by Heide Goody
“I’m picturing something like a Caribbean steel drum.”
“Yeah, except this one doesn’t play Yellow Bird, it explodes. The explosive force turns the metal disc into a bullet-shaped, self-forged warhead that can penetrate tank side armour. That one was a couple of metres across. I need something—”
“Less than twenty millimetres, like a halfpenny coin.”
“Exactly.”
“Or a euro one cent coin.”
“Really?” said Bernard.
“Sixteen millimetres in diameter.”
Bernard grinned. “You see! I knew you’d be the man with the answer. Clever bastard. It’s the specs.”
Jacob adjusted his round glasses. “There is no correlation between spectacles and intelligence, Bernard. That it was literate people who were the first to make full use of them is another example of how people misunderstand cause and effect.”
“You crack me up,” said Bernard. “Right. Off to find some euros. And I’ll feel happier destroying them rather than decent British coins. Pissing fiddly things.”
Bernard left him to it. Jacob picked up his pen, apparently to resume his campaign to right the wrongs in the world of jigsaws.
64
Sam and Marvin each had a small overnight case for their Christmas trip to Rich’s offshore luxury pad. Sam had watched a series of videos on the internet on the most space-saving ways to pack a suitcase. There was some dispute as to whether rolling or folding was best, but Sam opted to roll all of her clothes into sausage shapes. She layered them carefully into her case, using the tiny gaps to accommodate toiletries. It was deemed essential to use the dead space inside shoes, so Sam stuffed her underwear tightly inside.
“Can I put some stuff in your case?” asked Marvin as they plonked them down by the front door, just before Rich was due to pick them up.
Sam looked at him in alarm. “If I said there’s no room in my case, I think I’d be understating it. If the zip bursts, we could all be killed by tightly-rolled undies.”
“Just a pair of shoes,” said Marvin. “You must have room for that, surely?”
“Why must I?”
“Because men’s shoes are bigger than women’s. It stands to reason you’d have some spare space.”
“It really doesn’t,” said Sam. “How many pairs of shoes are you taking?”
“Only four,” said Marvin.
“Four pairs of shoes? We’re there for two nights. How could you possibly need four pairs of shoes?”
“It’s not good for the leather if you wear the same pair every day.”
“Nope, still doesn’t add up.”
“A pair for relaxing and a formal pair. It certainly does add up.”
“Can you do without them, dad? I really haven’t got any spare room in my case. I’ve also got my laptop in there in case Rich decides he wants to look over his animal drill footage.”
“How about your handbag?”
Sam sighed. Her dad always seemed to imagine a woman’s handbag was the size of a small valise. She held up her tiny bag. “If I emptied everything out of it, you still wouldn’t get a pair of shoes in there.”
The doorbell went and Sam was saved from any further discussion. She opened the door and Rich beamed at the pair of them.
As always, he didn’t seem appropriately dressed, as though weather was something that only happened to poor people. Despite the cold breeze his jacket and shirt were open enough to display the shell on a leather thong that hung at his neck. He said he’d got it freediving with some foreign catwalk model on a tropical island, or somesuch. Another bullshit story.
“Ready?” asked Rich
“Very much so,” said Marvin, his spare shoes forgotten. “A helicopter ride is something special.”
“I hope you enjoy it,” said Rich, picking up their cases and leading them down to a large four wheel drive.
“It’s been a while,” said Marvin. “Can’t think who it was that used to have one. Tarbuck or maybe Cheggers. Actually, it could have been Dusty. I once remember going over for a picnic on Anglesey, just because the sun was out. I daresay that’s not allowed since the royals moved in.”
They drove north through the town. Glimpses of the sea showed wave tops whipped into white foam by a stiff wind. Christmas Eve in Skegness was all greys and whites.
“How come you’re driving, Rich?” Sam asked. “I thought we were going over with your butler chap.”
“Peninsula is making his way there separately,” said Rich. “He’s been to collect some equipment and catering supplies from Grimsby, so he’ll be bringing everything across from there.”
“Cool.”
“He’s got a load of specialist contacts pulling out all of the stops. Expect some seriously gourmet meals over the next couple of days. Game bird, fish, the finest wine. Did you know he’s a Master Sommelier?”
“He’s good then?”
“It’s the highest level of proficiency you can get. Trained in Australia. The man is an expert.”
Sam grinned at her dad. They were going well and truly outside their comfort zone. The Christmases she’d grown up with were a straightforward ritual involving food, presents and telly. The house would be littered with fruit, nuts and liqueur chocolates for in-between snacking, but the basics were always the same. Sure, not many houses had the occasional celebrity in for Christmas dinner (there was one memorably crowded Christmas where there were five Grumbleweeds at the family table) but, that aside, the Applewhites were used to distinctly ordinary Christmases.
This year held the promise of something very different, with the frisson of excitement that came with the short, dramatic flight they were about to make out across the North Sea. The road north out of town turned inland at Seathorne, to an airfield. Sam could tell it was an airfield because there was a scattering of tiny planes, but there didn’t seem to be very much else there.
