“Captain Blake, he’s 46 is that right?”
Freya nodded. “He’ll be 47 in January. I mean…” She stopped, for the first time the enormity of what happened hitting her. Breathe. “His birthday is January 25th.”
“All Right.” He squeezed her shoulder, then his hand dropped, jotting quick notes in a pad. “That’s lovely. And, can I ask, how long has he been a commercial pilot?”
“Um, I guess, twenty years, maybe.”
“Gosh, so very experienced then. How long has he been flying with JetCymru?”
“Four years nearly.”
“And before that AirBritain? That’s right, isn’t it? Long-distance, out of Heathrow, with them for a number of years?”
“Fifteen…yes.”
“Lovely. So, goodness, a very experienced pilot. But it would be fair to say that he has had problems over the years?”
Freya could feel it, her skin littered with pin pricks. “Problems?”
“Problems. Difficulties. See, I spoke to someone in AirBritain who told us that he was quite well known for being difficult.”
You need to know when to lie. You need to know when to lie to yourself. But what happens when the rest of the world knows the truth? What happens to your lie then?
“Who said…”
“A source, I’m sorry I can’t expand on that, but I’m sure you can understand. See, what they said was that he was notorious within AirBritain, arrogant, that by the end no-one wanted to work with him.”
Dad’s coming home, Frey. He hates being away from us. He’s going to leave London, get a job somewhere local. That way we can all be together. Her mother’s eyes shining, face creased into a smile. It’ll be wonderful. He misses us all so much.
“People are saying that he was known to be reckless, that he would do things that went against protocol. In fact he was disciplined for it. That’s right isn’t it? Just before he left AirBritain? We have been told that was why he left. That it was a case of jumping before he was pushed.”
He wants to come home, Frey. So we can all be together.
“I…” Suddenly Freya was aware of the bitterness of the wind, pulling at her skin, the thick snow piling around her slippered feet.
“And at JetCymru? He’s had problems there too, right? People saying that he has a bad attitude. Again, the word reckless.”
Freya stepped back, closer to the house, suddenly feeling out of her depth. The red light still blinking. “I have to go.”
“Now, Freya, you know I have to ask you this, what about yesterday? How did he seem to you? Tired? Upset, maybe?”
Red-rimmed eyes. A start when he sees his daughter, standing in the kitchen where he doesn’t expect her to be. His hands, shaking, still cradling the phone.
“Had he been depressed?”
“Why?” Her voice seemed to be sticking, thick in her throat.
“People are talking, Freya. They are saying pilot error.” She didn’t want to be here now, had bitten off more than she could chew and should have listened to her grandmother, should have stayed inside where it was warm and safe.
“Have you seen the crash site, Freya? We’ve been there. You should see it. It’s a dreadful scene. Just dreadful. A lot of people dead. So many families devastated. And your father had something to do with that. So I have to ask you, Freya. What was going on with your father?”
Chapter 16
Tom – Saturday, 17th March – 9.02am
Libby’s father rested his hand against the wooden door, looked like he would fall without it. His stomach blossomed into a gut that hung over the band of his jeans, eyes red, face slack. He looked at Tom, and for a moment it seemed that he didn’t see him.
“Super, DC Tom Allison…”
The man shook his head. “It’s not Superintendent any more. Just plain Jim now.” But his shoulders straightened a little, and his eyes came into focus, running over Tom. Pausing for a moment at his shoes. Tom had brushed the mud off them. Rubbed them over with a cloth. Jim nodded, a fractional movement of his head, then looked back up at Tom. “Come on in.”
The hallway was wide and bright. Tom felt a pressure, brushing against his leg, glanced down. The black and white cat looking up at him with overlarge eyes.
“Charlie. Sorry. My daughter’s cat.”
Tom nodded. Looking at Jim’s hands. They hung limp at his sides, as if they weren’t connected to him any more. Small, smaller than you would expect to see on a man with a reputation as a lion on the force. His wedding ring dug into his flesh, as if his finger had grown around it, pulling it into his skin. “I, DI Maxwell, he said you might be more comfortable with someone from CID…”
“That’s good of him, very good of him. Was CID a long time myself. Lifetime ago now.” He wasn’t looking at Tom, gaze drifted off into the middle distance. Looked emptied out. The way one would expect a father to look after the death of his child.
