Skinner's Ordeal Read online

  `Better do it, then.'

  `Time enough. The first task is recovery of the victims. Then we'll have the world's biggest jigsaw puzzle to solve. We may have to try and put the plane back together again to get a picture of what happened. And before we can do that, we'll have to find all the bits!'

  TEN

  Skinner didn't need to send for the Bomb Squad. It came to him.

  He and the Chief Constable were making their way through the heather and down the hillside to add their manpower to the pointless, but obligatory, search for survivors when he heard the steady drone of the helicopter engine. At the sound, he stopped and looked up, thinking at first that an over-eager TV crew might be breaching the air exclusion zone which Jim Elder would have seen imposed by now as the DCC had instructed him earlier.

  The sky was still empty, but as he listened, the tone of the engine told him that the approaching craft was a heavier machine than those normally available for hire by the media. He looked back up the slope, westward, towards the source of the sound. It grew louder, forcing itself upon the stillness of the valley, until eventually it burst over the horizon and into view —a big, ugly, dark green machine, flying so low that Skinner could feel the down-draught from its heavy rotors.

  `Who's that?' said Proud Jimmy beside him. 'It isn't carrying RAF markings. Naval, is it?'

  Skinner shook his head. 'No, Chief. That's the so'jers. I can't tell which lot though. No.

  Wait a minute.' The helicopter held steady in flight hovering just in front of them, and swinging round so that they could see a man in a window to the side. He was pointing and gesticulating towards the other side of the hill.

  `That's Gammy Legge, Jimmy.'

  `Who?'

  `Major Gabriel Legge, known to one and all as Gammy, the Head of the Bomb Squad in Scotland. You remember him, from the business last year. Adam Arrow must have called them out.'

  Òh aye. Funny bugger that Legge, isn't he? What's he pointing at?'

  Ì think he's telling us that they can't land here and that the pilot's going to put down on the other side of the hill.'

  He waved an acknowledgement to the Major. The helicopter veered away.

  `D'you want to come and meet them?' Skinner asked.

  `No, Bob. It doesn't take two of us. I'll get down to where I can do some good; you go and talk to Legge.'

  Òkay.' Skinner turned and headed off, not back towards the road, but following the aircraft as it lumbered over to its landing spot. As he reached the top of the slope, he saw it settle on the uneven ground on a spot 200 yards away. He covered the distance at a trot.

  Major Legge, wearing a green officer's pullover with rank insignia on the epaulettes, jumped first from the helicopter. He was followed by three other soldiers — a Lieutenant and two Sergeants.

  `Thought we'd find you here, Bob,' he said, in his smoothed-over Ulster tones. 'You and I always seem to meet like two comrades on a battlefield, don't we?'

  Skinner gripped the outstretched hand and shook it. 'I'm afraid so, Gammy, and this is the most devastated yet. Tell me, who called you in on this one? Adam Arrow?'

  `Who's he?'

  `Military Security.'

  Òh yes, the little chap who was here last year. No, it wasn't him In fact, no one ordered us here. But sooner or later, our guys are always called in to something like this, if only to make sure that there is nothing to investigate other than an accident. When I heard about this one I simply decided to anticipate the request from CAA. Anyway, why should Adam Arrow call us in on a civilian air accident?'

  Succinctly, Skinner told him who had been in Row 1, Seats E and F, and of Arrow's concern about threats. Major Legge's tanned face seemed to darken.

  Ì see,' he said. 'And tell me, have you seen anything so far to indicate that there might be external involvement in this?'

  Skinner nodded. 'A witness who says he saw the plane come down, in flames and minus its nose-cone. To back that up, although the rest of the machine is spread all over the valley, there doesn't seem to be any sign of the cockpit.'

  `Sure and that's a fair indicator,' said the Major, his brogue deepening.

  Skinner pointed skywards. `Gammy, let's go up in your helicopter. Let's look at the site from the air, and then let's see if we can find the nose section.'

