Palmer-Jones 01 - A Bird in the Hand Read online

  “With long hair and a girlfriend who was an unmarried mother,” George finished. “ Yes, I see.”

  “He couldn’t have killed him.” Jack spoke suddenly. He was apologetic because he had interrupted. He almost blushed. They stared at him, surprised at his outburst. “Cranshaw couldn’t have killed Tom. Not early on that Saturday morning.”

  “And how do you know that?” Ella asked, curious, a little offended at having to admit her ignorance.

  “His mother had fallen again. Don’t you remember? I did tell you.” He looked at her wistfully, hoping that she would be able to relieve him of the burden of telling his story. As she looked blank, he continued.

  “I was on my way to dig bait on the shore at the bottom of Anchor Lane. It was early—well before six, I’d guess. I’d just parked my car on that bit of grass at the end of the lane when Bernard came out of the house. There was a real thick fog, but I could tell that he was agitated. He must have seen me but he didn’t say anything. He was in an awful state. I went up to him and asked if I could help and he almost broke down. He was worried about his mother who’d had a fall. He said she’d got out of bed to go to the bathroom, then must have tripped, because he’d found her at the bottom of the stairs. They’re not on the phone. I’d done a bit of first aid so I went in to have a look at her. She didn’t seem too bad, only shaken and a bit bruised, but she was making a terrible fuss. I could tell that Bernard was worried so I said that I’d go and fetch Dr. Jamieson. I drove round to his house. I was there for some time.” He looked at Ella. “ You know what the doctor’s like.”

  Ella snorted, expressing her disapproval of the elderly doctor who was notorious for his lethargy and absentmindedness.

  “It took him a long time to get dressed and ready, so it was nearly seven thirty by the time we reached Bernard’s house.”

  “So you waited for the doctor,” George said. “You didn’t drive straight back to Anchor Lane.”

  “No, I waited. The doctor was worried about driving in the fog so I took him in my car.”

  “Did you notice anything unusual on the road? Did you see anyone?”

  “I can’t remember. It was hard work just to keep the car on the road. I’ve never known a fog like that one.”

  “So Bernard Cranshaw was alone for over an hour while you were fetching the doctor?”

  “Well, he wasn’t alone. His mother was with him.”

  “He wouldn’t have left his mother to go out on the marsh,” said Ella, eager to contribute. “He’s very close to his mother, isn’t he, Jack?”

  Jack nodded.

  “Was Bernard dressed when he came out of the house to tell you about his mother’s fall?” George asked.

  Jack nodded again. “He said that he’d got up early to go out birdwatching.”

  “When you came back with the doctor was there any sign that he’d been out at all?”

  “I got the impression that he’d stayed with his mother, but it never occurred to me that he might have gone out.”

  “Has Bernard ever been married?” asked Molly, trying to form a picture of the strange man whom George had described to her.

  “No,” Ella replied. “ There was some talk about it a few years back when he was seeing a lot of a nurse in Skeffingham, but his mother was very ill again, and nothing came of it.”

  “How long did the doctor stay at the Cranshaws’ house?” George found the whole incident of Cranshaw’s mother frustrating. He could not quite believe it.

  “Oh, only a matter of minutes I think. There was nothing seriously wrong with Mrs. Cranshaw. I waited and took the doctor home. Then I went back to Anchor Lane to start bait-digging. Bernard was still there then.”

  “Did he say anything to you?”

  “No, I didn’t even see him. I could hear him and his mother talking. They’d left the window open.”

  “You must be right then,” said George reluctantly. “ He didn’t kill Tom French. I suppose that he might have gone out in the hour when you were fetching the doctor, but it wouldn’t have given him much time, especially as the murderer moved the body. He had no way of knowing that you’d take so long. The forensic report said that it was possible, although unlikely, that he was killed after seven thirty. He was certainly dead by nine. What time did you get back to Anchor Lane after taking the doctor home?”

  “It must have been about eight fifteen, but Bernard didn’t leave the house before nine. I was working at that end of the beach and I could hear them talking. You know how sound carries in the fog.”

  “In that case I think that we can discount Bernard Cranshaw.”

