After Midnight

by Robert Ryan

  Lindy stretched her arms out and made a sound of contentment.

  ‘So much for you two getting—’ My own yawn truncated my sentence and the pair of them collapsed into giggles. ‘Jesus. I think maybe we could skip the search today.’

  Furio slugged back a double espresso and signalled for another. ‘No, I’ll be fine.’

  ‘Lindy? Just Furio and I could go up to the site.’

  ‘Nah. It’s probably nothing anyway, but I want to be there. What’s your excuse?’

  ‘For what?’

  ‘Well, you can guess why we look like this. What about you?’

  I smiled at her. ‘I think it was those mussels for dinner. You wouldn’t believe—’

  ‘No, right, thanks,’ Lindy said quickly. ‘I get the picture.’ She stood up. ‘Let’s go and see if we can find my father. I mean, it’s not like we got a Samurai sword to make or anything, is it?’ She finished with a wink and I had to smile. I had a feeling she could see right through the shellfish story.

  ‘See you outside in five minutes,’ I said.

  I waited until she had gone and said to Furio: ‘You OK?’

  ‘Sure.’ He seemed surprised I’d asked.

  ‘You and Lindy. How did that happen?’

  ‘It just happened. I like her.’

  ‘Did she tell you …?’ I began, then bit my tongue. It would do nobody any good. ‘Did she tell you about her stepfather?’

  ‘Yes, of course. Why?’

  ‘No reason.’ I drained my coffee, and pushed a piece of bread into my mouth. ‘Don’t hurt her, Furio.’

  He looked pained at the very thought, but when he saw the expression on my face, he took it the wrong way. ‘Ah. Not until she writes the last cheque, eh?’

  I shook my head. It wasn’t my job to sort out their love life. I had my own to try to make sense of. I reached over and ruffled his hair. ‘Not until we’ve cashed it, idiot.’

  They were building a new Autostrada that year, and the traffic was slow up the side of Lake Orta and to what would become the junction at Gravellona. Things improved when we picked up the 33 and followed the river that feeds the lakes, north to Vogogna. I’d changed the bike’s tyres to the big studded Avons, which were going to be good for off-road, but were skittish on asphalt. I kept the speed down. The weather was cooler than it had been, and we both wore thick sweaters under our jackets and scarves round our necks. The sun had lost its focus, hidden behind a thin streak of cloud, and was past its zenith already. We had left it very late. Perhaps I should have gone with my instinct and called it off for the day.

  At Vogogna, I found a wide stony track heading up into the hills that I was certain led to the site. I checked the map and scanned the sky. No sign of Furio. ‘Ready?’ I asked Lindy. ‘It gets bumpy. Hold on tight.’

  Before I could start off, she said, ‘He’s not second-best, you know. I didn’t just do it on the rebound, if that’s what you think.’ Her voice was muffled from inside the helmet.

  ‘Lindy, I am not thinking about it at all. If I did, I’d be pleased for you. You make a nice couple. He likes you.’

  ‘He said that?’

  I caught the tone and said: ‘Oh no, I’m not playing that game. Hold on.’ I revved the bike and felt her arms slide around my waist. Even over the engine noise I heard her whoop as we started uphill, the bike making short work of the surface. Whether her exclamation of joy was because of my riding or the idea that Furio talked about her, I didn’t know.

  It was surprisingly wide for one of the Val Grande paths, cutting between chestnut, alder and sycamore trees. It took us over a series of ridges, where the deciduous trees slowly gave rise to a dense stand of pines that stretched for miles in either direction. The road carried on into it, picking its way between the trunks in slow, lazy curves, climbing all the while. I stopped before an ancient fallen pine bristling with sprouting etiolated greenery seeking the light, and consulted the map, photograph and compass.

  I looked up once more, wishing I had some of that secret military technology they talked about on science programmes—as seen in spy movies—where you could use satellites to locate yourself anywhere on earth. It was hard to imagine the little Sputniks being able to do that, but I was sure they could and more. My generation and my war made people terrified of looking up into the sky for fear of what might come down on them; the current crop of boffins had turned space into the stuff of nightmares.

