Flying Finish

by Dick Francis

  A hundred and fifty knots should reduce the petrol consumption enough for me to stay in the air until long enough after dawn to find an airfield. I hoped. It also meant not four hours ahead, but more than five: and I’d had enough already. Still, now that I knew roughly where I was going, the plane could fly itself. I made small adjustments to the trimmer until the needle on the instrument which showed whether she was climbing or descending pointed unwaveringly to level, and then switched in the automatic pilot. I took my hands off the wheel and leaned back. The D.C.4 flew straight on. Very restful.

  Nothing happened for several minutes except that I developed a thirst and remembered Rous-Wheeler for the first time since take-off. Still on his knees, I supposed, and extremely uncomfortable. His bad luck.

  There was water in the galley only five or six steps behind me, cold and too tempting. Gingerly I edged out of my seat. The plane took no notice. I took two steps backwards. The instruments didn’t quiver. I went into the galley and drew a quick cup of water, and went back towards the cockpit drinking it. Clearly the plane was doing splendidly without me. I returned to the galley for a refill of the cold delicious liquid, and when I’d got it, nearly dropped it.

  Even above the noise of the engines I could hear Rous-Wheeler’s scream. Something about the raw terror in it raised the hair on my neck. That wasn’t pain, I thought, not the sort he’d get from cramp anyway. It was fear.

  He screamed again, twice.

  One of the horses, I thought immediately. If Billy hadn’t boxed them properly … My newly irrigated mouth went dry again. A loose horse was just too much.

  I went back to the cockpit, hurrying. Nothing had moved on the instrument panel. I’d have to risk it.

  The plane had never seemed longer, the chains and racks more obstructing. And none of the mares was loose. They weren’t even fretting, but simply eating hay. Half relieved, half furious, I went on past the packing case. Rous-Wheeler was still there, still kneeling. His eyes protruded whitely and his face was wet. The last of his screams hung like an echo in the air.

  ‘What the hell’s the matter?’ I shouted to him angrily.

  ‘He …’ his voice shrieked uncontrollably. ‘He … moved.’

  ‘Who moved?’

  ‘Him.’ His eyes were staring fixedly at the blanket covering Patrick.

  He couldn’t have moved. Poor, poor Patrick. I went across and pulled the rug off and stood looking down at him, the tall silent body, the tumbled hair, the big pool of blood under his down-turned face.

  Pool of blood.

  It was impossible. He hadn’t had time to bleed as much as that. I knelt down beside him and rolled him over, and he opened his yellow eyes.

  Chapter Eighteen

  He’d been out cold for six hours and he was still unconscious. Nothing moved in his eyes, and after a few seconds they fell slowly shut again.

  My fingers were clumsy on his wrist and for anxious moments I could feel nothing; but his pulse was there. Slow and faint, but regular. He was on his way up from the depths. I was so glad that he wasn’t dead that had Rous-Wheeler not been there I would undoubtedly have wept. As it was, I fought against the flooding back of the grief I’d suppressed when Billy shot him. Odd that I should be tumbled into such intense emotion only because the reason for it was gone.

  Rous-Wheeler stuttered ‘What … what is it?’ with a face the colour and texture of putty, and I glanced at him with dislike.

  ‘He’s alive,’ I said tersely.

  ‘He can’t be.’

  ‘Shut up.’

  Billy’s bullet had hit Patrick high, above the hairline and at a rising angle, and instead of penetrating his skull had slid along outside it. The long, swollen and clotted wound looked dreadful, but was altogether beautiful in comparison with a neat round hole. I stood up and spread the blanket over him again, to keep him warm. Then, disregarding Rous-Wheeler’s protest, I went away up the plane.

  In the cockpit nothing had changed. The plane roared steadily on its three ten heading and all the instruments were like rocks. I touched the back of the co-pilot, awake again to his presence. The silence in him was eternal: he wouldn’t feel my sympathy, but he had it.

  Turning back a pace or two, I knelt down beside Mike. He too had been shot in the head, and about him too there was no question. The agile eyebrow was finished. I straightened him out from his crumpled position and laid him flat on his back. It wouldn’t help any, but it seemed to give him more dignity. That was all you could give the dead, it seemed; and all you could take away.

