John le Carre: Our kind of traitor

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Instrument failure is the semi-official verdict at present. Engine failure another. Laxity on the part of unnamed maintenance staff is widely touted. Poor little Belp Airport has long been the experts' whipping boy and its critics aren't sparing the rod. Ground control may also have been to blame. Two committees of experts have failed to agree. The insurers are likely to withhold payment until the cause is known. The charred corpses continue to mystify. On the face of it the two pilots were no problem: charter pilots true, but plenty of flying experience, sober fellows, both married, no trace of illegal substances or alcohol, nothing adverse in their records and their wives on neighbourly terms with one another in Harrow, where the families lived. Two tragedies, therefore, but as far as the media was concerned, only worth a day. Why on earth a former official from the British Embassy in Bogota should have been sharing the plane of a 'dubious Russian Swiss-based minigarch', even the red-top press was at a loss to explain. Was it sex? Was it drugs? Was it arms? For want of a shred of evidence it was none of them. Terror, the great catch-all these days, has also been considered, but rejected out of hand.

No group has claimed responsibility.