B006U13W The Flight (Jenny Cooper 4) nodrm (36 page)

‘Who did you think might have dumped a lifejacket?’

‘There were tens of rescue boats out on the water that day. Could have been anyone.’

‘I see. And did you check to see if it had any identifying marks?’

‘I saw that it came from Dublin, that’s all. Like I said, I thought it had been abandoned.’

‘Was there anything else about it that you noticed?’

‘Not that night, but later on – I saw that one of the straps had been cut. I guessed whoever discarded it must have done it to try to make it safe. You couldn’t wear it like that – there’s nothing to secure it.’

Evans went on to explain how he had received an email circulated to local yacht club members from the police asking whether anyone had seen helicopters flying over the estuary shortly after the plane went down. It also mentioned that information was being sought about an Irish yacht that was hit by the plane. It was then that he made the connection with the lifejacket he had found the previous weekend and contacted Chepstow police station.

‘How far from the site of the plane crash was your yacht moored, Mr Evans?’

‘Over the water? About six miles or so.’

‘And what was the tide doing at the time you picked up the lifejacket?’

‘It was going out – just about low water, in fact.’

‘So the jacket was coming downstream along the River Wye towards the Severn estuary?’

‘It was.’

Jenny referred back to the notes she has made during the evidence given by Dick Corton from the Marine Accident Investigation Branch during the previous week’s session. ‘High tide on the 9th was at approximately ten-thirty a.m., or one hour after the plane went down. That being so, if the lifejacket went into the water at approximately nine-thirty and was carried by the tide, it shouldn’t have been inland, it should have been miles to the west.’

‘You’d think so,’ Evans said, ‘but if it had made it as far as the Wye it could have got snagged up on a buoy line or a rope or something. There was plenty for it to catch on.’

No expert on tides or geography, Jenny sketched a diagram of the estuary in her legal pad. The mouth of the Wye was right beneath the Welsh end of the Severn Bridge. The distance from there to where Evans’s yacht was anchored was approximately a mile. From the mouth of the Wye to the crash site was closer to five.

‘You’re familiar with the tides in the estuary, Mr Evans?’

‘I’ve been sailing it since I was a boy. There was no bridge to Bristol then – it was boat or swim.’

He raised a chuckle from the jury and an arch smile from Giles Hartley.

‘Can you tell me, in your opinion, how this lifejacket could have travelled five miles up the estuary, turned left and been carried at least another mile up the Wye in one hour?’

Evans shook his head. ‘Couldn’t happen.’

Hartley shot to his feet. ‘With respect, ma’am, Mr Evans is an amateur sailor, not a maritime expert. His opinion on tidal flow is hardly reliable scientific evidence.’

‘Point taken, Mr Hartley. If you consider it necessary I’ll allow you to call such an expert – would that satisfy you?’

Wrong-footed, Hartley replied that he reserved the right to do precisely that, and let Jenny continue.

‘Assuming the lifejacket could have gone in the water at a point closer to where you found it, how close would it have to have been to get as far as Chepstow in under an hour?’

‘The thing is,’ Evans said, ‘for anything to come up the Wye from the estuary it’s got to go in the water tight up close to that side. There’s no way it came all the way over from the other side where the plane went down.’

Jenny looked over at Mrs Patterson. Suddenly animated, she was conferring with Galbraith and Rachel Hemmings.

Wait until you hear what’s coming next
, Jenny thought to herself.

‘Thank you, Mr Evans. You’ve been most helpful.’ She looked at the lawyers. ‘Any questions for this witness?’

‘If I may?’ Rufus Bannerman said, polishing his glasses with a handkerchief as he stood to cross-examine. ‘Mr Evans – you said it yourself, there were tens, if not hundreds of boats out searching for survivors on the estuary that day. You were aware of them no doubt.’

‘Yes, I was. I was listening to them on the radio, in fact.’

‘The ship-to-shore radio on your yacht?’

‘Yes.’

‘Did you see any search boats come as far as where your boat was moored?’

‘They definitely came up as far as Beachley.’

‘Which in effect is the mouth of the River Wye?’

‘It is.’

‘Thank you, Mr Evans, that’s all.’

So much for her amateur oceanography. Bannerman hadn’t only holed her theory beneath the waterline, he had sunk it without trace. She released Evans from the witness chair and asked Alison to fetch Lawrence Cole.

