The Healing of Broken Souls

Chapter 2

As soon as I cleared the airport formalities I took a taxi to my father's address. I knew the longer I put it off, the more I would waver. It was better to strike while the iron was hot. Before I had time to change my mind.

From what Rebecca had told me I expected a crisply uniformed private nurse to come to the door and lead me upstairs to a bright white sickroom. I had envisaged him as bedridden and on a drip, or at least hooked up to a fancy monitor with colored lines zig-zagging across the screen. So I was taken aback when I arrived at his modest semi-detached home and my father answered the door himself. I recognized him instantly. The last time I'd seen him he'd been in his late 40's but except for a raft of wrinkles he hadn't changed much. He certainly didn't look like someone close to death. He even had a pretty good head of hair for a man of  ... I had to do a quick calculation ... 78. I'd always thought cancer patients lost their hair, because of the chemotherapy. 

He made as if to embrace me but I stepped back to avoid it, and then we stared at each other wordlessly for several seconds.

"Michael!" he began. " I'm so glad you came, I ...".

"They told me you were dying," I interrupted.

"You better come in. I'll make us some tea."

While he was in the kitchen, I stalked around his living room, trying to get a sense of him. It was obvious he lived alone, there wasn't a single ornament or photograph and every surface had a fine layer of dust.  A threadbare olive green sofa took up one wall and a mismatched armchair was pulled close to a small electric fire crouching in an ugly 1970's tiled fireplace. A few dog-eared copies of Readers Digest and National Geographic were crammed into a bamboo magazine rack next to the armchair. The front bay window hadn't been cleaned for months. I perched on the sofa and glanced up at a fly-specked ceiling light fitting. The place was depressing.  There wasn't even a television. This wasn't a living room. This was a dying room. 

He came back, handed me a chipped mug of tea, and asked how long I could stay.

"I'm flying back tomorrow," I told him. "I've got a hotel room booked for tonight."

"You don't need to stay in a hotel. You can stay here."

"No thanks."

He had the good sense not to argue but then started bellyaching about his lung disease as if I was supposed to give a damn. It was too advanced to be treated. Except for the occasional shortness of breath and wheezing, he'd had no serious symptoms until a few months ago, so it had come as quite a surprise. His meds kept him going and he didn't intend to spend his last days in a hospice. I wasn't very sympathetic. I had no time for self-inflicted injuries, although it was strange that I couldn't remember him ever smoking a cigarette.

"So why did you want to see me?" I asked bluntly.

"Because you're my only child. All I have in the world ... and I need you to understand some things before I die ... some things about me and your mother."

"I know all about you and my mother," I snapped. "There's nothing more I need to know."

I saw the pain reflected in his eyes, but he didn't argue.

"Ok, I understand, but there's something else I want to show you."

He got up and picked a book off the mantelpiece.

"Do you remember this book?"

I glanced at the familiar cover of Birds of Britain and Europe. 

"I remember. I've got one of my own."

"Have a look through it." 

He handed me the book and slumped into the armchair facing me. I hadn't noticed the transparent oxygen mask draped over the seatback, but now he pressed it to his face, reached down to open the valve on a small oxygen bottle on the floor, and began to breathe heavily.  To my surprise, I felt a pang of pity that I had to quickly suppress. Ignoring him, I began turning the pages and then frowned at what I saw.  I started flicking through them faster until I got to the end. Then I looked at my father with incredulity.

"You've seen every bird in the book?"

He shook his head sadly.

"Not quite," he said. "Look at page ninety-eight ."

I looked. Page ninety-eight featured the extremely rare Andalusian Hemipode. And one of its few remaining habitats was in southeast Spain in exactly the area where I was living. It was the only bird without a tick and date.

"It would mean everything to me if I could tick that last one off before I die."

I stared at the old man with a mixture of awe and disbelief. Awe, because to complete Birds of Britain and Europe was an amazing achievement, every twitcher's ambition.  Disbelief, because I didn't believe in coincidences. It seemed too convenient to be true that the only bird he hadn't seen was native to Spain. It just so happened that I'd seen an Andalucian Hemipode, and knew of likely places to find them.  But how could he have known that? 

"Did you know I was living in Spain?" I said accusingly.

He pulled the mask away from his face.

"Not until Rebecca told me you were coming. I know what you're thinking, but I didn't know where you were living and the hemipode isn't the reason I contacted you. I only wanted to try and make things right between us. It was only yesterday that I even thought about completing the book."

I knew I could probably grant his last wish, but did he honestly expect me to? I stayed silent, in a quandary of conflicting emotions. 

"I know we have our differences Michael, but one thing we always shared was our love of birds."

I couldn't argue with that, but I was still on the fence about agreeing to take him back to Spain until another idea occurred to me that tipped the balance. I had a miniature voice recorder at home. With any luck, I might be able to extract the truth from him. I might be able to get him to confess to my mother's murder.

After all these years, I had the chance to bring him to justice.