by Clare Curzon
‘Just jet lag, I guess.’ But at that Hilary clammed up. Any confidence he’d displayed with the clients had totally disappeared. He was frankly in a dither.
Z’s curiosity had been centred on cocaine. So did this connect? From Colombia or Cuba illegal immigrants smuggle the raw stuff into Miami by sea. It’s picked up there and flown to the UK in innocent-looking tourists’ luggage. Or, at worst and sometimes fatally, swallowed.
There was plenty of that going on. Cabin crews on the long haul trip were warned to look for passengers refusing food for fear of defecating too soon. Customs and Immigration at British airports included medical back-up. One of their less palatable jobs was recovery and examination of faeces from stay-over detainees.
And sometimes the plastic containers for drugs, often condoms, burst while still inside. Not a pleasant way to die if you didn’t get to a surgeon in time.
‘I think,’ Z told him, ‘you’d better give me Justin’s mobile number.’
‘I’m not allowed to use it. Except in emergencies.’
‘This is one, believe me. I’ve other ways of obtaining it, but that could be too late. You know she could die, don’t you? And where does that leave you? Responsible.’
She thought then she heard his teeth chatter. He certainly knew of the traffic she’d suspected. His hands were shaking as he leafed through a notebook from his jacket pocket.
‘Talk to him,’ she ordered. ‘Tell him the police are already on to it. And not to do anything stupid. He’s to stay wherever he is and I’ll send emergency services.’
She watched his stricken face as he pressed out the number. There was a babble of rapid speech at the other end, rising on a note of despair.
‘He’s in his car,’ Hilary whispered. ‘I think he wants to dump her.’
‘Is she still alive?’ Z insisted. She waited while Hilary cut through Justin’s torrent of words.
‘Unconscious,’ he said.
‘Tell him it’s his only chance. He must keep her alive until we can get a surgeon to her.’
‘Leave cover to the locals now,’ Salmon snarled when she phoned to say Justin’s girlfriend was in theatre at Hillingdon hospital having her abdomen explored. ‘You’ve got a job here, remember? The Boss is expecting you to drive him to Bristol.’
Anna steered the Jeep along the twisting lane and in on the rutted track beside a country pub. The usual notice boards had been removed, packed for transport to the Moroccan site, but the wind sock was still flying, indicating a mild blow, south-south-easterly. Daniel, across from her in the passenger seat, appeared not to notice it.
She parked, backing on to a striped marquee, and waved the two men through an opening in the fence. Across the field something bulky was being manhandled off a flat-bed trailer. It was square and heavy.
‘Good, we’re in time to help,’ Anna said complacently. They both started walking across the coarse grassland, Barley bringing up the rear. Ahead, a bulky metal object had also been unloaded and stood braced on four steel legs. Now, as they approached, an immense length of multi-coloured fabric was being drawn from a cube of wickerwork, like an outsized string of red, blue and orange handkerchiefs produced by a conjuror from a hat. Two men in charge ran out, dragging it behind like a great, gaudy, sloughed-off snakeskin.
‘It’s a ruddy balloon,’ Daniel marvelled. ‘Are we going up?’ He was in there at once, helping pull open the folds, shouting to the others as outsize fans on the ground blew air in and the near end started to billow.
Again he was that complicated adolescent mixture of fascinated child and know-all male adult tackling technicalities. Anna went across to Jeremy who was testing the burners. He looked up and grinned, ran a hand over his cropped white hair. ‘Good to see you, Squadron Leader.’
‘Likewise,’ she said. ‘We’ve an extra passenger, Jeremy. My grandson’s bodyguard. Did Caspar fill you in on the background?’
‘He did. You have my sincere condolences, ma’am.’
DC Barley had drifted over to inspect the equipment. The two men shook hands. ‘You the pilot?’ They stood chatting, then together heaved the basket upright from the prone position.
‘That’s my section.’ Jeremy pointed to the largest of five divisions in the basket, the central oblong. The others were square, forming each corner of the cube. ‘Normally we take two passengers in each section, making nine, including the pilot.’
