The Fallen (37 page)

‘What do you mean?’

‘Apparently, the air-traffic controllers didn’t like having to look into the early morning sun. Very bright and glaring, especially after a dust storm, which they get there from time to time. Now, Freedom airport has a number of different runways, some with more advanced navigation gear than others. But for early morning flights coming in, the air-traffic controllers would often direct them to Runway 9, so that the pilots would be
arriving from the west and the air-traffic controllers wouldn’t have the sun in their eyes.’

‘But the pilots would.’

‘Exactly. In addition, Runway 9 had older navigational aids, called runway direction beacons. It was one of the more basic runways.’

A knock on the car window made Jade jump. It was the waiter, carrying a tray. When Robbie buzzed the window down, the waiter immediately began attaching the tray to the rim.

‘No, no, don’t bother,’ Robbie told him. ‘We’re in a hurry. We’ll eat off our laps.’

He handed Jade a polystyrene mug of coffee and a paper-wrapped sandwich, and scooped the packets of sugar, salt and chilli off the tray and dumped them in the Beemer’s centre console. Then he passed the waiter a hundred-rand note and closed the window.

The smell of bacon filled the car. Robbie opened his sandwich and bit into it with relish.

‘Eat,’ he ordered Jade, speaking with some difficulty through his own large mouthful.

Jade unwrapped her food and started eating. She kept watching the mirrors, looking out for approaching police cars, knowing that even if she did see one on the hunt for her it would be too late, because there was nowhere for them to go.

But in her mind’s eye, what she was visualising was not a dark and silent street, but a sunrise over a stark, dry landscape. Fierce and bright, blazing through a haze of dust.

‘So the pilot made his approach at sunrise?’ she asked.

Robbie chewed and swallowed. ‘Just after. I read a blog written by some aviation professional that said apparently one of the guys who’d landed there earlier that morning had radioed a warning to the Royal Africa Airlines pilot about the poor visibility. There had been a dust storm. He told him to request a different runway.’

‘Why didn’t he?’

‘Who knows? Probably thought it would be
OK
. In any case, it seems those sort of requests didn’t go down well in that cosy
little culture. According to this blog I read, what the
ATCS
in Freedom Airport would do if a pilot started getting picky, was simply tell him to stand by. They could keep the guys doing that for all eternity, it seems.’

‘My God,’ Jade said.

Robbie nodded and looked down at the second half of his sandwich as if formulating his strategy for attacking it.

‘This
is
Africa,’ he said.

‘And the pilot?’

‘He was a good guy, from what I read. Very experienced. People used to want to fly with him.’ Robbie shrugged. ‘But somewhere between him and the
ATC
, someone screwed up. Guess it only takes once, in that situation.’

‘I guess so.’

‘Now the dictator, he didn’t wait for the official report. As soon as whispers started about air-traffic control being responsible, he went ballistic. Blamed
ATC
for everything and fired all the crew who were there that day. Management and general staff. Old and new alike. Even the woman
ATC
who’d just been hired and was working her first shift that morning.’

Jade wondered if that woman had been Amanda Bolton.

‘He made a statement to the press that went something like … let me think now, he used big words, so I saved this page on my phone.’

He held up his BlackBerry and scrolled through a number of screens until he reached the one he wanted.

‘Here you go. “The reprehensible misconduct of these individuals has caused a tragedy of unforeseen proportions. They are responsible for the crash, the deaths of the passengers, and the destruction of so many lives. If I have my way, they will never work in the industry again.” ’

‘Seems he managed to blacken their names enough to do that,’ Jade said. ‘Amanda started teaching scuba diving instead. And Themba Msamaya was still jobless six months on. And then both of them were murdered.’

‘There was an earlier murder just after the crash, while all of this was going on,’ Robbie said.

Jade stared at him.

‘How do you mean?’

‘A week after it happened. The manager who’d been on duty that day, a local man called Victor Dimishi, was stabbed to death at his home in Freedom. With all the relatives over there to identify the deceased, and all the fuss going on, it was hushed up. Never made big news. But there was a report about it on the Net.’