  ‘Found it?’ Lindy asked.

  I manoeuvred the bike around the trunk. ‘Up ahead a way,’ I shouted.

  The propwash from the plane made us jump as the Beech roared over the ridge behind us and up into the sky, wings rocking. Stupid bugger, I thought, showing off to his girlfriend.

  I pulled over, made Lindy get off the bike and took my radio out from under the seat. Another thing I’d like to see from spy movies—a communications system smaller than a suitcase. The speaker crackled. Through the trees, I could hear him turning.

  ‘Ground Force to Eagle Eye. Can you hear me?’

  Lindy looked hard at me. ‘Ground Force? Eagle Eye?’

  ‘Old habits die hard. Do you copy me, Eagle Eye? Over.’

  Lindy took off her helmet, shook her hair out and unzipped her jacket, even though the air was crisp up here.

  ‘Ground Force, this is Eagle Eye. I copy and see you. Over.’

  ‘Good. How far do we have to go? Over.’

  ‘About a kilometre and a half up the track. Over.’

  As the Beech came overhead, still low, I saw a hint of a slipstream from the port engine. ‘You are all right up there? Over.’

  He was turning again, banking the Beech just beyond the rise. Now I was sure I could see something. Suddenly, I was sweating.

  ‘Furio. Port engine. What’s the temperature and oil pressure? Over.’

  Nothing but static. He was concentrating on the turn, watching the airspeed, so as not to stall.

  ‘Jack?’

  ‘Yeah. Go ahead. Over.’

  ‘Oil pressure is five pounds … no, ten … back to five. Over.’ The minimum was fifty. I recognised the panic in his voice from other planes and other pilots, a long time ago. It was a tone I had hoped never to hear again. ‘Christ, the cylinder head is cooking.’

  I watched him come round. ‘Furio, Furio, concentrate on the height. Keep the height and airspeed up. OK?’

  ‘Jack—’ The fire alarm, a modification I’d insisted on fitting, filled the cockpit, screeching over the radio.

  Now there was smoke leaching out of the bad engine, a knotted rope of black and white against the sky. ‘Extinguisher. Hit the extinguisher button.’ I fought to keep my own voice reasonable, calm. It was what you wanted from a ground controller. ‘Over.’

  Carbon-dioxide mist spewed out of the nacelle and over the wing, and vanished. I could see that he was losing height now. He had to work hard to compensate for the bad engine. You can’t feather a prop on a Twin Beech, and the drag of a windmilling one was serious. ‘Furio, get her up.’

  ‘Jack!’

  The plane made it over our heads, but one wing dipped and a trail of branches and leaves began to arc skywards, marking his passage through the treetops.

  ‘Furio.’ I closed my eyes and prayed. This was where the ground controller starts hoping there is after all a God, or at least a patron saint of pilots.

  The tip of the wing dug into something harder, and I didn’t see it, but I heard him shout, followed by the screech of folding and ripping aluminium, and I imagined the plane flipping, smashing down into the pines, rolling and disintegrating as it went, the wood punching through the thin fuselage and Plexiglas.

  The explosion was scarlet and black, and the noise boomed through the forest, sending scores of panicking birds skywards. There was another noise, more constant. Lindy, screaming.

  I indicated she get on the bike and I kicked it into life, my brain running over the whole sequence, analysing what he did wrong. Lindy threw her leg over behind me.
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  I tore the bike up the path, over-revving it, forcing my way through the brambles and ferns that had colonised parts of it. Their tendrils whipped at my face, and I could taste blood but it hardly registered.

  The air became full of tiny flecks of glowing carbon, like fireflies zipping around us, smashing into my goggles. Ahead, there was a white glow like a pathfinding flare, burning my eyes. I ticked off parts of the plane as we got close, mostly sections of wing. Then the heat hit us, and we could feel the oxygen being sucked out of the air so I stopped the CrossCountry and dismounted. I helped Lindy off. She had trouble standing and I slipped my arm round her and took her weight.