  Legge nodded. He turned to the Lieutenant. 'Gerald — take us up again, please. Sergeant Allan, Sergeant Law, you two stay here. Have a look at the wreckage on the ground furthest forward from the point of impact. See if it tells you anything. Come on then, Bob.'

  They climbed into the helicopter and strapped themselves into two seats behind the pilot.

  'Gerald,' said Legge. 'Take us up three or four hundred feet, high enough for us to see the spread of the wreckage. Fly very slowly down the length of the valley, then hover and await further orders.

  `Very good, sir,' said the young pilot, in clipped training college tones.

  Legge handed Skinner a headset, with built-in microphone. `Communicate through these,'

  he said. 'You'll be bloody deafened otherwise. These things are built for functionality, not comfort.'

  As the policeman looked at the solid plastic ear-defenders, the pilot started the engine and immediately, the cabin of the helicopter was filled with booming sound. He put them on quickly.

  The clumsy craft took off with all the ease of a lumbering albatross, but like that great bird, once freed from the constraints of the ground, it displayed wondrous grace and manoeuvrability.

  The pilot veered away from his landing site, turning as he gained height, back over the parked vehicles, westwards and away from the disaster valley. At last when he had reached the designated height, he swung round. Moving at not much more than hover speed, he followed the path of the doomed aircraft, towards the point of impact. As he flew, he kept the helicopter canted over, to give his two passengers the clearest view possible of the ground before them.

  Staring down, Skinner felt strangely as if he was looking at an aeroplane on the drawing board. The tail and the wings, incredibly strong structures, had retained their shape through all the impact and conflagration. But the rest of the wreckage resembled some huge sausage which had been slit, unfurled to reveal its ingredients, then hammered flat. It had spread out and over the remnants of the wings, so that, taken all in all, most of the wreckage in the valley, other than the metal fragments which had showered further away, was contained within a rectangle not much greater in area than an Association Football field.

  And as the helicopter moved on, he could see the players in the grim game, moving slowly through the wet heather. Where each one had been, their passing was marked here and there by small white flags. As a co-author of the disaster plan, a writer of the rules, he knew what each one meant. Already, the markers were numbered in dozens, but he knew that the count was not yet half-finished. Ahead the flags hung limp on their staves, but those close below the aircraft flapped and fluttered in the down-force of the rotors.

  `Careful, careful,' snapped Skinner. 'Not too low; not too low. Don't disturb them!'

  `There'll be no disturbing them, sir,' said the young pilot. For an instant, the policeman shot him a furious look, until he remembered that different people react to the unthinkable in different ways, some of them ignoble, but most of them understandable.

  `Nonetheless,' said Major Legge. Skinner had seen the Major in other places, matter-of-fact in the face of mayhem. Now there was emotion in his voice. 'Climb a little higher and take us out of here please, Gerald. Forward, steadily in a straight line, if you please.

  The Lieutenant did as he had been ordered, easing the helicopter up by around 100 feet and moving out of the valley, maintaining his angle of flight so that Skinner and the soldier could see ahead of them.

  Beyond the disaster site, the ground seemed to level off into a wide sloping plain, still heather-covered. Legge reached behind him, and produced a heavy pair of binoculars. He focused them on the ground ahead, peering through
them with raised eyebrows.

  `Nothing there,' he said.

  `Wouldn't the nose section have dropped like a stone?' asked Skinner.

  `Not necessarily,' said Legge. 'Things don't have to have wings to make aerodynamic sense. It's more likely that the truncated cabin and tail section would have come straight down. We'll go on for a bit yet.'

  Skinner took the binoculars as they flew ahead, but he saw no more than had the Major.

  As both continued to stare at the ground below them, with increasing frustration, they were startled by the pilot's interruption.

  `Body of water up ahead, gentlemen. Either of you know what it is?'

  Skinner thought for a second or two. 'Almost certainly, it's the Whiteadder reservoir.'

  Ìn that case, sir,' said the Lieutenant, 'should it have a small island in it?'

  `No, it bloody shouldn't! Let's take a look.'

  The craft straightened and speeded up as it made for the reservoir, covering the ground in less than a minute. 'Something there,' said Gerald, as he slowed to a hover, swinging and dipping once more so that they could see.

