B006U13W The Flight (Jenny Cooper 4) nodrm

by M. R. Hall

  Jenny tried to incorporate this information into one of the several possible scenarios she had mapped out to explain the explosion on the water and failed. Only one thing had become clear: if these men had all been going to the same meeting in Washington, then Nuala had to have been going there too.

  ‘One last thing before I get out of your hair,’ Galbraith said. ‘It’s purely anecdotal—’ He stopped himself mid-sentence, then nodded towards the Dictaphone as if inviting Jenny to turn it off.

  ‘I think that’ll do for now,’ Jenny said. ‘Thank you for bringing this to my attention, Mr Galbraith.’ She waited for a moment, then reached down and pressed the red button, ending the recording.

  ‘It’s just this,’ Galbraith said hurriedly. ‘Mrs Patterson says she and her now estranged husband have been pretty good at the no-pillow-talk rule – it’s written into his contract of employment. But as far as she’s concerned, the rules of the game have changed since their daughter’s death. She managed to hack into his online email account and picked up the gist of some of the contracts his company, Cobalt, are working on. It used to make high-end software systems for companies requiring tight security – banks, drugs companies, that sort of thing. But it seems the gamekeeper’s turned poacher – it looks like they’ve moved on to providing the tools for clients to break into other people’s systems. Corporations, unelected governments – as long as they pay, they don’t seem to care. Anyway, as you might expect, she couldn’t wait to hit him with it. And she did, in a round-robin email to him and all his colleagues last Thursday afternoon.’

  Thursday. Greg Patterson had come to see her on Friday morning. No wonder he had been so distressed.

  ‘Not the wisest move, perhaps,’ Jenny said. ‘What happened?’

  ‘She got the inevitable lawyer’s letter, and Greg Patterson’s done a disappearing trick. He’s not at work, not at home, he’s not answering calls and as far as we know he’s not turned up at a hospital – alive or dead.’

  Jenny remembered the overnight bag he had carried with him – he had clearly left London in a hurry, not stopping to pack more than he needed to disappear quickly.

  Galbraith said, ‘Another thing she found out from his email – it was Cobalt’s CEO, Dale Cannon, who pulled him off the flight.’

  ‘For any particular reason?’

  ‘“Business in London”. But she doesn’t think Cannon knew that Amy was due to travel with her father. Apparently Cobalt executives never discuss family matters among themselves. It’s considered unprofessional.’

  TWENTY-THREE

  JENNY STAYED ON AFTER GALBRAITH had left and watched the video clip several times through on her own laptop. With each viewing, her sense that something connected the three men with Nuala Casey and with the fate of the aircraft they were about to board grew stronger. And in the light of what Galbraith had told her it didn’t seem absurd to question whether Greg Patterson and his company were somehow involved. But as powerful as the circumstantial evidence was becoming, she still struggled with the notion that so many innocent lives could have been sacrificed to effect a handful of assassinations; aside from the shocking brutality of such an act, who would go to so much effort in a cover-up?

  Equally puzzling was the reaction of Moreton and his anonymous government colleagues to the morning’s evidence. The appearance of the mysterious helicopters so soon after the crash seemed to indicate an element of foreknowledge, but the official reaction wasn’t consistent with that. If the authorities had received a warning that a civilian airliner was being targeted, coroners wouldn’t have been allowed anywhere near the incident for months. It would have been strictly a police and security services investigation conducted under a cloak of secrecy. It was as if she was uncovering information faster than them – whoever they were.

  On top of everything else, Achari’s findings left no doubt that there had been an explosion on the water and that Brogan’s death was far from accidental. Technically, the presence of explosives residue was sufficient evidence of a crime having been committed for the police to step in and request that she postpone her inquiries while they conducted a criminal investigation, but no such request had been made. She didn’t believe for a moment that she was still being allowed to run free because that was the right thing to do; she could only surmise that her inquest was still in motion because just now Moreton and his colleagues were in disarray. Flight 189 was supposed to have been struck by lightning. It was the story that had been officially announced to the world. And she, the only potential fly in the ointment, was supposed to return an uncontroversial verdict of accidental death in the case of the one victim killed on the ground.

