B006U13W The Flight (Jenny Cooper 4) nodrm (18 page)

‘So, that’s it? You’re not even going to try?’

Jenny said, ‘I have to be careful. Let me think about it overnight.’

‘Up to you.’ He finished his beer. ‘I can always go it alone.’

Jenny made it back to Jamaica Street just in time to catch Professor Colin Dacre before he left his office on the pretty outskirts of north Oxford. Forenox was the most expensive of the laboratories she employed to conduct forensic investigations, but their links with the university made them one of the best in the country. When he wasn’t busy with his day job, the former chemistry don was lecturing postgraduate students and overseeing numerous research programmes. He was renowned as one of the world’s leading experts in the rapidly evolving field of the portable detection of explosives. Thanks to Dacre and his team, soldiers on active service would shortly be receiving a hand-held device able to sniff out buried landmines from up to twenty yards away. The equipment would also be employed at airports: any passenger, item of luggage or cargo that had been in contact with explosives could be detected immediately.

She told him about the lifejacket that would be arriving by courier within the hour, and that she needed to know as much about its history as his team could tell her.

Dacre’s curiosity was aroused by the challenge. He replied that the chances of learning anything about the provenance of the implement that cut the straps were slim, but that if Brogan had indeed fired a gun in the proximity of the jacket they were likely to find some telltale molecules embedded in its fabric.

Then the awkward question: could he make it his top priority?

‘How soon do you need it?’ Dacre asked.

‘Yesterday?’

‘I won’t be able to conduct the tests personally, but I’ve a team of eager young technicians who are always grateful for the overtime. Would you like them to burn the midnight oil?’

‘I’d appreciate it. Thank you.’

Setting down the phone, Jenny glanced at her email inbox and saw at least half a dozen messages from Mrs Patterson, each pointing out what she had convinced herself were anomalies in the evidence. There was also one from her solicitor apologizing for the missive he assumed she would have sent in defiance of his express instructions. His client was overwrought and underslept, he explained, and he promised to do his best to rein her in. Jenny sent all the messages to the recycle bin and switched the machine off. She needed some uninterrupted time to plot her way forward.

Instead the phone rang, making her start. She grabbed the receiver.

‘Jenny Cooper.’

‘Oh,’ a man’s voice said, in mild surprise. ‘I was trying to get hold of Mrs Trent.’

‘Hold on.’

Jenny called through the door to Alison and heard her step out from the kitchenette, where she was tidying up, their meagre office budget not stretching to a cleaner.

‘Who shall I say is calling?’

‘Paul,’ he answered hesitantly.

Alison came to the doorway.

‘It’s Paul for you.’

Alison reddened, staring panic-stricken at the receiver. ‘I’ll take it at my desk.’ She hurriedly pulled the door closed behind her.

Jenny detected the signs of another minor romantic drama and tried not to eavesdrop. But the snatches of Alison’s stage whisper that carried through to her were too enticing to ignore. Paul, it seemed, was an unwelcome admirer, or at least one who seemed to be placing her in a dilemma. Jenny heard her say, ‘I don’t know . . . I just don’t know if I should—’

It was a childish stab of envy that prompted her to remind Alison on the way out that she had yet to deal with the dead photographer’s camera, which, along with his other possessions, was still sitting in a box at the side of her desk.

‘I’m sorry, Mrs Cooper. I’ve hardly had a moment.’

Jenny looked at her dubiously.

‘I’ll see to it, I promise,’ she snapped.

Jenny felt a twinge of shame as she left the office, realizing at once what had provoked her fit of pique. She resolved to take hold of herself. If she was lonely, she must do something about it, just not now.

‘Is this Mrs Cooper, the coroner?’ The voice was that of a young and very precise man.

‘It is.’ Barely awake, Jenny struggled to focus on the small digital clock that sat on the windowsill by her desk. It was two forty-five a.m.

‘My name is Ravi Achari. I’m calling from Forenox. Professor Dacre informed me that you wished to receive information on the lifejacket as soon as it became available.’

‘Oh . . . yes. Please.’ She struggled to sound alert.

