Permissible Limits (63 page)

‘
A device?’

‘
Call it a bomb if you like. You’d only need a couple of ounces of explosive, some kind of detonator, it’s pretty simple stuff.’

‘
And you’re sure? You’re absolutely certain?’

There was a brief silence. Andrea was upstairs with the Hoover, chasing elderly guests around.

‘
I’m certain there was an explosion of some kind, yes,’ he said carefully. ‘The residues indicate commercially available explosives. As far as I’m aware, these aren’t standard issue on the
172
’. I
wasn’t sure whether this was Grover’s idea of a joke. Not that I was in the mood for laughter. ‘The front of the aircraft would probably have separated from the cabin,’ he was saying. ‘If it’s any consolation, your husband would have known very little about it. Fix a device to the fire wall, and he’d have been killed by the blast.’

I thanked him for the information, trying not to think about Adam.

‘
What happens now?’ I heard myself ask.

‘
The analysis will form part of my report. In the mean time I’ll be talking to the Jersey police.’

‘
You will?’

‘
Of course, Mrs Bruce. But remember what I said about provenance. The item we analysed tells a very clear story. Exactly where it came from will still be very hard to establish.’

It was Dennis, of course, who insisted that I, too, went to the Jersey police. He was so concerned that he flew over the day before and spent the night at Mapledurcombe, trawling through the evidence, drawing up a week-by-week diary listing everything that had happened since
12
February. Into this
chronology
, we wove all the loose ends that comprised Adam’s estate - the guarantee on Steve Liddell’s overdraft, the £70,000 he’d laid aside for my surprise Spitfire, Harald’s extraordinary generosity over the Harvard, the telltale fuel bill someone had run up at Hurn Airport. We finished way past midnight. What we were now calling ‘the brief’ ran to ninety-three pages.

My own contribution lay chiefly in the exchanges I’d had with Steve Liddell and Michelle La Page. I’d wanted to put in much more about Florida and my weeks with Harald but Dennis had limited this to a couple of brief paragraphs establishing that the man had expressed a desire to marry me. When I questioned this decision, trying to argue that motivation was important, Dennis told me to get a grip.

‘
We’re talking facts,’ he said, ‘figures, dates, sums of money. This is a deposition. Not a bloody novel.’

Dennis had a contact at Jersey police headquarters, a cheerful-looking inspector called Alastair Roper, and I flew back with him for a formal interview. Forewarned by Dennis, Roper had already been through the file on the accident and was now waiting to speak to Grover. Dennis had been right. All my in-depth analyses of Harald Meyler - fascinating though they may have been - were strictly for the birds. As far as Roper was concerned, the investigation was about evidence.

‘
You say there’s more wreckage?’

I explained about the sack I’d found aboard the
Frances Bevan.
The inspector scribbled notes.

‘
And you say Liddell has this material?’

‘
As far as I know.’

‘
Did you see him remove it? Take it away?’

‘
No.’

‘
So it might still be aboard?’

‘
I suppose so.’ I shrugged. ‘Though I doubt it.’

I watched his pen racing across the notepad. He looked up.

‘
And what about…’ he glanced down, ‘… Mr Meyler? Where do we find him?’

‘
I’m afraid I’ve no idea. He’s an American. He flies around a lot on business. The last thing I knew, he was in Kiev. To be honest, he could be anywhere.’

‘
You haven’t talked to him?’

‘
No.’

‘
You’re sure about that?’

I gazed at the man. Dennis had turned his head away. He loved rows, but only if he started them.

‘
I’m absolutely positive,’ I said carefully. ‘Mr Meyler and I really don’t have a lot to talk about. We were friends, once. But what do you say to a man who probably killed your husband?’

Inspector Roper had a kind smile. He’d done his best to make me feel comfortable but his courtesy and good humour clearly didn’t extend to wild assumptions like this.

‘
Can you prove that?’ he asked. ‘Because if you can’t, you ought to be just a little bit careful.’

‘
Really?’

‘
Yes.’ The smile at last returned. ‘Disappointment can be a terrible thing, Mrs Bruce.’

I stayed two more days on Jersey. That same afternoon, according to Dennis, the Jersey police searched Steve Liddell’s hangar, his camper van and the little house in St Helier that belonged to his parents. They took a
number
of
items away and spent the best part
of the
next
day interviewing Steve. Whatever came out of those conversations didn’t include anything incriminating, because Steve was back at his parents’ place by early evening. I know that because I went to see him. I wanted to know what he’d done with the rest of the stuff in the sack.

‘
I left it on the boat,’ he said.

He was standing on the front door step. He couldn’t wait for me to go.

‘
And the police? They’ve found it?’

‘
Apparently not.’

‘
They’ve looked?’

‘
So they say.’

‘
So where’s it gone?’

‘
I’ve no idea. Maybe the guys ditched it. You know what they’re like.’

I nodded. It was like talking to a child. Lies, lies, lies, I thought. And then more lies.

Back at the Bon Accueil, I phoned Dennis Wetherall. He’d asked me out to supper but I wasn’t sure I could take another three hours of ear-bashing. I told him briefly about my encounter with Steve. Dennis listened without saying very much then told me not to worry. Roper might look like a bumpkin, he said, but in fact the guy was very sharp.

‘
He’ll have to be,’ I said wearily. ‘At this rate.’

Dennis gave me another little lecture on the perils of high blood pressure, then said good night. About to hang up, I caught his voice again, an afterthought.

‘
By the way, some guy’s been phoning for you. Jamie? That ring any bells?’

