A Sentimental Traitor (6 page)

Which is precisely what the paperwork in his pocket would do. Smooth things over, just a few months, until the other investments came through and he’d be able to lose it all in the wash
up. Sharing, just like they’d always done. Jones and Jimmy. He’d taken the bullet, now Harry would take a bit of a kicking. Only difference was, Harry would never know it.

Christmas got cancelled. No one made it official, but its spirit drained away with the dark water that seeped from every fragment of recovered wreckage. Every evening, as the
light faded and night took hold, a crowd began to gather on the plaza of Trafalgar Square. Candles were placed around the rims of the fountains, drawing thousands, silent in their grief. Mourning
was something their grandparents had hidden behind closed curtains, yet now they poured forth, clutching their own candles, like a meadow of brilliant daisies in a soft breeze. Then the singing
began, hymns and folk songs, and the national anthems, forlornly. A shrine of flowers began to spread around the base of Nelson’s Column, while high above, through a blustery scattering of
snow, the admiral seemed to be searching the skies for sight of the lost children.

More candles. A memorial service was held at St Paul’s Cathedral, attended by many of the parents of the lost children and a congregation that overflowed down the steps before the west
doors. The Bishop of London gave a sermon that talked of lights extinguished and sorrows which found homes and multiplied in the darkness. Then he tried to rekindle hope by telling of life reborn
at Christmastime, which he pronounced Christi-mastime, like some medieval monk, yet it was a hope too far, beyond even his considerable rhetorical powers.

The Queen’s Christmas message had already been recorded. Now it had to be hurriedly rewritten, a new script prepared. She decided she would deliver it live, something she hadn’t done
since the death of Diana. Flags flew at half mast across the capital, even the Royal Standard above the Palace, although protocol suggested it should only be flown in that manner upon a royal
death. The formalities were pushed aside; they seemed inadequate and irrelevant when so many coffins were involved.

The Vice President of the United States flew from Washington on a military transport to collect the coffins, forty-one of them: all the children and four other American citizens who had been on
board Speedbird 235. Each coffin was covered in a flag, and laid out with military precision, immaculate and endless rows of death that filled the hold of the C5-Galaxy.

And after the sorrow and shock came anger. As two nations wept, the demand for answers grew more insistent, far outstripping the ability of the authorities to satisfy them. An engine had gone
down, the hydraulics ripped apart, but that was already clear from the radio traffic between the cockpit and Air Traffic Control. The pilot was a hero, putting his stricken craft down with
extraordinary skill on a spot where the only collateral damage was a tall ship’s mast, but what else had happened wasn’t yet clear. It was ironic that after the third day, his was the
only body that had still not been recovered. The other bodies were taken to local hospitals where autopsies were conducted under the supervision of pathologists who specialized in aviation
accidents.

The pieces of wreckage were taken to the headquarters of the Air Accident Investigation Branch, set in secluded woods beside Farnborough airfield, south-west of London. Police had blocked off
the long access road that ran from the public highway to the office block and hangars that hid the AAIB’s very private work from prying eyes. A large area beside the hangars was fenced off,
but even the fencing couldn’t completely conceal the litter of shattered airframes and fragments of helicopter that filled it to overflowing, evidence of its most recent work. Three large
shipping containers stood in one corner, the streaks of rust running down their sides testament to the fact that they had been there for many years. They held the most sensitive parts of the
wreckage from the Lockerbie bomb. The last useful grains of forensic evidence had long since been squeezed and scraped from the scraps, but no one had yet had the political courage to allow them to
be destroyed, so they festered, like bad memories.

One of the hangars had been hurriedly cleared, and as the fragments of Speedbird 235 began to arrive on the back of the low-loaders they were laid out in sequence, like the pieces of a jigsaw.
Even before the pieces had been unloaded the structural inspectors, systems analysts, flight recorder engineers and other teams of specialists started to pore over the remnants as they began the
meticulous task of trying to determine how, and why, the aircraft had been torn apart. There was a problem, of course. Cuts. Like all government departments the AAIB was under pressure, less money,
discarded personnel, their strength whittled away. And it was Christmas. Yet for this, and for so many dead, they did what budgets would not allow. The recorders arrived immersed in a tank of river
water to guard against corrosion that would start once they were exposed to the air. They were lifted gently, almost with reverence, and placed in ovens to be baked at eighty degrees Centigrade,
painstakingly drying them out. The process took almost two days. Only then could the harrowing information they contained be extracted and analysed.

During the crash the engines had been ripped off, the belly of the aircraft hideously punctured, bulkheads ripped apart, the fuselage broken. All was gathered, washed down, set out, and
examined. The inspectors were experts, they knew how to fly many different types of aircraft and did so on a regular basis for commercial airlines in order to keep themselves up to speed. They also
knew how every seal, nut, switch, hatch, lamp, circuit board and piece of Velcro was supposed to be assembled. Just as a forensic pathologist takes apart the bodies of the victims to confirm how
they had died, so these men did much the same, except they worked in the opposite direction, piecing the body back together once more.

Their first break came on the second night, when the recorders had been dried out and their examination could begin. The cockpit voice recorder was harrowing. The cabin had four microphones,
open regardless of the connection with Air Traffic Control, picking up every word, making it possible to triangulate the origin of every sound. That’s why they were able to tell it had been
the first officer, Bryan, who had screamed so pathetically in the millisecond before the recording went dead. The power had been cut off. An inevitable consequence when your cockpit smashes into a
river at a hundred and fifty miles an hour.

