Джеймс Блатч - The Final Flight

“How are things?” she asked. “How is Rob coping?”

Mary sighed. “Honestly, I don’t really know. He’s clammed up a bit. I think he’s still in shock and maybe… I think it’s affected him more than he wants to admit. Admit to me, anyway.”

Janet sipped her drink. “Does he have any other confidants who might help him through this?”

“The fellows at work, I suppose. He’s at the mess now, as a matter of fact.”

“Is he?”

“Yes, he is. Janet, what is this all about?”

“Does he have any female friends? I mean, beside Georgina and the other RAF wives? Someone younger, perhaps?”

“Janet, I don’t know what you mean. If you have something to say—”

“Look, I didn’t want to be the person to tell you and Mike and I have wrestled with it, but—”

“But what, Janet?”

“Mary, on Thursdays, Mike and I sometimes go to The Bell at Wyle.”

SUSIE LEFT THE B&B and headed into town. She wandered past red brick terraced houses, some with front doors open. Children played in the scraps of front gardens.

An elderly man sat outside one house, on a faded wooden chair. He had sharp creases in his trousers, a moustache and side-parted wisps of hair. His eyes followed her. She gave him a smile and he nodded in return.

Susie let her mind wander. Where was the man a couple of decades ago? Did he have a good war?

As she got to the busier part of Salisbury, she found a phone box and called the Service.

“It’s our very own Twiggy in the field.”

“Can we dispense with the nicknames, please, Roger? I was never in your rugger team.

Firstly, I’m about to meet May again. Secondly, anything from Blackton’s in Cambridge?”

He rustled around with some papers.

“Your hunch is wrong. Their computer was out of action until the crash. According to our man, they resurrected it from deep maintenance to read one tape. But, as I say, that was after the crash, so it’s unlikely to be your man on account of him being dead.”

Her heart sunk. “Are we sure?”

“Yes, we’re always sure, dear. The place has been on annual shutdown since 8th June, which means your theory doesn’t work.”

“Damn it.”

“Time to come in from the cold. Or the warm.”

“I’m about to meet May. He might have something for me.”

“Well, it had better be good. All things being equal, I expect to see you in the canteen the day after tomorrow.”

ROB ARRIVED EARLY and parked on St Ann Street before walking along the cobbled road toward the cathedral spire.

As he entered the manicured grounds, he looked up. The tallest church in the UK made even him, an experienced pilot, feel dizzy.

Scanning the area, he saw couples holding hands, a group of children kicking a ball. The sporadic benches were only sporadically occupied.

To his right, a demure figure walked casually toward him.

Still with her blonde hair, today in fawn miniskirt and a red blouse, she both stood out and blended in. Susie could have been a department store worker who had just finished for the day.

“Hello, Mr May. Shall we walk?”

She set off, he followed.

“Shall I start?” he asked, but she made a shushing noise without looking at him.

They walked on around the cathedral toward a quieter walled area on the far side. They sat down on the grass. Susie took out a cigarette and offered him one. She lit the cigarettes, using the movement to scan the surrounding space.

“I need to tell you, we were wrong about the tapes going to Cambridge. The computer’s been out of action since the last official batch at the beginning of June.”

“Are you sure?”

“Certain. Sorry. We’re back to square one. So, I’m afraid unless you bring news of a breakthrough, I’m probably heading back to London.”

“I thought we were going to do this together. You can’t leave me on my own.”

“We don’t have anything, Rob. One sheet that hints at something, nothing more.”

“Kilton’s sped up the project. It will be signed off on Friday.”

“As in four days’ time? Shit.”

“Yes. And they think Millie produced sixty of the tapes, not the twenty we thought. Kilton is using that as the reason, actually. They obviously have no idea where they are. They want to rush it out the door before it loses commercial and military value. Get the American contract signed.” He shook his head and looked down. “It was awful. I had to sit there and listen to it all. He more or less accused Millie of being a traitor. And everyone’s just going along with it.”

Susie sighed. “That’s the military way, right? All Kilton’s done is ensure he’s not properly supervised. He’s talking directly to ministers in a government that’s running out of money, desperate for foreign orders. No-one above him really knows anything.” She took a long draw on her cigarette. “So you can see how this happened. You can’t blame your colleagues, Rob. They’ve been brought up to trust and obey. Kilton says Guiding Light wasn’t to blame and somehow has the investigators fooled and… you’re the only one left with any direct experience of it going wrong the first time. No wonder he’s finding it easy.”

“Only Millie was standing up to him. But that’s why we’ve got to continue.”

“Rob—”

“No. I can’t just go home. I can’t just say goodbye to you and let this lie. I couldn’t live with myself.”

Susie put her hand on the back of his. “You might have to. We can’t fix everything.”

He sat up. “But we’ve got four days, right? Let’s at least bloody try.”

Susie stubbed her cigarette out on the grass and shrugged. “What have we got to go on? The trail’s run cold.”

She pulled out a notebook covered in what looked like Arabic letters.

“What is that?”

“A type of shorthand. We had this strange guy in training who taught us a technique to access parts of our subconscious memory. It’s not that strange, really. If I ask you to name as many prime ministers as you can think of, you’ll miss a few.”

“More than a few.”

“Right, but when I tell you the names of the ones you couldn’t remember, you’ll recognise most of them.”

“So?”

“So… they were in your mind all along, otherwise you wouldn’t have recognised the names. You just couldn’t access them when you were trying to. The theory is, if you let your mind wander freely, it sometimes goes off into those areas. It can work, believe me. It’s a way of recalling something you may have thought odd but then forgot. I tried it this afternoon and came up with two things we might have overlooked.”

“What?”

“The tapes, especially now that we know there’s sixty of them. How on earth did Millie get them out? If we crack that, we might find an accomplice.”

“That’s funny, it’s exactly what Hoskins said.”

“Hoskins?”

“The security officer Kilton has investigating Millie. What was the other thing?”

Susie looked down at her notes. “Someone gave Millie our number. Someone who was authorised to do so.”

“What does that mean?”

“There’s a system. The caller’s given a name to ask for, so we know they’ve gone through a handler. He used ‘AW Strutthers’. It’s an older name, been knocking about for years. Could have come from anywhere, which isn’t hugely helpful.”

“Do you think this could be the accomplice?”

“Maybe. But no-one’s contacted us since the crash, which doesn’t make any sense.”

After a moment, she turned to him. “Why don’t you try it?”

“Are you going to hypnotise me?”

She laughed. He noticed her freckles in the setting sun.