B006U13W The Flight (Jenny Cooper 4) nodrm (11 page)

‘It’s similar, certainly.’

‘But it is him? The monster?’

Jenny felt her eyes suddenly well with tears, but she hadn’t been
feeling
anything.

‘You seem irritated by your reaction.’

‘We’ve discussed this before.’

‘It’s not weakness, Jenny. Far from it. You were weak when you had no mechanism for dealing with your feelings, when they simply overwhelmed you and caused you to break down. Now at least you’re expressing them.’

She concentrated on drying her eyes and swallowing the lump in her throat.

‘Tell me, have you been feeling emotional at unexpected or inappropriate moments?’ he asked.

Jenny recalled her reaction to the two bodies on the beach. There had been other moments, too. She had wept after a perfectly mundane phone call from her son, and again after she spotted her ex-husband in a supermarket car park with his young partner and their new baby. She nodded.

‘And tell me, were these occasions when you would expect a person able to experience feelings normally to have a genuine, spontaneous emotional reaction, albeit a less dramatic one?’

‘Yes,’ Jenny said, disconcerted by the fact that he seemed to be several steps ahead of her.

‘Good.’ He made a neat and precise note in his book. ‘Alarming as it may be for you, that tells me that we’re making very good progress indeed.’ He set down his pen and knitted his fingers. Although he was no more than thirty-five, Dr Allen had already assumed the aura of a sage. ‘Recapturing the memory opened a channel to your subconscious – the buried vault you’ve talked about. It may be a narrow channel, but trust me, the force of the tide behind it will make a wider and a wider one. Your challenge is no longer accessing feelings, it’s allowing yourself to experience them.’

‘Even when it’s inappropriate?’

‘Especially then. Although I wouldn’t ask you to break down in public.’

‘Just my style.’

He smiled, then studied her face. She felt self-conscious under his gaze and glanced away.

‘If you don’t mind my saying, Jenny, when you arrived today, I sensed something was weighing heavily on your mind – other than your work, of course.’

‘What do you mean?’ she asked, feeling suddenly defensive.

‘We talked about the plane crash. It’s clearly as distressing to you as to everyone else, but your mind was elsewhere.’

‘How would you know that?’

‘Why don’t we concentrate on the question?’

She felt a surge of anger pass through her body. ‘You presume to know my thoughts, but I’ve a right to know where that comes from. You asked me to express my feelings, I’m expressing them.’

‘Of course,’ he conceded. ‘You mustn’t worry about this, and it’s only a rough guide, but I noted the line of your sight. If someone is looking down and to the right they tend to be accessing feelings, up to the left, a visual memory, and so on. You were very much in the realm of your own feelings before I even mentioned the crash, and you stayed there.’

‘Is that mainstream science?’

‘Now you are straying from the point. Tell me. Please.’

He was right. Her mind had filled with images of her father even as she drove through the dark evening across the Severn Bridge. By the time she sat in the chair they were so vivid he might have been standing in the same room.

‘I was thinking about my father.’

‘What about him?’

‘Images, pictures . . . memories—’

‘From what period of your life?’

‘Long ago. As a child, I suppose – when things were still clear and sharp. Somehow your senses seem to become blunted as you get older.’

‘The central image, Jenny. What is it?’ He suddenly raised his finger – a deliberate, momentary distraction. ‘Tell me.’

‘He’s young, in a suit and tie. A summer suit, a rose in his buttonhole – it’s at a wedding, I think. Yes, his youngest brother was getting married. A pretty girl—’

‘Your father’s expression?’

‘Smiling.’

‘His demeanour?’

‘Happy. My mother’s with him.’

‘Jenny?’

She startled, as if coming suddenly awake.

‘Would it surprise you to hear that you were smiling too?’

She looked at him blankly, aware of two competing voices in her head in heated but incoherent conflict.

‘You’ll have to take my word for it. But it tells me you have a big opportunity now.’

‘And what’s that?’

‘To make your peace with your father. It’s important to do it before he’s gone.’

‘I don’t think I can.’

‘What are you frightened of exactly?’

She tried to put her complex feelings into words. ‘It’s almost a superstition . . . You’ll think I’m stupid—’

Dr Allen shook his head.

‘I know he’s going, but when I think about it I’m frightened . . . that he’ll take me with him.’

