Permissible Limits

by Hurley, Graham

  I could feel a deep chill inside me. This was news I didn’t want to hear, not from Dennis, not from anybody. Adam forging my signature was bad enough. This was even worse.

  I leaned forward, sparing Dennis the obvious question, knowing I had to confront it.

  ‘So why didn’t he tell me?’

  ‘About the Spitfire?’

  ‘About everything.’

  ‘Pass.’

  The waiter arrived with the food. After Dennis had finished telling me about Steve, I couldn’t face the scallops.

  ‘So he wasn’t insured? Is that what you’re saying?’

  ‘Yep, more or less. There were certain things he saved on. That was one of them. He’s got insurance, of course he has, but nothing like enough.’

  ‘So where does that leave him?’

  ‘He’ll be down for the Spitfire. Or most of it.’

  ‘And how much is that?’

  ‘Half a million, probably more. It’s early days but I went through some stuff he faxed me this morning. Bottom line, he’s stuffed. Here. I’ll show you -’

  His hand was back in the briefcase. I told him not to bother.

  ‘Your chips are cold,’ I said briskly. ‘Let’s go and talk to Steve.’

  Back in the car, Dennis tallied the worst-case options. If the damage to the Spitfire was as bad as he suspected, and if the insurance situation was indeed the way Steve had described it, then Liddell Engineering - on the most optimistic assessment - was effectively bust. No business working on a £300,000 secured bank loan could afford to absorb a bill the size that Harvey Glennister would be sending in.

  ‘Secured?’ The word sounded like a death knell.

  ‘Yeah, on you.’

  ‘You mean Old Glory.’

  ‘No, you. Your assets.’

  ‘What assets?’ I laughed. Dennis and I had been through almost exactly this conversation only a year or so ago. On that occasion it had been the Mustang rebuild that had plunged us into debt and it was only with Harald’s help that we’d emerged intact. Since then, a great deal of hard work plus a growing reputation in the States had won us a modest credit balance at the bank, but this - all too obviously - was now history. Thanks to Steve Liddell, Old Glory was back in deep, deep trouble.

  I glanced across at Dennis. Over the last couple of years, at his insistence, I’d learned to find my way around a balance sheet. Figures no longer terrified me. Only their consequences.

  ‘So exactly how is the loan secured?’ I asked him.

  ‘On the house.’

  I nodded. The house carried a £110,000 mortgage. On a rising market, if we were very lucky, we might get £250,000.

  ‘And the rest? What’s that secured on?’

  ‘The Mustang.’

  ‘Does Harvey Glennister have an urge to fly Mustangs?’ Dennis laughed again, then returned my look.

  ‘Are you serious? You want to trade?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘Are you sure? Only…’ He shrugged, disappointed, and for a moment I glimpsed the wheeler-dealer of Dennis Wetherall’s dreams, the fast-talking entrepreneur he might have become had accountancy not given him such rich pickings.

  ‘The Mustang’s not on offer,’ I said quietly. ‘I’ll live in a tent before I part with it.’

  Dennis swerved to avoid a bicycle.

  ‘At this rate,’ he said grimly, ‘you might have to.’

  Steve Liddell’s new premises were on the south side of Jersey airport, a brightly painted industrial unit that Dennis told me he’d taken on a three-year lease. There were big roll-up doors at the front, and the hardstanding outside gave direct access on to the airfield perimeter track.

  Dennis parked the Porsche on the empty tarmac and I stood beside the car for a moment or two, watching the pilot of a passing 737 lift the nosewheel and haul the aircraft into a steep climb. Adam, bless him, had been right about flying. Once the virus is in your bloodstream, it never leaves you.

  Dennis was already making for a little glassed-in porch on the side of the unit. I called for him to wait, catching him up as he pushed in through the door. Beyond the porch was a tiny reception area. Two desks formed an L shape. There was a computer on one desk and a pile of unopened mail on the other. The rubber plant in the corner needed a lot of attention.