  The four packing cases in the luggage bay were heavy and had been thrust in with more force than finesse, pushing aside and crushing most of the things already there. Shifting the first case a few inches I stretched a long arm past it and tugged out a blanket, which I laid over Mike. Armed with a second one I went back into the galley. Sometime in the past I’d seen the first-aid box in one of the cupboards under the counter, and to my relief it was still in the same place.

  Lying on top of it was a gay parcel wrapped in the striped paper of Malpensa Airport. The doll for Mike’s daughter. I felt the jolt physically. Nothing could soften the facts. I was taking her a dead father for her birthday.

  And Gabriella … anxiety for her still hovered in my mind like a low cloud ceiling, thick, threatening and unchanged. I picked up the parcel she had wrapped and put it on the counter beside the plastic cups and the bag of sugar. People often did recover from bullets in the lungs: I knew they did. But the precise Italian doctor had only offered hope, and hope had tearing claws. I was flying home to nothing if she didn’t live.

  Taking the blanket and the first aid kit I went back to Patrick. In the lavatory compartment I washed my filthy hands and afterwards soaked a chunk of cotton wool with clean water to wipe his blood-streaked face. Dabbing dry with more cotton wool I found a large hard lump on his forehead where it had hit the floor: two heavy concussing shocks within seconds, his brain had received. His eyelids hadn’t flickered while I cleaned him, and with a new burst of worry I reached for his pulse: but it was still there, faint but persevering.

  Sighing with relief I broke open the wrapping of a large sterile wound dressing, laid it gently over the deep gash in his scalp, and tied it on with the tape. Under his head I slid the second blanket, folded flat, to shield him a little from the vibration in the aircraft’s metal skin. I loosened his tie and undid the top button of his shirt and also the waistband of his trousers: and beyond that there was no help I could give him. I stood up slowly with the first aid kit and turned to go.

  With anxiety bordering on hysteria Rous-Wheeler shouted, ‘You aren’t going to leave me like this again, are you?’

  I looked back at him. He was half sitting, half kneeling, with his hands still fastened to the floor in front of him. He’d been there for nearly three hours, and his flabby muscles must have been cracking. It was probably too cruel to leave him like that for the rest of the trip. I put the first aid kit down on the flattened box, pulled a bale of hay along on the starboard side and lodged it against the untra-sonic packing case. Then with Alf’s cutter I clipped through the wire round his wrists and pointed to the bale.

  ‘Sit there.’

  He got up slowly and stiffly, crying out. Shuffling, half-falling, he sat where I said. I picked up another piece of wire and in spite of his protests bound his wrists together again and fastened them to one of the chains anchoring the crate. I didn’t want him bumbling all over the plane and breathing down my neck.

  ‘Where are we going?’ he said, the pomposity reawakening now that he’d got something from me.

  I didn’t answer.

  ‘And who is flying the plane?’

  ‘George,’ I said, finishing his wrists with a twirl he’d never undo. ‘Naturally.’

  ‘George who?’

  ‘A good question,’ I said, nodding casually.

  He was beautifully disconcerted. I left him to stew in it, picked up the first aid kit, checked again
that Patrick’s pulse was plodding quietly along, and made my way back to the galley.

  There were a number of dressings in the first aid box, including several especially for burns, and I wasn’t keen on my shirt sticking and tearing away again. Gingerly I pulled my jersey up under my arms and tucked the side of the shirt away under it. No one except Billy would have found the view entertaining, and the air at once started everything going again at full blast. I opened one of the largest of the burn dressings and laid it in place with that exquisite kind of gentleness you only give to yourself. Even so, it was quite enough. After a moment I fastened it on and pulled my shirt and jersey down on top. It felt so bad for a bit that I really wished I hadn’t bothered.

  I drank another cup of water, which failed to put out the fire. The first aid kit, on further inspection, offered a three-way choice in pain killers: a bottle each of aspirin and codeine tablets, and six ampoules of morphine. I shook out two of the codeines, and swallowed these. Then I packed everything back into the box, shut the lid, and left it on the counter.

