Fatal Error

by Michael Ridpath

  ‘No. He was some kind of rent-boy. The local cops say they get killed all the time.’

  Guy drank his beer carefully. ‘Well, I can’t say I’m sad to hear that.’

  ‘No.’ Owen turned to me and gave me a mocking smile. ‘Did Guy tell you, I saw him humping Dominique?’

  ‘No,’ I said, my blood suddenly running cold.

  ‘Yeah. It was the day before you and Guy arrived. Dad was out somewhere. I think she thought I was on the computer. But I wasn’t. I was walking around. Looking.’ He caught my eye and grinned.

  ‘Oh,’ I said. What else had he seen, I wondered.

  ‘Of course that would have been a couple of days before you had it off with her. I bet you didn’t realize you were having the gardener’s leftovers?’

  I felt the anger boil inside me. Of course I hadn’t realized! Damn Owen.

  ‘I told the cops of course. That was why they were so sure he’d killed her.’ Owen saw my discomfort and laughed. ‘I’ve been wanting to tell you that for years.’

  Guy noticed my unease and tried to change the subject slightly. ‘What did Dad say when he heard about the body being found?’

  ‘He was pretty damn happy.’

  ‘I bet he was.’

  ‘He’s coming over next week,’ he said. ‘He’d like to see you.’

  ‘Great,’ said Guy. ‘But you’ll be back in the States by then, won’t you?’

  ‘Yeah. He won’t care, though. He wasn’t real pleased to see me in France.’

  ‘I’m glad you went.’

  Owen snorted into his beer.

  For the rest of the evening Guy steered the conversation away from France and his father. Eventually we left the pub and headed back to his place to play some music and drink some more. We had just crossed a road when a scrawny red-haired man with a ravaged face and ragged clothes lurched in front of us.

  ‘Have you got change for a cuppa tea?’ he said to me. He was obviously drunk. But then so was I. I ignored him.

  ‘Wharrabout you?’ he said to Guy, standing in his way.

  ‘I’m sorry,’ said Guy politely.

  ‘Come on. Gi’ us ten p. You can spare ten p, can’t yer?’ He pushed his face close to Guy with an unsteady leer.

  Guy tried to step around him.

  The man wasn’t having it. ‘Yuppy bastard!’ he shouted.

  Owen moved fast. He grabbed the man by the collar, whipped him off his feet and pinned him against a wall. ‘You leave him alone,’ he hissed.

  The man’s intoxicated eyes looked confused. Then they seemed to focus. He spat, spraying Owen full in the face.

  Owen dropped one hand and hit the man in the stomach. Hard. Very hard. The man slumped to the ground retching.

  Guy grabbed hold of Owen and pulled him back. Owen stared at the man on the pavement, his black eyes gleaming.

  ‘Get him away!’ I shouted to Guy.

  I bent down next to the man, who was gasping for breath. I sat him up against the wall. As the breathing came back the swearing started.

  ‘How are your ribs?’ I tried to feel the man’s chest but he pushed my hand away. ‘Shall I get an ambulance?’

  A stream of abuse. I sat there with him swearing at me for a couple of minutes. He seemed to be recovering. I pulled out a ten-pound note, stuffed it in his pocket and left him. He didn’t thank me. I didn’t expect him to.

  I waited until I was quite sure Owen was in California before I saw Guy again. We went to see a friendly international at Wembley. England were playing Brazil and amazingly managed to hold them to a one–one draw. After the game he gave me a lift in his electric-blue Porsche. As we sat in the car park with U2 loud on the stereo, waiting for several thousand vehicles in front of us to move, I mentioned Owen’s visit.

  ‘It was interesting what your brother said about the gardener being found murdered.’

  ‘Yes,’ said Guy, sounding uninterested.

  ‘Were they sure it was him who killed Dominique?’

  ‘Absolutely sure.’

  ‘I see.’

  I listened to Bono for a minute, summoning up the courage for my next question.

  ‘Guy?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Do you remember the police found one of your footprints outside Dominique’s window?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘How did it get there?’

  Guy paused to let in the clutch as the car in front moved forward six feet.

  ‘I went for a pee on the way to bed.’

  ‘No you didn’t.’