  It lay on the far side of the reservoir, close to the bank. The water could have been no more than two fathoms deep, for at least six feet of the plane's nose section, and virtually all of the window on the starboard side still showed above the surface.

  `Still intact,' said Skinner quietly, strangely unsure whether to feel relieved.

  `Yes,' said Legge. D'you know, I think it's done a Barnes Wallis. Look at that stuff floating in the middle of the lake. I think that she impacted there, bounced across the surface, and finally settled close to the embankment.'

  `Could be.' The policeman looked across at his companion. `We've got to go in, Major —

  you know that, don't you?' Sombre, the soldier nodded.

  `Shouldn't we wait for the frogmen?' ventured the pilot, warily.

  `No, son,' said Skinner. 'It might only be a million to one shot, but like the man said, they come up more often than you think. Radio in for the police sub-aqua team, sure, but we've got to open her up, right now.'

  `Very good, sir. I'll hover directly above, so that you can winch down.'

  `Don't be bloody silly, Gerald,' Legge drawled. 'There's a rowing boat on the bank. I'm sure the Deputy Chief Constable will allow us to commandeer it! Just put us down beside it, and get ready to row, there's a good lad.'

  ELEVEN

  There was a road about a hundred yards away from the flat area on which the Lieutenant landed. Two cars, one a sleek saloon, the other a battered farm LandRover, had pulled up at the roadside, and their drivers stood together on the other side of the fence, staring and pointing at the part-submerged aircraft section.

  As Skinner jumped down from the helicopter, having changed from his wool worsted into a spare flight suit, his police instincts almost made him yell at the men to move on, but suddenly a thought occurred to him. He squelched across the dewy grass towards them in his Wellingtons.

  `Police,' he called.

  `What's happened?' the driver of the saloon asked him, superfluously. Skinner ignored him, and spoke to the other man.

  `Do you have an axe in the LandRover? We need to get in there, fast, and it looks like we'll have to smash our way through the window.'

  The man wore much the same country worker's uniform as Robert Thacker, the witness; heavy trousers, dirty old sweater, and big boots. He looked at Skinner with the calm appraising stare that farmers and their people reserve for town folk.

  Àn axe! Naw, sorry.' He paused. But Ah do have a posting hammer.'

  Èven better,' said the policeman. 'Can I have it, please?' The man was already ferreting in the back of the much-abused old truck.

  He re-emerged after a few seconds, lugging over his shoulder a huge, flat-headed hammer on a long shaft, far bigger and heavier than any axe.

  `Here y'are then. Will you be able to use it a'right?'

  Ì've handled one of these before. Thanks.' Carrying the huge implement in both hands, Skinner set off across the grass once more, to where Legge and the Lieutenant had manoeuvred the rowing boat into the water, and where they sat.

  He untied the mooring rope, tossed it into the boat, and climbed in beside them, sitting on a cross-bench in the bow. As soon as he was settled, Gerald pushed them free of the bank with an oar, swung the vessel around, and began to row towards the wreck of the plane.

  He was a powerful and skilled oarsman; the distance to the stricken craft closed quickly, until Skinner had to call to the young officer to ease off his strokes. As the boat swung soundlessly against the fuselage, Legge reached out and steadied it by grabbing the handle of the starboard loading door, which showed just above the surface of the water.

  `Here.' Skinner tossed him the mooring rope, which he wound through the handle then handed back to the policeman, who passed it under his bench seat and tied it off against a piece of metal which had peeled back on impact.

  As he sat in the bow, Skinner's eye was level with the bottom of the cockpit window.

  Gingerly, he stood up, then swayed deliberately, testing their makeshift mooring. He was relieved to find that the boat offered a surprisingly stable platform.

  For a second, a feeling of dread flooded through him, and his stomach turned over. But he thrust emotion away once more, and leaned across to peer through the glass.

  The window was misted up on the inside. Hard as he tried, he could see nothing but blackness.

  `Give me the hammer, Gerald,' he ordered, taking the great bludgeon in both hands as the officer passed it up to him.

