Permissible Limits (8 page)

‘
It’s gone back to the mainland,’ Steve was saying. ‘They took it away a couple of days ago.’

‘
Who took it?’

‘
Glennister’s people.’

I’d got to the bottom of the pile of photographs. Dismembered by a couple of sturdy engineers, the aircraft had been packed into containers and trucked away.

Dennis wanted to know more.

‘
What about the AAIB?’

‘
They weren’t interested.’

‘
They knew about it? You told them?’

Steve’s hesitation gave him away.

‘
They’d found out from someone else,’ he said at last. ‘One of the airport people, I expect.’ He nodded vaguely in the direction of the terminal buildings in a gesture that could have meant anybody.

Dennis was getting tetchy.

‘
You’re telling me they won’t investigate?’

‘
There’s no need. No one was hurt.’

‘
Half a million quid’s worth of aeroplane?’

‘
That’s not their problem.’

‘
No, but it might be ours.’

Steve ignored the remark, slumped in his chair behind the desk. He tapped ash into the waste bin at his feet and began to fiddle with an old altimeter he must have rescued from the skip. It was lying there on the desk beside the telephone and for the first time I noticed the small framed photo partially hidden behind it. It was angled away from me but I could see enough to register the face of a child. She looked young, pre-school certainly.

Dennis was starting to ask the harder questions. He was, if anything, even more aggressive.

‘
Ellie’s down for three hundred grand,’ he reminded Steve. ‘We need to know about the status of the loan.’

Steve gestured hopelessly at the photos.

‘
I’m trying to sort it out.’

‘
How?’

‘
By talking to the insurers.’

Dennis muttered something terse about Glennister. The man had a box at Lloyd’s. He knew the insurance industry backwards. If anyone got screwed here, it certainly wouldn’t be him.

‘
No.’ Steve nodded. ‘I expect you’re right.’

‘
So who pays?’

‘
I dunno.’

‘
Take a wild guess.’

Dennis glanced in my direction. Steve was looking even more dejected.

‘
Tell me about the business,’ I said quickly. ‘How was the rest of it going?’

‘
Fine, until…’ Steve indicated the photos of the wrecked Spitfire.

‘
But you had customers? Stuff was moving through?’

‘
Yeah, absolutely. That’s why I expanded. I had more work than I knew what to do with. This place was perfect, just what I needed.’

‘
And it took all the money? The whole three hundred thousand?’

‘
Not all of it, no.’

‘
How much, then?’

Steve ducked his head, refusing to look me in the eye, and I rephrased the question. For the time being we were talking about money. All too quickly, as Dennis kept warning me, we could be talking about bricks and mortar.

‘
This matters to me, Steve. I want to know exactly how I stand.’

Steve said nothing. Dennis stirred. He had a big topaz ring on his little finger, and when he was angry he had a habit of twisting it round and round.

‘
It’s been a bad week, Steve,’ he said softly. ‘On Thursday, Ellie lost her husband. Next, it could be her home. You hearing me?’

Steve looked up.

‘
It won’t come to that,’ he said quickly.

‘
How do you know?’

‘
I just do.’

‘
But how can you?’

Once again, Steve had no answer. Conversationally, he seemed like a man with one hand tied behind his back. There were moves he couldn’t make, things he wouldn’t say. So far he’d told us practically nothing.

I heard myself asking about the fire. How did it start? When did it happen?

‘
Couple of weeks ago.’

‘
But when?
Exactly?’

‘
The middle of the night. Around one in the morning.’

Dennis took up the running.

‘
And the thing just burst into flames? Just like that? Spontaneous combustion?’

‘
No one knows.’

‘
Might someone have got in? Was the place locked up?’

‘
Of course.’

‘
You
know
that?’

‘
Yes. I locked up myself. This place is really secure. It’s one of the reasons I took on the lease.’

Dennis brooded for a moment. He still had the ring in the fingers of his other hand, twisting and twisting.

‘
And you were the one who discovered the fire?’ he said at last, ‘Is that the way I hear it?’

‘
Yes.’

‘
How come?’

Steve glanced up at him, then looked down again.

‘
I’ve got a van,’ he said softly. ‘Old VW combi. It’s parked round the back.’

‘
You
sleep
here?’

‘
Yes.’

‘
Why?’

Steve shook his head.

‘
Doesn’t matter,’ he said. ‘But it’s lucky I did. The place is alarmed, smoke detectors, proper rig. By the time I got inside the Spit was well alight but at least I managed to contain it. There were other aircraft in there, a couple of them jacked up. I couldn’t have got them out. No way.’

‘
Contain it?’ Dennis barked with laughter. ‘How the fuck did you do that?’

‘
I had fire extinguishers, four of them. The airport fire crew were here pretty quickly, too. They were the ones who really dealt with it.’

‘
And what did they say? Afterwards?’

‘
Same as me. They didn’t know.’ He shrugged. ‘Electrical fault? Fuel leak? You tell me.’