Her fears about his credibility as a witness were more than realized when she saw him approaching from the back of the hall dressed in a suit which had evidently spent thirty-five years in the wardrobe save for the occasional – and ever more uncomfortable – wedding or funeral. He looked exactly what he was – a petty criminal who’d done a bad job of scrubbing up for his day in court.

When Alison handed him the oath card, he reddened with embarrassment. ‘Sorry, ma’am,’ he muttered, ‘not too good with letters, like.’

Hartley sat back in his chair with a smile, enjoying the prospect of an illiterate witness to taunt.

‘Repeat after me,’ Alison began, ‘I swear by Almighty God that I shall tell the truth, the whole truth and nothing but the truth.’

Cole mumbled his way through a rough approximation of what he had just heard. It would have to do.

Jenny led him gently through the preliminaries, aware that the only times he would have seen the inside of a courtroom would have been when he was facing a criminal charge. He gave his name as Lawrence Arthur Cole, he was sixty-three years old and a casual labourer by profession.

‘Mr Cole, can you please tell the court what you saw on the morning of 9 January.’

He scratched his head and looked vaguely puzzled. Hartley raised his eyebrows.

‘The morning the plane went down,’ Jenny prompted.

‘Oh,’ Cole said, ‘yes, well, let’s see now –’ he cleared his throat noisily – ‘I’d been fishing down on the river. Not much luck that morning, far as I remember. The tide was too high, the water was all stirred up. Your fish won’t see the bait when it’s all dirty, like.’

Jenny waited patiently for him to get to the point.

‘I was just giving it up for a bad job when I heard the plane coming over. Making a sound like one of those World War Two bombers, it was.’ He gave a low growl for the benefit of the jury. ‘I looked up and there it was – appearing out of the fog. Huge great thing. I’d never seen one like that before, not there anyhow.’

‘Can you describe what it looked like? Was it intact? Could you see any flames?’

‘I didn’t see nothing wrong with it,’ Cole said. ‘It looked normal, but like it was coming in to land.’

‘Did you see it touch the water?’

He shook his head. ‘Too foggy. It disappeared off to the west. I heard it come down though. It wasn’t a bang, more like a rumble of thunder – a boom, that’s what it was.’

Jenny became aware that the room had fallen eerily silent. She realized it was the first time that anyone had heard live testimony of Flight 189’s last moments. The lawyers were all taking careful notes; Mrs Patterson was wiping tears from her cheeks.

‘I knew what had happened – it was plain as day. I packed up my kit and hurried back up the lane – I wanted to hear what they were going to say about it on the wireless. Anyway, it was no more than ten minutes later, I was just about to turn down the track to my place when I heard this chop-chop-chop coming from the same direction the plane had come. I turned round and saw these two black helicopters skimming over the water, like. No more than a few feet up they were. And the one in front had this orange searchlight.’

‘Was there anything else that struck you about them?’ Jenny asked.

‘Little wings, they had – on the underneath, like.’ He produced a folded scrap of paper from his jacket pocket. ‘I drew a picture.’ He held up a sketch similar to one he had made for Jenny in his caravan, only substantially larger and more detailed. He had an unrealized talent.

Jenny gestured Alison to hand it to the jury first, making the impatient lawyers wait their turn.

‘Where did the helicopters go, Mr Cole?’

‘Same way as the plane.’

‘And then?’

‘It was only a couple of minutes later – I was going through the gate to my place when I thought I heard a bang. It wasn’t as loud as the first one, and it was different – like when you hear a shotgun echo off the side of a valley.’

‘Just the one bang?’

‘That’s all I heard.’

‘Did you see or hear the helicopters again?’

‘No, I was inside listening to the news. I couldn’t believe it—’ He shook his head. ‘Wild horses wouldn’t drag me onto one of those things.’

Jenny gave Rachel Hemmings the privilege of being first to cross-examine. Stoically ignoring the constant flow of whispered instructions issuing from Mrs Patterson behind her, she treated Cole with the kid gloves she must have used so effectively in the family courts.

‘Mr Cole, would you say you’re an observant man?’

‘I suppose so.’

‘You spend a lot of time by the estuary?’

‘I do.’

‘Have you ever seen anything like those helicopters before?’

‘I can’t say I have.’

