Deep Shelter (32 page)

“Why?”

Malcolm raised his hands in something more exasperated than a shrug. Belsey pressed on.

“This picture in the magazine—you say your sister sent it.”

“Yes, my sister sent it just a few days before she died. She’s the one behind the bar.”

“Know any of the men?”

“We’ve identified most. I couldn’t give you the names off the top of my head.”

“Know this one?” Belsey leaned across and pointed to Easton’s doppelganger.

“No. Why?”

“I’m interested in him.”

“Who is he?”

“I’m not sure. I need to find out. Does the name Michael Easton mean anything?”

“No.”

“Where are they in this photo?” Belsey asked.

“A pub somewhere, just before the accident. I don’t know where.”

“There was an exercise in 1983: Able Archer, a cold-war simulation of nuclear attack,” Belsey said.

“It coincided, yes.” Malcolm nodded. “There’s no evidence of any connection. We’ve certainly speculated that they may have been involved in it. I’m not sure it has any bearing on the accident. The exercise wasn’t mentioned in the inquiry.”

“What did the inquiry say?”

“Nothing. For five hundred pages. Want to see?”

Malcolm left the room. He fetched a ring binder from the bright, white kitchen next door and for a surreal moment Belsey felt this was part of the sterile conformity; that every respectable family should have one. “This is the lot,” he said. The doorbell rang and Malcolm went to answer it. Belsey opened the binder.

It contained a copy of the inquiry and a lot more. The collection began with copies of each MOD condolence letter, identically worded, only the name changing. Then the official report, starting with the facts: the flight took off from RAF Lyneham at 07:15, 9 November 1983. At approximately 09:05 it exploded close to the coast of Montenegro. Belsey leafed through the main body of the report: “inconclusive,” “technical malfunction,” “recommendations to be made.” They’d got a very senior military official to lead the inquiry. He was called Sir Douglas Argyle. That was convenient, Belsey thought. He had a feeling Argyle might have known exactly how to steer it.

He heard the conversation at the front door.

“He’s a police officer.”

“What does he want?”

“Give him a chance.”

“Has he said what he wants?”

The new arrival had a gruff voice, with traces of a Yorkshire accent that enhanced his disdain. When he came into the living room Belsey saw he was at least ten years older than Malcolm. He wore a jumper over what looked like a pyjama top. He scrutinised Belsey, didn’t offer his hand, lowered himself onto the edge of the other sofa.

“This is John,” Malcolm said. He showed John the advert in
Military Heritage
.

“Who did this?” John demanded.

“That writer.”

He scoured the page. “Look at the date of the reunion.”

“We were just saying.”

“Is it meant to be bloody funny?”

“Who were they, on the flight?” Belsey asked.

“Mostly men from 81 Signal Squadron,” Malcolm answered. “2nd Signal Brigade. All ranks.” He showed him in the binder. “Private, signaller, lance corporal, warrant officer class 2. All kinds of communications officers, radio operators, logistics; there was also a medic, a cook, a chaplain. Not from the same brigade.”

“And the women?”

“Three from the Women’s Royal Army Corps. One female medic.”

“I don’t know much about the military,” Belsey said. “But that’s a strange assortment.”

“Yes.” Belsey waited but the two men didn’t seem to have anything to add to this. Belsey pointed to the job titles within the brigade.

“What do these mean?” Malcolm took the file and glanced over them.

“Systems operator—that’s radio and trunk communications. Systems engineer deals with computer networks, an installation technician will look after the fibre optics and telephone systems.”

“Did they ever do any work in telephone exchanges?”

“Telephone exchanges? What do you mean? They were military. This is military communications.”

The binder contained a photograph of the memorial being unveiled, then another list of the thirty-seven names.

“Can I take a picture of this?”

“Be my guest.”

Belsey took a photograph of the names using his Samsung. He turned back to the page of
Military Heritage
and counted the faces in the pub. Thirty-two men and women. Allowing for someone taking the picture, still four short.

“This isn’t everyone who died.”

“No. The children aren’t in the picture.”

Belsey took a second to process this. The other men noticed, their anger finally vindicated.