A helicopter was parked on a pad near the squat control building. It was larger than the car they were in, but not by much. Was it irrational to want a helicopter to be bigger than that? Sam had only ever been on commercial flights, where the aeroplane was the size of an office building.
A man in a flight suit walked around and shook Rich’s hand.
“This is Gregor, the finest commercial chopper pilot in the business,” said Rich.
The pilot glanced at Sam and Marvin. “These two done the HUET training?”
“No they haven’t, they are my guests,” said Rich. “I’ve applied for a waiver for visitors to my—”
“I can’t take you out if there are people in the group who are unprepared to ditch into the water,” said Gregor.
“I am definitely unprepared to ditch into the water,” said Marvin.
“It’s just a drill,” said Rich to Marvin and Sam. “Nobody’s going into the water.”
“HUET?” Sam asked.
“Helicopter Underwater Escape Training,” said Rich. “If you’re working on the rigs you’d definitely do it, but I’m not sure we really need—”
“It’s important,” said the pilot. “I mean, I’m already overlooking the fact that none of you are wearing rubber immersion suits.”
Sam could see he wasn’t budging on this. “How long does it take to do the training?” she asked.
“It’s half a day,” said Rich, “but you need to go to a specialist centre that has the facilities.”
“Is there a video we can watch on the internet or something?” Sam asked. If DefCon4 had taught her anything, it was the value of self-learning.
The pilot rolled his eyes, but Rich caught his arm. “Great idea. I can run them through everything in fifteen minutes or so.”
“It’s supposed to be physical training,” said Gregor, “so that it’s embedded firmly into your muscle memory.”
“We both have a great imagination,” said Marvin. “If we see a video, I guarantee it will be as if we’ve lived it ourselves. There was this time back in Eastbourne when I was doing a summer s
eason with The Barron Knights. There was a strong man appearing on the same bill and he tore a ligament. Or it might have been a tendon. Anyway, I swear I still get twinges in the same spot when the weather’s—”
“Fine!” said Gregor. “Show them the video. Hurry up though, there’s a major weather system moving in and I don’t want to be stuck out in it.” He walked away towards a small building nearby.
“Does he work for you?” asked Marvin.
“Sort of. No,” sighed Rich. “He does private charter work. Very safety conscious. Come on now, pay attention to this video, he will almost certainly ask questions when he comes back.”
Rich played them a video that showed four trainees strapped into a mocked-up helicopter cabin. When the shot changed, Sam realised it was positioned above something like a swimming pool.
“Oh wow, are they actually going to get a dunking?” she asked.
“Yep.”
The video made it clear the dunking was going to happen multiple times, and the trainees would evacuate the helicopter in different ways, as each particular scenario dictated. The first one was straightforward, where they would each evacuate through the window nearest to them. Sam watched in horror as the trainees sat calmly in their seats, the water coming up their legs, over their laps, and eventually over their heads. They didn’t move until the cabin was entirely filled with water.
“Such self-control,” said Marvin, echoing Sam’s thoughts.
“Listen to the commentary,” said Rich. “It’s drilled into you that you shouldn’t waste your energy until the water fills up the cabin, as you won’t be able to get the windows out. The pressure’s equal when there’s water on both sides of the glass. You also need to wait until the rotors have stopped as well, obviously, or they’d slice and dice you as you swam to the surface.”
Sam felt herself shiver involuntarily as the trainees on the video held their breath while they removed the windows and swam to the surface. The idea of doing all of that in the frigid waters off Skegness was beyond appalling.
“That’s not all though,” said Rich. “The scariest thing is, in real life, you wouldn’t know which way was up. Something to do with the action of the rotors flips the whole helicopter upside down, more often than not. You need to focus on a reference point to try and tell which way is up. Got it?”
Before Sam and Marvin could respond, Rich was waving at the pilot to come back over.
“Don’t go through with this just to save face,” whispered Marvin. “We’ve got cottage pie in the freezer. We could eat that for Christmas dinner.”
“It will be fine, dad. Crashes are so rare, but we just need to be mentally prepared.”
Luckily nobody asked her whether she was mentally prepared, but they all took their places in the helicopter. There was no getting away from the fact that they were stepping into a bubble. A bubble that looked tiny against the pewter grey backdrop of the North Sea.
65
“Come.”
Dr Erin Hackett glanced up at the wall clock as the penultimate patient of the day entered. It was four-fifty and the man had a four-fifty appointment. This was right and proper. She fully intended to finish her clinic at the appropriate time. This had nothing to do with it being Christmas Eve; it was her standard operating procedure.
The NHS guidance that GPs must allocate at least ten minutes to each patient had been rightly scrapped, and Erin saw no reason why she couldn’t rattle through the obvious and easy cases as fast as she wished. As a busy frontline health service, her role was one of winnowing out the malingerers, prescribing to those who could be medicated and referring on those who could not. In many ways, she envied veterinaries whose patients didn’t cloud matters and waste time with idle chat.
She looked at this latest one. A rotund man who wore old age badly. If he had been a dog or a horse, she would have already implemented a strict diet and made a note recommending he be put down sooner rather than later. Of course, such a course of actions was neither moral nor professional for humans. She was going to have to steer him towards more palatable and less effective remedies.