‘You feel your destinies are entwined. That’s because he has always intruded on you. Your feelings have never been your own. And failure to express yourself is a form of living death, is it not?’

‘I suppose so,’ Jenny said. And for the first time since the feeling of imminent doom took the breath from her in a crowded courtroom nearly five years before, she allowed herself truly to believe that the beast that had stalked her was him, her father.

Dr Allen thought carefully before continuing. ‘I can say this to you now because you’re well enough to bear the responsibility. To live is a choice made consciously or unconsciously. It takes effort and will. Similarly, people may choose not to live, consciously or unconsciously – for example, people who skydive for a hobby, don’t, in my opinion, die altogether by accident.’

‘What about people who die in plane crashes?’ Jenny said, challenging his dubious theory.

‘There is a school of thought that says there is no such thing as an accident, but that’s a little too simplistic for my tastes. I’m just advising you to be very aware of your choices, that’s all.’

‘Are you telling me I’ve got a death wish, doctor?’

‘No . . .’ He sounded less than convinced. ‘But to pursue your analogy of the aeroplane, it takes constant propulsion to stay in the air. The moment the engines stop, it falls.’

‘I get it – living is a conscious choice, but you think I spend all my time thinking about death, so I’m more attracted to that than life. You never did approve of me being a coroner.’

‘It’s a very necessary profession,’ he said. ‘Just be careful not to give everything you’ve got to the dead.’

Michael Sherman had answered his phone in the cockpit of a Cessna he was flying back from Newmarket to Bristol. Jenny had offered to drive over to the airport to meet him, but he said he would prefer to come to her—his boss had already warned him not to speak to any officials without his approval and it wouldn’t be wise to be seen together. Since the accident a collective paranoia seemed to have gripped the airlines, he explained, even his small outfit.

He suggested they meet at the St Pierre. A few miles west of Chepstow on the Welsh side of the estuary, it was a fourteenth-century manor house that had been converted into a hotel and country club. Jenny approached along a winding drive and arrived in front of an imposing castellated building. She parked amongst the rows of Mercedes and BMWs and made her way to the entrance.

She spotted him sitting at a corner table in the wood-panelled lounge bar, quietly sipping beer from a tall glass. He looked over to her and waved. As she picked her way between the club sofas she noticed that he looked different. He’d shaved and put on a fresh white shirt.

‘One of your favourite haunts?’ Jenny said, sitting in a chair at an angle to his.

‘It’s where the jockeys and owners stay,’ he said. ‘They know me here. I get to use the gym and shoot a round of golf if I’ve got nothing better to do. Can I get you a drink, Mrs Cooper?’

‘Red wine,’ she said, flouting Dr Allen’s long-standing ban. If he wanted her to act on her feelings, she would. ‘And, please, call me Jenny.’

‘Michael.’

He called over a waitress, who took the order. He displayed little outward sign that he had just lost someone he had been close to, but she could nonetheless sense it in him: a pervading sadness beneath the surface that felt heavy with regret.

‘Are you sure you’re all right with this?’ Jenny asked.

‘Fine,’ Michael said. ‘It’s not like I haven’t known people die in planes.’

‘In the RAF?’

‘There were a few. Not as many as you’d think.’

Jenny had never met a fighter pilot. She was curious to know more. ‘You must have seen a lot of active service.’

‘Kosovo, Afghanistan, Iraq, Afghanistan again.’ He fired off the answer as if he was used to giving it, and quickly changed the subject. ‘What have they given you?’

Jenny pulled her laptop from her briefcase and loaded the disk that Chambers had had couriered to her office. They moved a little closer together so they could both see the screen.

‘It’s just the raw air traffic control data,’ Michael said. He clicked open a file. ‘See – it’s a playback.’ They were looking at a video file, showing the air traffic controller’s screen exactly as he would have seen it. It was dotted with moving aircraft symbols. ‘There she is, RA189.’ He pointed to a triangular symbol approaching from the right-hand side of the screen. ‘The initials and the number identify the flight – RA189 – the two numbers underneath are airspeed and altitude – 470/20,000.’

Voices crackled over the image:

‘
Skyhawk 1–8-9, identified, climb flight level three one zero, unrestricted.
’

‘
Climb to flight level three one zero, Skyhawk 1–8-9.’