  In the silence that followed Jack refilled the glasses and Ella made tea. When she was settled on her stool once more George turned to her.

  “Tom came to have a meal with you a few days before he died. How did he seem? Can you remember what you were talking about?”

  “The police asked me that,” she said, “so I’ve been thinking about it. He didn’t seem very different. He was a bit quiet, but he’d been working all day and I thought that he was tired.”

  “And can you remember what you were talking about?”

  “Yes,” she said. “ I’d had a letter from Peter Littleton. It was a shame his marriage didn’t work out, but what a letter it was! It made me laugh out loud when I read it and I had Sandra in fits when I told her some of the things he’d written. I thought it might cheer Tom up a bit so I read it to him.”

  “Did it cheer him up?”

  “No. He didn’t seem to find it funny at all.”

  They left Ella and Jack’s warm kitchen reluctantly. George was more eager to go than Molly, who was enjoying the conversation. She always felt at home and relaxed there. George felt restless, uncertain. All the information he had gained during the day led in circles. The frustration and helplessness were returning. It was his fault. He should have asked different questions of different people. The only person to claim to see the body was mentally defective; and they had allowed him to run away!

  But now, at least, he had some information. He had something to work on. He knew that he would sleep badly. Even in sleep his mind would be working, sorting through the information. He could feel already the tension of insomnia.

  It was to put off the moment when he would have to attempt to sleep that he went into the bar. It was very near to closing time. The bar had been unpleasantly modernized and there was a lot of noise. George regretted the restlessness which had made him leave Ella’s kitchen. A large young man, with long greasy hair tied back in a pony tail, still wearing the check trousers which identified him as a member of the kitchen staff, was sitting at the bar. He seemed to be telling a rude, unfunny joke to the barman. The barman, who had seen George enter and seemed inclined to serve him, motioned to the big man to stop.

  “Now now, Den. Tell me later.”

  George looked with renewed interest at the other customer. Dennis. The chef who had gone drinking with Tom. He ordered a drink for himself, then with an exaggerated politeness asked if he could buy Dennis a drink. The young man expressed surprise at his good fortune rather than thanks, but allowed himself to be taken to a corner where they would not be overheard.

  “I’m interested in finding out how Tom French died,” George said. He was in no mood for subtlety. “ I understand that you were a friend of his.”

  “Well, I don’t know about a friend. We used to have a few drinks together after work.” He had a West Country accent. He was very suspicious.

  “I was talking to Terry this evening. He seemed to imply that you and Tom were friends.” George was at his most pompous.

  “Terry!” Dennis’s derision was directed not only at Terry, but at George for being so gullible. “You don’t want to listen to him.”

  George was goaded into direct attack.

  “Someone working at this hotel smokes cannabis. Is it you?”

  Dennis was frightened.

  “Don’t you talk like that. If anyone hears you I co
uld lose my job.”

  “So you admit that you do?”

  “No, of course I don’t.”

  “Where did you get it from? From Tom French?”

  “Tom? Tom never smoked.” The astonishment in that reply at least seemed genuine to George.

  Dennis had answered the questions despite himself, but after his last outburst he seemed to realize what he was doing. He stood up, levering his huge body off the chair by leaning on the table. He thrust his face towards George.

  “You leave me alone,” he said. “You hear. You don’t know what you’re messing with.”

  With a swagger, he left the room.

  The next day Molly went to find Terry. She waited until the receptionist was answering the telephone before going through the door marked “Staff Only.” The corridor was dirty and untidy, cluttered with furniture awaiting repair, tools, overalls. Terry was alone in the kitchen. He was leaning over a huge sink. His hair was long in the front, and he was peering through it, concentrating hard on the pan he was cleaning. He heard Molly close the door behind her.

  “You get out of here,” he said. “You’re not allowed in here. Dennis, he’ll have a fit if he sees you in here.”

  “You promised to tell me all about Tom. Look, I’ve brought you some cigarettes.”

  She held the packet towards him. But he was very nervous because she was in the kitchen, and it was forbidden to let anyone in the kitchen.