‘Another stabbing?’

Robbie’s eyes gleamed as he turned to stare at her. ‘You mean there have been more?’

‘I really need to see a list of the passengers.’

Robbie passed his phone to Jade.

‘Google it,’ he said, before stuffing the remainder of his sandwich into his mouth.

While Jade fought with the compact keyboard, squinting down at the tiny screen, Robbie stirred sugar into his coffee.

She raised her head as she heard another noise over the scraping of the plastic spoon against the bottom of his cup.

The noise grew louder. It was one she recognised immediately, approaching fast down Louis Botha Avenue.

Police sirens. Several of them.

‘Shit,’ Robbie said. He started the car, his head whipping from left to right, as if considering his options for escape.

‘They’re too close,’ Jade said.

‘They’re after somebody else. Not you. It’s a crime-scene call-out, I’m betting you,’ Robbie said. ‘But all the same, let’s not take any chances right now.’

He slammed the Beemer into gear and it shot forward towards the roadhouse, sending steaming coffee splashing over the back of the cup-holder.

‘Hang on, babe,’ he said.

He whipped the car round in a tight left-hand turn and headed directly for the concrete panels of the roadhouse wall.

‘Robbie …’ Jade braced against the dashboard.

Just before he reached it, he swung right and into a narrow alleyway.

It led into a small backyard. Slamming on the brakes, he narrowly managed to avoid rear-ending the modest little Toyota Corolla in the staff parking space.

On the main road, two sets of sirens wailed past.

‘Could be more coming,’ Robbie muttered. ‘Better to wait.’

Looking back down at the phone’s screen, Jade realised that her search had produced results. Clicking on the link, she saw there was, indeed, a list of the passengers who had died in that crash. It was arranged alphabetically, with the age and nationality of each person in brackets after their name.

Jade didn’t have to look far. The first South African was second on the list.

Aidan Marais, aged five. And then Matthew Marais, aged forty.

Jade felt the blood drain from her face.

‘Elsabe lost her whole family,’ she said. ‘She lost her son and her husband in the crash. God, that’s just so awful.’

Awful enough to push a woman over the edge and into murder? Jade didn’t doubt it.

A twisted revenge, where guilty and innocent alike were made to pay the price for what she had perceived to be their wrongdoings.

No wonder she’d taken an instant dislike to Elsabe. Not because she was so different from Jade, but because she was so similar. Instinctively, Jade had sensed a quality in her that she recognised, and hated, in herself.

The ability to kill.

Jade had never used her ability on innocents, though, and Amanda Bolton had been indisputably innocent.

As a third set of sirens screamed past on the main road, Jade scrolled down further, to the surnames beginning with H. And that was where she made her second unwelcome discovery.

Because there was no Mr Hitchens listed.

Craig’s father had not been on the plane. Craig had lied.

‘We’d better get moving now, babe. You got what you need?’

Jade shook her head.

‘What?’ Robbie’s voice was sharper now.

‘There’s something wrong here.’

‘Wrong how?’

‘Craig—he’s Elsabe’s partner now, I guess—he told me he met her at the crash site. That his father died there. But I can’t find his father’s name on the list at all. It isn’t here.’

Jade breathed deeply, trying her best to dispel the icy feeling in her stomach. The suspicion that, all along, she had been lied to.

Had their meeting on the beach really been as coincidental as she had thought?

Or had Craig Hitchens used it—used her—to give himself an alibi for that night? In the predawn gloom, while she was sleeping, had he sneaked out to do what Elsabe had asked him to do? Or more probably, paid him to do.

She would have sworn on any bible you had cared to lay down in front of her that Craig had been genuine. The man had told her he was an environmentalist, for God’s sake. She knew that was true, because he’d proved his knowledge to her. He’d described in detail the environmental implications of the oil-tanker disaster.

But that didn’t mean he couldn’t be a killer as well.

Jade bit her lip hard enough to make herself wince.

Why hadn’t she considered this earlier? Had he been too convincing to arouse her suspicions? Or were her own instincts starting to grow dull?