  Her mind exploding with frightening possibilities, Jenny hurriedly packed away her computer and decided that she couldn’t afford to wait for Achari to examine the aircraft’s wreckage. If she really was ahead in this race, she would have to fight to stay there.

  ‘Cigarette, Mrs Cooper?’ Detective Inspector Owen Williams leaned across his desk in Chepstow police station and offered her his open packet.

  ‘Are you sure we’re allowed?’

  ‘You’ll see the Welsh flag flying from the roof of this station, not the bloody swastika.’

  Jenny smiled as she took one and shared the flame from Williams’s match. She hadn’t smoked in months and had forgotten how much she enjoyed it. It was the aroma of the few carefree years between leaving home and getting married far too soon; it made her feel young and interesting, and stupidly invincible.

  ‘I can tell this is going to be good,’ Williams said.

  ‘How’s that?’

  ‘You’ve got that look about you, Mrs Cooper – a woman on a mission.’

  ‘I don’t suppose you’ve caught up with what happened at my inquest this morning?’

  ‘I did hear something on the car radio – explosives, wasn’t it?’

  ‘You don’t sound surprised.’

  ‘I’m a policeman, Mrs Cooper. Nothing surprises me, especially when it comes to those bastards.’ He nodded in the direction of England. ‘It’s obvious – one of those helicopters let a rocket off.’

  ‘That’s one possibility. But why?’

  ‘Your man Brogan had form a mile long. You can’t tell me no one knew he was there.’

  ‘Who are you thinking of?’

  Williams blew a thin stream of smoke up towards the single light bulb that lit his gloomy cubbyhole of an office. ‘I shouldn’t be telling you this, but every few weeks we get these intelligence alerts sent through from HQ in Cardiff. It looks like a quiet stretch of water out there, but there are vessels bringing in drugs, people traffickers, criminals trying to escape the country. If there’s been a tip-off we’re all told to keep an eye out.’

  ‘And was there a tip-off about Brogan?’ Jenny ventured cautiously.

  ‘Not specifically, but let’s just say there’s an ongoing problem with Irish villains thinking they can sneak their wares in across the water.’

  ‘What sort of wares?’

  ‘Marijuana mostly. They’re growing more of it than they are potatoes – all indoors, of course. It’s what’s keeping the Real IRA in business.’

  ‘That’s still no reason to fire a rocket at Brogan.’

  ‘Maybe they’d run out of bullets?’

  Jenny shook her head. ‘I’m not sure, but look, I could do with a favour. There are some witnesses I want to get to my inquest in the morning. I need help tracking one or two of them down, and once they’re found they might need a little persuading.’

  ‘But you’re over the border, Mrs Cooper. Now, if you’d done the sensible thing and held court in Chepstow—’

  ‘It’s covered. The border runs down the middle of the estuary. When Lawrence Cole saw those helicopters they were definitely in Wales. Brogan’s lifejacket was cut off him and dumped your side of the line – that’s got to be something you’re entitled to investigate all the way up the chain.’

  Williams dabbed his ash dubiously int
o a saucer.

  ‘I’m not asking you to launch a criminal investigation, not yet. I just want you to serve a witness summons and give them a lift in the back of your car if they’re tempted not to comply.’

  ‘Who are we talking about?’

  ‘Greg Patterson – the father of the little girl who was washed up at Aust; Mick Dalton – the chief ground engineer at Ransome Airways; and the personal assistant of a man named Dr Ian Duffy, who was a passenger aboard 189.’

  ‘You’re going to tell me it’ll mean sending my men into Indian country.’

  ‘Kensington, Berkshire and Cambridge.’

  Williams smiled. ‘I don’t know why, but there’s something about driving a vehicle saying Gwent Police through the middle of London that makes me feel like Owen Glendower on his way to thrash Henry IV.’

  ‘You’ll do it?’

  ‘With pleasure. But you did know that Glendower is the only Welshman ever to have been Prince of Wales. Six hundred years of Englishmen—’

  ‘I can’t say that I did.’

