by M. R. Hall
‘What do you mean?’ she asked, feeling suddenly defensive.
‘We talked about the plane crash. It’s clearly as distressing to you as to everyone else, but your mind was elsewhere.’
‘How would you know that?’
‘Why don’t we concentrate on the question?’
She felt a surge of anger pass through her body. ‘You presume to know my thoughts, but I’ve a right to know where that comes from. You asked me to express my feelings, I’m expressing them.’
‘Of course,’ he conceded. ‘You mustn’t worry about this, and it’s only a rough guide, but I noted the line of your sight. If someone is looking down and to the right they tend to be accessing feelings, up to the left, a visual memory, and so on. You were very much in the realm of your own feelings before I even mentioned the crash, and you stayed there.’
‘Is that mainstream science?’
‘Now you are straying from the point. Tell me. Please.’
He was right. Her mind had filled with images of her father even as she drove through the dark evening across the Severn Bridge. By the time she sat in the chair they were so vivid he might have been standing in the same room.
‘I was thinking about my father.’
‘What about him?’
‘Images, pictures . . . memories—’
‘From what period of your life?’
‘Long ago. As a child, I suppose – when things were still clear and sharp. Somehow your senses seem to become blunted as you get older.’
‘The central image, Jenny. What is it?’ He suddenly raised his finger – a deliberate, momentary distraction. ‘Tell me.’
‘He’s young, in a suit and tie. A summer suit, a rose in his buttonhole – it’s at a wedding, I think. Yes, his youngest brother was getting married. A pretty girl—’
‘Your father’s expression?’
‘Smiling.’
‘His demeanour?’
‘Happy. My mother’s with him.’
‘Jenny?’
She startled, as if coming suddenly awake.
‘Would it surprise you to hear that you were smiling too?’
She looked at him blankly, aware of two competing voices in her head in heated but incoherent conflict.
‘You’ll have to take my word for it. But it tells me you have a big opportunity now.’
‘And what’s that?’
‘To make your peace with your father. It’s important to do it before he’s gone.’
‘I don’t think I can.’
‘What are you frightened of exactly?’
She tried to put her complex feelings into words. ‘It’s almost a superstition . . . You’ll think I’m stupid—’
Dr Allen shook his head.
‘I know he’s going, but when I think about it I’m frightened . . . that he’ll take me with him.’
‘You feel your destinies are entwined. That’s because he has always intruded on you. Your feelings have never been your own. And failure to express yourself is a form of living death, is it not?’
‘I suppose so,’ Jenny said. And for the first time since the feeling of imminent doom took the breath from her in a crowded courtroom nearly five years before, she allowed herself truly to believe that the beast that had stalked her was him, her father.
Dr Allen thought carefully before continuing. ‘I can say this to you now because you’re well enough to bear the responsibility. To live is a choice made consciously or unconsciously. It takes effort and will. Similarly, people may choose not to live, consciously or unconsciously – for example, people who skydive for a hobby, don’t, in my opinion, die altogether by accident.’
‘What about people who die in plane crashes?’ Jenny said, challenging his dubious theory.
‘There is a school of thought that says there is no such thing as an accident, but that’s a little too simplistic for my tastes. I’m just advising you to be very aware of your choices, that’s all.’
‘Are you telling me I’ve got a death wish, doctor?’
‘No . . .’ He sounded less than convinced. ‘But to pursue your analogy of the aeroplane, it takes constant propulsion to stay in the air. The moment the engines stop, it falls.’
‘I get it – living is a conscious choice, but you think I spend all my time thinking about death, so I’m more attracted to that than life. You never did approve of me being a coroner.’
‘It’s a very necessary profession,’ he said. ‘Just be careful not to give everything you’ve got to the dead.’
Michael Sherman had answered his phone in the cockpit of a Cessna he was flying back from Newmarket to Bristol. Jenny had offered to drive over to the airport to meet him, but he said he would prefer to come to her—his boss had already warned him not to speak to any officials without his approval and it wouldn’t be wise to be seen together. Since the accident a collective paranoia seemed to have gripped the airlines, he explained, even his small outfit.
He suggested they meet at the St Pierre. A few miles west of Chepstow on the Welsh side of the estuary, it was a fourteenth-century manor house that had been converted into a hotel and country club. Jenny approached along a winding drive and arrived in front of an imposing castellated building. She parked amongst the rows of Mercedes and BMWs and made her way to the entrance.
She spotted him sitting at a corner table in the wood-panelled lounge bar, quietly sipping beer from a tall glass. He looked over to her and waved. As she picked her way between the club sofas she noticed that he looked different. He’d shaved and put on a fresh white shirt.
‘One of your favourite haunts?’ Jenny said, sitting in a chair at an angle to his.
‘It’s where the jockeys and owners stay,’ he said. ‘They know me here. I get to use the gym and shoot a round of golf if I’ve got nothing better to do. Can I get you a drink, Mrs Cooper?’
‘Red wine,’ she said, flouting Dr Allen’s long-standing ban. If he wanted her to act on her feelings, she would. ‘And, please, call me Jenny.’
‘Michael.’
He called over a waitress, who took the order. He displayed little outward sign that he had just lost someone he had been close to, but she could nonetheless sense it in him: a pervading sadness beneath the surface that felt heavy with regret.
‘Are you sure you’re all right with this?’ Jenny asked.
‘Fine,’ Michael said. ‘It’s not like I haven’t known people die in planes.’