I tried to phone Jamie but there was no reply from Ralph’s. I checked my watch. It was nearly nine, unusual for the bungalow to be empty. I put a call through to Andrea. My sister loves bad news, especially other people’s.

‘
I’ve been trying to get you for ages,’ she said at once, ‘but your mobile’s switched off.’

‘
That’s right. What’s happened?’

‘
It’s Ralph. He’s had a stroke.’

My phone calls eventually found Jamie at St Mary’s hospital, over at Newport. He’d been there since early morning,
waiting
for word from the Intensive Care Unit. Ralph had woken up feeling dizzy. Trying to make his way to the bathroom, he’d collapsed in the hall. The noise had woken Jamie and he’d found his grandfather face down on the carpet, unconscious.

‘
Has he recovered at all?’

‘
Nothing. Yet.’

‘
Christ, I’m sorry.’

I could hear the tension in his voice, the disbelief that something so catastrophic, so sudden, could have happened to someone so close. February the twelfth, I thought. The voice on the phone from Newport police station. Your husband’s overdue, Mrs Bruce. We may have to assume the worst.

‘
I know how you feel, my love, if that’s any consolation.’

‘
Thanks. I wish you were here.’

I checked my watch again, pure reflex. I’m not cleared for night flying, and even if I was Sandown airfield doesn’t have lights.

‘
I’ll come across first thing tomorrow,’ I said. ‘Will he be staying at St Mary’s?’

‘
As far as I know.’

‘
And you? You’ll be there?’

‘
What do you think?’

I gave him my love and told him to be strong and rang off. My mobile was in my bag. I’d kept it switched off because even now I was nervous of a surprise call from Harald. It would be typical of him to ring me out of the blue, bounce me into a conversation and elbow his way back into my life. Watch your six, I thought, and hope to God that Dennis was right about the guileful Inspector Roper.

I flew back to Sandown
the
following morning. It was a ghastly day, low rags of dirty grey cloud racing up the Channel. We bucked and shied our way towards Sandown and I made a horrible landing in a strong crosswind.

I phoned Jamie from the car en route to Newport and he met me at the front door of the hospital. It was obvious from his face that the news was bad. He looked awful, pallid and grey, just like the weather.

‘
They say he may never wake up,’ he muttered. ‘I think he’s half-dead already.’

The Intensive Care Unit at St Mary’s is up on the second floor. Ralph had a tube down his throat and wires coming out of his chest. A ventilator was doing most of his breathing for him and a drip on a stand was feeding clear liquid into one of his arms. Jamie was right. His face had somehow slackened. He looked waxy and his flesh felt cold to the touch. We sat on either side of him, each holding a hand, and after an hour or so the sister in charge asked us to go. There was a nice coffee shop we could use. If there was any improvement, we’d be the first to know.

We went to the cafeteria. Jamie, for once, couldn’t face food.

‘
Have you had anything since yesterday?’

He shook his head. He looked bereft, completely lost, and when I suggested he go home for some rest he barely seemed to understand me. I took his hand. It was nearly as cold as Ralph’s.

‘
Go home,’ I urged him. ‘I’ll stay here. If anything happens, I’ll phone. I promise.’

He gazed at me, glassy-eyed with exhaustion. He couldn’t go back to the bungalow. He couldn’t face it. Not without Ralph.

‘
Go to Mapledurcombe then. I’ll give Andrea a ring. Use my bed.’

Reluctantly, he agreed. He had Ralph’s Peugeot and I walked down to the car park with him. He wanted to be sure I was staying at the hospital.

‘
Of course,’ I said. ‘Do you really think I’d be anywhere else?’

He stopped beside the car. I think he was close to tears.

‘
It’s not just Ralph,’ he said. ‘It’s everything.’

‘
Everything?’

I didn’t know what he meant but it was pretty obvious to both of us that this was neither the time nor the place to ask. It had started raining again and I took the keys from his hand, opening the driver’s door and helping him in. He might have been Ralph’s age. Something inside him seemed to have collapsed.

I bent to the open window.

‘
Andrea’s expecting you.’ I touched his face. ‘Get some sleep.’

For the next eight days we shuttled back and forth to the hospital.

Ralph stayed up in the ICU. His condition had apparently stabilised and he was certainly breathing without the help of the ventilator but there was no sign of any return to consciousness.

Occasionally, in the hot afternoons, I thought I could detect the ghost of a smile and quite often he’d make gummy sucking noises like a baby, but apart from that he remained beyond our reach. Watching him for hour after hour - the slow rise and fall of his chest, the little sigh he uttered after the nurses had turned him - I sometimes wondered whether he wasn’t, after all, aware of what was going on around him. For that reason, I encouraged Jamie to talk to him and it was the oddest experience eavesdropping on these strange one-way conversations.

Jamie began by concentrating on things they’d been doing together recently - gardening talk mostly - but as the days went by he began to reach further and further into the past, recalling the days when he and his parents would spend long weekends at Ralph’s house down in Dorking. Jamie floated these monologues on a thin raft of half-remembered incidents - little domestic things like a snowball fight in winter, or a birthday visit to a local stables - and listening to this version of Jamie’s childhood it was impossible not to believe how secure and how happy he’d been, a contentment all the more precious because of the way it had so suddenly been destroyed. The morning he told Ralph about the face of his half-sister at the door, and then described how he got the news of his mother’s subsequent suicide, had me close to tears and it was only then that I realised who Jamie was really talking to. It wasn’t Ralph at all. It was me.