by Matt Hammond
‘Boy’, he thought; ‘Do I have an explanation for you!’
Chapter 2
David and Katherine took their seats. The doors were sealed. The plane disconnected itself from the boarding gate and taxied towards the runway.
David noted an incongruous ‘ker–thunk’ as the wheels bumped over the joints in the concrete. Aircraft streaked past the window, followed by a momentary roar from their engines. As the plane lined up at the end of the runway, the flight crew made final pre-flight checks.
David looked around the cabin. No talking, just nervous yawning. People stared at the in-flight magazine. Some flicked through the new book they had bought for the flight.
Like bumble- bees, jumbo jets are theoretically incapable of flying. They leave the ground purely through the collective willpower of those on board, hence the solemnity of the atmosphere inside. Pre–flight food and drinks had been cleared away. Trays were returned to the upright position, the onboard entertainment system was paused and the lights dimmed.
Now everybody, concentrate.
The cabin crew sat, palms on knees, staring benignly down the aisle. Then a silent chant began. Each passenger took up their own internal incantation until three hundred people were of one mind.
Quiet contemplation was broken as the captain pushed the throttle forward. The passengers were forced back in their seats, their knuckles whitening. They chanted louder, their voices drowned as the roar of four giant turbines grasped at the air in front of them.
Eyes closed as the speed increased.
Sheer human willpower was now seeping into the superstructure, enveloping the entire airframe. The pilot glanced to his right, then at his instruments as the plane passed the control tower. Suddenly the runway lights dipped beneath the nose as it lifted, carried by a cushion of collective mental effort into the clear sky above.
Five hours into the flight, the meal, served as soon as the plane had levelled out, was beginning to have an effect. The ambient noise level disguised the sounds, and hence directions, from where the various offensive odours were emanating. David thought they were permeating through several rows of seats.
The trick was to just sit and hold it in, hoping it would return like warm wax in a lava lamp, and dissipate. He had read the laminated sheet suggesting various exercises to pass the time. No advice on how to safely and politely pass wind at thirty thousand feet.
It was 4.00 a.m. Finally feeling drowsy, he closed his eyes. His hearing became more acute, more attuned to sounds other than the incessant low whistle of the engines. He thought he could hear another noise hidden within the engine sounds, a metallic banging as if someone was deep inside the fuselage hitting pipework with a hammer. Each time he opened his eyes, the distinctive sound melted away as he looked for any sign that other people could hear it too. When he closed his eyes again, the sound returned.
Beneath shoeless feet, under the carpeted floor, below three metres of airframe, there was nothing - an empty expanse of screaming icy air. David resigned himself to being disturbed by his latent fear and morbid imagination for the duration of the flight.
He yelped as a loud bang woke him with a start, the pain deep in his neck thrusting down his left arm as he straightened in his seat. There had been no loud bang and the subdued scene around him was as he had left it before drifting off to sleep. A screen attached to the bulkhead displayed a map of the world indicating that a small yellow aircraft, trailing a thin line of the same colour, was now more than half way to Singapore.
It was reassuring the map showed no other planes in the vicinity. In fact, according to the screen, no other planes were currently in the air anywhere else in the world. He would be able to anticipate the approach into Singapore by watching the numbers on the altimeter decrease.
As the cabin crew processed along the aisle checking seatbelts and clipping trays back into place, he turned to Katherine who had been asleep for much of the flight. “I think we’ll be landing soon.”
She nodded sleepily and he realised they had probably not spoken more than a dozen words to each other since take–off. They never usually spoke between eleven-thirty at night and seven-thirty in the morning. The previous few hours of silence was no more than habit.
The captain appeared to have browsed through the manual of alternative landing techniques during the long flight. Whoever was at the controls now decided to begin the descent in the manner of a small child going down stairs on their backside.
Every few minutes the plane would suddenly descend as if from one step to the next. This was not going to be a landing, it was controlled dropping. The plane rolled alarmingly to the left, David looked towards the window, two seats away, and saw sea, palm trees and small boats just above the wing tip. The plane continued in a sweeping arc before levelling off as sharply as it had turned.
Through the window he could make out the unfamiliar skyline of Singapore. It sped past at a crazy angle as if gravity itself had suddenly been switched off and everything on the face of the earth not firmly rooted to it was now rapidly sliding away. David imagined every human, every building, sliding off as the oceans poured themselves around the curvature of the earth before forming a giant tear and dropping off at the South Pole.
There was a final plummet and the wheels banged hard onto the runway, the combination of fierce braking and reverse thrust making the cabin bulkheads shake violently from side to side.
As they stepped from the plane, it was as if they had flown in a huge circle. The walkway to the terminal seemed identical to the one in London, the baggage trolleys looked familiar and the brightly–lit posters were advertising the same cameras, phone companies and credit cards as the ones they had seen at Heathrow.