‘And you’re sure about the timings – less than ten minutes after the plane went down.’

‘Certain of it. It’s not half a mile from the beach to my place. I was in a hurry, too.’

‘Have you ever seen a search and rescue operation mounted on the water?’

‘Once or twice. I’ve seen the rescue helicopter go over quite often, mind. This wasn’t one of them – they’re bigger like, and they don’t have the wings.’

‘That is unusual, I agree.’

Galbraith thrust a note in front of her. It was clear that this was an instruction from Mrs Patterson that she wasn’t being given the option to ignore.

‘What you describe as the “wings” on these two helicopters – did they appear to have anything attached to them?’

Cole looked blank.

‘What you have described is, I’m given to understand, a military-style helicopter that might have guns or missiles.’

He shook his head. ‘I’d be lying if I said there were. I didn’t get a clear enough look at them, to be honest.’

‘But the bang you heard a few minutes later – you described it as an explosion?’

‘Like a big firework going off, that’s what it sounded like.’

‘I understand. Now one final thing – you said that you saw no obvious damage on the aircraft or smoke trailing from it as it passed over.’

‘That’s right.’

‘Would I be correct in assuming you only saw one side of the aircraft – its right-hand side?’

‘Yes – that’d be it.’

‘And there was dense fog over the water, from which smoke may have been indistinguishable?’

Cole thought for a moment. ‘I hadn’t thought of that, to be honest with you.’

‘Thank you, Mr Cole. You’ve been most helpful.’

‘Does anyone else have questions for this witness?’ Jenny asked.

Bannerman nodded towards Hartley, who was looking at something on a laptop screen which had been shown to him by his instructing solicitor. Jenny caught a glimpse of a page from an online newspaper. Hartley rose to address the witness, wearing a faintly amused smile.

‘Would you say that you are a trustworthy man, Mr Cole?’

‘If I can trust you, I am,’ Cole answered defensively.

‘What an interesting answer,’ Hartley said. ‘Well, I’m sure we can trust you to be honest under oath, so would you please tell me this – given the fact that you pleaded guilty to a charge of stealing diesel fuel last October, can I ask if you have been convicted of any other offences in the past?’

Cole turned warily to Jenny.

‘He’s entitled to test your credibility, Mr Cole,’ she said. ‘I’m afraid you’ll have to answer.’

He turned back to Hartley, who was waiting expectantly. ‘It’s no secret. I’ve been in court a few times over the years.’

‘What sort of offences have you committed? Perhaps we could begin with the most serious.’

Cole scowled. ‘Burglary.’

‘Domestic or commercial?’

Jenny cut in. ‘How many years ago, Mr Cole?’

‘I was no more than a kid.’

‘Any offences of violence?’

‘No.’

‘Theft?’

Cole gave a reluctant nod.

‘How many convictions?’ Hartley asked.

Cole shrugged. ‘Ten or so.’

‘And you nevertheless consider yourself trustworthy.’

‘I know what I saw.’

‘You didn’t see any smoke or flames, did you?’

‘I never said I did.’

‘Quite. And neither did you see anything to connect the bang you claim to have heard with any of the aircraft you claim to have seen.’

‘It came from that direction.’

‘I’ll treat that as a “yes”, shall I?’

Cole shrugged. He was getting impatient with Hartley’s tone.

Hartley continued. ‘These helicopters with “wings”, how many were there?’

‘Two.’

‘Had you been drinking, Mr Cole?’

‘I beg your pardon?’

‘Had you been drinking down by the river? It’s not unusual for an angler to have a nip or two, is it?’

‘A drop to keep warm, that’s all.’

‘You don’t think it might have been a drop too many?’

Cole’s face hardened. ‘I wouldn’t come all this way to tell lies, would I?’

‘Of course not. All I’m suggesting is that your recollection may not be altogether sound. One’s perception of the passage of time, as we know, is apt to become a little distorted under the influence of alcohol, and senses somewhat dulled. Perhaps you saw a rescue helicopter twenty minutes later and heard a search flare being fired?’

‘You can twist it whatever way you like, I know what I saw.’

‘The question is, whether what you perceived corresponded with reality.’ Hartley smiled at the jury. ‘I wonder, Mr Cole. I wonder.’ With a little theatrical shake of the head, he sat down. He didn’t need to labour the point any further.