  ‘You should learn the history of your adopted land, Mrs Cooper. I don’t run these errands just for fun, you know.’

  Jenny was too preoccupied with framing questions for Patterson and Dalton that would fall within the technical limits of her inquiry to notice the black government car idling close to the front entrance to her office, or the midnight-blue saloon tucked in close behind it. She dashed into reception hoping to bypass another prickly conversation with Alison, but was met by the sight of Simon Moreton standing inside the open door to her room sipping a cup of coffee from one of the china cups Alison reserved for those she deemed VIPs.

  Alison was at her desk, sorting officiously through a pile of mail. ‘If you’d switch your phone on, Mrs Cooper, I could keep you informed,’ she said, without looking up.

  ‘Ah, Jenny,’ Moreton said. ‘I was frightened you’d disappeared.’

  ‘No such luck.’

  Stepping forward to join him, she closed the door and glanced over her desk, checking that he hadn’t helped himself to her paperwork.

  ‘I wouldn’t dream of it,’ he said, settling in a chair. ‘Alison kindly made coffee for both of us. Would you like some?’

  He was being unnervingly polite. It made her suspicious.

  ‘Yes, please.’

  Jenny sat behind her desk, unsure what to make of him. She could deal with him angry or flirtatious, but he was managing to be neither. ‘I know you didn’t come here to kiss and make up.’

  ‘I’ll be honest – you pulled off something of an unexpected spectacular this morning. I know you’ve a lively imagination, Jenny, but really – haven’t you even explored the possibility that Brogan let off a distress flare, or that a rescue helicopter might have dropped one?’

  ‘I don’t know why I’m discussing the evidence with you, but distress flares are made of phosphorus, not explosive.’

  ‘I’m reliably informed they have an ignition agent that can be mistaken for explosive, but there we are – that’s a matter for the experts to quibble over. Now what interests me is something outside the formal limits of your inquiry, but which I suspect you might be able to help with.’

  ‘And what’s that?’

  ‘You’ve been taking an interest in one of the other passengers on board – a young lady by the name of Nuala Casey?’

  Jenny tried not to let the cup she was holding rattle in its saucer. ‘Have I? Who told you that?’

  ‘I couldn’t tell you the original source exactly – you know how labyrinthine these things are. But in the interests of getting everything out in the open, it might be helpful if you were to tell me why she, in particular, caught your attention.’

  Mick Dalton – that’s who it would have been. He had been frightened into talking to whoever had been following him. Jenny could imagine Ransome Airways having hauled him over the coals, extracting all he knew, then deciding to cut their losses and do a deal with the authorities in the hope of staying in business.

  ‘She was a pilot.’

  ‘I’m aware of that.’

  Of course he was.

  ‘A friend of hers approached me, that’s all.’

  ‘A friend?’

  ‘An ex-boyfriend. Also a pilot. He wanted to know what she was doing on the plane.’

  ‘Why did he come to you?’

  ‘You’d have to ask him.’

  ‘And you discovered what exactly?’

  Jenny set her cup down on the desk, her trembling fingers threatening to betray her.

  ‘Simon, only last Thursday you and I were at a press conference at which the world was told that Flight 189 was hit by lightning. Accident. Act of God. No human agency. Are you telling me you no longer believe that?’

  ‘Hmm.’ The question seemed to unsettle him. ‘I must confess to having my doubts.’

  ‘And Sir James Kendall?’

  ‘He remains open-minded. Contrary to what you might be tempted to believe, Jenny, no one wants anything less than the truth.’

  ‘You could have fooled me.’

  ‘There may be valid reasons for not hurling it directly at the public without weighing the consequences first, of course.’

  ‘Well, that’s where you and I will always differ, isn’t it?’

  He gave a resigned smile. ‘I can’t pretend that I still entertain any hope of ironing that particular flaw out of you.’

  ‘At last.’ She sat back in her chair with the feeling that she had scored a minor victory.

  ‘I suppose I would have felt guilty if I had ever succeeded in making you compromise your principles. I get the impression you could live with almost anything but that.’

