Who was you there with?’

‘Just Rusty and Stampy. You know. His older brother.’

‘The one with the gammy leg?’ said Ferguson. ‘He doesn’t go out on Eleventh Night either?’

Billy shook his head. ‘Stampy says he hates all that. Besides, he can’t run so fast now.’

‘Fair play.’

Stampy Chandler liked to tell the younger children he walked with a limp because he had been kneecapped by the IRA for dealing weed, but really it was because he’d been hit by a car last year crossing the road outside school.

‘And tell me, Billy, when you came back from your friend, Mr Chandler’s house, did you see anything strange? Before you let yourself in the door, that is.’