‘That’s Bristol giving them clearance to climb to a cruising height of 31,000 feet, and the first officer confirming,’ Michael said. ‘All looks pretty routine so far. Normally the route would take them north-west over Wales, but you can see they’re all being sent out over the Severn estuary.’

‘Any reason?’

‘Could have been military aircraft manoeuvres in the Welsh valleys. That’s where we used to do a lot of our low-level practice.’

‘
Bristol, Skyhawk 1–8-9 – do you have any reports of turbulence on our routing?’

‘
Skyhawk 1–8-9, light turbulence reported at your level and your route for the next fifty miles. Nothing to worry about.
’

‘
Thank you.
’

‘They sound quite chatty,’ Jenny said. ‘I thought it would be full of “rogers” and “wilcos”.’

‘It’s like anything – you get a feel. If reception’s bad you revert to formality to make sure the other party knows where your message begins and ends. But this is all run of the mill. The first officer just has to check in with Bristol to let them know he’s there, and then he’ll be talking to Shanwick over in Ireland, getting clearance to head out across the Atlantic.’

‘He seems worried about turbulence,’ Jenny said.

‘It’s just a standard precaution to check there have been no reports of heavy turbulence from flights up ahead. He’d mostly be thinking about whether it was safe to switch off the seat-belt signs. A lot of passengers need to pay a visit after take-off. OK – we’re coming up to level-off now, 30,000—’

Jenny watched the altitude figures tick up to 30,500, then 31,000 feet. The time read 09:52.

‘Wow,’ Michael said. ‘Look there – the airspeed’s falling away, 450, 430 . . . 400, but he’s climbing steeply. And nothing on the radio.’

They moved in closer to the laptop, straining to hear any trace of a message.

The air traffic controller spoke when the airspeed had ticked down to 350. ‘
Skyhawk 1–8-9, I see your airspeed is three-fifty. Confirm all OK.
’

There was no reply.

‘
Skyhawk, this is Bristol eight-zero-nine. Please confirm airspeed. I’m reading three-ten.
’

Jenny and Michael continued to watch in silence as the airspeed figures tumbled rapidly through the two hundreds and the controller made repeated unsuccessful attempts to gain a response. There was a momentary sound through a cloud of static, not clear enough even to be certain that it was a human voice.

‘I don’t see how that happened,’ Michael said. ‘It looks as if he stalled . . . but how?’

The controller was panicking now. ‘
I’m sorry, say again, Skyhawk . . . Skyhawk, uh, are you still on? Skyhawk, are you there?
’

‘What happens then?’ Jenny asked. ‘I mean, technically.’

Michael ignored her question, transfixed by what he was seeing on the screen. ‘There. Look at that.’ He sat back in his seat as the altitude figures started to tumble, slowly at first, then faster. ‘He did stall. If you slow down too much you lose lift at the wing tips first. The pilot, more likely the autopilot, compensates by dipping the nose. But if it dips too far, and if for some reason you’ve got less than full control, on a big aircraft you’re in danger of getting into a dive you can’t pull out from. On a small plane, you’d jam on the rudder, hope to flip over on your side and win it back that way. But with something the size of the 380, once it’s falling the forces involved are phenomenal. It’s designed for steady, stable flight—’ He paused, watching a shift in the rate of fall. ‘My God – he almost does it. He’s almost levelling out at 15,000 . . . Thought so—’ The altitude figures resumed their rapid tumble. ‘My guess is he managed to bring the nose up, but probably too far. It may only be a matter of a few degrees, but if the centre of lift shifts ahead of the centre of gravity, the nose is forced up even higher.’ He demonstrated with his hand, tilting his palm upwards to forty-five degrees. ‘You need more thrust to push you out of it, but now the engines are below the centre of gravity and even if you had the power, it would just force the nose even higher.’ His fingers were vertical. ‘Then you start to slip backwards. This is bad.’

They watched the pattern repeat itself – a level-out at 8,000 feet, then another rapid dive until the aircraft symbol simply vanished from the screen.

Michael stared at the screen for a moment longer, then clicked to another file. It was a graph produced by air traffic control software which plotted the flight’s descent from 31,000 feet to the ground over a period of five minutes and forty-two seconds. It resembled a series of three mountains of diminishing height. ‘He was fighting it all the way down.’