“You didn’t know?”

“No. Go on, tell me about the children.”

“There were two military families on the flight. The woman medic, Helen Kendall, was married to one of the systems engineers. Eleanor Forrester from the Women’s Corps was married to a corporal in the brigade. They had four children between them, six years up to thirteen.”

Belsey felt himself inching towards some theory that might almost obey the laws of time and space.

“Could one of them have survived? One of the children?”

“Survived?” Malcolm picked up the binder and flicked through to the colour shots. Deep blue sea. It took Belsey a moment to realise it was sprinkled with debris. There were twenty-five of these photographs, almost identical: vividly blue stretches of the Adriatic strewn with fragments of dull grey metal. In most of them a rocky coastline could be seen on the horizon. A few shards of aluminium glinted in the sun. The wreckage was augmented by hundreds of birds, white and grey, resting on floating fuselage and wing panels.

“That’s all we were given. Hard enough just getting those pictures out of them.”

Belsey took another photo.

“Where exactly is it?”

“The explosion was roughly twenty miles from the Balkan shore. Think anyone survived?”

“What were the children doing there?”

“That’s what we’d like to know: what was the nature of the exercise? No doubt the involvement of children is one reason it’s all been hushed up. Heaven forbid that should get out.”

“And why wasn’t the plane checked?” John said. “Problems had been reported with other C-130s.”

“Why did it take five days to inform us?” Malcolm said. This returned them all to silence. Belsey understood. It was what you looked for as a detective, unexplained gaps. John leaned forward.

“The plane sent out twenty-four automatic messages signalling system failures in the moments before the crash. That doesn’t rule out pilot error or weather conditions.”

“But the weather was fine,” Malcolm said.

“First we thought it was a technical malfunction,” John said. “It remains an outside possibility. These planes are still being used, you see. It would cause a stink if it turned out the government had been hiding evidence of faults.”

“But we think there’s more they’re not telling us.”

“Like?”

“The nature of the posting, the role of the children. In Amy’s letter, sent a few days beforehand, it seems she hadn’t been fully briefed.”

“What did she say?”

“Just that she might be out of contact for a couple of weeks but hadn’t been told why.”

Again, there was hurt mixed in with the grief, hurt at the infidelity of the dead, in their secret place, whispering among themselves.

“Any suggestions that she would be doing something dangerous?”

“No.”

John said: “My brother told me he was involved in something highly important. He said he shouldn’t have even told me that much. We believe they had all received extra security vetting. We know this because for at least ten months prior to deployment their letters arrived late. They’d been opened. Someone was checking them.”

“Did either of them ever talk about any military or government facilities underground?”

“No.”

“Anything secret?”

“We think possibly their training meant they knew
something
. We have no idea what.” Belsey waited. He was learning the rhythm. He went for it.

“What if they were killed because of what they knew?” He braced himself for outrage but they didn’t flinch.

“It’s possible. We don’t know.”

Belsey looked at the photographs of the wreckage again. He imagined the plane breaking some barrier of possibility, vaporising, leaving faint traces on the waves. When he looked up the two men were staring at him.

“But what is it
you
know?” John said. “Why are you here?”

For a second, Belsey struggled to think. He was sleep-deprived. He felt himself stepping through puzzled grief again, incompetently, so that he wasn’t building an answer, just trailing around other people’s questions. He got to his feet. The men looked defensive now, as if Belsey had taken their money in a game of cards. He wondered if they’d let him out of the house.

“Come on then,” John said. “Who was leaving the flowers?”

“I’m going to find out for you. Now. Tonight.”

BELSEY SAT IN HIS SKODA WATCHING THE END OF
a sunset whose drama was disproportionate to the town beneath it: a sky of ash on embers, black scraps of cloud across what looked like lava dripping over the entertainment complex.

Children.

He brought up the names of the dead on his phone, looked for the children: James and Rachel Kendall; Susan and Michael Forrester. Michael Forrester had been eight years old when he died. Son of Corporal Terence Forrester, 2nd Signals Brigade, and Eleanor Forrester, staff sergeant in the Women’s Corps.