  Just visible through the burning pines was the shape of the fuselage, on its nose, incandescent as the aluminium burned and threw out a toxic cloud that rose high above the canopy. It was more or less intact apart from the wings. I had no doubt Furio was in there, already incinerated.

  I looked at Lindy, her face bright from heat and horror, and pulled her closer. I knew what she was thinking. This must have been how it ended for her father. It’s a pilot’s nightmare. I’ve been in that cockpit, on the ground and in the air, hundreds of times and I’ve woken up trying to bat the flames away with hands that are already melting.

  I moved Lindy well back and propped her against a tree, explaining that there was still fuel that could go up; I made sure she understood she had to stay put. She still hadn’t said a word. She reached up and wiped a tear from my eye and all I could do was nod my understanding. I picked my way through the trees and skirted around the perimeter of the site.

  Branches were burning now, dropping fiery embers and resin onto me. I traipsed through the thick pine needles, unable to keep my eyes off the wreckage, hoping a figure would stagger out, knowing he was probably killed the instant he hit the ground, praying that his neck had snapped to save him from burning to death.

  I felt the air move around me in waves, and a sudden downdraught of rotor-wash. It was a helicopter. I looked up but couldn’t see it through the smoke drifting across the sky at treetop-level. Probably the mountain rescue team. They’d got here fast.

  My lungs began to hurt and I wrapped a handkerchief around my lower face. All sorts of dangerous materials—plastics, rubber, metal—were burning in there, and I started to cough. My throat was already seared and raw, and I had to make my circle wider to avoid choking. I moved deeper into the woods. It was then I saw the skeletons.

  There were three of them and they had been there a long time. Trees had grown up around and through them, so they were now almost a part of the forest itself, barely illuminated in the fractured light that penetrated their protective canopy. If it hadn’t been for the flames glinting off the browned metal ribs, I wouldn’t have noticed them at all.

  I pulled the undergrowth aside and forced my way through. I was no expert, but I reckoned they were the bare bones of German trucks, Henschels or Biissings. The canvas had all gone, exposing the rusted supporting hoops I had seen in the flames, and the metal elsewhere was thin and papery. The wooden sides and running boards had mostly crumbled to dust.

  I bent down and picked up one of the remaining slats. It was singed, but from a long time ago. Someone had burned out three trucks. It was what we had seen on the IR map. Not Bill Carr’s plane at all, but new growth where this trio had been driven up the wide path and torched in the woods, twenty years previously.

  The door of the lorry came off in my hand, and fell to earth with a muffled thud. The body that was in there was barely recognisable as such, charred down to a blackened, shrunken simulacrum of a human. There was another in the rear flatbed section. I picked up the shreds of uniform as carefully as I could. The belt buckle was scorched but intact, the words Ehre Heisst Treue just visible around the eagle. One of the alloy buttons had a faint SS-BW stamped on the rear, which meant the uniform was manufactured at the SS clothing works at either Dachau or Ravensbruck. I threw them both back and didn’t bother examining the other two vehicles. It would be more of the same.

  I trudged back towards my own tragedy, a small part of my brain nagging me that I had probably found Zopatti’s stolen art. Three trucks, he said, had been taken from the convoy. I ignored it. I had bigger worries than some ancient piece of looting. Like finding out who had killed my friend.

  The heat was still lashing out from the trees, although the fire seemed to be moving slowly. I knew we needed to get out, because if a wind got up that could penetrate this forest, we could easily be outrun by flames. And there were too many corpses in this place already.

  ‘Lindy!’ I shouted.

  There was a splitting and cracking noise and a blazing sapling keeled over, coming to rest in a shower of sparks. Another tree spluttered and gave birth to flames.

  ‘Lindy!’

  She was more or less where I had left her by the bike, her face streaked with tears. I stood for a second and held her once more. ‘I’m sorry. There us nothing we can do. If the fire really takes, the Rangers will come and douse it with water from the lake. We don’t want to be here then. You hear their chopper?’

  She shook her head. I went over to the bike and touched the tank. It burned my hand. I was about to put my helmet on when I felt something cold against my neck.

  ‘Kirby.’