  I joined Dennis beside the computer. The screen-saver featured little cartoon biplanes flapping from one corner to another. Each aircraft towed a banner advertising Liddell Engineering and I was still wondering how much the software must have cost when Dennis nudged the mouse, returning the screen to a draft letter. The letter was evidently fending off an anxious customer. It seemed he’d heard about the accident with the Spitfire and wanted an assurance that his own aircraft, booked for routine maintenance, would be in safe hands.

  Neither of us heard Steve come in. When I turned round, he was standing in an open doorway on the far side of the reception area. He was wearing grubby olive overalls. He had his hands on his hips and his face was in deep shadow under the peak of his Timberland cap. He was staring at the computer screen.

  Dennis, typically, wasn’t the least bit embarrassed.

  ‘Tried to call you.’ He gestured at the unmanned mini-switchboard. ‘No reply.’

  Steve wiped his face with the back of his hand. I’d only met him a couple of times before, when Adam and I were over on business, but I was shocked by how much he seemed to have aged. He was a tall lad, broad-shouldered, well-built, with an open, cheerful manner and a readiness to help that had always impressed me. Now, though, his body seemed to sag inside the overalls. His face was grey with exhaustion and when he extended a reluctant hand in my direction, the smile was utterly lifeless.

  He gestured at the still-open door.

  ‘Come through.’

  The hangar was empty except for an old Piper Cherokee jacked up in one corner. There was a big scorchmark on the concrete and Dennis had been right about the damage to the roof. The smell was still there too, acrid and bitter. Rubber tyres, I thought, and probably the plastic coating on the wiring looms.

  At the back of the hangar was another door. Beyond it lay the office that Steve used. It was sparsely furnished, a desk, a chair, an airways map taped to the wall, a FlyPast calendar still showing January, and two filing cabinets shrouded in polythene. On the floor beside the filing cabinets was a line of cardboard boxes stuffed with documents. A month or so after his move to these new premises, Steve had yet to unpack.

  He offered us both a cigarette. Neither of us smoked. We talked about Adam for a couple of minutes and Steve repeated what Harald had already told me, that the Cessna he’d been flying had only just been through its fifty-hour checks. It was an oldish aircraft, first registered in 1968, and Steve had been looking after it on behalf of the owner, who was currently on an extended business trip to Thailand. They apparently had an arrangement whereby Steve could loan or hire the aircraft to anyone he trusted, but when I pressed him for details - more about Adam than the Cessna - he refused to meet my eyes. The thing was a mystery, he kept saying. He didn’t have a clue what might have happened and as far as he was concerned the whole episode was now in the hands of the AAIB.

  The police had mentioned the AAIB when they’d first broken the news about Adam. The Air Accidents Investigation Branch is a kind of government detective agency, and right now I knew that their inspectors would be wanting to find out exactly what had happened to the Cessna.

  ‘Have they been in touch?’ I asked Steve.

  ‘They’ve interviewed me.’

  ‘Already?’

  ‘Yeah. They came this morning. Two of them.’ He looked at me, uncertain, not wanting to go on.

  ‘And?’ I said.

  Steve shrugged, then gestured limply at one of the drawers.

  ‘They went through the technical logs, all the paperwork. I told them everything was fine. There wasn’t a problem.’ He put his head back and looked up at the ceiling. ‘They wanted to know about Adam, too.’

/>   ‘And what did you tell them?’

  ‘I said he’d been fine, you know, fit, well, nothing wrong with him…’ His voice trailed away.

  ‘Go on,’ I said. ‘What else did they ask?’

  ‘They wanted his log book. They wanted to know how much experience he’d had. I couldn’t help them with the log book but I told them he wasn’t… you know… exactly a novice.’

  I didn’t oblige Steve with the smile he wanted. Adam’s log book was back at Mapledurcombe. I could picture it in the top drawer in his office desk. Mine lay beside it.

  ‘Will they be wanting to talk to me?’ I wondered aloud. ‘Only I’d have thought -’

  ‘Yeah,’ Steve cut in. ‘They said.’

  ‘Said what?’

  ‘Said they’d get in touch. I gave them your number. I didn’t think you’d mind.’

  ‘Not at all.’ I frowned. ‘So did you get the feeling they’d come to any conclusions?’