Only somehow Michael Forrester didn’t die.

Was that his message? What answer could Belsey provide that would restore Jemma to the living? He couldn’t see how the flight connected to the tunnels. But they had all been engaged in something sensitive before it took place.

Belsey turned to the reunion advert. There were the adults in the pub. Thrown together. Not much physical contact between them. Maybe they hadn’t known each other long. Where were they? He couldn’t see any military memorabilia. There was one clock, which said
Guinness Time
, a shelf above the bar with a hunting horn, an old drum, Toby jugs. The bar was distinctive: elegantly curved and divided into three by wooden buttresses that broke against the ceiling like wooden waves. And the ceiling itself was ornate, with bowls of light set among the moulding. Not a country pub: it had an air of buttoned-up city heritage; a London pub, brass and polish. Not rough around the edges, not cosy with darts-tournament clutter either.

He took a photo on the Samsung and zoomed in. Where would you get identifying marks? He checked the mirror behind the bar. There was a heraldic lion engraved. A lion with its claws out. Belsey thought of the undelivered crates in the Belsize Park shelter, the bottles of champagne.
For Dispatch: Red Lion
.

And then he knew he’d been there. Something clicked as the name and image merged. The hunting horn, the Guinness clock . . . Belsey rifled his mind’s sodden archive of pubs, working through the Red Lions of his life. The slight stiffness of the place suggested a business district, somewhere central, preserved by well heeled footfall. Now he looked again at an object on the end of the bar. It was a bell. A fine bell, wooden handled. A division bell. Belsey’s memory was waking up and stretching. A bell for calling MPs and their aides back to parliament when a vote was on. It was the Red Lion on Parliament Street.

Now he saw it: the ornamental jugs had the faces of politicians. Churchill, Thatcher, Harold Wilson. He had been there several times. It was always filled with exiles from the Commons’ own bars, getting drunk on expenses before smuggling their interns back to Portcullis House. A few years ago he’d stopped the daughter of a Tory whip driving her father’s Audi loaded with five boxed stereos and three members of the Peckham Ghetto Boys. He’d been treated to a lot of Beaujolais in the Red Lion while her father convinced him that neither he nor his daughter were Ghetto Boys. It was a good pub in which to take a break from kettling protests. Hard to get a seat, though.

AN HOUR
’
S DRIVE INTO
London, back from the sleepy suburbs into the airless unsleeping city. Then through, into the business heart of it, where things almost got quiet again. Westminster, Whitehall, past the taciturn monuments and ministries resting on their tunnels. Maybe that’s where all the civil servants were; you never saw them out and about. He cruised past the Red Lion. Its windows glowed. Belsey parked on the first road he found that wasn’t drowning in cameras and stepped into a photograph.

It was 9:30 p.m., and a greyer uniform was in attendance. Women in blouses tilted glasses of white wine at one another while a scrum of suited men occupied the centre ground. But the pub was unmistakable. Belsey squeezed himself in, knocked by the throng as he unfolded
Military Heritage
. They were here, he thought. Why? It was a long way from RAF Lyneham. He felt the ghosts mingling. The Toby jugs remained above the bar, an enhanced collection now, and there were a few other additions to the clutter: a flatscreen in the corner, a fruit machine. But he was in the right place. He pushed his way to the bar.

“Is the manager about?”

The landlord came over. He had bushy white sideburns and a moustache. He was a little flushed, a little yellow of eye, whisky of breath. Belsey laid the picture on the bar.

“I’m interested in this—whether you remember or have heard anything about this photo being taken.”

The man lowered a pair of glasses from his brow and peered through them. He tilted the advert until the light was on it.

“I’ve never seen this picture before.”

“How long have you run the place?”

“Twenty-five years. What year was this?”

“1983.”

“That would have been my father’s time.” He turned to the front cover of the magazine then back to the advert. He stroked a sideburn.

“It’s my pub, but that’s not my pub.”

“What do you mean?”

The landlord took his glasses off. He looked around the pub itself, came out from behind the bar and stood next to Belsey. He used the arm of his glasses to point at the photograph.