“Mr Babcock. Bernard,” she said, waiting for him to waddle across and sit down. “What can I do for you?”
“I’ve come with my chest,” he said.
“Experiencing pains?” she asked. A heart attack in the surgery, at this point in her day, would put paid to all her evening plans. There were presents to wrap, a table to lay, and a house to tidy (even though her husband would claim he had already tidied it). Cesar didn’t seem to understand the importance of David coming over for dinner on Christmas day.
“Trouble breathing,” said Bernard Babcock. “A bit chesty. A cough.”
She already had her stethoscope out and he was reaching for his shirt buttons.
He was a physically repulsive man, one of the many fat and tattooed who seemed to congregate in this corner of the world and plague her surgery door. He was tanned: a deeply unnatural complexion for this climate and time of year.
She listened to his chest. He did that stilted, self-conscious breathing that all patients did when they were being examined, as though they might get brownie points for the quality of their inhalations.
“Relatively clear,” she commented. “You’ve no history of asthma. Do you smoke?”
“Thirty a day,” he said with apparent glee. “Should I cut down?”
“You should stop. Do your shirt up.”
“You see I was thinking about that. I thought I ought to get me one of those e-cigarette thingymajigs.”
“They do considerably less harm than regular cigarettes,” Erin nodded. “Now, there is an NHS smoking cessation service which—”
“I was wondering if you knew what e-cigarette I should get.”
“We don’t prescribe e-cigs, Mr Babcock.”
“No. But I was wondering if you had any ideas.” The man’s eyes flicked to Erin’s bag on the floor.
It took Erin a moment or two to work out what he was hinting at. Clearly he’d seen her smoking her e-cig, either leaving or arriving in her car. He’d seen his GP using an e-cig and wanted to follow suit. Hers wasn’t even in her bag, but in her desk drawer. She felt a tired irritability – the man thinking she was some sort of e-cig saleswoman. He could simply have gone to one of the growing number of vaping shops in town.
“Smoking cessation services are the best place to start,” she said. “I have a leaflet.”
“In the waiting room?” he said. “Would you fetch it for me?” Did he have something in his closed fist? He was holding it tightly.
“I have one here.” She slipped one off the rack behind her and passed it to him. There was a look of nervous disappointment on his face which she couldn’t comprehend.
“Perhaps I can write you a prescription for your cough,” she suggested. “Although you can simply buy tickly cough medicine at the pharmacist.”
Mr Babcock nodded but he didn’t seem ready to leave. “I just … I just…” He clutched at his coat pocket and pulled out a phone. He put it straight to his ear. “Hello?”
“You will need to take your phone call outside,” Erin said. The man had taken up enough of her time already. There was little need for him to stay any longer.
“You’re what?” He stood and took a step towards the window. “Mary! What’s happened?”
“Mr Babcock…”
There was now full-blown panic on his face. “Doctor! Mary who dropped me off. She’s having a heart attack. In her car.”
“What?”
He peered out of the window. “Oh, Mary!”
Erin tried to see where he was looking.
“The blue car,” he said. “The Honda.”
Erin hesitated for a second before grabbing her own phone from the top drawer and the medical responder kit from the wall’ Leaving the man, she dashed out along the corridor and past reception.
“Sofia!” she called to the receptionist. “I may need you to call an ambulance!” Then she was
outside and hurrying towards the little blue Honda that Mr Babcock had pointed out.
It was empty.
She peered through the windows in case the occupant was lying flat along the seats. She circled the vehicle in case the person had gotten out. There was no sign. She looked toward the window of her consulting room, but Mr Babcock was no longer there. Erin moved along the row of parked cars, looking at each, even stepping onto the pavement to check the verge for any signs of a recent heart attack victim. There was none.
As she made her way back inside, Mr Babcock was coming down the corridor from the consultation room.
“I must apologise, doctor,” he said. “She was telling me about something that had happened on The Archers. Silly moo.”
“What?”
“Total confusion,” he said and smiled tightly. “Right. I’ve got my leaflet. Off to buy some Robitussin, yeah?”
He left, which was at least a good thing. Erin sighed, annoyed, and returned to her office. She had left the man alone in there for a minute or two, but nothing was out of place. There were no drugs or expensive equipment he could have stolen. He hardly looked the type, anyway. As she sat down she saw that her top drawer was closed. She thought she had left it open when she’d grabbed her phone. Clearly that was not the case.
She clicked on her computer and told Sofia to send the last patient in.
66
The drone of the helicopter rotors made ordinary speech inside the cabin impossible. Conversation was possible only through headphones connected to the intercom. Marvin was merrily telling everyone about the time he rode in a helicopter with Noel Edmonds, shortly before making an appearance on Noel’s Late, Late Breakfast Show. It was droning of a different sort.
Sam stared down at the sea. From this height the waves almost looked static, lines of cotton-wool wave tops in a teal grey sea. She suspected it was an optical illusion. When they’d passed the wind farm, Sam looked back at the coast. The buildings of the town merged into one another, a mould growing on the edge of the flat Lincolnshire landscape. She wanted to ask how high they were flying, but she didn’t want to distract the pilot from his important job of not ditching the helicopter into the sea.