Brian Garfield: Hopscotch

The emergency hatch was in the bow forward of the windshield; you had to crawl under the dashboard to get to it. That wouldn’t be fast enough. He broke the half-window out of its frame on his right and judged he could work it from there. He set the bundle on his lap and ran up both engines against the brakes. When the plane began to shudder and lurch he released the brakes. It rolled forward and he throttled back; this had to be done precisely and he couldn’t have a lot of speed at first. He bounced forward at twenty miles an hour or so, steering with his feet while he leaned across the aisle and fixed the clochard’s dead fingers to the crescent wheel. He locked both the fists onto the control yoke and jammed the clochard’s feet under the rudder pedals so that they couldn’t kick back and send the plane into a ground loop.

Bumping along on the uneven ground he had a hard time climbing out the window but finally he was hanging there with both shoulders wedged into the opening so that he wouldn’t fall out before he wanted to. The starboard propeller was frighteningly close behind him but he could avoid that easily enough; it was the wing strut and the landing gear he’d have to worry about when he made his drop.

He had two matches in his left hand, pressed together. With that hand he reached the throttles and thrust them all the way forward to emergency speed. There was about a quarter mile of runway left. He struck the two matches and touched the flame to the gasoline-soaked tip of the candlewick. The flame soared bright; he had only a glimpse of it and then he was hunching his shoulders, clutching the dead matchsticks in his left hand and the bundle of oddments in his right.

When he compressed his shoulders he slid down out of the jouncing window. He let go and dropped with his legs all gone to rubber; he felt his feet touch down and he willed himself to collapse and he was still dropping when he saw the strut coming at him but it only glanced off his upraised arm and then the starboard wheel was rutting past him and he was under it and free.

He rolled over and lay flat while the tail surface rumbled overhead, the tail wheel bouncing and veering a little from side to side. He didn’t move after that: he lay prone on his belly and watched, uncaring of the blunt pain in his corded forearm; waiting with his eyes wide stark staring and the breath hung up in his throat.

Gathering speed the PBY began to yaw dangerously and he feared the ground loop but the clochard’s stiff joints held it on something like a course and it kept wobbling toward the end of the runway with a high angry whine of overaccelerated engines. He saw the flames burst alight in the cockpit, fueled by the gasoline-soaked carpeting and Oakley’s saturated clothes. Perhaps it had been unnecessary but he had to make sure the plane caught fire to mask the work he’d done on the clochard with the acid… It veered right and then left but it didn’t flip over and it didn’t loop around and it must have been doing at least seventy miles an hour when it smashed head-on into the trees. It was an earsplitting crash and there was afterecho and silence before the flames tongued into a ruptured tank and the whole thing went up with a spectacular thundering conflagration: even from where he lay he felt the heat of it on his cheeks.

He picked up the bundle and backed his way to the edge of the runway, dragging the bundle to erase his footprints; he faded into the brush, walking with care and rubbing it out when he left any signs.

At the vineyard fence he went through the staves carefully and then he turned and walked uphill, a bit jaunty and smiling without reservation, toward the violet smear along the east that predicted the dawn.

The afternoon sun broke through but it remained bitter cold and the wind went right through Ross’s coat. He watched the technicians sift through the rubble. Wisps of smoke still curled from the charred surreal sculpture of the wreckage.

The body-the remains of it-lay on a litter near his feet. Follett spoke across it to Cutter; the wind almost carried his words away. “I don’t like coincidences-I don’t like handy accidents.”

“He only had a few flying lessons,” Cutter said. “He didn’t know how to handle a plane that big. You couldn’t call it an accident.”

“I still don’t believe he’s dead just like that. It’s too easy.”

“Everybody dies. It was his turn.”

“Overdue for that matter. But it’s still hard to absorb. Son of a bitch made monkeys of us right up to the end.”

Cutter laughed-a dryish cackle.

Follett made way for the SDECE medical examiner; he moved around the corpse and looked at his watch. “You said you’d follow through on the autopsy business, Joe?”

“Yes. It was my case-I might as well handle the rest of it.”

“Then I’d better get back to the salt mines. I’ve got a lot of unfinished jobs to reheat.” Follett turned away, picked up his driver and walked back toward the cars, out of step with his companion.

Cutter watched the medical examiner and Ross watched Cutter: his lean mentor looked stupefied. He looked away from the body, studied the backs of his hands and then turned them over and studied the palms.

Cutter turned to face the ruins of the plane. Ross turned with him. They watched the crew extracting the remains of the luggage; the fire hadn’t done too much damage that far back in the fuselage. They walked forward and the technician set the suitcase down on the grass. The lid was buckled and scorched. Cutter tipped it up; a hinge corner snapped off and the lid fell askew onto the grass. There was a lot of ash inside; most of it was money. Ross had no trouble recognizing the manuscript for what it was; the edges were burned and curled up but it was still a manuscript. When sheets of paper were compacted together in thick stacks it was remarkable how fire-resistant they could be.

Cutter seemed restless. He walked back to the litter. The ambulance stood where it had been backed up with its doors open but the remains were fragile and the medical examiner wanted to make his preliminary investigation before it was moved. Cutter said, “What does it show, doctor?”

“It will tell us very little, M’sieur. The face is burned beyond recognition. If there were distinguishing marks on the body the fire has obliterated them. There was this.”

It was a charred wallet with the black partial remains of two passports folded into it. Cutter said, “Oakley’s wallet, I imagine. And we knew he had a French passport. Look at this.”

The edges were gone and it had blistered but it was recognizably a photograph of Miles Kendig in the passport.

“First photograph I’ve ever seen of him,” Cutter said. “Except for that basic-training group shot. And it looks like it’ll be the last.”

The medical examiner said, “As soon as possible we shall provide you with the fingerprints and the dental survey.”

Ross thought, that meant nothing; they had no fingerprints to compare, no dental records on him.

The sunshine was brittle on the rolling vine-yards. Cutter’s flat stare drew Ross’s eyes up from the ugly remains: Cutter was watching him with a curious fixed intensity. “Well, Ross-what do you think?”

He knew well enough what he thought. He’d traveled so closely with Cutter that he had the feeling he’d developed an ability to read Cutter’s mind. Cutter had no more factual knowledge than Ross had but that didn’t matter. Ross knew what Cutter believed instinctively: that it wasn’t Kendig’s body. He didn’t see how the hell Kendig could have done it.

Abandoning the manuscript-that could be an olive branch: Kendig’s farewell message, the assurance he was quitting the game. But if he was alive he still had it all in his head. He could start the whole business all over again any time he wanted to.