The Crocodile Bird Read Online Free Page B

I’ve said so.”
    “I think we ought to leave, we ought to be on our way, not sitting here talking.”
    “Don’t you worry yourself about that, I’ll see to all that. You tell me about your mum and this man.” She saw it in his eyes as the idea came to him. “Did he try raping her, was that it?”
    “He was teaching her to shoot pigeons with a shotgun. He was out there shooting and she said, show me how.”
    “You’ve got to be joking.”
    “It’s the truth. If you’re going to say that, I won’t tell you.”
    “Right, then. Go on.”
    “I hate shooting birds. I hate people shooting anything, rabbits, squirrels, anything, it’s wrong. And I thought Eve—my mother—I thought she did too. She said so, she taught me to think like that. But she told him the pigeons were eating her vegetables and she asked him to show her how and he said he would. You see, I think he’d have done anything she asked, Sean.”
    “She’s an attractive woman.”
    “More attractive than I am?”
    “Don’t be bloody ridiculous. Was you watching all this?”
    “I’d been in the wood with you,” Liza said. “They didn’t see me. I came up through the garden and they were on the grass where the new trees are. Sound carries terrific distances there, you know. Even when people are speaking softly you can hear them. I saw the two of them with just the one gun and I thought she must be telling him not to shoot the pigeons. He was allowed to, you know, because though pheasant shooting doesn’t start till October you can shoot pigeons when you like. Poor things! What did it matter to him, he wasn’t a farmer, they weren’t his cabbages they were eating, and even if they were, the pigeons have got to live, haven’t they?
    “I thought, good for her, she’s going to stop him, but she didn’t. She was out there with him for a shooting lesson. I’d heard her talking about it with him, but I didn’t think she was serious. When I saw them I asked myself, what on earth is she doing? He started showing her things about the gun and she was looking and then he handed it to her.
    “I didn’t want to see the birds killed. I started to go back toward the gatehouse. Then the shot came and immediately afterward this screaming choking noise. So I turned around and ran across the lawn and there she was looking at him where he lay. She wasn’t holding the gun, she’d dropped it, she was looking down at him and all the blood on him.”
    Sean had put up his hand to cover his mouth. His eyes had grown very big. He took his hand away, pushing at his cheek in a curious wiping movement. “What did you do?” he said in a small voice.
    “I didn’t do anything. I went home. She didn’t tell the police and I didn’t, so I think Matt must have. You know Matt?”
    “Of course I do.”
    “He was there, up by the house. Only I don’t think he saw any more than I did. He guessed.”
    “But you said the police had only just come, they were coming when you left—when? A couple of hours ago?”
    “They came last evening. They didn’t see me. You see, they didn’t come to the gatehouse, not then. First of all, cars came and a black van to take away the body. I watched it all from my bedroom window. Eve told me to stay there and not come out, not to let anyone see me. I didn’t want them to see me. She went up to Shrove and I think the policemen talked to her there. They talked to her and they talked to Matt and Matt’s wife.
    “She knew they’d come back, so she said I must go. For my own protection, she said. I ran away to you. That’s it.”
    “That’s all of it?”
    “Not all, Sean. It’ll take me a long time to tell you all of it.”
    “I’ll get the van fixed up to the tow bar,” he said.
    She went outside with him. The day was warm and sultry, two in the afternoon, and the sun a puddle of light in a white sky. Watching him, she picked blackberries off the hedge and ate them by the handful. She was enormously hungry.
    The