Skinner's Ordeal (7 page)

`Mmm.' He spoke through another finger of KitKat. Did you hear anything, apart from Mr Shipley?'

The child munched and knitted his brows. 'Nothing.' He paused. 'No noise. No engines.'

`Then what happened?'

Listening and watching, Skinner realised suddenly that he was holding his breath. He filled his lungs.

`The plane went "Boinng!" and bounced. There was a huge big splash, and it went

"Boinng!". My tummy went all funny. Daddy and Mummy took me to Alton Towers, on the great big ride there. It was just like that, only my tummy went a lot more funny this time.' Mark's eyes were shining — with the memory of his terror, Skinner imagined.

`Then it went "Boinng!" again, and again.'

Ànd all this time April was still cuddling you?'

Ùntil she made a funny noise and let me go.'

`When was that?'

Ì think it was just before the plane stopped.'

Àfter the water came in?'

Mark creased his brows again, his special concentration sign. `No. Before.'

Did the water come in all of a sudden?'

`No. Slowly.'

`Did Mr Shipley say anything else? Or April, or Mr Garrett?' `No. I asked Mr Shipley, "Is this still Emergency Routine?" but he didn't say anything.

`Were you frightened when the water came in?'

Not really,' said the boy slowly. He was an unconvincing liar. `What did you do?'

Ì undid my belt, and climbed up, till it stopped.'

`Were you frightened at all?'

Mark turned his head and looked up at Skinner, shyly embarrassed. 'Yes,' he said, reluctantly and quietly. 'Most of all when Mr Bob banged on the window and broke it.'

`Why were you especially frightened then?' asked Maggie. "Cos I thought he was a big thing come to eat me, like in Power Rangers.'

Again, Skinner laughed aloud. 'No chance of that, Mark. I don't eat wee boys. Just policemen!'

THIRTEEN

They sat in the small private area at the far end of the mobile office, a few feet away from the child survivor, who crouched in his blanket, still unconcerned, drinking Coca-Cola from a can, through a straw, and now devastating a Tunnock's Caramel wafer.

`Tell you something, Mags,' said Skinner. Ì'm going to make sure that flight crew, and especially April the stewardess, get some sort of posthumous award. I don't think I'll have too much trouble persuading the Secretary of State to recommend it.

Ì saw the co-pilot. His neck was snapped by the whiplash of the first impact, and I think his seat-belt had cut right into him. That girl must have kept calm and held on to wee Mark with the last breath in her body.'

Maggie Rose looked at the boy. 'I can't get over it, sir. The only child on board, and the only survivor.'

`Don't dwell on it. Like I said, million to one shots do come up. Someone wins the lottery every week.'

`What about the mother?'

`Jim Elder phoned, while you were getting the wee chap his Coke. The Scottish Office people in London were going to break the news to her, and arrange for her to be brought up. Roland McGrath's father is on his way out here to pick up Mark. He's collecting some clothes for him on the way. D'you hear that, Mark?' he called out to the boy. 'Your grandpa's coming to get you. He'll take you to meet your mum.'

The child looked up and grinned. 'Can we go to UCI?' Ìn the afternoon? That would be a treat, wouldn't it.' `Can I come and see your police station?'

Skinner smiled, and knelt down by the boy's perch on the table. 'Very soon, you can come and spend a whole day with Maggie and me. You can be a police cadet. We'll show you all over our headquarters. You'll even meet the Chief Constable in his big silver uniform.'

`Honest?'

`Dead cert, cross my heart honest.'

He ruffled the child's blond hair, dried now but streaked with mud, and left him to his Coke. As he did so, a phone sounded at the other end of the van, but stopped on the second ring.

Skinner looked towards the sound. 'That'll be Jim Elder's fax,' he said. 'He told me that they had identified most of the passengers, by address, next-of-kin and job, and that he would send it out here.' He glanced back towards Rose. 'He said it would make our hair stand on end.'

The Inspector walked across to the fax machine and watched as the last of the five pages rolled silently from its printer. When it had stopped, she picked them up, checked the page order and handed them to Skinner.

The DCC glanced through the list, then re-read it, more slowly. He looked through it a third time, as if to confirm what he had seen.