Barley examined the cockpit with its coloured hanging cords that controlled the upper panels of the balloon. Under the burners there wasn’t a lot of space for a pilot, once mounted, because of the gas bottles.
‘Flown before?’ asked Jeremy.
‘Just in holiday jets, and the Chiltern chopper. Did a bit of gliding off Booker airfield.’
‘This is different,’ Jeremy promised, busy fitting protective spats to the four steel legs of the superstructure. ‘Total silence between burns, no engine, no straining fabric sounds, because we’re wind-borne, not resisting the air. Too high even for traffic noise over the motorways. Peaceful, civilised.’
When the balloon was fully bellied and floating, they climbed in, using square toe-holds in the wickerwork to reach the breast-high rim. Anna and Daniel were to one side, the boy directionally ahead; Barley and a crewman on the other. Each in a separate section, balancing weight.
Jeremy ran through the safety precautions, indicated the security loops to be grasped, reminded them he’d repeat instructions directly before landing. ‘You’ll see there are no seats. That’d be a complication if anything went wrong. Which it won’t.’
‘OK then, everybody happy? We’re off.’ A groundsman loosed the moorings.
The burner roared above them. Slowly they began to rise.
Anna turned and smiled at her grandson. His eyes blazed with excitement, his features taut. Then he smiled back, and her heart went cold. Such intensity, almost malevolence.
Dear God, don’t let him do anything crazy.
Jeremy had said it was peaceful. It might have been so for Barley if he hadn’t been uneasy about the boy. Silent it certainly was when, above nine hundred feet, Jeremy cut gas to the roaring burners. The last sound from below had been miniature cows lowing as they crossed unbelievably green pasture, driven towards a toy milking parlour. The River Chess snaked flatly, country lanes wriggled like kinky tape. As they rose still higher motorways began to look just as marked on the map.
They were progressing in a series of leisurely hops, soaring steadily as hot air filled the fabric, then, as the fire’s roar was cut, more slowly drifting down until the burners took up again and they rose even higher.
In the late afternoon light, tapestry colours of autumn woods, lush fields and tidy country houses with turquoise swimming pools began to take on a harmonious overall blue haze. Long shadows drew bars across the valleys. The sky alone remained luminescent, immeasurable, with the sun sinking in a pearly silver towards the left horizon.
The DC looked over Jeremy’s head as he squatted in the cockpit. Daniel, like himself, was in the forward basket section, on the far side. Out of reach. He was leaning far out, focusing on the chequered fields they were presently passing over. The old lady, behind him and separated by the breast-high wicker partition, was gazing back towards the disappearing village where they had taken off. She was smiling as she turned, leaning forward to speak with her grandson, one arm outstretched.
They were above the sun’s level now, the balloon casting no shadow on a regimented pattern of buildings below. Barley took them for a military establishment, then recalled it would be RAF Halton: maybe a station at which the old lady had once served. Their altitude had wiped out ground contours and he barely recognised the flattened escarpment above the Vale of Aylesbury. Men appeared to be winching up a car upended half-way down the slope.
Fascinated, he could pick out villages he remembered driving through, half-familiar loops of waterways meandering like flat ribbons to lose themselves finally towards the Thames.
&nbs
p; A startled cry made him straighten and turn. Across from the cockpit two figures were struggling, the woman’s arms clamped about the young man, he fighting to get her off his back. Both out of reach because of the cockpit in between, and Jeremy’s hands busy with the burners.
Bloody balls of fire! I should have kept close, the DC knew. Can’t do a bloody thing from here. They should have warned me he was this crazy. For God’s sake, what was the old girl thinking of to give him a chance like this? Did she want him to leap?
‘Get down!’ roared Jeremy, reaching out to grasp Daniel by the shoulder, but the boy swung back an elbow, thrusting him away. Anna Plumley, knocked off balance, gave a little grunt and fell back against the rear wall of wicker, one hand still clutching the boy’s jacket which pulled down imprisoning his arms. Savagely he shook her off, like a terrier with a rat.