  ‘What do you want from me, Simon?’

  He sat back in his chair and gazed thoughtfully up at the ceiling, as if the question was a philosophical one requiring deep contemplation. ‘I suppose I’m trying to appeal to the part of your nature that might be tempted by a pragmatic solution to all of this. The evidence you’re uncovering is fascinating, and I’m sure in the fullness of time and with all the resources at Sir James Kendall’s disposal, it will be slotted into the complete narrative we all want so desperately to emerge.’

  ‘You want me to abandon my inquest and turn all my evidence over to someone else.’

  ‘Strictly on a basis of trust. You have my word – no sleeping dog will be left undisturbed, no fact hidden.’

  ‘Why? What exactly are you afraid of?’

  ‘The implications, Jenny. We need to know what they are.’

  She shook her head. The gulf between them remained an unbridgeable void. ‘Why will you people never accept that you’re the servants and not the masters?’

  ‘My way is safest, Jenny. Please, for once – be kind to yourself and take my advice.’

  She resisted. ‘You know my answer, Simon.’

  ‘Yes,’ he said, as if he had expected nothing else. He stood up from the chair, their conversation at an end. ‘I admire you, Jenny; I mean that sincerely.’ He smiled at her fondly and left the office.

  There was something in his manner which had been strangely pathetic. It left Jenny with a curious feeling of guilt, as if she were partly responsible for the furious dressing-down she imagined would be waiting for him following his failure to curb her waywardness.

  Forcing her thoughts to more pressing matters, she unloaded the contents of her briefcase onto her desk and grabbed a legal pad. Hartley and Bannerman would both be conferring with teams of lawyers, trawling every statute and precedent for a means to derail her. She wouldn’t just have to be good, she would have to be the best she had ever been.

  Moreton had been gone less than a minute when Jenny heard the doorbell ring.

  ‘Tell whoever it is I’m busy,’ she called through the closed door to Alison.

  It was too late. The visitor had already been buzzed into the hall.

  Jenny shot up from her seat and looked around the door. ‘I’ve no time for visitors. Make an appoi
ntment for tomorrow.’

  ‘It’s Detective Sergeant Fuller.’

  ‘I don’t care. I’m not available.’ She slammed the door shut and returned to her desk.

  ‘I’m sorry – Mrs Cooper’s too busy to see anyone at the moment.’

  ‘Thank you,’ Jenny said out loud to herself.

  Karen Fuller wasn’t taking no for an answer. Without knocking, she marched in with a detective constable at her shoulder.

  ‘I did tell them,’ Alison called out.

  ‘You’re under arrest, Mrs Cooper.’

  While Fuller recited the caution, all Jenny could think of was what she would like to do to Moreton, the devious bastard.

  Jenny decided that complete cooperation was the best policy. She opened the office safe and handed over the evidence bags without being asked. She also handed Fuller her phone containing the video record she had taken of her opening them. The items hadn’t been stolen, she stated calmly, she had merely seized evidence relevant to her inquest from a competing jurisdiction. The issue was a technical one between her and Sir James Kendall, not a matter for the police. Fuller was having none of it, and told Jenny she was being taken to New Bridewell police station.

  Her nerves calmed by a beta blocker, Jenny declined the offer of legal representation and faced Detective Sergeant Fuller and her taciturn colleague, Detective Constable Ewan Ashton, alone. It was a moment she had hoped wouldn’t come, but for which she had been mentally preparing since her visit to the evidence and effects store at the D-Mort. While far from bulletproof, she at least had a defence which sounded plausible. During the brief journey across town to the police station Jenny had tried to prompt Fuller into revealing who had told her about the evidence bags, but she remained tight-lipped. Jenny guessed that if it wasn’t one of the officers at the D-Mort who had reported her, the trail would lead back somehow to Mick Dalton. Michael had been sure that whoever had followed him to their rendezvous had been working for the airline – a private detective or internal security – but Jenny secretly suspected the police. Either way, it made little difference; Fuller had arrived knowing exactly what she had done.