  “Dennis is my friend,” he said, taking the cigarettes, as if that fact had been disputed. “ Dennis says that if I talk to you he’ll make them send me back to the hospital.”

  “That doesn’t sound very friendly.”

  Terry, after many years’ practice, was sensitive to mockery. He peered at her suspiciously, hurt. He looked sulky and betrayed and stood fidgeting, waiting for her to go.

  “You said you were my friend.”

  “Terry, I am your friend.”

  She could only see the bottom half of his face because of the long, untidy fringe. He almost seemed to hide behind it. Molly watched him and waited for some reaction. His clothes were patched and ill-fitting, but they were clean and so was he. Mrs. Black looked after him well. His face was blank, and he faced her, sullen and unresponsive.

  “Terry,” she said in desperation, “if I buy you a present, any present you like, will you tell me about Tommy?”

  “What I told you about Tommy, it wasn’t the truth.” He spoke flatly, not trying to sound convincing, not caring. He peered through his hair, squinting up to look at her defiantly.

  “Why did you lie about Tommy?”

  “Because I’m batty.” He laughed, bending double in a mirthless parody of laughter. “ Batty Terry.”

  She left the kitchen, knowing further persuasion to be pointless. George had frightened Dennis so much that the chef had threatened Terry. She was worried that George would blame himself, that the old depression would return. But when she found him he hardly seemed to listen to what she had to say. Ella had phoned him. There was a penduline tit at Scardrift Flat, near Scarsea. He had packed and wanted to leave immediately.

  Chapter Six

  Everyone of any consequence was at Scardrift that afternoon. Every section of birdwatching society was represented. There were ringers, staying at the observatory, who affected to ignore the chaos and walked round the traps as usual, returning to the hut with a handful of bird bags. They appeared to show as much interest in the common birds they had caught, conscientiously ageing and sexing them, then attaching the dainty metal ring to one leg, as the twitchers outside did in the penduline tit. They tried to ignore Tina, who watched them, giving the occasional blunt word of advice. She wore denim shorts and a skimpy, washed-out, sleeveless shirt. It was plain that she wore nothing else.

  There were the unemployed, full-time twitchers who had hitched north up the motorways. They stood with dirty, studied nonchalance and discussed their winter’s work at the oil terminal at Sullom Voe on Shetland or a proposed trip to Thailand.

  Two respectable twitchers in their thirties, who had arrived in a smart company car, left their wives and children with a picnic on the beach and began to circulate among the crowd. As members of the British Birds Rarity Committee, they took the final decision about whether a bird was what it had been claimed to be. They were recognized, asked endless questions about records submitted and rejected.

  Locals, beginners, looked with envy and excitement at the expensive binoculars and telescopes, listened to the talk of birding exploits, understanding only half the jargon, as strangers talked of “stringers,” “dipping out,” being “gripped off.” They pointed out to each other the well-known birdwatchers, whose names they had read in British Birds.

  So there were twitchers and dudes, RSPB members and photographers, children and old men who had been twitchers before anyone knew what that word meant.

  In the centre of the crowd Rob Earl and Pete Littleton were being loud, silly, telling obscene jokes about Vera, the notorious lady twitcher who hunted birds and men with the same determination. They had spent three hours at lunchtime in the pub at Scarsea. Adam Anderson sat apart from them and carefully, shyly cleaned the lenses of his binoculars.

  Of the hundreds of people there, only six had seen the bird. It had been caught by a keen schoolboy staying at the observatory, who had done a trap round at dawn. It had been shown to observatory members, ringed and released. The warden had wanted to keep news of the bird secret. He resented the invasion, the noise, the lack of privacy which always followed the discovery of a rarity. Scardrift was his place and these outsiders did not appreciate it. But the schoolboy was on the grapevine. Every weekend he phoned a person whom he had never met, who lived in Manchester, to find out “what was about.” If there was anything good within cycling or public transport distance he would go to see it. He could not resist the temptation to give information rather than to receive it. He could not resist the glory. The warden would never know how the news had escaped. The boy phoned from a call box in Scarsea to his friend in Manchester, and by the time the majority of Ella’s customers were arriving at the Windmill for a late breakfast, the news was there, waiting for them. By lunchtime it had reached Bristol, Tyneside and South Wales.

