Permissible Limits (68 page)

My eyes raced across the instruments. Temperatures and pressures were fine. The Merlin was churning away. The stick was still as responsive as ever. Nothing appeared to be wrong.

My pulse began to settle and I was reaching for the flap lever when it happened again, much closer this time. Then, immediately below me, came a loud bang and the whole airframe shuddered. I heard myself gasp, first shock, then terror. At the same time, I heard the voice of the controller in my headphones.

‘
Golf Papa India. Conflicting traffic. Repeat, conflicting traffic’

‘
Where, for God’s sake?’ I hadn’t meant to shout.

‘
In your six o’clock. Closing. No radio contact. Repeat, no radio contact.’

My eyes went up to the rearview mirror and I felt a physical chill that started in the very middle of me. The head-on view of the Messerschmitt 109 is unmistakable. I’d seen it dozens of times in the hangar at Standfast, the black-and-white spinner on the prop, the brutal outlines of the cockpit, the underwing bulges that held the shells for the Oeliken cannon. On the ground, it looked sinister enough. Up here, in perfect fighter pilot’s weather, I knew I was staring at death.

‘
So how do you like the new paint scheme?’

It was Harald. Somehow, he’d made it over to England. Somehow, he knew about me flying in the air show. And up here, in front of God knows how many people, he even had the right radio frequency.

‘
Golf Papa India -’

The controller was trying to butt in. He wanted to know what was going on. I told him to get off the air. Harald thought that was very funny.

‘
Telling them who’s in charge,’ he said softly. ‘I like that.’

I couldn’t take my eyes off the mirror. The Messerschmitt had eased away, riding high above my starboard quarter. I could see Harald’s face. He was wearing a leather helmet and as I looked at him he waved. Then he came closer, and closer still, until I touched the stick to the left, widening the gap again.

‘
The wingman formates on the leader,’ he said. ‘Remember?’

The 109 crept in again. Any closer, and we’d collide.

‘
Something’s happened,’ I managed to say. ‘What can you see?’

‘
You’ve got a minor coolant leak. I just winged your radiator. Lucky the shell didn’t explode.’

Lucky it didn’t explode?
I swallowed hard, then looked in the mirror again. Harald was right. A thin white plume of coolant was feathering away behind me into the deep blue of the sky.

‘
Nurse her,’ Harald murmured. ‘She’ll be fine.’

My eyes went to the engine temperature gauge. The needle was beginning to nudge upwards. How long before the engine overheated? How long before the big Merlin seized up?

Harald’s voice again, that same even tone he’d used in the skies above Florida. He was telling me to circle the airfield in a long left-hand turn. I was to try and keep the Mustang within the perimeter racetrack.

‘
Why?’

‘
To give these good folks a look, of course.’

‘
At what?’

‘
Me and you. Me behind, you up front. Just putting the record straight.’ He paused. ‘I’ve got a couple of hundred shells left. Shouldn’t be a problem.’

When I’m ready and you’re about to die.

Was this it, then? Had Harald finally decided to level the score? Avenge his father’s death? Shoot down the Mustang that had killed Reinhard Mehler?

I did what he wanted, easing the Mustang into a left-hand circuit, then gradually tightening the turn to keep the aircraft within the airfield, listening all the time for the first telltale signs of engine overheat. Harald matched me move for move, perfect formation. I
glanced down
at the
crowd below.
I felt
sick
with
fear.
They’d
come
to commemorate one of history’s great aerial battles and they doubtless thought this was all part of the show. In a moment or two, when he was bored with playing cat-and-mouse, Harald would slip behind me, and line me up in his gunsight, and give them a finale they’d never forget. A little bit of history rewritten. With an execution thrown in at the end. Nice.

I put my thumb on the transmit button.

‘
Why didn’t you tell me about your father?’

‘
My dad?’ I wasn’t supposed to know. He sounded shocked.

‘
Yes. Reinhard Mehler. Why didn’t you explain all that?’

There was a long silence. Then the radio came to life again.

‘
It was none of your business,’ Harald said.

‘
But it might have made a difference.’

‘
How?’

‘
We might have sold you the Mustang.’

Desperation breeds desperation. Anything, I thought. Anything to keep him circling here while I worked out what to do.

‘
Adam would never have sold it,’ Harald said at last.

‘
You knew that?’

‘
Sure.’

‘
Is that why you killed him?’

I glanced over my shoulder. It might have been my imagination but I thought the 109 took a slight wobble. Maybe he doesn’t know about the video, about Steve Liddell banged up in Jersey police station, about Michelle La Page. My finger was on the transmit button again.

‘
I’ve seen the security video, Harald, but there’s something I don’t understand. Why did you start that fire in Steve’s hangar?’

It was a long shot but it turned out I was right. I thought I could hear Harald laughing.

‘
You really don’t know?’

‘
No.’

‘
I needed the guy, I needed to get a lock on him. I needed him to need me. It’s money, Ellie. With money, you can solve anything.’