Dennis nodded very slowly. Plainly, he didn’t believe a word.

‘
Thanks,’ he said. ‘Let’s go through this three hundred grand again.’

On the way back to St Helier, I asked Dennis about the framed photo on the desk. Whose child was it? What was her name? Dennis said he didn’t know, and by his tone of voice it was obvious that he didn’t much care. What interested him far more was Steve Liddell’s next move.

Pressed by Dennis, Steve had told me again that my £300,000 was safe. To Dennis, who lived in the accountant’s world of black and white, this was simply evidence that the boy was either in denial, in shock or clinically insane. The figures, he said, spoke for themselves. The first year’s lease had cost Steve £35,000. Tooling for three mechanics, another £33,000. Round it up for rates, office equipment, services, wages and all the other demands on the cash flow, and you were probably looking at about £100,000 in start-up costs. Add to that the interest payments on the loan, plus Steve’s probable liability for the Spitfire, and there’d be precious little change from the third of a million that Adam had so gaily underwritten.

‘
But Steve’s still trading,’ I pointed out. ‘He’s still got the premises and the tooling and all the rest. Doesn’t that count for anything?’

Dennis, wedged behind a tractor, enquired whether I, too, was mad.

‘
What’s the foundation for any business?’ he rasped, sounding his horn for the third time. ‘Christ, Ellie, you should know.’

I frowned, trying to concentrate. For some reason I couldn’t stop thinking about the photo on Steve’s desk.

‘
Good will,’ I said vaguely. ‘And reputation.’

‘
Yeah, and something else,’ he said. ‘Confidence. That’s number one. You’ve got to believe in yourself, believe you’re the very best. Did you see the guy just now? Did you take a good look? And does he strike you like a man way out in front?’ He shook his head, contemptuous, dismissive. ‘Defeat’s a smell, Ellie. And that guy stank of it.’

He finally made it around the tractor and I closed my eyes for a moment or two, glad of the silence between us, fixing the image of the young child in my mind. As we’d left the office, I’d taken the opportunity to have a good look. She had dimples, and lovely eyes, and a bright, trusting smile. She didn’t look the least like Steve Liddell.

‘
I’m thinking of threatening the bank with an action,’ Dennis said suddenly. ‘What for?’

‘
Dereliction of duty. They were happy enough to advance the money, take the interest, accept the security on the loan.’

‘
So what else should they have done?’

‘
Notify me.’

‘
Have you asked them why they didn’t?’

‘
Yes.’

‘
And
what
did
they say?’

We were on the outskirts of St Helier now. Dennis slowed for the short cut down to the harbour.

‘
They said that Adam had told them he dealt with his own affairs. They said he had no time for fancy accountants.’ He glanced sideways at me. ‘Nice to be wanted, eh?’

I spent another hour or so at Dennis’s office before finding somewhere to stay. Dennis was keen for me to meet the bank manager who’d fixed up the loan, and while we waited for his secretary to confirm an appointment, I dug some figures out of my own briefcase and ran through the advance bookings situation for the coming season.

So far, we’d always opened Mapledurcombe for business during the first week in June. This gave us four clear months through to the end of September, generating enough revenue to keep our heads above water while giving us the chance to maintain the standards we’d set for ourselves. Currently, we were charging £150 per night per person for accommodation and all meals. For that sort of money, quite rightly, our guests expected the very best, and so far I’d resisted the temptation to extend the season in the belief that we’d probably buckle under the strain. This summer, though, I was assured of help from a couple of wonderful women in the village and as a result we’d decided to open a month early, on 2 May. Filling five months instead of four had been no problem. Already, in mid-February, we were oversubscribed.

Dennis put the figures through his calculator. Like me, he projected the season’s gross takings at £168,000.

‘
And that’s just board and lodging,’ I reminded him. ‘The flying comes separately.’

‘
How much are you charging for the Harvard?’

‘
Six hundred and fifty an hour. We’ve just put it up.’

‘
And the Mustang?’

‘
Two thousand nine hundred and fifty.’

Dennis made small, neat notes on the pad beside his calculator. Like most accountants, sums like these made no visible impression on him. Everything on earth had a market price. If people were prepared to pay £17,000 for a day trip to Berlin and back, so be it.

‘
What’s the bottom line on the Harvard? Costwise?’

‘
Per hour?’

‘
Yes.’

I knew the figures backwards. I’d been through them a thousand times with Adam, tallying up all the various expenses involved just keeping the aircraft in flying condition. Fuel and maintenance cost a small fortune but insurance was the real killer. For the Harvard, we were currently paying £10,000 a year. The Mustang came in at nearly double that figure.

Dennis was still waiting for the hourly cost.

‘
Four hundred and twenty-five an hour for the Harvard,’ I said, ‘And around two thousand for the Mustang.’

‘
And you’re serious about keeping the aircraft?’

‘
Yes.’

‘
What about pilots?’

‘
I’ve got a list as long as your arm. Most of them would do it for nothing.’