B006U13W The Flight (Jenny Cooper 4) nodrm (12 page)

Jenny took a sip of her wine, a rich, oaky Rioja, and felt glad to be alive. ‘Could a lightning strike have caused that?’

‘Like I said, it’s virtually never happened. And this is the most advanced aircraft in the world.’ He shook his head. ‘Losing the radio, losing speed – it looks like everything went at once, but the pilot still had some control, otherwise he wouldn’t have come so close to winning it back. If there was a bomb, you could understand it, but if there wasn’t . . . There isn’t just one fail-safe system on that plane, there are four or five, and probably more.’

‘Give me a theory,’ Jenny said. ‘What will the Air Accident Investigation Branch be looking for?’

‘The on-board flight data and cockpit voice recordings will tell them a lot, but looking at this trajectory I’m guessing that they’ll be searching for something that could have caused almost complete electrical failure leading to engine shutdown. Either that, or pilot error that’s off the scale of negligence. I suppose he could have throttled right back at level-off and disengaged the autopilot somehow, but I don’t see how – there would have been audible warnings.’

‘And that wouldn’t explain loss of radio.’

‘If you’re dealing with that sort of emergency you may not have time to radio. It’s all hands on deck.’

Jenny said, ‘I’m told it landed tail first on the water, but the hull split in two places.’

‘That wouldn’t surprise me,’ Michael said. ‘The stress that pulling out of several stalls must have placed on the airframe could easily have been enough by itself to have broken the aircraft apart. It would certainly have been severely weakened by the time it came down. And hulls are designed to split cleanly in three – the idea is that survivors can escape without having to negotiate jagged metal.’ He suddenly looked tired, as if the reality of the accident had finally hit home. ‘I’ll expect you’ll find Nuala was sitting at the back. She always insisted that was the safest place.’

Jenny said, ‘We’ve only found one body with a lifejacket. A little girl travelling alone. She called her father on the way down and he told her to put it on. That’s all he could think to do . . . I’m guessing the captain didn’t have time to make an announcement.’

‘Or his PA wasn’t working.’

‘But Nuala was a pilot. Wouldn’t she have thought to wear one?’

Michael took a mouthful of beer and gazed down at the table. ‘If she thought it would do any good . . .’

She waited for him to explain.

He reached into his pocket and drew out his phone. He looked at it for moment, then hit some buttons. He showed the screen to Jenny. It was the call log. The date was yesterday’s.
Nuala
appeared three times in a row. She had tried to call him three times in the space of two minutes.

‘She was trying to reach me as they were going down,’ Michael said, his voice close to a whisper. He switched away from the missed calls log to his message folder.

‘Then she sent me this, at nine fifty-seven. The ground was coming up fast by then. Can you imagine texting?’ He handed the phone to Jenny. The message said simply,
Tyax x.

‘What does it mean?’ Jenny asked.

‘It’s the name of a little place in British Columbia – our one and only holiday together. We hired a float plane in Vancouver and flew up there ourselves, stopped off on a crystal-clear lake in the middle of nowhere. Just us and the grizzly bears . . . And I think it’s what she called herself on Airbuzz – that was the name of her forum.’

‘Which do you think she was referring to?’

Michael put the phone back in his pocket. ‘Probably both.’ He gave her a look which she couldn’t interpret. He seemed lost, as if he was relying on her for answers.

Jenny said, ‘Are you going to share this with the coroner?’

‘Do you think I should?’

‘Why wouldn’t you?’

‘Because, despite everything, it was me she was trying to talk to.’ Michael drained his glass. ‘We were meant to be getting married at one time, but it turned out not to be in my nature. We’d hardly spoken in nine months.’

‘You think she had some information she wanted you to know?’

‘She wasn’t trying to rekindle the romance.’

‘Why are you telling me this, Michael?’

His gaze lingered on her for a moment. ‘I’m a pilot, I rely on a sixth sense.’