  Slowly I went up to the cockpit and stood looking at the instruments. All working fine. I fetched a third blanket from the luggage bay and tucked it over and round the body of Bob. He became immediately less of a harsh reality, and I wondered if that was why people always covered the faces of the dead.

  I checked the time. An hour from Marseilles. Only a hundred and fifty miles, and a daunting way still to go. I leaned against the metal wall and shut my eyes. It was no good feeling the way I did with so much still to do. Parts of Air Ministry regulations drifted ironically into my mind … ‘Many flying accidents have occurred as a result of pilots flying while medically unfit … and the more exacting the flying task the more likely are minor indispositions to be serious … so don’t go up at all if you are ill enough to need drugs … and if coffee isn’t enough to keep you awake you are not fit to fly.’

  Good old Air Ministry I thought: they’d hit the nail on the head. Where they would have me be was down on the solid earth, and I wholeheartedly agreed.

  The radio, I thought inconsequentially. Out of order. I opened my eyes, pushed myself off the wall, and set about finding out why. I hadn’t far to look. Yardman had removed all the circuit breakers, and the result was like an electric light system with no fuses in the fuse box. Every plane carried spares, however. I located the place where the spares should have been, and there weren’t any. The whole lot in Yardman’s pockets, no doubt.

  Fetching a fresh cup of water, I climbed again into Patrick’s seat and put on the headset to reduce the noise. I leaned back in the comfortable leather upholstery and rested my elbows on the stubby arms, and after a while the codeine and the bandage turned in a reasonable job.

  Outside the sky was still black and dotted with brilliant stars, and the revolving anti-collision beacon still skimmed pinkly over the great wide span of the wings, but there was also a new misty greyish quality in the light. Not dawn. The moon coming up. Very helpful of it, I thought appreciatively. Although it was well on the wane I would probably be able to see what I was doing the next time I flew out over the coastline. I began to work out what time I would get there. More guesses. North-west across France coast to coast had to be all of five hundred miles. It had been one-forty when I left Marseilles; was three-ten now. E.T.A. English Channel, somewhere about five.

  Patrick’s being alive made a lot of difference to everything. I was now thankful without reservation that I had taken the D.C.4 however stupid my motive at the time, for if I’d left it, and Yardman had found him alive, they would simply have pumped another bullet into him, or even buried him as he was. The tiring mental merry-go-round of whether I should have taken the Cessna troubled me no more.

  I yawned. Not good. Of all things I couldn’t afford to go to sleep. I shouldn’t have taken those pills, I thought: there was nothing like the odd spot of agony for keeping you awake. I rubbed my hand over my face and it felt as if it belonged to someone else.

  I murdered Billy, I thought.

  I could have shot him in the leg and left him to Yardman, and I’d chosen to kill him myself. Choice and those cold-blooded seconds of revenge … they made it murder. An interesting technical point, where self-defence went over the edge into something else. Well … no one would ever find out; and my conscience didn’t stir.

  I yawned again more deeply, and thought about eating one of Patrick’s bananas. A depleted bunch of them lay on the edge by the windscreen, with four blackening stalks showing where he had fended off starvation on the morning trip. But I imagined the sweet pappiness of them in my mouth, and left them alone. I wasn’t hungry enough. The last thing I’d eaten had been the lasagne with Gabriella.

  Gabriella …

  After a while I got up and went through the plane to look at Patrick. He lay relaxed and unmoving, but his eyes were open again. I knelt beside him and felt his pulse. Unchanged.

  ‘Patrick,’ I said. ‘Can you hear?’

  There was no response of any sort.

  I stood up slowly and looked at Rous-Wheeler sitting on the bale of hay. He seemed to have shrunk slightly as if the gas had leaked out, and there was a defeated sag to his whole body which showed that he realised his future was unlikely to be rosy. I left him without speaking and went back to the cockpit.