He reached out with something in his hand. For a brief second he held it over the void, looking down and then, too fast for Barley to be sure what the object was, he’d released it. Falling, there was a flash of metal as the low sun caught it. Then it was gone. Daniel drew back, turned a mocking smile on him. ‘What’s the sweat, man? Didn’t you ever play Pooh Sticks?’
Jeremy was talking into his mobile, ordering up the truck to meet them, giving location of an emergency landing site. They were dropping steadily now, the fall decelerated with steady, short bursts of burning.
He ignored Anna’s attempt to apologise for the scuffle. He repeated the landing instructions to them, twisted round to check all their grips on the safety ropes, watched them take up squat position for landing, heads below the basket’s rim. The ground was getting close now.
‘There will be one slight bump,’ he said. ‘Then a second slighter one, and we’ll have landed.’
They barely felt a thing, then a little slither on grass, and cool evening air blowing on their flushed faces. The basket stayed upright.
‘So what,’ Jeremy asked grimly, facing Anna and her grandson, ‘was all that about?’
DC Barley looked at the boy’s closed face. He’d thought for a mistaken moment that Daniel had meant to jump. But it wasn’t that. He’d risked killing someone below by dropping a metal object. So what had it been? Something he needed to be rid of? Evidence that hadn’t turned up, despite fingertip searches of the murder site?
Like a sharp kitchen knife, or a small handgun? Who the hell was he protecting?
Jeremy was white with contained anger. ‘Everyone out,’ he ordered. He swung down and waited while the others clambered over the high edge of the basket.
When Daniel stood with his back to him he whirled him round. ‘Did you need telling how dangerous that was? Any solid object falling from that height … You could have killed someone below. For all we know you may have done. Aren’t you in trouble enough?’
The boy flushed, biting his lips. He was trembling with outrage. ‘Take your hands off me. You can’t speak to me like that!’
‘Daniel, the pilot’s in charge,’ Anna warned him, coldly angry. ‘What was it you dropped?’
‘Just my mobile. I’ll not be getting any more death threats on that. Let someone else pick it up. They’re welcome to it.’
Which didn’t ring true, Barley thought. The boy had been too focused on what he was doing. They’d been passing across water at that point. It looked like a stretch of the Grand Union Canal. If the dropped object had hit target, it could take days of dragging to retrieve it. And, anyway, it wouldn’t have been his mobile: Barley had been in the job too long not to know a cover-up when he heard it.
Jeremy had given up on them and was phoning again, guiding in their pick-up. The collapsing balloon needed sorting. Anna joined the crewman who was dragging the sagged fabric out in a straight line, prior to beating out the residual air. They all lent a hand while Jeremy set about dismantling the superstructure.
A 4x4 with the flat-bed trailer appeared at the gate to their field, having tracked their route from ground level. Between them they gathered the fabric into horizontal folds and rolled it down tight, ready to fit again in the basket. The engine was hoisted alongside on the flat-bed. In the 4x4 there was room for them all, with bottles of drinking water provided.
Jeremy nodded to Barley. ‘I have to log it for the police.’
‘Likewise,’ Barley confided. ‘It’ll be my head rolling. I should have kept closer.’
No, Anna told herself: my fault. A stupid idea. It was intended as a pleasant outing, to divert him. Now it’s complicated life further for the wretched boy.
They were driven back in silence to the take-off field. The striped marquee had already been dismantled, ready for transport abroad with the other gear. There was just a temporary table there laid with glasses, a bottle of champagne and nibbles.
Anna insisted that, out of courtesy, they accept the refreshments, along with signed certificates for the flight. It should have been a celebration but had gone seriously flat.
Still Daniel hadn’t thought fit to apologise for his irresponsible behaviour. He drank the champagne as if it was gall. Barley refused it. They said goodbye to Jeremy and his assistants, then returned to Anna’s car. Barley offered to drive but was stared down.
A little more than half an hour later they were back at Fordham Manor. Alma Pavitt hadn’t returned and Anna was obliged to put together a meal, since they all seemed disinclined to eat out in a pub. She covered ready-made pizza bases with tomato purée, mozzarella, ham and chives, while Barley tossed a salad. Daniel had disappeared upstairs, leaving them to discuss him if they cared to. Which they didn’t.