  ‘About what?’

  I stared at Steve, trying not to lose my temper. There were questions I was desperate to have answered but he looked so battered, so physically drained, that I almost felt sorry for him. I took a deep breath.

  ‘About Adam’s accident,’ I said patiently. ‘What I want to know is whether or not they’ve come up with anything.’

  Steve shook his head.

  ‘They’ve impounded the ATC tapes,’ he said, ‘and they told me they’d talked to the weather people at Bracknell, but I think that’s about it. Adam just fell off the radar. They haven’t a clue why.’

  I gazed at him a moment longer, then looked away at Dennis. I’d had enough of asking questions for one morning.

  Dennis returned to the incident with Harvey Glennister’s Spitfire. What kind of state was it in? Where had it gone?

  Steve hunted for an envelope in a drawer. He emptied the contents on to the desk, a gesture - it seemed to me - of resignation. Dennis glanced through the photos then passed them to me. They showed the burned-out fuselage and the buckled panels on the wings. The paintwork was bubbled and blistered and the canopy over the cockpit had been shattered by the heat. The cowling was off the nose and damage to the big Merlin engine was plainly visible. In photo after photo, it looked like someone had taken a giant blow torch to the aircraft, peeling back its skin, exposing the bones beneath.

  ‘It’s gone back to the mainland,’ Steve was saying. ‘They took it away a couple of days ago.’

  ‘Who took it?’

  ‘Glennister’s people.’

  I’d got to the bottom of the pile of photographs. Dismembered by a couple of sturdy engineers, the aircraft had been packed into containers and trucked away.

  Dennis wanted to know more.

  ‘What about the AAIB?’

  ‘They weren’t interested.’

  ‘They knew about it? You told them?’

  Steve’s hesitation gave him away.

  ‘They’d found out from someone else,’ he said at last. ‘One of the airport people, I expect.’ He nodded vaguely in the direction of the terminal buildings in a gesture that could have meant anybody.

  Dennis was getting tetchy.

  ‘You’re telling me they won’t investigate?’

  ‘There’s no need. No one was hurt.’

  ‘Half a million quid’s worth of aeroplane?’

  ‘That’s not their problem.’

  ‘No, but it might be ours.’

  Steve ignored the remark, slumped in his chair behind the desk. He tapped ash into the waste bin at his feet and began to fiddle with an old altimeter he must have rescued from the skip. It was lying there on the desk beside the telephone and for the first time I noticed the small framed photo partially hidden behind it. It was angled away from me but I could see enough to register the face of a child. She looked young, pre-school certainly.

  Dennis was starting to ask the harder questions. He was, if anything, even more aggressive.

  ‘Ellie’s down for three hundred grand,’ he reminded Steve. ‘We need to know about the status of the loan.’

  Steve gestured hopelessly at the photos.

  ‘I’m trying to sort it out.’

  ‘How?’

  ‘By talking to the insurers.’

  Dennis muttered something terse about Glennister. The man had a box at Lloyd’s. He knew the insurance industry backwards. If anyone got screwed here, it certainly wouldn’t be him.

  ‘No.’ Steve nodded. ‘I expect you’re right.’

  ‘So who pays?’

  ‘I dunno.’

  ‘Take a wild guess.’

  Dennis glanced in my direction. Steve was looking even more dejected.

  ‘Tell me about the business,’ I said quickly. ‘How was the rest of it going?’

  ‘Fine, until…’ Steve indicated the photos of the wrecked Spitfire.

  ‘But you had customers? Stuff was moving through?’

  ‘Yeah, absolutely. That’s why I expanded. I had more work than I knew what to do with. This place was perfect, just what I needed.’

  ‘And it took all the money? The whole three hundred thousand?’

  ‘Not all of it, no.’

  ‘How much, then?’

  Steve ducked his head, refusing to look me in the eye, and I rephrased the question. For the time being we were talking about money. All too quickly, as Dennis kept warning me, we could be talking about bricks and mortar.

  ‘This matters to me, Steve. I want to know exactly how I stand.’