The final page was a summary of the list. 'Jesus, Maggie,' he muttered, 'would you look at this! In that plane, we had a member of the House of Lords, two Directors of the Bank of Scotland, seven senior executives of major insurance companies, five directors of a major brewery, eighty-five administrators of various companies, thirteen civil servants of various grades, and one senior policeman — one of our own. On top of that, we had twenty-seven foreign businessmen — eight Japanese, five Americans, four Germans, six French, two Spanish, one Israeli, and one Czech. Last but not least there were the six MPs we know about — one Nat, one Lib Dem, two Tories and two Labour.'

He laid the paper on a desk and shook his head. 'Maggie, a disaster like this is a human tragedy on an enormous scale. This one's a corporate tragedy as well. And it's a political tragedy. It strikes at the whole fabric of the Scottish economy. And with the loss of Roy Old, we suffer too.'

He looked at his assistant. She had gone chalk-white and her hands were covering her face. `Mags, I'm sorry,' he said, realising at once. 'No one told you. Yes, Roy was on the plane. I expected Jim Elder to put an announcement round Fettes. It must have gone out after you left.'

He placed a hand on her shoulder. 'You see, kid? None of us are special. None of us are immune. None of us are free from blame. I sent him down there, and I won't be able to cut myself loose from that one for a long time. I'll tell you something though, and you remember it. If you want to get to the top in this game, you have to practise being callous.

Just like you might think I'm going to be now.'

He picked up a telephone from the desk and dialled, from memory, a mobile number.

It was answered in seconds. 'Detective Superintendent Martin.'

Àndy, it's Bob here. Are you in mid-session?' He paused. `Well, leave the room and call me back on this number.' He read from a handwritten list on the desk, then replaced the phone, to Pick it up as soon as it rang ten seconds later.

Àndy? Right. I've got some pretty shocking news for you, I'm afraid.' Quickly and with no frills, he told Andy Martin of the crash and of Roy Old's death. There was a silence while the news sank in.

`Yes, I know. It would have to be Roy. Aye, and with him and Lottie right on the edge of retirement. But, terrible as it is, unfair or not, life goes on. It means my game plan goes into play a year or so early. You'll be Roy's successor as Head of CID. Pull out of the Drugs Liaison thing, right now, and get back up here. I need you.

`This my friend, will be the biggest investigation that you and I have ever tackled.'

FOURTEEN

The Permanent Secretary told me that official attendance at scenes like this was one of the burdens of my office, Mr Skinner. But he couldn't help me to prepare for it.'

The Rt. Hon. Andrew Hardy MP, Secretary of State for Scotland, and his Security Adviser, walked slowly through the valley amid the wreckage and the heather, and at the heart of a forest of white marker flags. Around them the area was strewn with flight seats, some still in rows, some broken apart and lying individually. By now at least, all of the seats around them were empty.

Both men were ashen-faced.

Ìt's your burden, but it's a duty of my job too, Secretary of State,' said Bob Skinner, 'and of every man and woman here. I don't make political comments as a rule, but next time public sector pay, or staffing comes up in Cabinet, I hope you'll remember this morning.

This is the most horrible task Society could ask any man or woman to perform, yet look around you. You'll see tens and hundreds of people carrying it out without question, although every one of them will be scarred by the experience. They'll carry it with them for the rest of their lives. And so will you. I'm sure it will make you an even better advocate on their behalf.'

The politician looked at the policeman, and nodded.

Skinner had got on well with the Secretary of State, ever since he had agreed to continue to act as his Security Adviser. However, he had been careful to deal more formally with Hardy than with his predecessor, having learned from that disastrous relationship that when dealing with Ministers of the Crown it is safest to serve the office rather than the man.

Or as Sir James Proud had put it in a moment of typical candour: 'Now you know, Bob.

Never trust the bastards any further than you can throw them.'

Privately, Skinner felt that he could trust the straightforward, serious Hardy, but hoped that he would never have to put it to the test.

`Where should we go now?' asked the Secretary of State. Skinner had briefed him earlier, in the command trailer, on the disaster and on the witness accounts of an explosion. Hardy had absorbed the information calmly and without any sign of panic.

Ì suppose we'd better look at the mortuary tent.' The policeman nodded upwards. Just beyond the crest of the slope, they could see the ridge of a great grey marquee which had been set up by the Army.

