Alex Scarrow - A thousand suns

Chris stood silently for a moment, following the old man’s gaze. Then he turned back to McGuire. ‘This body… you’re sure it was one of yours? An American airman?’

‘Hell, yeah. Didn’t look like a Limey to me. Sean got a better look, though.’ ‘Sean?’

‘My friend, he was a little older than me, he got a closer look; turned the body over an’ all. He was looking for a name on the body.’

‘Could I speak to him?’

McGuire shook his head. ‘Doesn’t live here any more. Shit, I don’t know if he’s still alive any more. He moved away with his dad not long after the war. Never seen him since.’

‘What was his surname?’

‘Grady, Sean Grady. His dad was… Tom Grady, I think,’ McGuire smiled, ‘it’s been a long time. The old memory ain’t what it used to be.’

‘Do you think Sean found out the pilot’s name?’

McGuire shrugged. ‘Don’t know, didn’t get a chance to speak with him again. He took all the damned credit for finding the body when the army came. I don’t think he bothered to mention once that I’d found it too. The army and government men made a big fuss of him while they were down there in the cove. Then, not long after, Sean and his dad moved away.’

McGuire spat a plug of phlegm on to the beach. ‘Sean and his dad got some kind of reward. That’s what happened. Or maybe you might want to call it go-keep-it-to-yourselves money… either way, all of a sudden, Tom Grady didn’t need to carry on scratching a living round here any more. No, sir.’

Chris cursed under his breath. If he had a name, it would go a long way towards making some sense of this story.

‘You didn’t speak to this friend of yours? Not ever again?’

‘No. I was too angry with him at the time. I know the bastard never mentioned me. I never got any goddamned money. To be honest, I never gave him, nor the body, nor all those ships and people a second thought until the other week when that trawler found the plane wreck. Then I figured that was the plane those ships had been looking for all that time ago.’

‘Right.’

‘You find out who it was on that plane out there, and you got yourself a story. That’s what I reckon.’

Chris nodded. Maybe this old boy was right. Maybe there was a body out there in that plane that was going to make sense of what he knew so far.

‘And you get some money for this,’ McGuire continued, ‘then you come looking for me, ’cause you’ll owe me some. I ain’t missing out on this story two times round. You understand?’

Chris nodded. ‘Sure. Presuming there is some money to be had, where would I find you?’

‘The Fisherman’s Club in town. Just ask for Danny McGuire.’

‘Don’t worry, I’ll do that,’ said Chris.

The last of the pale afternoon light was rapidly fading, and the old man was little more than a dark silhouette. Chris saw the old man raise his arm again. McGuire was pointing up the beach towards a small cove.

‘You know, I went back to the cove some weeks later, after all the soldiers and ships had gone. I went back to where me and Sean found the body, and I made a cross out of driftwood, you know, out of respect an’ all for the dead pilot. I guess that cross would be still there if you looked for it, back in the dunes.’

Chris nodded. I might do that… might make a good photo.

‘Okay, I’ll have a look for it.’

McGuire nodded. ‘I’m getting cold.’ He studied Chris intently for a moment. ‘Don’t go forgetting that money, now,’ he muttered, before turning away and disappearing amongst the dark forms of the beached hulls around them.

Chris shook his head. ‘Now this is just getting silly.’

But he knew this was something he might have to follow up. If this friend, Sean, had indeed been bought off somehow, then he surely had something interesting to say on the matter. That is, if he was still alive after all this time. Chris made a mental note of the name: Sean Grady, son of Tom Grady.

That was a lead he could think about following up later, after he’d had a chance to take another look around the wreck of Medusa.

But this next time, despite Mark’s inevitable over-zealous cautionary warnings, he wanted to go right down inside the bomber. He knew the answer was there. It had to be.

They descended along the buoy’s rope in silence, the last flickering rays from the trawler’s floodlight quickly dwindling to nothing. Once again, at about fifty feet down, their torches picked out the wing tip of the B-17.

‘There’s Medusa. You beautiful thing, you,’ said Chris. This time around he didn’t want to waste any precious dive-time — straight inside was what he wanted; straight inside, hopefully to find something, or perhaps the remains of someone. Either way, he was almost certain he’d stumble across a find of some sort in the next half an hour.

Mark pointed his torch towards the front of the plane. ‘Let’s not hang about, then. You want to make straight for the cockpit, right? I’ll go in first this time, okay?’

‘Thanks. You can shoo out any critters in there for me.’

‘And like I said to you this morning, this time we’re staying together. Okay?’

‘You’re the boss, Mark.’

Mark swam towards the cockpit and Chris followed him down to the seabed beside the nose of the bomber. He shone his torch at the open belly hatch. ‘Right, Chris, gently does it this time. Okay?’

Chris nodded as he floated beside him.

The big American stuck his head up through the hatch into the observation blister and shone his torch round before pulling himself in carefully.

‘Okay. No eels in here. I’m going up the ladder into the cockpit.’

He moved slowly up the short ladder, feeling the edges of the hatchway catch on his air cylinder. He backed down, leaned forward and rose again slowly, listening unhappily to the gentle metallic scraping sound of the cylinder on the hatchway as he pulled himself up inside the cockpit.

He shone his torch around, coming to rest eventually on the body.

‘I’m in the cockpit, no eels here either,’ said Mark. ‘You can come up.’

‘Roger that.’

‘I’m going to move to the back of the cockpit to the doorway, there should be room for you to enter. Be careful on that hatch from the observation bit into the cockpit, it’s much tighter than the first hatch.’

Chris pulled a face, remembering the damage he’d done to Mark’s equipment.

‘I’ll go slowly. Promise.’

Chris eased himself up inside the plane with extra care this time, and then climbed the ladder and squeezed tentatively through the even tighter hatchway into the cockpit.

Mark was waiting beside the bulkhead leading back into the fuselage. ‘Hi there.’

Chris nervously shone his torch down through the opening, half expecting a rerun of his ghostly hallucination. The beam of light picked out the navigator’s desk and the bomb bay.

He then turned his torch on the body. ‘Okay, I want to make sure this guy wasn’t just a souvenir-wearing Yank, sorry, no disrespect, Mark.’ He reached out and peeled back the leather of the flying jacket. It tore like tissue paper and a cloud of soft debris billowed out.

‘Gross,’ said Mark, curling his lip in disgust.

The debris took its time to settle. Chris stared at the tattered shreds of the dark tunic beneath. The silver eagle on the right of the tunic was remarkably untarnished thanks to the leather that had been covering it for the last sixty years.

‘Okay, he’s either a German or he’s someone who took souvenir-wearing a little too far.’ Chris took a couple of shots of the exposed remains of the Luftwaffe tunic.