Tom cleared his throat. “It’s a good job. Busy.” What else do you say when nothing matters any more? You talk about the stuff that never mattered anyway. Like the weather. Because that at least remains the same when everything around it has changed.
“Takes the heart of you. Have to love it otherwise it’d kill you. Tough for families though. That’s why I got out in the end. Wasn’t seeing Essie, the kids. Said to myself, Jim, you’re going to end up married to no-one but the job. And the kids…” His voice sputtered, a failing candle, then went out.
Tom’s stomach spasmed, the way it had in the hospital, the receptionist’s voice trilling “She’s here” and the faces turning, looking at him with something akin to hatred, that he has got what they so desperately want. The feeling of a gift unjustly given.
A door opened, closed, slow footsteps. The mother walked, every step painful to watch. Jim turned, and now there’s a new kind of grief pulsing from him. He held out his hand.
“Essie, this is Tom.” Pulling his wife in, mother bird cradling young beneath its wing. “Tom, my wife Esther.”
Tom smiled, and she nodded, face contorted like she’s really trying to speak, but her mouth is stoppered up by sadness. Fingers wrapped themselves around her husband’s shirt, and he stared at them. Hands again. It was like he’d become obsessed with them. Narrow, small. Trembling. They clung to her husband like that was all that was keeping her from falling.
“Why don’t you have a sleep?” Jim stroked her hair.
One beat. Two. Then she looked up at her husband, like she’d only just realised he’d said something, eyes watching the shape of his lips. “I…No…I’ll stay. Just in case. You might…”
“If we need you, we’ll call you.” Kissing her on the forehead.
Esther nodded, not looking at anyone now, sleepwalking towards the stairs, and up. They didn’t say anything. Watched her go.
Jim cleared his throat, wiping his eyes with the back of his hand. “Come into the kitchen, Tom. Let’s talk in there.”
It smelled of sugar and cinammon and burnt pastry. A narrow man, tall with an aquiline nose, blonde hair cut short, stood, staring out of the kitchen window.
“Tom. This is my son, Ethan.” Jim said.
Tom nodded, a brief smile. Ethan looked to be close to his age, early thirties maybe. He started, looked like he hadn’t heard them coming. Tom held out a hand, and the other man shook it, briefly. His hands were large, solid.
Jim pulled a chair out from the kitchen table. “Have a seat, Tom. Coffee? Eth? Grab us some coffee.”
“Tom. I need to ask. Where are we with the investigation?” Jim leaned forward, splayed his fingers flat against the pine table top.
Tom hesitated, diplomacy vying with honesty. “Well, we’re doing everything…” His voice trailed off into nothing, caught up in Jim’s stare. It was hard, face pulled tight as a drum. He recognised the look. It was the one he saw in the mirror. “How much do you want to know?”
“Everything.” Jim’s voice was different, all sharp edges and slick surfaces. A policeman’s voice.
Better to be a policeman now, because being a father is just too damn hard.
Ethan set the mugs of coffee onto the table, clumsy, the dark liquid slopping.
“Incident room is up and running. Got a good staff there. Senior Investigating Officer is DS Barker, new in from Avon & Somerset. He’s got a good rep. The boys like him.”
“Do we know when…” Jim’s voice trailed off, too hard to put it into words. When was my daughter murdered?
“We’re waiting on the pathologist.” Tom kept his voice even, trying to be the detective, trying not to think that it could be no more than a day, two at the most; before the plane crash, after the plane crash. Such a short amount of time for the world to turn on its head.
“I, right.” Jim looked down, clearing his throat. “And the scene?”
“Not bad. Mostly untouched. Snowfall wiped out any footprints, but scenes of crime are doing what they do.”
Tom sipped his coffee. Stoppering up his mouth. So that he wouldn’t have to tell this man that his daughter was still lying on the riverbank, covered in little more than a tent. Scenes of crime were hopeful that they would get her out today, that had been the message from this morning’s briefing. Hopeful, not certain.
“The house?”
“Forensics are there now.” Turning his daughter’s life upside down, searching through her private belongings in the hope of uncovering her deepest, darkest secrets. Like the condoms that she kept in the beside cabinet even though she was supposedly single. The empty condom wrapper buried at the bottom of the bathroom bin. Tom wondered how much this man truly wanted to know about his child now that she was gone. “House-to-house team are canvassing the neighbours. We’re hoping someone’ll throw something up.”