It was not long before some of the essence of the true culture beyond the airport began to infuse the surroundings. It began simply - exotic foliage in locally decorated pots lined their path and signs were bi–lingual, with English as the second language. As they moved closer to Immigration, the hum of humanity grew louder. So many different cultures and creeds were being drawn towards this point.
Insomnia–induced meanderings abruptly halted as his mind returned him back to London. By now the police would have viewed the security camera footage and identified David Turner leaving the car park shortly before the body was discovered. They had tracked him onto the plane where he had remained secure and contained. The authorities in Singapore had been contacted and alerted to his imminent arrival, and armed police would be waiting to arrest him as he approached the immigration desk.
Mingling with a nonchalant lack of interest amongst the slow moving mass of new arrivals might just fool any welcoming party. Katherine had joined the shortest queue. At least this would reduce an unbearable sense of expectation that was now sending his stomach into sickening spasms.
The queue edged slowly forward. David watched the face of the officer scrutinising first passports, then documents, then back to the passport. Had he been told to look out for him? Did he already have a photograph of David? Had he already seen him waiting in line and was coolly working his way through the line until David reached his desk?
David noticed a door opening. Two uniformed men emerged and walked towards them, not the crowd in general but the Turners in particular. Halfway across the floor, the pair divided. David’s heart pounded in his chest. He kept his head fixed straight but his eyes hurt in their sockets as they strained to the right. David moved closer to Katherine in a vain attempt to gain protection. “Excuse me,” a polite but firm voice said, “Please follow me.”
The instruction was directed at both of them. David realised that as far as the Singaporeans were concerned, they had travelled as a pair. It would be prudent to arrest them both.
Katherine still had no idea what had happened to him in London. He had wrestled with telling her during the flight but she had fallen asleep for several hours, then woke and got into deep conversation with a woman sitting next to her who would have been able to hear eve
ry word. It now seemed a feeble excuse but the opportunity to explain his incredible story had not presented itself during the entire flight.
Now he was glad she would be able to tell the absolute truth when the time came to be questioned about their short time apart prior to their departure from Heathrow.
David expected to be guided towards the door the two men had emerged from. His mouth was dry. He prepared for an angry exchange. Instead they were led parallel to the queue of waiting passengers to a previously vacant immigration desk at which the second man now sat looking intently at the screen in front of him.
The first man smiled. “No point in waiting long time when we have an officer free to assist, please?” He gestured towards the free desk. Katherine thanked him with the smile David knew she reserved for any man in a uniform. The immigration official ignored their approach and continued to stare intently at the computer screen. He took their passports one at a time, scrutinising first the person, then the photo, before waving them through, to David’s disbelief.
Their luggage had been checked all the way through to Auckland, meaning they could bypass the baggage carousel; pass through customs unchallenged and out of the terminal to the rank of waiting taxis, a row of twenty identical Datsuns.
David slowly stretched his limbs and breathed in the warm damp tropical air, contemplating how easily he had succeeded in avoiding arrest. He couldn’t ignore the unwashed hair and body odour of the man who now approached with a half toothless grin offering them his taxi. Having spent half a day sitting in the same seat, he probably smelt equally unpleasant. “Can you take us to our hotel please?”
“Sure. You get in, I take you.”
David took the front seat, noticing the badly frayed and tattered owner's licence untidily taped to his side of the dash. The photograph on the licence bore no resemblance to the current driver.
Loose change and empty cigarette packets were scattered beneath his feet. The driver reset the meter before glancing over his shoulder, throwing the shift into ‘drive’ and nudging the nose of the car into the stream of taxis exiting the airport.
David and Katherine sat in silence, staring out at the sights of this unfamiliar city–state. Their driver made an attempt at friendly conversation. “You like a David Beck-ham, Manjester Unided?”
David did not hold out much hope of the driver understanding anything other than a very simple reply, which was all he was prepared to offer given that the question had encapsulated about seventy-five per cent of his entire football knowledge. “Yes, very good,” he answered with no enthusiasm, It sounded patronising, a belittling answer to satisfy a simple soul, but it was genuinely his most eloquent answer on the subject. He turned to Katherine to be rescued. “Look at that,” he said, pointing to some dull, uninteresting apartment block. “People actually live in there.”
Luckily years of previous experience had taught her to recognise when her husband began floundering in a sea devoid of sporting knowledge, a completely dead sea as far as he was concerned. She was ready to dive in, a ring of life-saving banality tucked under her arm. But first she always relished the few seconds of silence she made him endure as she circled for a few moments; hesitating, just to watch his ever–widening eyes sink lower and lower into the murky depths of embarrassment and ignorance. “Do they really?” She smiled. “How interesting.”
This device was designed to eliminate the driver from any further conversation. He would not feel confident in either his language or cultural skills to attempt a three way conversation, particularly when the other parties were husband and wife. Just for good measure, she secured his total exclusion. “Jan and Tony came here for their honeymoon, do you remember?” There was little chance they would have travelled in this particular taxi.