A
FTERWARDS SHE THOUGHT SHE MIGHT
only have been imagining Michael’s pass. The conversation had quickly moved on and wrapped up along businesslike lines. What had shocked her most was her reaction to the prospect. She had felt hot and anxious. Had it not been for the beta blocker she felt sure she would have suffered a panic attack right there in the hotel bar, her first in months. It was curious, but also disturbing. Throughout her dark years, sex and desire had always been an antidote to her anxiety. When Steve had touched her, she was instantly transported into the moment. Nothing else mattered. But Michael’s unexpected look had produced the opposite effect. The brief flash of excitement, like an electric pulse through her body, had been followed by a sense of dread that seemed to rise like a dark tide inside her. And it was made all the more confusing by the fact that she hadn’t for a moment thought of him that way.

During her morning commute through the frosted forest and across the estuary, she tried to isolate the feeling that had haunted her the previous night and that refused to be banished by the startling January sun. It was not one but several sensations, she concluded. Grief, shame, and a guilty feeling that she realized she hadn’t experienced since she was a teenager. Giving in to it, as Dr Allen would have told her to, she felt her cheeks start to burn and the taint of disapproval – her father’s. She remembered the day, sitting at the kitchen table opposite him, during the painful time after her mother had left home. She was fifteen years old, and still very innocent. He had quizzed her about the party she was longing to go to and made her list the names of all the boys who would be there. He had made her feel as if she was betraying him.

Things were getting mixed up. It was as if the walls of her inner compartments had been broken down and her emotions were slopping from one to the other; the past and present were equally potent. She was middle-aged, a young woman, a child, all at once. The realization brought a measure of relief. It was just as Dr Allen had predicted. She was experiencing again, and the pain would pass if she would only let herself
feel
it. That was fine in theory, but it left her frightened of making an irrational judgement. Could she trust herself in this state of mind?

She had no option.

It had been Michael’s parting suggestion to check the traffic cameras on the Severn Bridge for any sign of helicopters. Jenny called the bridge authorities as soon as she arrived in the office, but was referred to the Welsh Assembly government, who passed her around five different officials until someone finally informed her that all original footage had already been handed to Sir James Kendall. Jenny tried her contacts in the Chepstow police to see if they might work an angle she hadn’t thought of, but got the same answer: the data had been seized within hours of the plane going down. The order had come directly from Whitehall even before Sir James Kendall had been formally appointed.

Perhaps it was just slick contingency planning that had prompted the authorities to move so quickly, but Jenny doubted it. As she and Michael had been leaving the hotel, he had talked about an incident in Afghanistan in which a colleague had bombed the wrong target and killed seventy innocent civilians at prayer in a makeshift mosque. If they’d run the war as well as they’d organized the cover-up it would all have been over in a couple of years, he said. A small army of men and women from anonymous departments emerged from nowhere to make sure every potential channel of information was blocked. Jenny was beginning to see parallels with her own investigation.

Pushing the creeping sensation of paranoia from her mind, she opened the email that had just arrived from Dr Kerr. It was the results of DNA analysis carried out on the scrapings taken from beneath Amy Patterson’s fingernails. It confirmed the presence of Brogan’s skin cells.

The phone rang in the outer office as she was reading his accompanying note:
Evidence suggests Amy Patterson was not only alive in the water, but fully conscious. Abrasions to Brogan’s forearms indicate the application of considerable force, presumably in panic.

Alison forwarded the call to her desk, ‘It’s a Mr Galbraith. He says he’s the Pattersons’ lawyer.’

‘Mrs Cooper?’ The voice belonged to a man in his thirties, who was both pushy and ambitious.

‘Speaking.’

‘Nick Galbraith, Caldwell Rose. I represent Greg and Michelle Patterson.’

She recognized the name of Bristol’s most upmarket firm of solicitors from an inquest she had conducted into the death of a wealthy young woman at a private clinic. The firm had represented the clinic, and her impression of them had been of charming old-school manners masking a determined streak of ruthlessness.

‘How can I can help you?’

‘I presume you’ve seen the result of the DNA test.’

‘Yes,’ Jenny answered, asking herself how the information had managed to reach him first. She checked the email again and noticed she had merely been copied in as a courtesy. Sir James Kendall was the first named recipient.

‘This evidence seems to suggest that Amy didn’t die in the crash,’ Galbraith said.

‘That’s correct. Though we already suspect that was—’

‘Mrs Patterson would like to meet you,’ Galbraith interjected. ‘In fact, we both would.’