  ‘Of course I did,’ said Guy, avoiding my eye, focusing on the car in front.

  ‘I was there, remember? You came straight back to the guest cottage with me.’

  ‘No. You’ve got that wrong. You’re thinking about some other night. That night I stopped off for a slash in the bushes. The police checked it all out. It’s five years ago. You must be confused.’

  I opened my mouth to protest and then closed it again. History had been rewritten as far as Guy was concerned, and the rewriting had received the official police stamp of approval. It was his version of what happened and he would use the force of his personality to make sure it was the only version. The trouble was, I knew it was a lie.

  ‘I’m seeing Dad tomorrow night. Do you want to come?’ Guy asked.

  ‘No thanks.’

  ‘Why not? It’ll be fun. We’ll go out to dinner and then maybe on to a club later. Don’t worry, he’ll pay.’

  ‘No, really. I’d rather not see him. I suspect he’d rather not see me.’

  ‘After France?’

  ‘After France.’

  The line of cars in front of us began to move. Guy kept the Porsche within a foot of the Vauxhall in front to make sure no one else barged in.

  ‘I try, but it’s hard to forget France,’ he said. ‘I still blame my father for what he did to Mel.’

  ‘I’m not surprised. But you still see him?’

  ‘Oh, yes. He’s a player, you know what I mean?’

  ‘Not exactly.’

  ‘He knows how to live. How to have a good time. He doesn’t take himself too seriously, or other people. Sure, sometimes other people get hurt, like I did and Mel did. But they forget.’

  ‘You can’t go through life thinking about yourself all the time.’

  ‘Why not?’ Guy said. ‘It’s not as if anyone else is going to look out for you, is it? I don’t mean you should actively harm other people. But you have to go out and grab what you want.’

  ‘And that’s what you’ve learned from your father?’ I said, unable to hide the distaste in my voice.

  ‘Oh, come on, it’s not that bad. Live and let live is all it is.’

  ‘So what does Owen think?’

  ‘Owen and Dad are on different planets. The only reason he talks to Dad at all is to keep me happy.’

  ‘It seems strange to me you two are so close. I mean, you seem so different from each other.’

  ‘We are. But we’ve always helped each other out. Right from when Owen was born.’

  I felt like pointing out the obvious contradiction with Guy’s earlier musings, but I decided not to. Emotions have their own logic, as do families.

  ‘Mom and Dad have occasionally shown some interest in me,’ Guy went on, ‘but none at all in Owen. Basically, I’ve been the only person looking out for him. And he looks out for me.’

  He laughed. ‘I remember when I was eight. Mom and Dad were still together and we were living in LA. We were by the swimming pool. I had committed some minor crime, taking a glass down to the poolside or something, and my father was tearing strips off me. He used to get really angry then, probably because he was pissed off with Mom. Anyway, he was taking it out on me. It went on for ten minutes or so.

  ‘Owen was watching it all. He was only five, but he was a big five-year-old, as you can imagine. Suddenly he let out this horrible scream and charged my father. The two of them went flying into the pool. Dad was wearing a suit. He was not
amused. Owen went to bed early for a week. But he didn’t care. He was just pleased he’d helped me. It’s good when you’ve got a brother like that.’

  ‘It must be,’ I said, but I was thinking how lucky I was to have a normal sister whom I quite liked but scarcely saw rather than a brother like Owen.

  ‘Are you sure you don’t want to come tomorrow night?’ Guy said.

  ‘Quite sure. But I hope you have a good time together.’

  I saw him a couple of days later in the pub after work. Or after my work. I guessed he had spent the afternoon watching television.

  ‘So, how did it go with your dad?’

  Guy scowled. ‘Nightmare.’

  ‘Late night, was it?’

  ‘No. Not that kind of nightmare. A real nightmare. He wants me to get a job.’

  ‘Outrageous.’

  ‘Don’t be so bloody sarcastic. I told him acting was my job. It can be damned hard work. But he doesn’t seem to think that counts. He says I’m pissing away my life. He said he’s going to cut off my money.’

  ‘Harsh,’ I said. I had always been curious where Guy got his funds from.

