Michael Ridpath - See No Evil

The next day was busy. Kim had stayed the night at Calder’s cottage but spent most of the time at the hospital. There was no change in Todd’s condition. The brain scan showed no signs of permanent damage, apart from probable memory loss, but the doctors couldn’t be sure. They also had no idea how long he would be unconscious. They were keeping him on a ventilator, giving him drugs to try to control the swelling in his brain. Kim just sat there and watched her husband.

Cornelius waited with her in the hospital for a couple of hours the next morning, but then he returned to London, extracting a promise from Kim to let him know if there was any change to Todd’s condition, one way or the other. He grilled Calder for twenty minutes on exactly what had happened, but seemed satisfied with his responses. Calder was under no illusions that if the accident report showed that someone had blundered, be it himself as pilot, or Colin, the maintenance engineer at the airfield, or a fitter at the specialist firm in Lithuania which had undertaken the last major overhaul on the engine, that person would pay.

The air accident investigators were soon on the scene. They were working on salvaging the Yak and they had lots of questions for Calder. Calder also talked through everything with his partner, Jerry Tyrell, who was the chief flying instructor at the flying school. Jerry’s opinion was that Calder had done everything correctly in very difficult circumstances. Calder was pleased and relieved to hear this: Jerry had never shrunk from criticizing Calder whenever he had caught him doing something that didn’t comply with his own strict interpretation of safety procedures.

A uniformed police constable came to ask questions, but this seemed more of a formality. Feeling slightly foolish, Calder did as he had promised, and asked the policeman to let him know if he came across anything that suggested the accident was a result of sabotage. This perked the constable’s interest, but faithful to his promise to Kim, Calder denied that he had any concrete reason to think that someone might have wanted to kill him or Todd.

He had a close look over the patch of grass between a Warrior and a Seneca where the Yak had been parked, and asked around to see if anyone had seen anything suspicious at the airfield the day, or more especially the night, before the accident. Jerry and Angie, who manned the radio, had left at about eight o’clock the evening before. Angie thought she had seen a lone man walking along the footpath by the poplars on the far side of the airfield as she was locking up, but there was nothing unusual about that. Otherwise all had been quiet. The aerodrome was really not much more than a field; someone could easily have climbed over a fence in the middle of the night and tampered with the Yak’s engine without anyone noticing. But the more Calder considered it the less likely he thought that was. The strain of worrying about her husband was causing Kim to lose her sense of proportion.

Amongst all the activity he did allow himself one quick diversion. When he switched on his computer in his office he couldn’t resist checking the Spreadfinex web page. The US bond markets had tumbled over the previous twenty-four hours and he was now sitting on a £5,000 loss. He thought for a moment, clicked a couple of buttons and doubled his bet at the lower price.

He picked up Kim late that evening from the hospital and drove her home. She looked worn out, even though she had done nothing but sit and watch her husband all day.

Calder’s house was an old cottage nestling at the edge of a salt marsh about a mile from the village of Hanham Staithe. It was dusk as they arrived and the rooks were kicking up a fuss in the trees behind the house. It was clear Kim had eaten very little all day, so Calder warmed up some soup and threw together a salad.

‘Glass of wine?’ he asked.

‘God, yes please,’ Kim replied. ‘Suddenly that’s exactly what I want.’

Calder opened a bottle, poured two glasses and placed them on the solid oak kitchen table. ‘Back tomorrow morning?’

Kim nodded. ‘And the next morning, and the one after that.’ She was still pale and shaken but there was no mistaking the determination in her voice.

‘They still have no idea how long it’s going to take?’

‘No. It could be days, weeks, months. Half the time I’m relieved he’s not getting any worse. But I’m also scared what he’ll be like when he does come round. Whether he’ll remember who he is, who I am. I sit there looking at him and all kinds of wild thoughts go through my head.’

‘We have to take it one step at a time,’ Calder said. ‘We know he’s alive, and it looks like he’s going to stay that way. They didn’t spot any serious damage on the scan, did they?’

‘There’s damage,’ Kim sighed. ‘They really won’t know how bad it is until he wakes up. Did you talk to the police and the accident investigators?’

Calder told her about his various interviews and the fact that no one had seen anything suspicious.

‘It still worries me,’ Kim said. ‘The more I think about it the more worried I become.’

‘It must have been an accident,’ Calder insisted.

Kim sipped her wine thoughtfully. A curl of dark hair fell over her face and she let it rest there for a few moments before pushing it out of her eyes. The gloom gathered around the kitchen as the evening light over the marshes outside slipped away. The rooks were settling themselves. ‘I suppose you’re right. But I would still be very grateful if you could talk to this man Benton Davis. Todd was sure there was something weird about Martha’s death, and he’s our best bet for finding out what.’

‘I’ll go down to London to see him as soon as I can get away. But first you must tell me some more about Todd’s mother. The police claimed she was killed by guerrillas?’

‘That’s right. They said it was a random attack by African National Congress guerrillas from over the border in Mozambique, and the family accepted that. Obviously it was a horrible time for Todd; you saw how it still eats him up. Todd says Cornelius was devastated. He moved the family from South Africa to Philadelphia soon afterwards, he closed the Cape Daily Mail, sold his other South African newspapers and bought the Herald. Four years later he got married again, to Jessica Montgomery. You might have seen her in the gossip columns.’ Kim examined Calder doubtfully. ‘Or then again you might not.’

‘I think I’ve seen a photo of the two of them somewhere,’ said Calder. ‘Was Todd suspicious at the time about his mother’s death?’

‘Not then. There was a lot of random violence in South Africa, much of it blamed on the ANC. In fact, random violence seems to define the place.’ Kim’s voice was bitter. ‘The only thing that bothered him was when his grandmother, Martha’s mother, came to South Africa shortly after the murder. She asked lots of questions that Cornelius wouldn’t answer. After the initial grief, the tension between the two of them increased. Todd hadn’t heard then what those questions were, but he did have a conversation with her in 1997 when he went to visit her in Minnesota. She lived on the shore of a lake just outside Minneapolis. I went there myself once, right after we were married. It’s an absolutely gorgeous place. Anyway, Todd’s grandmother said that she had been in touch with Cornelius to suggest he bring a complaint to the Truth and Reconciliation Commission. Have you heard of that?’

‘Vaguely.’

‘It was set up by the new constitution in South Africa to examine abuses during the apartheid regime. People could come to the Commission to tell them about torture or murder committed by whites or blacks, and the TRC would investigate. The perpetrators would be given amnesty if they promised to tell the truth. It looked at thousands of cases, some of them with high-profile victims, most of them just ordinary people. Todd’s grandmother thought this would be the perfect way to find out what had happened to Martha. But Cornelius refused.’