‘What do you wish to discuss?’

‘Best not to on the phone, don’t you think? Can you make her hotel, two o’clock?’

Jenny made him wait while she checked her diary. ‘If you’re absolutely sure it’s necessary.’

‘Thank you, Mrs Cooper. Goodbye.’ He gave her no time to change her mind.

‘I spoke to his girlfriend.’ Jenny looked up to see Alison bustling in with the pile of mail Jenny had deliberately ignored when she arrived.

‘Oh?’ Jenny said, preoccupied. ‘Whose?’

‘Gerry Brogan’s. Her name’s Maria. They’d only known each other a year, but she was devastated, poor girl. No one had told her. She’d been trying to call him all yesterday evening.’

‘Did she have any idea what he was doing this far up the Bristol Channel?’

‘She didn’t even know he had a criminal record. I don’t think she believed me when I said he’d been to prison. He told her he’d spent the last twenty years sailing yachts.’

‘What else did she say?’

‘Only that he was living on a boat until he moved in with her. He sounds like a bit of a drifter, if you’ll pardon the pun.’ She looked at Jenny with maternal concern. ‘You seem a bit tired, Mrs Cooper. You should try getting some more exercise, you’d feel much better for it. I know I do.’

‘I can see,’ Jenny said, feeling an irrational stab of jealousy. Alison had been regularly visiting a gym and, as she often told anyone who would care to listen, had lost twenty pounds. It had taken years off her.

‘I know it’s not easy – being alone.’

‘You seem to be managing.’

‘Just about—’

Jenny waited, sensing that Alison needed to unburden herself.

‘It’s Terry, my husband.’ She made an attempt at a shrug. ‘His girlfriend walked out on him last month and he’s been on the phone saying he wants to get back together. Spain’s suddenly not so wonderful now it’s just him in a rented flat.’

‘Would you have him?’

‘No,’ she said with less than certainty. ‘He’s got no right to me any more. He’s had my best years, now I want some for myself.’ She was trying hard to convince herself. ‘I’m sorry. I shouldn’t be troubling you with this—’ She turned to go.

Jenny said, ‘Alison – there was a call here on Sunday night, after you’d left. I answered, but whoever it was didn’t speak. Do you think it might have been Terry?’

‘He calls my mobile . . .’ She hesitated, as if hiding something. ‘I know who it might have been, though. It won’t happen again.’

Jenny nodded, knowing not to probe any further. ‘And the photographer’s camera—’

‘I’ll deal with it,’ Alison said, and hurried out on heels that threatened to snap her ankles.

Tired?
No one had ever called her that before. But when she inadvertently caught her reflection she saw a face that had been attractive once, which was still slender, but which life had worn and grooved. A history had emerged in her features; there were threads of silver in her hair; she was a woman who could never again be called a girl.

It was less than a half-mile walk to the Marriott on College Green, which stood only a few yards from Bristol Cathedral in the ancient heart of the city. The narrow side streets that led off in several directions with their scruffy old pubs and faded Georgian buildings were a gateway into the city’s seafaring past. This had been England’s first port in the days of tall-masted ships that rode the trade winds across the Atlantic. The thoroughfares and marketplaces would have been filled with American and African voices. Even more so than London, Bristol had been the crossroads of the world.

Galbraith strode out of the downstairs lounge to meet her in the lobby and squeezed her hand in a large fist. ‘Good of you to come, Mrs Cooper.’

He was just as she had pictured him: tall, dark-haired and broad-shouldered. She remembered that the senior partner of his firm, a man named Duncan Rose, liked to tell anyone who’d listen that he had twice played rugby for England. He had recruited in his own image.

‘I’ve booked us a meeting room upstairs,’ he said, leading the way towards the elevator. ‘I thought it might be best.’

Michelle Patterson had set up office in a small meeting room on the second floor. She had a notebook computer, a printer and two phones – one for research, one for fielding calls from the families of other passengers, she explained as Jenny took a seat. This was clearly her way of coping, and if outward appearances were anything to go by it was working. Dressed in a formal business suit and with her hair neatly arranged, she could have been about to address an academic conference.