  Steve said nothing. Dennis stirred. He had a big topaz ring on his little finger, and when he was angry he had a habit of twisting it round and round.

  ‘It’s been a bad week, Steve,’ he said softly. ‘On Thursday, Ellie lost her husband. Next, it could be her home. You hearing me?’

  Steve looked up.

  ‘It won’t come to that,’ he said quickly.

  ‘How do you know?’

  ‘I just do.’

  ‘But how can you?’

  Once again, Steve had no answer. Conversationally, he seemed like a man with one hand tied behind his back. There were moves he couldn’t make, things he wouldn’t say. So far he’d told us practically nothing.

  I heard myself asking about the fire. How did it start? When did it happen?

  ‘Couple of weeks ago.’

  ‘But when? Exactly?’

  ‘The middle of the night. Around one in the morning.’

  Dennis took up the running.

  ‘And the thing just burst into flames? Just like that? Spontaneous combustion?’

  ‘No one knows.’

  ‘Might someone have got in? Was the place locked up?’

  ‘Of course.’

  ‘You know that?’

  ‘Yes. I locked up myself. This place is really secure. It’s one of the reasons I took on the lease.’

  Dennis brooded for a moment. He still had the ring in the fingers of his other hand, twisting and twisting.

  ‘And you were the one who discovered the fire?’ he said at last, ‘Is that the way I hear it?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘How come?’

  Steve glanced up at him, then looked down again.

  ‘I’ve got a van,’ he said softly. ‘Old VW combi. It’s parked round the back.’

  ‘You sleep here?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Why?’

  Steve shook his head.

  ‘Doesn’t matter,’ he said. ‘But it’s lucky I did. The place is alarmed, smoke detectors, proper rig. By the time I got inside the Spit was well alight but at least I managed to contain it. There were other aircraft in there, a couple of them jacked up. I couldn’t have got them out. No way.’

  ‘Contain it?’ Dennis barked with laughter. ‘How the fuck did you do that?’

  ‘I had fire extinguishers, four of them. The airport fire crew were here pretty quickly, too. They were the ones who really dealt with it.’

  ‘And what did they say? Afterwards?’

  ‘Same as
me. They didn’t know.’ He shrugged. ‘Electrical fault? Fuel leak? You tell me.’

  Dennis nodded very slowly. Plainly, he didn’t believe a word.

  ‘Thanks,’ he said. ‘Let’s go through this three hundred grand again.’

  On the way back to St Helier, I asked Dennis about the framed photo on the desk. Whose child was it? What was her name? Dennis said he didn’t know, and by his tone of voice it was obvious that he didn’t much care. What interested him far more was Steve Liddell’s next move.

  Pressed by Dennis, Steve had told me again that my £300,000 was safe. To Dennis, who lived in the accountant’s world of black and white, this was simply evidence that the boy was either in denial, in shock or clinically insane. The figures, he said, spoke for themselves. The first year’s lease had cost Steve £35,000. Tooling for three mechanics, another £33,000. Round it up for rates, office equipment, services, wages and all the other demands on the cash flow, and you were probably looking at about £100,000 in start-up costs. Add to that the interest payments on the loan, plus Steve’s probable liability for the Spitfire, and there’d be precious little change from the third of a million that Adam had so gaily underwritten.

  ‘But Steve’s still trading,’ I pointed out. ‘He’s still got the premises and the tooling and all the rest. Doesn’t that count for anything?’

  Dennis, wedged behind a tractor, enquired whether I, too, was mad.

  ‘What’s the foundation for any business?’ he rasped, sounding his horn for the third time. ‘Christ, Ellie, you should know.’

  I frowned, trying to concentrate. For some reason I couldn’t stop thinking about the photo on Steve’s desk.

  ‘Good will,’ I said vaguely. ‘And reputation.’

  ‘Yeah, and something else,’ he said. ‘Confidence. That’s number one. You’ve got to believe in yourself, believe you’re the very best. Did you see the guy just now? Did you take a good look? And does he strike you like a man way out in front?’ He shook his head, contemptuous, dismissive. ‘Defeat’s a smell, Ellie. And that guy stank of it.’