‘
That’s bullshit.’ I swallowed hard. ‘You killed my husband. You killed Adam. And you killed him because you couldn’t buy him.’

Harald said nothing and I checked again over my shoulder. He was edging ever so slightly away. Any minute now, I thought. Any minute now he’s going to get tired of this game.

We were still circling inside the airfield. Away to my left I could see the black mass of the crowd. I had a choice. I could simply sit here, waiting for the end, or I could try and do something about it. Put that way, it was no choice at all. Harald Meyler had taught me to think like a fighter pilot. I could hear his voice now, back in his office in the hangar at Standfast. One day, he’d said, all this may save your damn life.

I waited for the sun to come round, oh so slowly, and when it was full on the nose I pushed the stick forward and hit the throttle. The Mustang dropped like a stone and seconds later, as the grass began to fill the windshield, I hauled back, feeling the blood draining from my head, fighting to stay conscious. We were climbing now, the throttle hard against the stops, the engine howling in front of me. All my training told me to monitor the engine temperature but I ignored the dial. If the engine seized, so be it. Maybe that was a better death than another volley of cannon shells.

Following the sun would take me south-west, out over the coast, out over the Isle of Wight, I didn’t care where, just as long as I slipped the long shadow of Harald Meyler. For the first time, I risked a look in the mirror. He was still there, nicely tucked in, about a hundred metres behind me, the 109 riding the thin trail of coolant. If he wanted to be sure, he’d have to drop back a little further. Two hundred metres. That’s what he’d always told me. Two hundred metres for the cleanest kills.

‘
Good.’ It was his voice again.

‘
What do you mean, good?’

‘
Nice flying. It’s a textbook move. I can’t recall ever teaching you that.’

You didn’t, I thought grimly, it was pure instinct. I checked my airspeed, angry now at this game of cat-and-mouse. At 2,600 feet we were doing a fraction over 300 m.p.h. I looked ahead, recognising the long white crescent of Sandown Bay. In a couple of minutes, we’d be over
Ellie
B’s home airfield. Was this where I was supposed to spear in?

Suddenly, the Goodwood controller was back on the air. God knows what he’d been doing in the mean time but now, very definitely, he wanted to know what was going on. I was about to tell him but Harald got there first.

‘
Apologies, Goodwood,’ he said. ‘We’re changing to one two zero decimal six five.’

I stared at my radio console. 120.65 was one
o
f
Goodwood’s so-called quiet frequencies. How the hell did he know that? I toyed with staying on the tower frequency but decided against it. If I was going to survive this thing, then talking to Harald was more important than talking to the tower. I reached for the radio and changed to 120.65. Then I checked my mirror again. Harald was much, much closer.
Head-on like that
,
a pale disc
of
face in the cockpit, he looked
almost medieval, death with wings.

I closed
my
eyes a moment. Please God, get me out of this. Please God, wake me up.

‘
Maybe you’ve got a point. Maybe you should have sold me the Mustang. That might have been wise.’

It was Harald again. He was right. That was what we should have done. Sell Harald the bloody Mustang, and I might still have had a husband.

I felt for the transmit button.

‘
You did, didn’t you?’

‘
Did what?’

‘
Kill Adam.’

‘
Yes.’

I tried to look behind me, an utterly reflex action. His acknowledgement was so matter-of-fact, so passionless, that it probably saved my life. On the very edge of panic, of losing it completely, Harald had hauled me back. Whether he’d meant to or not, he’d made me very angry indeed.

‘
Why?’ I said. ‘Why did you do it?’

‘
Because it was necessary.’

‘
But why?’

‘
Because I loved you.’

Loved. Past tense. Loved me enough to kill my husband. Loved me enough to wreck my life. Loved me enough to drag me across the Atlantic and try and turn me into a fighter pilot.

I reached up and made a tiny adjustment to the mirror. The nose and the cockpit of the Messerschmitt swam into view. Since I’d last checked, he’d got even closer. The perfect fighter pilot, I thought. Nerveless. Dispassionate. A killing machine.

‘
How did you do it, as a matter of interest?’

‘
Do what?’

‘
Trigger the bomb.’

‘
You really want to know?’

‘
Yes.’ I felt myself nodding. ‘Please.’

There was another silence. Then Harald was back.

‘
I wired a radio detonator,’ he said, ‘to the Southampton Control frequency.’

My eyes returned to the radio console. Flying up from Jersey, northbound aircraft pass from one control zone to another in mid-Channel. At that point, pilots are supposed to check in with Southampton Control, changing frequency and announcing their call sign.

‘
Fifty degrees north,’ I said. ‘That’s where Adam went down.’

‘
Exactly.’

‘
How? How would that happen?’

This time there was no mistaking the sound of laughter.

‘
It’s easy,’ he said. ‘You figure out the Southampton frequency, tune the detonator, and the pilot does the rest.’

‘
By calling up Southampton?’

‘
Of course.’

‘
Because the rules say he has to?’

‘
Yes.’

‘
You’re telling me Adam blew himself up?’