`Very good. Let's give these chaps a hand.' Two soldiers were walking past them, beginning the trudge up the hill with a laden, blanket-covered stretcher. The Secretary of State took a handle at the front, Skinner at the rear.

`Doesn't bear thinking about,' said Hardy quietly, as they climbed. 'This could be Colin Davey, or Roly McGrath that we're carrying.

Skinner glanced down at a small, bare, bloody foot which showed beyond the end of the blanket, and saw red nail-varnish.

`No,' he said. 'This was a woman.' He saw no point in reminding the Minister that from the accounts of Robert Thacker and the child, Davey and McGrath had been at the heart of an explosion big enough to blow the plane's nose section away from its fuselage.

There had been no room in the Army transporters for trestle tables, and so, inside the long tent, the victims recovered from the valley had been laid on the ground, in neat, ordered rows. Each one was in a black, zippered body-bag.

As Skinner, the Secretary of State and the soldiers laid their stretcher on the ground near one of the tied back entrances to the marquee, Sarah rushed across. Bob opened his mouth to introduce her to Hardy, but she ignored him and bent beside the stretcher. Her face was drawn and her eyes were creased. She was just over thirty, but for the first time ever, her husband saw how she would look in middle age.

Without a word, she drew back the blanket covering the body. Skinner felt the Secretary of State flinch beside him, and heard his gasp as he caught a glimpse of bloody blonde hair, and of a face without recognisable features. 'That's done by the seat in front,' said Sarah, in an emotionless, professional voice, acknowledging their presence without looking up. 'The brace position gives you a chance in a low-level impact, say a crash landing, but in an incident like this, there's no chance at all. All that the doctors here are doing is certifying death' As if to illustrate she placed two fingers against the woman's neck.

'In most cases, even with a post mortem, it's impossible to be specific about the cause. It could be a broken neck, it could be the shock as the impact pulps the internal organs, it could be, and in many cases it probably is, heart failure induced by sheer bloody terror.'

She stood up. 'Okay, boys,' she said to the soldiers. 'Bag her and lace her in order.'

Then: 'As we lay out the bodies, we're trying to Picture the floor of the tent as if it were the valley, south this end, north up there. They're being placed in roughly the position relative to which they were found. We figure it might help in the identification, that it might approximate to the seat order.'

`How many victims have you recovered so far?' asked the Secretary of State, his composure returned.

`They're coming in so thick and fast we ain't keeping a running tab.' She looked along the length of the tent. 'So far I'd guess about a hundred and forty.' She glanced at her watch.

'It's just gone eleven-thirty. Not bad for around two hours' work.'

`Will identification be a problem?'

`Not as great as it might have been. Quite a few of the bodies even have ID in their clothing. Normally, in a high-impact accident you'd expect widespread disfigurement and dismemberment, with bodies burned and personal effects destroyed. Most air accidents turn into human jigsaw puzzles. Not this one, though.'

‘Any ideas as to why?' asked Hardy.

`Well, in this case the plane seems to have been well into its descent when the incident happened, so the seat-belt signs would have been on. That will have had an effect. The people on board seem to have been fairly well disciplined, too. I'm no expert, but from what I've read on the subject, in a situation like this, people often unstrap themselves, so that on impact, they're thrown about, sometimes right through the fuselage, and torn apart.

Not all, but most of the bodies recovered here have still been strapped into their seats.

`Most of all though, I'd say it was the heather. It's so thick up here it seems to have had a certain cushioning effect. When the plane impacted, the fuselage disintegrated, the seats were ripped up and their occupants thrown all around. They were probably all killed instantly at that stage, incidentally. When the bodies landed again, you'd have expected dismemberment to a great extent, but the heather seems to have stopped that.'

Skinner thought of the body which he had found on the hillside and nodded.

`What about burning?' he asked.

`Not much,' said Sarah. 'The explosion of the wing-tanks and the disintegration of the fuselage seem to have happened simultaneously, so apart from a few scorched people in the central area, that hasn't had the effect you'd imagine. What is noteworthy, and the point that will interest you most, is that the greatest burning effect and the greatest damage to the corpses seems to have been found on those recovered from the far end of the valley, and we assume from the front area of the plane.'