At the hotel, they successfully negotiated the curious ritual of giving their hand luggage to the porter at reception, only to have to buy it back from him in their room five minutes later.
The next eighteen hours were spent in a listless, semi-conscious state. They had planned to shop, eat and take in the sights but the heat and jet lag had suppressed their appetite for anything. Completely drained by lack of sleep and the disorientation it induced, an overly frantic search for a suitable restaurant found them sitting down to a hearty steak dinner at eleven–thirty in the morning, their brains telling them it was only seven-thirty a.m. and their appetites craving protein and carbohydrates.
The reality of being homeless added to their sense of disassociation. Enveloped in a suffocating oriental haze of humidity, relieved only by the artificial air–conditioned chill of the numerous shopping malls, their senses assaulted at every turn by the vibrant atmosphere of Singapore, all only added to an unnerving sense of unreality and disconnection with the present.
David’s mind was on the next leg of the journey. Too much fatty food and far too much caffeine continued playing tricks. He imagined they were in a jungle clearing, trapped amidst the chatter of machine gun fire. motorbikes and mercenaries selling cheap electronic equipment. They would be rescued by an SAS taxi driver and delivered safely back to the airport to await the last flight out of the country.
Energy-sapping fatigue was not a pleasant feeling. He progressively lost concentration as they sat in the airless cab on the way back to the hotel, thankful someone else was taking the risk of negotiating busy, unfamiliar streets.
Young men on whining mopeds careered past, weaving dangerously between the cars and trucks. Each bike and rider looked identical to the last, their brightly–coloured shirts flapping wildly in the hot breeze as they overtook the taxi, clasping a box or a large bag of food in the arm which was not aiming the small bike at the traffic ahead.
David’s head drooped and his eyes came to rest on the taxi driver’s licence. The face looked the same as the driver the day before. He looked and the driver smiled. “You like soccer? Chelsea? West- a–Ham?”
David shook his head.
Katherine had fallen asleep in the back of the taxi by the time they arrived back at their hotel. “I’ll give you the key so you can go straight to bed,” David suggested to her. “I just want to check to see if we have any emails.”
He fed some coins into the computer he’d noticed in the lobby. The clock on the website flashed UK time, confirming why he was feeling so exhausted at six-thirty in the evening.
You have no new messages.
On the opposite wall was an ATM machine. He remembered the credit card that had appeared in his wallet the day before.
He had successfully left the UK, had entered Singapore unchallenged and was now an insignificant speck amongst four million others. Taking out his wallet, he almost hoped the card would be gone. It may have already been cancelled and would remain inside the machine.
Please enter your PIN number and press OK.
He fumbled for the small scrap of paper, typed in the number and pressed OK. The option menu appeared. The card was still active.
How could the owner be so stupid as to not cancel a credit card with such a huge balance on it? The answer came straight back at him - because it had belonged to the man who had fallen to his death in the car park!
The other men had stolen it from him. A dead man cannot cancel his own credit card. This would give the thief time to do some serious spending before it was cancelled by the company who had issued it.
Questions began to flow once more. What was his part in their plan and why had they planted the card on him instead of just taking it for themselves? How had he managed to evade the police, leave the country and enter Singapore unchallenged?
The machine beeped, reminding him to make a selection. He looked again at the options. The balance had been some incredibly high amount when he had checked it back in London. He decided to get another printout and keep this one, then get another one in about twelve hours' time, just before leaving Singapore, and check if anyone else was using the account.
The dead man may have a wife or partner who shared the account and
he wanted to see if they were continuing to use it, He knew when Katherine had her credit card stolen in Spain both the cards on the same account were invalidated.
He suspected he was already being followed or tracked in some way. The coincidence of apparently getting the same taxi driver twice in a city of four million people had already heightened the suspicion that had been lurking ever since the security guard had somehow found him in the toilet at Heathrow.
The machine beeped again. He pressed the button. It whirred and sent the card back out. David placed it into his wallet. In the lift back up to his room on the twentieth floor, he read the printout. The number was huge, but was it exactly the same as the first one he had read? He would check it against the next enquiry he made.
David decided not to tell Katherine any of this until they were on the plane heading for New Zealand. The long flight would give him plenty of time to explain what had happened so far and she could help him decide what to do next.
* * *
The second night was worse than the first. Their body clocks were stubbornly refusing to adjust to the time difference and David sat in bed pretending to read the hotel magazine at 3.00 a.m., his head spinning. Katherine lay beside him reading her latest book. This was not the best time to broach the subject of his lost half an hour at Heathrow.
They finally drifted into a fitful sleep before waking again two hours later. “Are you OK? You’re very quiet.” Katherine broke the silence as they repacked the small amount of belongings they were carrying. David was taking longer than usual to slip into the happier relaxed frame of mind that was usually evident within a few hours of beginning a holiday. For Katherine at least, this certainly felt like a holiday. “Not homesick already I hope.”