  It seemed inconceivable that the bird would have moved during the day. If it was there at dawn, if it were still alive, it would still be there at three o’clock in the afternoon. A rumour spread that the warden had taken it in his car and released it some miles away along the Yorkshire coast. This was denied by observatory members who had seen the bird released.

  Scardrift Flat is a thin crescent of land curling down into the North Sea. It seems that the sandy land is held together only by the mass of vegetation, the bramble and the buckthorn that cover it. Somewhere in those acres of tangled undergrowth the bird must be resting and feeding. On the beach the wives sat in the sun watching the children build sandcastles, too accustomed to their husbands’ obsession to wonder again at the madness of it. They were only grateful that the sun was shining and that the bird had not arrived in the industrial wastes of Merseyside or Tyneside, where there would be nowhere for the children to play. The birdwatchers moved about the area slowly, in small depressed groups, waiting for something to happen. Many drifted back to their cars to return to Norfolk and the Windmill, and reliable information from other parts of the country.

  There had been many false alarms. Anyone staring intently at one spot, or pulling his telescope out of his case, would attract an immediate crowd. So when one of the locals, a middle-aged man with Boots binoculars, nervously called to a teenager with long hair and a long list, that he had “summat a bit funny” in the middle of a thicket of buckthorn the boy sauntered over to look. He knew immediately that the bird had been found, and one raised hand was enough to bring all the birdwatchers in the area to see. The thicket was at the mainland end of the point, but the news spread to the tip without a word being spoken. There was a sound of running footsteps, which attracted p
eople from hidden clumps of undergrowth, from the beach, on to the one track which led up the flat. Soon the watchers were organized into a wide semi-circle surrounding the bushes. Tripods were set up and binoculars focused, and after a few minutes of complete silence, when the bird was stared at and appreciated, tiny details of its plumage and behaviour were discussed and notes were taken.

  Adam Anderson pushed to the front of the crowd with quiet, polite determination. He was sure that he had been looking in that area just before the bird was found, and was angry with himself because he had failed to see it. He stared intently, his concentration so great that he could have been alone, as he made notes of the tail size and shape, leg colour, all the features which made the bird penduline tit.

  Pete Littleton watched the bird with a real sense of joy. He could feel the sun and a slight breeze on his bare arms. The bird was lovely, so small, unique and beautiful as it moved—as if it were arrogantly unaware of the people staring at it—in the bush with its fresh, green foliage. He was free now. It was spring and he had the energy and the will to start again.

  Rob Earl lay on his back, his battered telescope leaning against his leg. He focused automatically on the bird and tried to concentrate on it. But he was thinking of the letter he had received that morning, offering him the opportunity of working for a travel company leading birdwatching tours to South America, Africa and even twice a year to Siberia and Mongolia. His research would be completed by the summer. He desperately wanted the job. But now he felt uneasy, a little frightened of accepting. For perhaps the first time in his life he wondered if he should do just what he wanted to do.

  With an envy that approached hatred Tina looked at the metal ring on the bird’s leg.

  George Palmer-Jones had not expected to see the bird. He was ashamed of his flight from the hotel, from the frustration and claustrophobia of his investigation. He did not deserve to see the bird. Nothing else was going right for him. But having made the decision to go for it, he would play the game according to the rules. He would pretend that he had a chance of seeing it. And all the time he knew that he was deceiving himself, playing double bluff with fate, because only if he convinced himself that he would not see it would he have any chance at all of its still being there. Yet, with a certainty that was not only self-justification, he felt that the answer to all his questions about Tom, and why he died, was not at the White Lodge, but where birdwatchers were. He drove as fast as the Morris Minor would go through the Lincolnshire flatness, over the magic, apparently endless Humber Bridge, through city docklands, to the open windy land beyond. That part of the country had the feel of an island to him. The area had a definite boundary, the locals knew everyone who lived there and there was a lot of sky. He was very tense now. His mind was concentrated on pushing away any speculation that he might see the bird, on preparing himself for the inevitable disappointment.