Robbie released the handbrake, reversed back through the alley and pulled onto Louis Botha Avenue, heading in the opposite direction, away from the police cars.

‘Where do you want to go, babe?’

‘To Jo’burg Central police station. I’ll have to sit down with one of the detectives there. Explain everything to him. I don’t think they’ll charge me if my file’s gone missing. And when they hear the full story, they’ll have to move fast and send a team to arrest Elsabe, and Craig as well. If they’re flying to Namibia later this morning, I suppose they’ll be able to apprehend them at the airport.’

Robbie shrugged. ‘Your choice. You think any of the detectives will be there so early?’

Jade checked the dashboard clock.

5.10
A.M
. It wasn’t quite as dark as it had been. A faint shimmer was starting to appear on the horizon. Dawn was on the way.

‘Some of them are early birds. Like Moloi.’ The last person on earth she wanted to see right now, but still. ‘I might have to wait a little while. But he’ll be there by daybreak, I should think.’

By daybreak.

For some reason, the words gave Jade an uneasy feeling.

‘I’m not going to hang around,’ Robbie said. ‘I’ll just drop you and go,
OK
? And remember, babe, you owe me one now. I don’t know when this other job will happen, but when it does, you’re in it with me. Don’t forget that.’

‘I won’t,’ Jade said.

She closed her eyes briefly at that thought. It was growing lighter by the minute and, when she opened them again, she could see the surrounding houses, the trees and walls, in sharp relief.

More memories flooded back.

Craig’s face, looking down at her, on the single night she’d spent with him. Every detail of his features was etched into her memory. The tenderness of his expression. The green flecks in his golden-brown eyes.

Craig again, talking about her twenty-twenty vision. Perfect eyesight, an attribute she possessed, and one that she shared with his father … 
Another possibility occurred to Jade. Picking up Robbie’s BlackBerry and stabbing the keys as fast as she could, she did another Internet search, only this time she wasn’t looking for the passengers on the plane.

And there it was. His name. Mr Anthony Hitchens. Killed in the fatal crash of flight 813 to Freedom.

Adrenaline surged through her as she realised what this discovery implied.

‘Robbie, I’m sorry,’ she said. ‘The plans have changed.’

‘Changed? How?’

We need to get to Emmarentia, and we need to do it before the sun is up. If we don’t, there’s going to be another murder.’

She dialled Craig’s number from memory and listened, willing him to pick up, the knot in her stomach pulling tighter and tighter with every ring.

It went through to voicemail, but Jade didn’t leave a message. There was no point.

Robbie was driving at top speed, tearing through the empty streets of Houghton as he cut across the city on the route that would take them to the peaceful suburb of Emmarentia.

Christ, she hoped she would be in time to save him.

She needed to get there before dawn; before daybreak, because that was when the killing would take place, just as the others had done.

The plane had crashed at daybreak.

Craig
had
told her the truth. Now she understood the real reason for the strange and conflicted relationship that Elsabe had maintained with him.

His father hadn’t been on the passenger list for a very good and very logical reason. He hadn’t been a passenger.

He had been the pilot.

You descend, slowly and gradually, from the brightening skies. The air is like a road and, as your plane meets the warmer updrafts, you feel a series of gentle bumps, as if the highway you were travelling on had suddenly become rough and uneven.

Nothing to worry about. Just a little clear-air turbulence.

Except the air is not clear.

Cloudless does not mean clear. Not this morning, when the dust from the storm hangs in the air, as dense as fog, turning your visibility from good to poor.

And then there is the sun.

You arrived at the same time, you and the morning sun. It breaks over the horizon in all its blazing power and magnificence. Moving swiftly from a bright fingernail to become a full, red orb. And then brightening, as red turns to gold and gold to a whitish-yellow, reflecting off all the dust particles and obscuring what lies below.

Still low on the horizon, the sun is now so dazzling that you cannot possibly look into it.

The radio crackles with information and warnings. You hear them, but you do not listen. Perhaps you think you know better. Perhaps you disregard them. You are, after all, an experienced pilot. Runway 9 holds no fear for you. You have landed there after dawn on many other occasions.