Jim nodded, looked down at his hands as he sucked in a low breath. “Was she raped?”
“Dad!” Ethan’s expression was taut. “Don’t…”
Tom shook his head. Watching the brother. “We don’t think so. So far there’s been no evidence of sexual assault.”
Jim released the breath, his shoulders slumping. “Okay.”
Ethan turned, staring back out of the window into the still falling snow.
Chapter 17
Cecilia – Saturday, 17th March – 9.30am
Cecilia didn’t know why she had come. She stood in the hospital lobby, surrounded by tight faces and torn bodies and broken hearts. She hadn’t heard Tom come in last night, but then, there was a murder. That was the way it was when there was a murder. And what did it matter to her anyway. Ben had stayed with Tom’s mother. She had rung Cecilia, thrusting Ben onto the phone to say goodnight to Cecilia, even though all the child wanted to do was watch television and be left alone. Cecilia had tried to make the noises that a mother should make. Had said goodnight, told her son that she loved him. Wondering if she was doing it right, what her mother-in-law would think.
She had woken, a little after eight, sleep disturbed by the sound of the door slamming. She had got up and, for the first time in the longest of times, had hoped that it was Tom coming home, so that he would be there and she wouldn’t have to be alone with the beige walls and the sounds of a screaming engine. But the house had been silent, driveway empty. She was alone.
She had tried to settle. Had showered as best she could with the pain in her arm. Had put on the television and tried to block out the sounds and the smell of jet fuel until she couldn’t anymore.
She hadn’t known where she was going. Had gotten into her car and turned her key in the ignition, guiding it onto the motorway, doing eighty, car ploughing through slush like a ship through storm waves. She would go and get Ben. That was what she would do. And she was going to get Ben, she really was. But then the miles had fallen away behind her, and then all she could see was herself standing in the hallway of her mother-in-law’s house, with its ugly beige flecked anaglypta, holding out her arms to her son, stomach eating her from the inside, him turning away, choosing his grandmother over her. Her mother-in-law’s face, faux sympathy tinged with triumph.
Driving past the junction. Foot flat to the floor. Then blue hospital signs, her finger flicking the indicator, plunging up the steep ramp of the slip road, and she doesn’t know why. But she’s thinking about the knot of people sitting huddled in the snow, and the way they looked at her like she had all the answers. A sharp left, not waiting at the roundabout even though there was a car coming, a Volvo that braked sharply, honking its horn.
It was quieter today than it had been yesterday. The crowds had thinned out. The information desk had been pushed back into the corner, tucked out of the way, as if that way one could pretend that it had all been a bad dream and a plane hadn’t really fallen out of the sky. It was still manned. A single, solitary receptionist, foundation thick on her lined face, elbows resting on the table. She wore coral lipstick. Eyes heavy, like she had been there forever. She watched the people, gaze tracking them, body folded in tight, willing them to keep walking.
Cecilia stood, too close to the sliding doors, so that they hung agape, a billowing breeze bringing with it a dusting of snow that turned the grey linoleum white, the desk feet away. It seemed that she couldn’t move, her feet sunk into the ground, figures moving around her, in their pyjamas and suits and white coats, and it was like she was invisible. That fleeting sensation again, like maybe she’s already dead. Her gaze tracking the crowd, looking for someone to notice her. That was when she noticed him. A young man, little more than a teenager; black hair, thick, dark eyes, distantly familiar. He was leaning against a wall, a spike of tension running through his neck, looked like he’d been crying.
Cecilia stood a little straighter.
“Can I help you?” The receptionist asked.
Cecilia started.
The woman was watching her, had pulled her mouth into a sympathetic smile. But it was in her eyes still that look, that says that she wants Cecilia to say no, that she’s fine thank you, so that she won’t have to deal with it again today, won’t have to break another heart.
“I…” The words stuck. I want to see the people, the ones that I pulled out from the plane before it caught on fire. But nothing seemed to be working the way it should, her lips moving, no sounds coming out, and her shoulders slumped. Her arm throbbed, and, even though she didn’t want to, she cradled it, looking now like just another victim. Cecilia glanced over her shoulder back towards where the boy had stood. Nothing there now but an empty space. Cecilia shook her head, her gaze sinking back to the woman with the bad make-up.