  ‘Yeah. I’ve got a couple of trusts set up by Patrick Hoyle and I get the income from them. I said he couldn’t do anything about them, they were mine. He assured me he could. And I’m sure he can. Hoyle would do anything for him, including stopping me getting my hands on my own cash.’

  ‘The rest of us have to work,’ I said.

  ‘Don’t come over all proletarian with me, Davo. I know lots of people have to work. But not my father. It’s the hypocrisy that gets me. If it’s OK for him to spend his life lying around by pools on the French Riviera or skiing in Villars, why can’t I go to the pub every now and then?’

  ‘But he made his money,’ I said.

  ‘That’s exactly what he said,’ Guy muttered crossly. ‘It still pisses me off. And he’s going to sell my plane.’

  ‘Sounds like you’re in trouble.’

  ‘Yeah.’ Guy finished his beer and stood up to fetch a refill. ‘But I’m not going to give in. I know I can act. In a couple of years, I’ll show him.’

  He returned with a bottle of beer for him and a pint of bitter for me. ‘Anyway, how are you?’

  ‘Good,’ I said. ‘Ingrid’s coming back to London next week.’

  ‘Really? Are you going to make a move?’

  It was a question I had been asking myself ever since I had last seen her. The truth was, I wasn’t sure. There was no doubt I liked her, and I thought she liked me. But I didn’t want to screw up our friendship.

  ‘I don’t know.’

  ‘Go for it,’ said Guy, the master strategist. ‘I can get Mel to put in a good word.’

  ‘I don’t think that will be necessary.’

  ‘Hey! I’ve got an idea. Why don’t we go for a trip together for a long weekend in Golf Juliet? You, me, Mel and Ingrid. We could go to France. Or how about Scotland? I’ve always wanted to fly around the Hebrides. If my father’s serious about selling the plane I want to get the most use out of it I can this summer. What do you think?’

  ‘Sounds good.’

  ‘At the very least, you’ll get to know Ingrid better. At best …’

  ‘Are you trying to set me up?’

  ‘Of course I am. What’s the matter? Don’t you want to do it?’

  I was slightly embarrassed at Guy trying to direct my love life, and I wasn’t even sure what my plans were for Ingrid if I even had any. Also, I had a big accounting exam the following week, for which I had done precious little work. I had performed very badly in the last exam after a heavy night out with Guy, and I had been warned by my boss to ‘pull my socks up’ this time. But a trip to Scotland would be fun. I’d worry about my socks later.

  ‘Yeah, I do,’ I said. ‘It’s a good idea.’

  20

  We all met at seven thirty on a wet, cloudy Friday morning at Elstree aerodrome. Guy and I whipped the covers off the plane and walked round to make sure everything was as it should be.

  ‘Are you sure this is a good idea?’ asked Ingrid doubtfully, looking up at the sky, a roof of thick grey only a few hundred feet above us.

  ‘It’ll be fine,’ said Guy. ‘My rating lets me fly through this. I’ve checked the weather and the sun’s shining in Scotland. All we have to do is get there.’

  I sat in the front next to Guy, with Ingrid and Mel in the rear seats. The Cessna 182 was one of the few single-engined planes powerful enough to carry four people and enough fuel to go any distance. We took off, and within a few seconds we were in cloud. A minute later, and we were above it.

  We skimmed along on autopilot up the backbone of England a couple of hundred feet above the clouds, being passed from RAF controller to controller. We didn’t need it: ours was the only aircraft in the sky that early in the morning. I had only a few hours’ training under my belt, I hadn’t even done my first solo flight, but I was fascinated to watch Guy. He had already told me a lot about how the Cessna worked, and now he told me more.

  As we reached the Clyde the cloud began to break and Guy lowered the aircraft beneath it. We crept along the Firth of Clyde through the gloom, passing low over a nuclear submarine and its attendant helicopter, skipped through a gap in the hills by the Crinan Canal, and emerged into glorious sunshine. Suddenly the sea changed from murky grey to brilliant blue, with patches of turquoise and cyan. Everywhere we looked there was sea, coastline, rocks, inlets and mountains. It was very difficult to tell what was the mainland and what was island. In the back, the women stopped talking and started looking. It was unbelievably beautiful.

