Permissible Limits (60 page)

‘
I’m not sure,’ I said lightly. ‘I might go tomorrow. Or the next day.’

‘
Did you fly yourself over? Did you bring the Moth?’

‘
Yes.’ I nodded. ‘And actually it’ll have to be tomorrow because I’ve got a meeting in Bournemouth last thing.’ I paused, frowning. ‘Do you know Hurn at all? Have they got a GA terminal?’

‘
Yes, they have, and it’s a doddle getting in, too. They’ve got full ILS.’

ILS stands for Instrument Landing System. It’s no use for something like the Moth but that didn’t matter. Far more important was the fact that Steve obviously knew all about Hurn Airport.

‘
You go there a lot, Steve?’

‘
Twice a month.’ He tried to force a grin. ‘I’ve got half a dozen regulars there. I do all their maintenance. They stood by me when things… you know… got sticky. Without them, I’d have gone under.’ He got to his feet again, eager to bring this conversation to an end. ‘Have a nice flight, Mrs Bruce. Sorry I can’t stay.’

He bolted for the door, weaving between the tables en route, and I leaned back in my chair beside the window, watching him disappear down the street. I was thinking of that last entry in Adam’s Amex account. When Steve wasn’t flying a Cessna, I knew he borrowed a Tomahawk. Empty, they’d take around £83 worth of Avgas.

It says a great
deal
about my state of mind that I double-bolted the door that night. There was absolutely no reason why anyone should know where I was staying - I hadn’t even told Jamie - but events
were galloping forward and
I felt
a good
deal safer with the door firmly locked. Bad news, as Harald often used to point out, rides a fast horse.

Next morning, back behind the sunglasses, I took a walk around the harbour at St Helier. From the end of the long wall that encloses the seaward side of the harbour, I could look back through the forest of yacht masts to the office block where Dennis Wetherall had now pitched camp. He’d given me a week’s grace to pursue my own inquiries. I had just four days left before he might lift the phone and talk to the island’s police. Whether or not he really intended to do that, I’d no idea, but the threat seemed real enough and I still wanted the satisfaction of nailing one or two of the lies myself.

By far the most important, of course, concerned Adam. By now, thanks to Michelle La Page, I was convinced that he hadn’t gone off on some wild affair. She’d told me she’d never met him and I not only wanted to believe her but I also thought it was true. Adam was too disorganised, too careless, to handle anything as complex as adultery. Just one woman in his life was quite enough. But that didn’t begin to explain the photo. Just how had that bloody picture got into his desk?

The increasingly likely answer was Harald. He flew over to Sandown regularly. He was close to Adam. He got on well with Dave Jeffries. There was only one lock on the door to Adam’s office and for all I knew there might have been half a dozen keys floating around, not least because Adam was always losing his. What if one of these keys had ended up with Harald? What if he’d stolen in one day and left the photo where he knew I was bound to find it?

I shook my head, walking back along the harbour wall. The implications of that particular question were too horrible to contemplate. Leaving the photo would mean foreknowledge of Adam’s death. And foreknowledge of his death, unless Harald had the gift of prophecy, rather ruled out any notion of an accident. Might the Cessna have been tampered with? Might someone - Harald - have wanted Adam dead?

I couldn’t believe it. It was too unlikely, too far-fetched. The two men had been friends. Killing your buddy just doesn’t happen. Not in the real world. Not if you’re normal.

Normal. I thought of Standfast, and the Casa Blanca, and that strange, silent household where I’d lived for over a month. After I’d discovered what went into Monica’s little cage, her daily offerings to her pet alligator, I’d rather steered clear of her, but when we’d said our goodbyes I was struck by the relish with which she seized my hand and squeezed it and squeezed it as if my departure had been the answer to some private prayer. Quite what she’d been expecting before my arrival I didn’t know but I was never able to rid myself of the feeling that I was under observation, constantly being put through some kind of test, not simply in the air but on the ground as well. Given the wild gleam in her eye when I finally bumped away across the airfield, I can only assume I failed, but the chill, air-conditioned silence of the Casa Blanca had stayed with me ever since. Tomb-like, it was exactly the kind of place that would breed a man like Harald Meyler. Emotionally, at least, he’d begun to strike me as half-dead.

I paused. Below me, aboard a sturdy wooden fishing boat, two youths in stained blue smocks were unloading the night’s catch. I watched them winching the dripping plastic crates of glistening fish up on to the wooden pontoon. The boat reminded me of the vessel I’d seen from the front seat of Harald’s Yak. I stood there in the sunshine, trying to remember its name. Harald had chartered it for the mid-Channel search. If the Jaguar holdall he’d given me had really been fished out of the water, then the crew aboard would certainly know.

I walked on slowly. At the end of the fish dock a middle-aged man in yellow waterproofs was hosing down the flagstones. He returned my smile but when I mentioned Harald’s name and asked him about a chartered fishing boat he shrugged his shoulders and said he’d no idea. Undeterred, I mentioned the Cessna going down.

‘
That plane? Back end of last year?’

‘
February, actually.’

‘
Really?’

He pulled a face, then looked at his watch. The boat I was after was the
Frances Bevan.
Give or take an hour, she was due back any time.

I wandered back down the fish dock, found myself a perch in the sun and settled down to wait. Around noon, beginning to burn, I decided to find a drink and something to eat before coming back, but when I got to my feet and took a precautionary look over the seaward wall, I saw a stubby red hull pushing a big white bow wave towards the harbour. From this distance it was impossible to read the name but as the boat got closer, it began to resolve itself. My friend in the waterproofs had been right. The
Frances Bevan
was back.