‘Regarding the strap and the puncture wound, we can confirm they were caused by the same sharp object – we have detected minute traces of steel swarf on each of the severed surfaces. It had two cutting edges, suggesting a bayonet-type knife. Some preliminary research suggests there are various military-style knives of this nature, all commercially available, with self-sharpening sheaths. We suggest this may be the most fruitful line of inquiry.’

‘Interesting. I’m grateful.’

‘There is more, Mrs Cooper.’ She heard him tap on a keyboard. ‘Microscopic examination of the front surface of the jacket revealed evidence of flash burns to the left-hand front face of the jacket, suggesting brief exposure to intense heat.’

‘That makes sense. He came close to an aircraft engine.’

‘Ah.’ He hesitated. ‘That may be the case,’ he said guardedly, ‘but we have tested some of the affected area using terahertz spectroscopy and found minute traces of PBX embedded in the same surface of the fabric. This is currently being confirmed by two separate chromatography techniques. We suggest this is post-blast residue, or, if you prefer, unreacted material. Not all of the explosive is fully combusted, you understand. Judging by the very limited damage, we suggest the jacket was some distance from the blast.’

‘Hold on. PBX – ?’

‘Plastic bonded explosive,’ Achari said, as if it were common knowledge. ‘Though, interestingly, the traces we have detected don’t appear to contain the chemical marker indicating its provenance as required by the Montreal Treaty.’

Jenny’s tiredness vanished. She felt the blood pulsing through her veins. ‘The lifejacket has been in the presence of an explosion?’

‘Undoubtedly, Mrs Cooper.’

J
ENNY COULDN’T SLEEP
. For three restless hours her mind buzzed with possibilities, each more outlandish than the last. At six a.m. a now weary-sounding Achari telephoned a second time. The two further tests had confirmed the presence of unmarked PBX on the lifejacket and detailed thermal testing of the fabric indicated that the wearer had been at least fifty yards from the centre of the explosion. Jenny quizzed him hard about where the explosion had taken place. In the air? On the water? Underwater? Definitely not underwater was all he could confirm.

By six-thirty she was at her desk in the study drinking strong coffee and struggling with the weight of responsibility the new evidence had heaped on her shoulders. Strictly speaking, the ethical course would have been to release it to all the interested parties immediately, including to Sir James Kendall. If she were to do that, she felt sure that the Secretary of State for Justice would invoke his powers under the Coroners and Justice Act to suspend her inquest immediately, citing issues of national security. It would be a neat and certain way of washing her hands of the case, but each time she contemplated the prospect, her conscience pulled her back from the brink.

She tried to predict how events would unfold at the reconvened inquest were she to produce a surprise witness from Forenox. If she wasn’t silenced immediately, she could guarantee that there would be a huge effort to uncouple the evidence of an explosion from the scene of the air crash. And therein lay a problem: as things stood, there was nothing in the forensic evidence to link the two. She made a note to ask Dr Kerr to forward swabs from Brogan’s body to the Forenox team. If there was explosive residue on his skin, there could be no argument.

She dreaded Mrs Patterson’s reaction. She would inevitably seize on evidence of an explosion as irrefutable proof of terrorism and demand that Jenny carry out inquiries that no amount of explanation would convince her were beyond Jenny’s remit. And then there was the media firestorm that would undoubtedly follow. The moment she released this evidence she would find herself the centre of global news and responsible for even greater numbers of passengers staying away from beleaguered airlines. The potential consequences were limitless.

Whichever way she looked at it, she was faced with a straight choice: to share her evidence such as it was with the official crash inquiry, or to reinforce it further by digging deeper into what, if anything, Nuala Casey knew.

She prayed that it wasn’t just her ego making the decision as she lifted the telephone.

‘Michael? It’s Jenny.’

‘Hi,’ came his non-committal reply. In the background, she heard the sound of a small plane sputtering into life, its engine rising to a dragonfly hum.

‘I’ve thought about what you said, and there is no way I can get Nuala’s property from the D-Mort.’

‘Uh-huh.’ He sounded unsurprised and unimpressed.

‘But what if I were to come with you to her flat? It’s stretching the boundaries of my inquiry rather, but I’m sure I could persuade a friendly locksmith to let us in.’

He was silent for a moment. She sensed his wariness. ‘Why the sudden change of heart?’