  We reached the south coast of Mull and followed it along until we passed over the monastery at Iona, a cluster of white and stone buildings clinging to the edge of the world. Guy descended to a hundred feet and we sped across the water towards the island of Staffa and Fingal’s Cave. At that height we could see right into the cave, with its black basalt columns. A couple of sightseeing boats rocked as we flew over and a flock of birds rose into the air in protest. We followed the north coast of Mull, passed low over an impossibly romantic castle and climbed for the approach to Oban, where we had planned to land for fuel and food. Guy dodged the mountain that blocked the approach path and landed the Cessna expertly, with the barest whisper from the wheels as we touched down.

  We had lunch at a hotel close to the airfield. The girls, who had been showing signs of advanced boredom as we had droned over the English cloud, had come alive. We sat in the garden of the hotel, the heat of the sun tempered by a pleasant sea breeze, congratulating ourselves on not being in London. In the afternoon Guy planned to take us up between the Inner Hebrides and the mainland to Broadford, a small airfield on the Isle of Skye. We would spend the following day walking, before nipping over to Barra in the Outer Hebrides in the evening and then home the day after that.

  I noticed that Guy drank a couple of pints and it made me uneasy. I also felt foolish. I knew Guy was an experienced pilot and I knew he could handle his drink, but I also knew that he was breaking the rules. Of course, that was the difference between him and me. He broke the rules and I didn’t. Although as a student pilot I wasn’t allowed to handle the controls without a qualified instructor, I restricted myself to a Coke, as if reducing the average intake of alcohol in the cockpit would help.

  We returned to the airfield and refuelled. I checked the weather fax. I had just completed the meteorology paper in my pilot’s course and found the subject fascinating. What I read worried me. I went out to the apron and found Guy.

  ‘Here, come in and look at this,’ I said quietly.

  He followed me into the caravan, which doubled as a control tower, and looked at the fax. Under Inverness it had the words ‘PROB 30 tempo tsra bkn0010cb’.

  ‘So?’ said Guy.

  ‘So doesn’t that mean thunderstorms?’

  ‘No, Davo, it means that in Inverness there’s a thirty per cent probability that for a temporary period there might be a
thunderstorm. Inverness is on the east coast and we’re on the west.’

  ‘But isn’t Inverness the nearest place on the fax to Skye?’

  Guy hesitated. ‘Maybe. But look outside. Where are the clouds? It’s a great day.’ He saw the doubtful look in my eyes. ‘They always say there’s a chance of thunder in the summer. It’s just the Met Office covering its arse. We see a thunderstorm, we fly around it, OK?’

  ‘OK,’ I nodded, reflecting how much happier I had been flying with Guy when I knew nothing about the subject myself.

  We took off into clear skies and headed north along the craggy coastline, passing lighthouses, lochs, birds, crofts and castles. We nosed up the Sound of Sleat, past Mallaig towards the Kyle of Lochalsh. To our left were the dark mountains of Skye and to our right the Highlands. I looked over my right shoulder for Ben Nevis, which should have been about thirty miles behind us. I couldn’t see it. An enormous black cloud had suddenly appeared, rearing up over the mountains. It rose thousands of feet up into the sky, tapering into a tower that formed a flat white top. An ‘anvil’. It was a massive cumulonimbus. A thundercloud.

  I had read about thunderclouds in my meteorology texts. They are a pilot’s worst enemy. Wind can make landing difficult, rain can make visibility tricky, but a thundercloud can shake an aeroplane to bits. In a big, mature thundercloud, warm air is dragged into the centre of the thunderstorm and thrust thousands of feet upwards, where it cools and rushes back towards the ground in a vicious downdraught. The resulting turbulence produces sudden shocks that an airframe is not designed to withstand.

  I tapped Guy on the shoulder and pointed.

  ‘That’s OK,’ he said. ‘You often get cloud over mountains. We’ll be all right down here.’

  We were approaching the shoulder of a hill that plunged down to the sound. We passed it and turned northwards. Right in front of us was a wall of black. The aeroplane shuddered a little, as if in nervous anticipation.

  Another one.

  Mountains rose above us on either side. It was impossible to fly around this as Guy had promised.

  ‘What now?’

  ‘We go under it,’ said Guy. ‘There might be a bit of turbulence, but we’re nearly there.’