  I turned slowly. There was a tone to her voice I didn’t like. And what had happened to Jack, exactly?

  Lindy Carr had stepped back away from me in case I tried to jump her. She now stood five yards from me, gripping a gun in a two-fisted stance that was good enough to make my stomach flip. Not just any old gun, either. She was holding my old Colt .38.

  Part Five

  Thirty-Two

  IT WAS THE WILD look in her red-rimmed eyes, along with the clenched jaw and the muscle twitch in one upper arm that kept the gun moving jerkily, that frightened me. Plus the increasing discomfort from the flames scaling the trees behind me. The back of my head was almost burning now. I’d smell hair singeing soon.

  I managed to say: ‘Lindy? What the hell are you doing?’

  ‘This wasn’t meant to happen.’ Her face crumpled, but I still wasn’t sure I could make that distance between us before one of the Colt’s slugs hit me. How on earth did she get hold of my gun? It was last seen in the presence of Monkeyman and Co. ‘It wasn’t … wasn’t meant to be like this!’ She shouted the last word and it echoed through the woods.

  I heard more foliage crackle and fall. The air was thick with smoke, coiling around us like fingers of swamp mist.

  ‘Lindy, we have to get out of here.’ There were flames visible from the corner of my eye. The fire had crept round to my peripheral vision, sneaking like a thief in the night.

  ‘Lindy?’ I took a step forward. The gun flashed and I felt the percussive thud of the round zing by my ear. ‘We’re going to die here. Look, the fire is coming round us. We will shortly be cut off. We have to go.’

  ‘Maybe.’

  ‘No, not maybe—for sure. Whatever this is, we can sort it out later. That’s Furio in there—’

  ‘I know who is in there! I know.’ She began sobbing, but not hard enough to affect her aim.

  I tried to keep my voice level. ‘It won’t do us any good to join him. Not now.’

  She nodded and took a piece of paper from her pocket and handed it over, keeping the gun well back, away from my grip, as if she’d been trained in this. ‘These are the coordinates. Can you find it?’

  ‘I’ll have to check on the map.’

  ‘Don’t do anything stupid.’

  ‘I get the feeling I’ve been nothing but stupid for the last few weeks.’

  ‘You started well before that, Kirby.’

  A little bulb went on. Who would have told her about my wartime career, even before I got a chance to? One man. ‘Lang blamed me, didn’t he? For your father?’

  ‘Just check the map.’

  I did as I was told. It was one of the high meadows, to the east, with another track running to it from where
we were, smaller, just a series of dashes on my map. I nodded. ‘I can get us there. But—’

  The explosion caused me to stagger forward into the bike, knocking it off its stand. I felt vegetation and metal fall on me, burning my exposed skin. I waited five seconds, holding my breath, and looked up. Flames were ahead of us now. The circle was closing.

  I rolled over, and felt my ribs protest again. It hadn’t done them much good, throwing them onto the cooling fins of a CrossCountry, but I was more or less in one piece. Which was more than I could say for Lindy.

  I left the bike where it was and crossed to her. She was lying on her back, and there was a sliver of metal jutting out from her upper right arm. A chunk of fuselage, I thought. Blood had welled around it, onto the leather of her sleeve, but seemed to have stopped flowing. A second piece had nicked her neck, and thin rivulets ran down into her sweater. Her face was blackened down one side, with steel or carbon particles. A fuel tank must have gone up.

  I was sweating now and I took off my leather jacket, pulled off my jumper, threw it away and put the jacket back on over my T-shirt. Lindy had managed to sit up and had transferred the gun to her left hand. It was still pointing at me. Christ, she was good, I had to give her that.

  ‘You need a doctor,’ I said.

  ‘Take me to the coordinates.’

  I shook my head.

  ‘Take me.’

  She fired again, but I didn’t flinch this time. ‘You re-load that, or is that your lot?’ I had only left a couple of rounds in there after my tree shooting.

  ‘Re-loaded,’ she said.

  ‘I don’t believe you.’

  The third shot threw up debris around my boots. I believed her.

  ‘I should look at that wound.’

  ‘Yeah. Let’s finish this first.’