I waited nearly an hour while the crew berthed and unloaded a vanload of fish. There seemed to be three men, and one of them - the oldest - was very obviously in charge. He was in his forties, small, squat, with a red bandanna wound round his head. His face, nut-brown and deeply lined, wouldn’t have been out of place at Standfast and I’d
almost convinced
myself he was American when he clambered up the iron ladder from the deck and produced a thick roll of bank notes. I watched him counting the notes off and handing a bundle to each of the crewmen. When they’d gone, I stepped across. He looked at my extended hand with deep suspicion.

‘
Yes?’ he said.

I introduced myself as a friend of Harald. I said I was interested in the plane that had gone down back in February and I wondered whether he’d been on board during the search.

‘
Who’s asking?’

‘
I am.’

‘
So what’s your name?’

I hesitated. Owning up to being the widow didn’t seem the cleverest thing to do, so I settled for my maiden name.

‘
Ellie Tranter,’ I said.

‘
You a journalist or something?’

‘
No.’

‘
What then?’

‘
A friend. I knew the pilot.’ I smiled, ‘And you’re Mr… ?’

He ignored the question, looking me up and down. Whatever else I was going to find out wouldn’t include this man’s name.

‘
So what are you after?’

‘
I’d like to know what you found.’

‘
Found?
Bits of the aeroplane, you mean? Or the pilot?’

‘
Either.’

For one giddy moment it occurred to me that there might, after all, have been a body.

‘
Nothing,’ he muttered. ‘Nothing much, anyway.’

‘
Nothing personal? Clothing? No bag of any kind?’

‘
Nothing like that.’

‘
No wreckage?’

‘
Yeah, some. Nothing valuable, though. Nothing worth having.’ He nodded down at the boat. ‘There’s a sackful at the most, gash stuff, bits and pieces. We were going to dump it overboard but no one got round to it.’

I was staring at him. This was new to me, this crossfire of question and answer. Keep pulling the trigger, I thought, and one day you’ll draw blood.

‘
It’s still there? This sack?’

‘
As far as I know. You’ll have to ask the skipper.’

‘
You’re not the skipper?’

‘
No, he’s across in France. Back tonight.’ He wiped his hands on his jeans. ‘That it, then? Only I’m away for my breakfast.’

I watched him walking off down the quay. He got into a battered white van and disappeared behind a cloud of blue smoke. I went to the edge of the quay and looked down at the fishing boat. I’d no idea whether boats were like cars. Do you lock them up? Was this one alarmed? For the first time in twenty-four hours, I wished Jamie were here. He’d know what to do.

I stood on the quayside a moment longer, wavering. The men had been paid. They’d be hungry. Thirsty. They’d been up all night fishing. They were hardly likely to come back. I looked round, wondering whether the harbourmaster’s office extended to security. Were there cameras here? Men in Group Four uniforms with those little two-way radios? It was impossible to know and anyway I didn’t much care. If it was true, if bits of Adam’s Cessna were down there in that boat, then it was up to me to find them. That was the least I owed my poor dead husband.

The iron rungs of the ladder down to the pontoon were warm beneath my fingers. At the bottom, I scrambled up the side of the fishing boat, and steadied myself before jumping down to the deck. The wheelhouse was locked. I skirted the structure behind it, looking for another door. There wasn’t one.

Forward of the wheelhouse, a grubby tarpaulin was stretched across the hold. It was secured only loosely and I pulled one corner back, peering down. The smell of fish and diesel was overpowering. I pulled a little harder, widening the gap. Sunshine flooded in, revealing a ten-foot drop to the bottom of the hold. This, I knew, was the moment of decision. Ten feet is a long way. And once in, how the hell would I ever get out?

I looked round again. No one seemed to be watching. I unfastened yet more of the tarpaulin and rolled it back. Then, on the other side of the deck, I saw a misshapen pile of wood and nylon that could only have been a rope ladder. This was how the guys got in and out, I thought. Stupid of me not to spot it earlier.

I dragged it across. The outside lip of the hold had downward-facing hooks to secure the tarpaulin and I used a couple of these to anchor the rope ladder. It was much heavier than it looked and I was breathing hard by now, my face bathed with sweat. I tipped the ladder over the edge, grunting with the effort, and watched it tumble down into the hold. The bottom rungs hit the metal floor, a hollow, booming noise that echoed and echoed. Committed now, I stepped over the edge of the hold and made my way down the ladder. The wooden rungs were still wet with fish slime and when I got to the bottom I had trouble keeping my balance on the greasy steel floor.

There was enough light from above to show me the four corners of the hold,
and
it was much bigger than I’d expected. It was empty, too, a dim, cavernous space with no sign of a sack.

I stood at the bottom of the ladder, still catching my breath, trying to work out what to do next. Forward of the hold, there might be some small compartment in the bow. Aft, there’d be a much bigger space for the engine room. Very carefully, I abandoned the sunshine and made my way towards the stern. I’d no idea whether there was any other access to the hold and I’d almost given up looking when my fingers began to trace the outlines of a door. I found the hinges, then the handle. The handle turned and I pulled the door open. In the pitch darkness beyond, the smell of diesel was even stronger. It was also much hotter, almost oven-hot, the engine still warm after the run back.

I began to feel my way around the knobbly steel walls. Somewhere there had to be a light switch. It must have taken me ten minutes to find it.