  `Now, you guys, brace yourselves against the side away from the aircraft, and try to keep this thing as steady as you can. That glass isn't going to give first whack, and I don't want to wind up in the drink!'

  He took a deep breath and tried a practice swing, working out the best way to attack the window. Eventually he was ready. Remembering the principles of karate, he focused on the point where the energy of the blow would be delivered, and swung.

  The huge 'Clang!' echoed across the water. Even with Legge and the Lieutenant holding the boat steady by bracing their feet against the fuselage, Skinner still swayed back. He almost lost his balance as the armoured window threw his own force back at him, but saved himself by dropping into a half-crouch, lowering his centre of gravity.

  As soon as the boat was absolutely steady once more, he stood up and swung again, ready this time for the strength of the reaction. Still the window remained intact, but on the third blow a hairline crack appeared. As fast as he could do so safely, he rained huge hammer blows upon the glass, hitting the same spot every time, until at last the section split in two, and swung inwards, loosened from its frame.

  He crouched in the front of the boat, breathing as hard from the effort as from his customary morning run, and still holding the huge hammer. His heart was pounding and his pulse roared in his ears, but still, the unexpected sound broke through.

  A cry, a plaintive fearful cry. Not quite hysterical, but close to it. A child's sound, a mixture of relief, shock and fear. It came from inside the cockpit.

  Skinner dropped the hammer and stood bolt upright. He stared at Gabriel Legge. The Major's eyes were wide and glistening.

  The cry came again. Louder this time.

  `Major, to this end of the boat! I'm going in.'

  The policeman reached across and took the empty frame of the window in both hands.

  The metal dug sharply into his palms, but he ignored it, straightening his arms, taking his weight on his shoulders and swinging his right leg up and into the opening.

  Straddled across his makeshift doorway he looked down into the half-submerged cockpit.

  One of the officers was slumped in his seat. His shoulders were clear of the water, but from the angle of his lolling head, Skinner knew at once that he was dead.

  Beyond the body, the blond child crouched against the curve of the window. His eyes were wide with fear and shock, and his
mouth was set in a rictus, a grotesque parody of a smile. For a second the policeman's mind swam as he looked at the miracle of the living boy, seeming to stand on the surface of the water.

  In fact he was perched on the aircraft controls. His hair was wet and his clothes, blue trousers and a red polo shirt, were sodden and clung to him. He looked to be around five or six years old.

  Skinner tried to speak, but only a croak came out. He coughed to clear his throat.

  'What's your name, son?' he asked at last.

  `Mark,' said the little boy. There was a shudder in his voice as he stared, stricken with terror, at the intruder.

  `Well, Mark, my man, my name's Bob. You don't need to be frightened any more. I'm going to get you out of here. You'll have to help me, mind. D'you think you can do that?'

  ‘Yesss; he whispered. 'I think so.'

  `First of all, do you know if anyone else is in here?'

  The child nodded his wet, blond head. 'There's Mr Shipley, the pilot, and there's April, the stewardess. They're both down there.' He flicked out a finger, pointing down towards the water beneath his feet. He nodded again, towards the body in the flight seat. 'That's Mr Garrett. He's the first officer. They were showing me how they fly the plane.'

  Skinner took a deep breath. 'Okay, Mark. Now let's see how we're going to get you out of here. Can you swim?'

  The boy shook his head. The two, man and boy, were only two or three yards apart, but the water in the cockpit was black, silted, cold and deep. The policeman knew that if the child fell below the surface his chances of recovering him quickly enough, if at all, would not be great.

  The control console rose out of the water between them. Skinner looked over his shoulder.

  'Major,' he called, 'I want you to stand up behind me and be ready to take a package.'

  He reached into the cockpit, towards the co-pilot and felt below the water-line. Eventually he found the catch of the safety belt. Something was wrapped around it. Without allowing himself to speculate as to what it might be, he flicked up the lever. The belt came undone, and the body of First Officer Garrett rolled from its seat and disappeared below the black surface, to join his dead crew-mates.