It was on the same evening that an inspector watched a flat-bed bringing in the cowling from the failed engine. It had been ripped away and floated downriver, and had taken some time to be
recovered. Even while the truck was reversing in order to unload, the inspector was up beside the cowling, taking a closer look. He had seen something that startled him, a hole punched through the
outside of the skin that had created a characteristic petal effect of torn metal on the inside.

He had the cowling unloaded onto a trolley that he then pushed to the corner of the hangar where the engines were being inspected. The failed engine was a tangle of fuel pipes, debris and
crumpled titanium blades that at first seemed not to make much sense, even to the specialists who had arrived from the engine manufacturers, but when the pierced skin of the cowling was matched up
against it, suddenly one mystery faded away, to be replaced by another. The evidence was before him, before them all, yet not one of them was willing to believe.

He was twisting his head, stretching his neck, trying to get a new perspective on the damage when he heard his name. A colleague who had been investigating the hydraulics compartment was
calling. His voice sounded excited, and perhaps a little afraid, repeating the inspector’s name with increasing urgency.

‘Mike! For God’s sake, Mike! Get over here.’

The hydraulics bay was also the compartment where the undercarriage was retracted during flight. As Mike stepped around a scrap of fuselage skin that had yet to find its proper place, he found
the other man bent over the twin wheel assembly. He was biting on his knuckle.

‘What is it?’ Mike asked, but he got no answer. The other man was lost for words, except for one single sharp obscenity that rushed forth on a gasp of air.

When Mike joined him, and saw what he was looking at, he did the same. Embedded in the thick Dunlop tyre was a shard of aluminium that was covered in dull-green paint. Most of the immense
fuselage of Speedbird 235 was constructed from aluminium, but not an inch of it was painted this colour.

It was a missile fin.

They planned to go out for dinner. The Wolseley, her favourite, with its elegant Twenties’ atmosphere. As Harry sat propped up on the bed he watched her step from the
shower, her pointed toe searching like a ballerina for the towel spread across the floor. Water was still dribbling down her body as she lifted her arms carelessly to tie up her damp hair. She
looked stunning. Yet Harry was troubled.

Jemma Laing was a primary school teacher whom he’d met at a charity function. Glorious red hair, a little on the short side, with the soft, pale complexion so characteristic of Scots women
whose skin seem to have been washed clean of any blemish by a thousand years of soft breezes and rain. She and Harry had been going out for nearly four months and he knew she was growing tired of
stopping over, living out of an overnight bag. The time had come for her to make a deeper mark on his life and he couldn’t find a single reason to object, to prevent her from claiming some
cupboard space, beginning the process of manoeuvring alongside him, except . . .

He’d been married twice before. His first wife, Julia, had filled his life in a manner that made him question and revalue everything around him, with the sum always greater than what had
gone before. She’d begun gathering together all those loose parts of his young character and tying them neatly together when she had died, killed in a skiing accident for which Harry would
for ever blame himself. She’d been pregnant, too. Perhaps that was why he had punished himself second time around with Melanie, a woman who loved to turn men’s heads, couldn’t
stop, even after she and Harry had got married. He thought she was somewhere in Cheshire now, married to an older man who made cheese. A lot of cheese, for she had expensive tastes. Since Mel, many
women had passed through Harry’s life. Some he had loved, but none had been able to keep up with him. His fault. Until Jemma. She had been careful not to make demands, even to hint that he
should slow down, but he had begun to acknowledge that perhaps it was time he did. And with Christmas just a couple of days away, maybe it was time to ask her to hang around a little longer, empty
the overnight bag.

‘You still planning on going to your parents for Christmas?’ he asked, hoping the question sounded casual as she towelled her hair dry. She flicked it back over her head.

‘They’re expecting me.’

She was an Edinburgh girl, with eyes that reminded him of sun on the firth. She was early thirties, ten years younger than Harry and all grown up, but it was an outcome her parents seemed
ill-inclined to share. They were Church of Scotland, small lives lived out in a pebble-dash terrace in the suburb of Livingstone. There would be no room there for Harry, except in her bed, which
they wouldn’t allow, not at Christmas or at any other time unless they were married. London ways had never proved popular in Livingstone, not with neighbours peering from behind every
curtain.

‘I’d like you to come, Harry.’ She bit her lip, afraid she sounded too serious. ‘It would be the sofa in the downstairs room, and the floorboards creak.’ She
laughed, trying to make light of it.

‘Not with you?’

‘No. Anyway, I still sleep in my old metal-framed bed. The springs complain like a shutter in a storm. Not your style.’

‘No,’ he sighed, as she wrapped the towel around herself.

She stared at him, searching. ‘I don’t have to go. I could stay here. In London.’

There it was. They both knew what it meant. Christmas together, here, in Harry’s home. Cupboard space. He liked this woman, knew he wanted more of her, accepted that she had a right to ask
and to be taken seriously.

He looked away, broke her gaze. ‘Better not let your parents down, if you’ve promised.’

A cloud passed across her eyes, the sun gone. ‘No, you’re probably right. Silly of me.’

‘We’re still on for New Year’s?’

‘If that’s what you want.’

‘Of course.’

A dullness had crept into her voice; he’d hurt her, couldn’t help it. He was scared, couldn’t afford to get this wrong again, hurt her even more, and himself most of all. Yet
even as he argued with himself he heard Julia’s voice – ‘You’re a total tosser, Jones!’ And he knew she was right.

‘Let me get dressed, will you?’ Jemma said softly. ‘A girl needs a little privacy.’

One moment wanting to share their lives, the next demanding privacy. He wanted to say something, to apologize, put things right, but already she had turned her back. He rolled off the bed and
went downstairs to drown in another whisky.