‘In the RAF?’
‘There were a few. Not as many as you’d think.’
Jenny had never met a fighter pilot. She was curious to know more. ‘You must have seen a lot of active service.’
‘Kosovo, Afghanistan, Iraq, Afghanistan again.’ He fired off the answer as if he was used to giving it, and quickly changed the subject. ‘What have they given you?’
Jenny pulled her laptop from her briefcase and loaded the disk that Chambers had had couriered to her office. They moved a little closer together so they could both see the screen.
‘It’s just the raw air traffic control data,’ Michael said. He clicked open a file. ‘See – it’s a playback.’ They were looking at a video file, showing the air traffic controller’s screen exactly as he would have seen it. It was dotted with moving aircraft symbols. ‘There she is, RA189.’ He pointed to a triangular symbol approaching from the right-hand side of the screen. ‘The initials and the number identify the flight – RA189 – the two numbers underneath are airspeed and altitude – 470/20,000.’
Voices crackled over the image:
‘Skyhawk 1–8-9, identified, climb flight level three one zero, unrestricted.’
‘Climb to flight level three one zero, Skyhawk 1–8-9.’
‘That’s Bristol giving them clearance to climb to a cruising height of 31,000 feet, and the first officer confirming,’ Michael said. ‘All looks pretty routine so far. Normally the route would take them north-west over Wales, but you can see they’re all being sent out over the Severn estuary.’
‘Any reason?’
‘Could have been military aircraft manoeuvres in the Welsh valleys. That’s where we used to do a lot of our low-level practice.’
‘Bristol, Skyhawk 1–8-9 – do you have any reports of turbulence on our routing?’
‘Skyhawk 1–8-9, light turbulence reported at your level and your route for the next fifty miles. Nothing to worry about.’
‘Thank you.’
‘They sound quite chatty,’ Jenny said. ‘I thought it would be full of “rogers” and “wilcos”.’
‘It’s like anything – you get a feel. If reception’s bad you revert to formality to make sure the other party knows where your message begins and ends. But this is all run of the mill. The first officer just has to check in with Bristol to let them know he’s there, and then he’ll be talking to Shanwick over in Ireland, getting clearance to head out across the Atlantic.’
‘He seems worried about turbulence,’ Jenny said.
‘It’s just a standard precaution to check there have been no reports of heavy turbulence from flights up ahead. He’d mostly be thinking about whether it was safe to switch off the seat-belt signs. A lot of passengers need to pay a visit after take-off. OK – we’re coming up to level-off now, 30,000—’
Jenny watched the altitude figures tick up to 30,500, then 31,000 feet. The time read 09:52.
‘Wow,’ Michael said. ‘Look there – the airspeed’s falling away, 450, 430 . . . 400, but he’s climbing steeply. And nothing on the radio.’
They moved in closer to the laptop, straining to hear any trace of a message.
The air traffic controller spoke when the airspeed had ticked down to 350. ‘Skyhawk 1–8-9, I see your airspeed is three-fifty. Confirm all OK.’
There was no reply.
‘Skyhawk, this is Bristol eight-zero-nine. Please confirm airspeed. I’m reading three-ten.’
Jenny and Michael continued to watch in silence as the airspeed figures tumbled rapidly through the two hundreds and the controller made repeated unsuccessful attempts to gain a response. There was a momentary sound through a cloud of static, not clear enough even to be certain that it was a human voice.
‘I don’t see how that happened,’ Michael said. ‘It looks as if he stalled . . . but how?’
The controller was panicking now. ‘I’m sorry, say again, Skyhawk . . . Skyhawk, uh, are you still on? Skyhawk, are you there?’
‘What happens then?’ Jenny asked. ‘I mean, technically.’
Michael ignored her question, transfixed by what he was seeing on the screen. ‘There. Look at that.’ He sat back in his seat as the altitude figures started to tumble, slowly at first, then faster. ‘He did stall. If you slow down too much you lose lift at the wing tips first. The pilot, more likely the autopilot, compensates by dipping the nose. But if it dips too far, and if for some reason you’ve got less than full control, on a big aircraft you’re in danger of getting into a dive you can’t pull out from. On a small plane, you’d jam on the rudder, hope to flip over on your side and win it back that way. But with something the size of the 380, once it’s falling the forces involved are phenomenal. It’s designed for steady, stable flight—’ He paused, watching a shift in the rate of fall. ‘My God – he almost does it. He’s almost levelling out at 15,000 . . . Thought so—’ The altitude figures resumed their rapid tumble. ‘My guess is he managed to bring the nose up, but probably too far. It may only be a matter of a few degrees, but if the centre of lift shifts ahead of the centre of gravity, the nose is forced up even higher.’ He demonstrated with his hand, tilting his palm upwards to forty-five degrees. ‘You need more thrust to push you out of it, but now the engines are below the centre of gravity and even if you had the power, it would just force the nose even higher.’ His fingers were vertical. ‘Then you start to slip backwards. This is bad.’
They watched the pattern repeat itself – a level-out at 8,000 feet, then another rapid dive until the aircraft symbol simply vanished from the screen.
Michael stared at the screen for a moment longer, then clicked to another file. It was a graph produced by air traffic control software which plotted the flight’s descent from 31,000 feet to the ground over a period of five minutes and forty-two seconds. It resembled a series of three mountains of diminishing height. ‘He was fighting it all the way down.’
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.’
EIGHT
AFTERWARDS 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.