Natural Flights of the Human Mind (31 page)

2 p.m.

Doody marches through the cottage gate and turns towards the field and the aeroplane that Tony is about to fly away. Straker follows her reluctantly, wishing it was all over and the Tiger Moth gone.

‘I’ve changed my mind,’ she says, turning round to wait for him. ‘I’m going to keep it.’

Naturally.

‘It’s a dream, isn’t it? Why should I sell my dream?’

‘Because it’s cheaper.’

She stops walking. Straker is learning to recognise that dangerous glint in her eyes, the rigid set of her mouth and the way she stands, hands hanging loose at her sides, deliberately not clenched. ‘So why shouldn’t I do something extravagant? I’ve spent most of my life getting things wrong without meaning to. This cottage is the best thing that ever happened to me. Aren’t I allowed to make my own mistakes for once and not just wait for circumstances to get me anyway?’ She stops, takes a breath and relaxes now that she’s said it all. ‘If I can’t have Biggles, I want the real thing.’

Surely Biggles has already been disposed of in the sea.

‘It’s not just the cost of learning to fly. You have to keep paying out for maintenance.’

She glares at him. ‘Stop being so practical. You live in a lighthouse. You should be more visionary.’

A large crowd of people is walking up the road behind them,
some on the cobbled pavement, but most on the road. Straker and Doody stop to let them pass.

Straker is still thinking about the crash. He wishes he could remember more, bring back what was going on in his mind just before it happened.

Unexpectedly, he feels Doody’s hand on his arm. He waits for her to remove it, assuming it is a mistake, but it stays there. He can feel the warmth from her seeping through and penetrating his skin.

‘You can’t change things, you know.’ Her voice is unusually gentle.

He raises his eyes.

‘It happened. Nothing stops that, whatever you were thinking at the time.’

‘I don’t know what I was thinking.’

‘You probably weren’t that stupid. Crashing a car with just you in it isn’t the same thing as destroying a train full of people. Most potential suicides don’t decide to take everyone else with them.’

‘I wish I could remember. What sort of person was I? I can only see myself now.’

‘And you wouldn’t do it now. That’s the important thing. I used to worry about Harry. Maybe if I’d done it better, he wouldn’t have gone. But that’s just how it is. You pick yourself up and carry on walking.’

‘An open door,’ says Straker. ‘You don’t have to look through it every time you go past.’

Doody stares at him. ‘That’s right,’ she says. ‘That’s it exactly.’

Straker moves over to let the group of people pass, but Doody remains standing in the road, refusing to allow them more space. He examines their feet. There are trainers, normal for the sailing lot, and smart shoes—suede, leather. Older styles too, with flat heels, one-inch heels, three-inch heels, even higher in one case, although these are stumbling to keep
upright on the road, which is not much smoother than the cobblestone pavement. It’s the diversity of ages and styles that is disconcerting. They don’t look as if they ought to be together.

Straker becomes aware that the feet have stopped walking, and they’re all around him and Doody. There’s an odd silence.

‘Straker?’

Who are they? How can they possibly know his name? He raises his eyes to their faces.

In front of the group, there’s a woman who reminds him of Doody. She has that same aggressive way of standing and staring at him that makes everything his fault. She moves closer and he tries to back away, but there’s only a stone wall behind him.

‘Who’s asking?’ says Doody.

‘Who are you?’ says the woman, half turning her face to her.

‘I asked first.’

‘Is your name Straker?’

‘It might be.’

The woman turns back to Straker. ‘I don’t think so,’ she says slowly.

He looks at the woman’s face. She has pale, almost transparent skin, and her short, spiky hair is so black that it’s difficult to see any individual strands of hair. Her unnaturally bright eyes, heavily rimmed with black makeup, are staring at him with an intense, hungry expression. She’s prettier than Doody, and thinner, but there’s a hardness about her that’s almost familiar—although not quite. He realises that Doody’s anger must be cultivated and controlled, because it’s nothing in comparison to the reality of this woman’s anger.

‘I’m Straker.’

She smiles unpleasantly. The people round them are breathing, listening, waiting.

‘Does the name Carmen Halliwell mean anything to you?’ she says.

He knows the name, but he can’t think clearly enough to work it out.

‘Or Pete Butler?’

He swallows hard.

