Sam Leith - The Coincidence Engine

‘Whur durr?’ said Arno Fisk.

‘There are certain anomalies in our records regarding the events of August 11th. We need to straighten out our files. Mr Fisk, I’m going to level with you. We have no record, precisely – and this is very probably our fault; the full-spectrum security audit ongoing since 2001 has, to be honest, caused as much confusion as it has cleared up – of your pilot’s licence. You were admitted to the emergency room without ID, and the FAA – under the WelfAir insurance scheme – covered your bills during the time you were unconscious. We’re now reaching a stage where we need to action an alternative funding stream for your medical care.’

Something stirred in Fisk’s face. Somewhere at the murky bottom of his consciousness, what Bree was saying had snagged. That was the idea. If he wasn’t too stoned to know he was in the hospital, maybe he wasn’t too stoned to realise that whoever was paying for him to be there could stop paying for him to be there.

‘Mr Fisk, we need to establish your eligibility for continued treatment. We need to find some way of reconnecting you to the FAA’s database.’

This was not strictly true. Bree didn’t give too much of a damn about the FAA’s database, though she was curious as to who the hell this guy was. No ID, no known next of kin. They’d found his name through teeth while he was still out – busted crown done eight years previously back home in Illinois.

Arno Fisk, thirty-five years old. Born in St Charles. Moved away when he graduated high school. Moved back, apparently, for long enough to go to the dentist. Moved away again. He’d ended up in Mobile somehow, though he didn’t seem to have driven there. There were three Arno Fisks holding driving licences in Illinois and two in Alabama, and none of the five of them was this guy.

‘I’m nurr a pilurr. I tole the pleezmann.’ He looked tired. ‘Anno whurr huppen.’

‘But you were found near the wreckage of a 737,’ Bree said. ‘You were found in the wreckage of a 737. Strapped into what was left of the pilot’s seat.’

‘Anno whurr.’

‘You know what happened?’

‘AnnNO.’

‘You don’t know what happened?’

Fisk subsided slightly, and his eyes refocused dead ahead.

‘Mr Fisk, you were dressed as an airline pilot.’ She reached a little. What the hell. ‘As I’m sure you know, there are federal penalties attached to the improper impersonation of an officer of the Federal Aviation Authority, or an accredited pilot of that same body.’ She softened her voice. ‘We’re sure you meant no harm, but it’s very important that you tell us everything you remember about the events leading up to your being found.’

She looked at him, her eyes moving over his unbruised cheek. The skin was olive-coloured. It looked like it would smell nice. He kept staring ahead.

‘Look, I’m honest? We just want to know where the plane came from. There were no identifying markings on the fuselage – at least none recognisably attributable to any known airline. No passengers were found. No planes were missing. We checked all the schedules in the continental United States for the two weeks surrounding the time you were found. We checked private flights – and there aren’t a large number of 737s in private hands; we checked scheduled flights; we checked extraordinary rendition flights. There weren’t any scheduled flights across the South in any case, because of the hurricanes.’

This was mostly but not entirely true. They had recovered some identifying markings. One section that seemed to belong to the tailplane, according to the file, was made of tin-plated steel and stamped with a date of no readily decipherable significance in the summer of 2009. It seemed overwhelmingly likely it belonged to a can of beans.

‘As far as anyone knows, this 737 airplane appeared out of nowhere. It didn’t crash, it didn’t fall out of the sky – there was no sort of impact evidence. OK? Planes don’t come out of nowhere. They are big things. Then it broke up – without burning or exploding – at or near ground level. And it scattered itty-bitty little bits of metal debris over three square miles of Alabama backcountry, and left a guy with half his bones broken, strapped to a chair, hanging in a tree.’

Arno Fisk, to whom some of this was getting through, attempted to look as baffled as Bree. It was a very creditable attempt.

‘That was you,’ she added.

Bree tensed as she heard the handle of the door twist. A nurse came in, sideways, turned and looked startled to see a visitor. She was carrying a clear plastic jug of water. She frowned, then smiled politely, and was opening her mouth to speak when Bree interrupted her.

‘Oh, thank you. Arno’s mouth was getting so dry, wasn’t it, hon? Just there, sweetie, thanks. No, a bit to the right. Perfect. I’ll take care of his glass.’ She put a little urgency into her tone, stopped just short of steering the nurse back out of the room by her hip. She could see the nurse making a snap decision; to go with the flow rather than submit to the awkwardness of challenging Bree’s ownership of the space. One more firm ‘thank you’ was enough to see her off.

Bree had all sorts of outs, but unnoticed was best – unnoticed was always best. She knew the name on the register was different from the name she’d used to Fisk, and figured there’d be no trouble with it in a routine hospital visit to a badly if bizarrely injured man. She’d leave confusion, rather than suspicion, behind her if she left anything at all. But she’d rather leave it behind her than have it turn up while she was still there. As far as the nurse was concerned, if she checked, this was the cute Fisk guy’s fat older sister. And if Fisk wondered why this lady was calling him ‘hon’, well…

He made a noise. She turned back to him. Fisk was looking a little more focused, as if he’d made a decision to pull himself, as far as he could, together.

‘Uh durr rumberr much. I’ was Sadderday. Uh wuzz a li’l drunk.’

The words came out slowly, and clearly with effort. ‘Uh hadd a beer. Bit. Nommuch. Cuz uh wuz goin’a work. Uh member geddin dress. Geddin in car. Id was winndy.’

‘You were going to work. What time was this?’

‘Uh dunnuh. Evennuntime. Late. Iz dark. Winndy.’

He pushed his lips together and out, like a chimp puckering up for a kiss, and exhaled through them almost soundlessly: hwhhhhhhhhhooooo. His eyelids drooped and his cheeks tightened in a secret smile. Some sort of morphine surge. Hwhhhhhhh…

‘Winnndy…’ Hwhhh…

‘Yes, it would have been windy. There were hurricane warnings. A lot of people had left town. And you were going to work?’

‘Ssssss.’

‘Why? Nothing was leaving the ground that night.’

‘Gudda work. Goo money.’

‘Where do you work? You work as a pilot?’

‘Nuh! Nudd a piludd.’ He was trying to pull himself together again.

‘You were dressed as a pilot. Could someone have done that to you while you were unconscious?’

If someone had done that to him, Bree could have added, they had a sense of humour. According to the admittedly sketchy paperwork she’d been able to obtain through the Atlanta relay, he was dressed in the uniform of a TWA pilot from the mid-1980s. A defunct airline. An emergency-room orderly’s sniggering email to his college buddy had added the even more peculiar detail that, underneath his pilot’s uniform, he had been wearing satin thong underpants with a tiger-stripe print. These had been soiled.

‘Nuh. Uh dress muhself. Took muh uhn cloze inna bag.’

‘Where do you work?’

He shook his head floppily and frowned. ‘Anywhur. Uzz jus’ anyone books. Wuzz jub up by – ahhh – Gumbuh Lake.’