Not a good day at all, Anna decided. I don’t know what good I’m doing here. I’ve never been a success in dealing with family.
Chapter Nineteen
News of her mishap with the car had gone before her. When he picked Z up from the railway station, Yeadings looked rueful. ‘Are you up to the journey? Sure? In which case you drive. Best to get back in the saddle straight after a spill. We’ll stop for a late lunch on the way and you can bring me up to date on the London end while we eat.
‘That explains Jennifer Hoad’s access to drugs,’ he commented when she told him, ‘and raises more questions about the firm in Knightsbridge. Young Halliwell will be lucky to escape a manslaughter charge if his “mule” dies.’
He sounded almost pleased. But then there wasn’t much progress to report on any other aspect of the investigation.
At the Bristol foundry Yeadings and Zyczynski, with a video screen apiece and surrounded by a welter of paperwork drawn from Personnel and Wages departments, were both interrupted by calls on their mobile phones. For the superintendent it was a text message, which he read off without comment.
Z, recognising Anna Plumley’s number, took her call. The news was interesting rather than startling. It seemed that no great harm had come from the boy’s actions, but his grandmother was clearly upset. ‘I’m mortified,’ Anna confessed. ‘I badly misjudged Daniel’s state of mind, and I’ve let my friends in for a severe reprimand at the very least.’
Z sympathised. ‘Has the bodyguard arrived yet?’
‘A Charlie Barley, yes. He’s a great deal more alert than he appears. Unfortunately we were both situated where we couldn’t prevent what happened. We felt sure the object would have fallen into the canal, but couldn’t agree on the exact location. Then again the DC disbelieves that it was Daniel’s mobile phone he got rid of, but I’m quite certain it was. A compact metal object, smaller than any kind of handgun I’m familiar with, and too short for the knife you’re looking for.’
‘Don’t worry,’ Z told her. ‘As promised, I’m dropping in this evening, and I’ll have a word with Daniel. That should give him time to realise he’s been acting very stupidly.’
‘Boy in balloon?’ Yeadings queried as she closed her mobile. ‘I had Barley’s version. He wasn’t best pleased with himself. How’s your list coming on?’
‘Four fictional employees to date,’ she told him, ‘one metallurgical
trainee, one furnaceman, two metalworkers in medium salary range. All with phoney National Insurance numbers. Somebody at this end has been seriously into creative bookkeeping.’
‘I guess we’d better check with Inland Revenue. The taxman will be losing out on this as well. “0 what a tangled web we weave …” I wonder was it worth it?’
‘Someone’s made a quarter of a million to date,’ she reckoned. ‘Kept up another year or so, Fallon, or another, could have bought himself a handsome country estate.’
‘Or paid off a whole load of debts. We need local investigators to go into Fallon’s spending habits. There could be a bottomless pit he’s been throwing money down.’
He flipped open his mobile and pressed in the contact number for DCI Salmon. ‘Yeadings,’ he announced himself. ‘Hang on to Fallon until I get back. Ply him with tea and sandwiches first, then leave him under supervision. At that point you might let drop where I’ve spent the best part of the day. It should get him in the right mood for a heart-to-heart on my return.’
Their visit to the foundry had been unexpected and raised a certain amount of ruffled feathers, but nobody they’d met had appeared particularly uneasy. Before leaving, Yeadings spoke aside to a young woman in the human resources department, and Z assumed he’d sniffed out the informer.
Dusk had at first slid into starry dark. A nip of frost was in the air. When cloud cover began to obscure the moon there was little discernible rise in temperature. The girlie weather-forecaster with the local news was warning of sleet and snow over the Chilterns during the night with difficult driving conditions on motorways. Anna edged the central heating up a notch and checked that the second guest room was adequately prepared for the visiting DC.
Passing Daniel’s door she paused, knocked and went straight in. In view of his attitude to bathroom privacy he could hardly object. But he did, starting up at his writing desk, then hunching forward to cover a sheet of notepaper with both forearms. He stared coldly over one shoulder at her.