‘I’ll tell you who we are. Listen to the names, Straker. Think about them. Kieran and Stuart Fisher, sons of Alan Fisher. Jack Tilly, father of Felicity. Felicity Tilly. Jeremy Ainsworth, grandson of Jerry and Anne. James Taverner, grandson of—’

‘Maggie,’ he says. ‘Maggie!’

There’s a sudden silence, as if they are taken by surprise. There appear to be hundreds of them now, crowding round together, although no one actually touches him. Straker is finding it difficult to breathe.

‘Yes,’ says a calm voice. ‘Maggie. She was my grandmother.’

Straker looks at his face. A tall young man with a ponytail, somehow very strong and confident. He’s undoubtedly a Taverner, a younger version, one of those faces in the photographs that Straker pored over in Simon’s flat. It is possible to see Maggie in him. And Simon. Looking at his face, Straker believes he can see the loss, the absence of something.

‘What about the others?’ shouts another voice. ‘My Helen.’

Then all the voices join in. ‘Yes, what about Leroy?’

‘Paul!’

‘Johnny!’

They are all names he knows. He’s conscious of the fury of the names, throwing themselves at him, slamming him against the wall. He tries to push them away, and feels Doody’s reaction as she moves closer.

‘What’s going on?’ she says. ‘Clear off! How dare you come here and harass us?’

He wants to tell her that he understands what’s happening. He doesn’t recognise any of them, but he knows who they all are. He’s been diverted by other memories and briefly for
gotten Simon Taverner’s computer—the conversations on it, the plans they were making…

‘What do you want from me?’ he says at last, struggling to make his voice work properly. Half of him is afraid and the other half is strangely liberated, as if this is what he’s been waiting for all these years, a chance to confront them, to explain, or give them something back. If he dies here, now, it won’t matter. It would be fair. After all, there’s no real justice for someone who’s killed people. How can there be? You can’t bring them back. There’s nothing you can do. Once it’s done, it’s done.

‘We’ve come for you,’ says Carmen.

‘I know,’ he says.

‘We want to know what really happened, not what you told the court.’

‘I don’t know what happened,’ he says.

‘Rubbish,’ says a voice from the back. ‘Stop being a coward and face up to it. Tell us the truth.’

Doody, at his side, is tensing, but not speaking. She must realise by now who they are.

‘It’s the same as then,’ he says. ‘I can’t remember.’

‘Don’t give us that. It’s just a cop-out.’

‘I know it seems like that—’

‘Stop messing about and tell us the truth.’

But there isn’t a truth. Or if there is he doesn’t know what it is. He only has the information that they all have, the result of the inquest, which is that nobody really knows what happened. The truth must be locked somewhere inside his brain, and he doesn’t have access to it. He doesn’t know a way to get to it.

‘Go away!’ shouts Doody, right by his ear. ‘This isn’t a court. You’ve no right to come here.’

‘Don’t talk to me about rights!’ yells a voice from the back. ‘Did he think about my rights when he killed my daughter?’

‘How does it feel to kill all those people?’ says a soft voice by
Straker’s other ear. He turns and sees a man in his thirties, who’s screwing up his eyes and twisting his mouth into an expression of revulsion. He appears to be about to hit him, but he doesn’t. ‘How does it feel to be a murderer?’

‘It wasn’t murder,’ says Doody. ‘Murder is premeditated. It was an accident.’

‘What do you know about it?’ shouts a woman.

‘As much as you,’ yells Doody.

‘Seventy-eight people,’ says the voice by Straker’s ear, and his stomach starts to roll. He has managed to not think of the seventy-eight for some time, but now they come back to him eagerly, burrowing their way into his head, tumbling around his mind: seventy-eight, seventy-eight.

Jonathan looks at his watch. ‘What time are you taking off?’ he says again to Tony, although he’s already asked the question several times already.

Ben and Kasra have just brought the aeroplane to the take-off position, one on each wing, guiding it into the right place, with Terry controlling the trolley at the back, supporting the tail skid.

Now it sits comfortably on the grass, facing the runway, neat, polished, immaculate. Tony is wearing a leather jacket and has goggles hanging round his neck. ‘Got to look the part,’ he had said, with a grin, when he first greeted Jonathan.

‘It’s supposed to be two fifteen,’ he says. ‘She’s done it again. We’d better hang on a bit.’

‘Reliability isn’t Imogen’s strong point. I spend my life waiting for her.’