‘I’ll tell you when we meet. How soon can you do it?’

‘I’m giving flying lessons over at the Cotswold airport this morning. I finish around one.’

‘I’ll meet you there.’

Telling Alison only that she would be out of the office for the rest of the day on a research trip, Jenny switched off her phone and drove the forty miles across Gloucestershire to Kemble. The winter countryside had a stark, stripped-down beauty that she had learned to appreciate since moving out of the city. Frost clung to the clefts of hillsides untouched by the sun. In the centres of bare fields ancient oaks that in summer were perfect domes of green revealed their bent and twisted limbs.

The Cotswold airport was in fact little more than an airstrip: a handful of buildings and a scattering of light aircraft and helicopters parked on the grass. Jenny stayed in the warmth of her car, watching the tiny planes coming and going and wondering what impulse it was that possessed people to take to the sky in such fragile machines.

A few minutes before one o’clock, a tiny Cessna made an erratic descent towards the airstrip, wings tilting left and right. The nose jerked suddenly upwards as it came in to land. It hit the ground heavily, bounced once, then twice, before skewing slightly as it drew to a halt. It turned at the end of the runway and taxied over the grass towards the car park. Michael climbed out of the cockpit together with a young man who was laughing self-consciously at his efforts and hoping his instructor would share the joke. But Michael had already spotted Jenny. He hastily scratched a note in the student’s logbook and made his way over to her.

She wound down her window. ‘I hope that wasn’t you at the controls.’

‘It’s only his third lesson – you should have seen the first.’

‘You must be insane. I couldn’t even set foot in one of those things.’

Michael smiled. ‘What are you scared of?’

‘What do you think?’

‘You don’t fancy going up for ten minutes?’

‘No thanks.’

‘Come on – you’ll love it. It’s a perfect day. I’ll cure your fear for good, I promise you.’

‘I doubt that very much.’

‘Just once round the field, that’s all.’ He opened the car door, refusing to take no for an answer.

The two-seater Cessna Skycatcher was cramped and claustrophobic. Jenny’s heart was already pounding as Michael fastened her belt and fixed on her headset and was fit to explode by the time he had taxied to the start of the runway. As hard as she tried to relax and disappear into inner space, each sound and sudden movement wrenched her back to unwelcome reality.

‘Just a light headwind this morning – nothing too bumpy. All set?’

Jenny nodded, feeling anything but. Even as they were accelerating along the runway she would have gladly thrown open the door and taken her chances.

‘Here we go—’

Michael eased back the stick and aimed the nose towards the sky. The little aircraft clawed its way upwards. Jenny gripped the sides of her seat as they juddered through pockets of warm air, the plane’s flimsy-looking wings shaking alarmingly.

‘Look over there.’

Michael pointed left towards far-off hills, monumentally beautiful in the sharp sunlight, but Jenny couldn’t enjoy the view. She took a slow, deep breath and tried to relax her clenched muscles, telling herself that it was good that she was facing her fears.

The plane banked sharply leftwards, the wing tilting to what felt like ninety degrees to the ground.

‘It’s perfectly safe,’ Michael said. ‘These things can glide. You don’t even need the engine to land safely.’

‘Can we not try that?’

He smiled, his eyes brighter and more alert than she had seen them before. It was as if since leaving the ground he had come alive.

‘A thousand feet. Doesn’t feel like it, does it?’

‘Are we going down soon?’ Jenny said. ‘I thought it was going to be just once around the field.’

‘We’ve got twenty minutes of fuel. My students have paid for it—’

‘Please?’

The plane took a sudden dip, the engine revving as it momentarily lost purchase. The whole fabric of the craft seemed to strain as they levelled off with a violent thud.

‘Just a touch of turbulence.’ He pointed to the west. ‘Look, you can see Bristol.’

Jenny nodded, losing her battle against her phobia.

‘Are you going to tell me what happened to change your mind?’ Michael said.

‘Can we please go back now?’

‘I’m confused. I’m having to put a lot of trust in you.’

‘What do you mean?’

‘One minute you don’t want to get involved, the next you want to break into Nuala’s flat. I was taught to be wary of people who change their minds. They’re not usually who you want in a crisis.’