  Four o’clock. France had never seemed so large. I checked the fuel gauges for the hundredth time and saw that the needles on the auxiliary tanks were knocking uncomfortably near zero. The plane’s four engines used a hundred and fifty gallons an hour at normal speed and even with the power reduced they seemed to be drinking the stuff. Fuel didn’t flow automatically from the main tanks when the auxiliaries were empty: one had to switch over by hand. And I simply couldn’t afford to use every drop in the auxiliaries, because the engines would stop without warning the second the juice dried up. My fingers hovered on the switch until I hadn’t the nerve to wait any longer, and then flipped it over to the mains.

  Time passed, and the sleeping country slipped by underneath. When I got to the coast, I thought wearily, I was going to have the same old problem. I wouldn’t know within two hundred miles where I was, and the sky was ruthless to the lost. One couldn’t stop to ask the way. One couldn’t stop at all. A hundred and fifty an hour might be slow in terms of jetliners, but it was much too fast in the wrong direction.

  In Patrick’s briefcase there would be not only a thick book of radio charts but also some topographical ground maps: they weren’t needed for ordinary aerial navigation, but they had to be carried in case of radio failure. The briefcase was almost certainly somewhere under or behind the four packing cases in the luggage bay. I went to have a look, but I already knew. The heavy cases were jammed in tight, and even if there had been room to pull them all out into the small area behind the cockpit I hadn’t enough strength to do it.

  At about half past four I went back for another check on Patrick, and found things very different. He had thrown off the blanket covering him and was plucking with lax uncoordinated hands at the bandage on his head. His eyes were open but unfocused still, and his breath came out in short regular groans.

  ‘He’s dying,’ Rous-Wheeler shouted unhelpfully.

  Far from dying, he was up close to the threshold of consciousness, and his head was letting him know it. Without answering Rous-Wheeler I went back along the alley and fetched the morphine from the first aid kit.

  There were six glass ampoules in a flat box, each with its own built-in hypodermic needle enclosed in a glass cap. I read the instruction leaflet carefully and Rous-Wheeler shouted his unasked opinion that I had no right to give an injection, I wasn’t a doctor, I should leave it for someone who knew how.

  ‘Do you?’ I said.

  ‘Er, no.’

  ‘Then shut up.’

  He couldn’t. ‘Ask the pilot, then.’

  I glanced at him. ‘I’m the pilot.’

  That did shut him up. His jaw dropped to allow a clear view of his tonsils
and he didn’t say another word.

  While I was rolling up his sleeve Patrick stopped groaning. I looked quickly at his face and his eyes moved slowly round to meet mine.

  ‘Henry,’ he said. His voice didn’t reach me, but the lip movement was clear.

  I bent down and said, ‘Yes, Patrick. You’re O.K. Just relax.’

  His mouth moved. I put my ear to his lips, and he said ‘My bloody head hurts.’

  I nodded, smiling. ‘Not for long.’

  He watched me snap the glass to uncover the needle and didn’t stir when I pushed it into his arm, though I’d never been on the delivering end of an injection before and I must have been clumsy. When I’d finished he was talking again. I put my head down to hear.

  ‘Where … are … we?’

  ‘On your way to a doctor. Go to sleep.’

  He lay looking vaguely at the roof for a few minutes and then gradually shut his eyes. His pulse was stronger and not so slow. I put the blanket over him again and tucked it under his legs and arms and with barely a glance for Rous-Wheeler went back to the cockpit.

  A quarter to five. Time to go down. I checked all the gauges, found I was still carrying the box of ampoules, and put it up on the ledge beside the bananas and the cup of water. I switched out the cockpit lights so that I could see better outside, leaving the round dial faces illuminated only by rims of red, and finally unlocked the automatic pilot.

  It was when I’d put the nose down and felt again the great weight of the plane that I really doubted that I could ever land it, even if I found an airfield. I wasn’t a mile off exhaustion and my muscles were packing up, and not far beyond this point I knew the brain started missing on a cylinder or two, and haze took the place of thought. If I couldn’t think in crystalline terms and at reflex speed I was going to make an irretrievable mistake, and for Patrick’s sake, quite apart from my own, I couldn’t afford it.