‘I can’t understand why she’s late again. Give her a few more minutes.’

Jonathan walks round the Tiger Moth, running his hands over the wings. ‘They’ve done a good job,’ he says.

‘Careful,’ says Tony. ‘It’s only fabric. You could go through that, easy as anything.’

Jonathan hastily withdraws his hand. ‘Are you sure you couldn’t take me up as a passenger? In the other cockpit?’

Tony shakes his head. ‘Sorry, it’s not on. Regulations are very strict these days. If you want to keep the certificate of airworthiness, you can’t take passengers. I’ve got ballast in there to get the weight right.’

‘We’ll give her another five minutes,’ says Jonathan. ‘Then you’d better go.’

‘I can wait a bit longer than that. She’ll be very disappointed.’

‘I’ll be very disappointed if you don’t take off before I go. I’ve driven all this way to see it, and I’ve got to get back. I’ve got an appointment later on today.’

Tony looks interested. ‘On a Saturday? Are you still on that deal with Harold Harrington?’

Jonathan nods. ‘Promised I’d meet him for drinks tonight. I can’t miss it.’

They stand by the aircraft with Ben and Kasra and Terry. Jonathan checks his watch, shifting his weight from one leg to the other. ‘Imogen’s seen it in the air,’ he says. ‘She told me.’

‘She missed the landing.’

‘Yes, but she saw it flying. I won’t see it at all if she takes much longer.’

A gentle breeze ruffles the short grass at their feet. The windsock comes briefly to life.

‘Perfect weather conditions,’ says Kasra.

2.20 p.m.

A sharp object hits Straker, and he falls backwards against the wall, his hand to his head. There’s something wet dripping down his face. Blood. They’ve got guns! With silencers. He’s hit again and again, knocked back each time, convinced he must be dying. But it doesn’t hurt enough. He brings his hand
down to look—it’s coated with something yellow and slimy. For a second he thinks his blood has turned yellow. Then he realises he’s being attacked with eggs.

They’re coming rapidly, but from only one person. A tiny Indian woman in a bright red sari, with dangling jewellery and ridiculously high-heeled shoes. She’s getting the eggs out of a carrier-bag one at a time and throwing them, putting all her energy into the action. Everyone else has stopped to watch her, amazed by her ferocity.

‘You took away my Sangita,’ she’s shouting, tears running down her cheeks. ‘She was a beautiful girl, my only one, just a little trip to India, her father and me, come home, no lovely girl, you kill her!’

She leaps at Straker, spitting, her long painted nails attacking his face, scratching him, grabbing at his clothes. He tries to fend her off, but he’s afraid of hurting her—she’s so small. Doody doesn’t seem to have any reservations, however, and she throws herself at the woman, trying to pull away her hands, which is almost impossible, since her nails are locked into his jumper.

The situation descends into chaos. There are people everywhere, disembodied hands clawing at him, fighting each other for a position, voices screaming, feet pushing against each other, and in front of all these, the Indian woman refusing to let go with her nails, her voice hoarse and shrill. ‘Murderer! Killer! Assassin! Manslayer!’

She screams the four words over and over again, and her high-pitched voice carries above all the other shouting. Straker keeps trying to untangle her nails, but as soon as he removes one, another hooks on. Doody is pulling at her viciously, while, at the same time, they’re being lunged at by people in the crowd. It’s a maelstrom of voices, arms, legs, heads, open screaming mouths, kicking legs, scrabbling hands—

2.30 p.m.

‘We’re going to have to get going,’ says Jonathan. ‘I wasn’t expecting to wait.’

‘Well…’ says Tony. ‘If you’re sure.’

‘I’ll just go and see if she’s coming.’ Jonathan jogs to the top of the field, looks down the pathway to the gate, and runs back. ‘Sorry,’ he says, panting. ‘There’s no sign of her. I think you’d better go ahead.’

Tony zips up his jacket, climbs on to the left wing and into the cockpit, then lowers himself into the seat. He organises the harness and clicks the five points into place. He looks out over one side and then the other. ‘OK,’ he shouts, and pushes down the brass switch on the side to start the electrics.

Ben and Kasra move to the front and stand by the propeller, which is set at a ten-to-four position. Then, together, they reach up and pull the propeller down very hard. Nothing happens. They try again, and this time it rotates twice, hesitates and stops. They do it once more, and it roars into a violent and powerful life, while they jump out of the way.