by M. R. Hall
‘Meaning the plane hit the water intact?’
‘It’s looking increasingly likely. Tail-end first probably, with enough force to snap the hull in two places – could have been weakened already, of course. However it happened, the front end flipped forward and sank down to the bottom nose first. The rear and mid-sections are lying on their sides, but the tide is too strong for the divers to get inside until later.’
Jenny said, ‘All the bodies I’ve seen are in a real mess. Any idea why Amy Patterson’s isn’t?’
‘She was probably sitting along the line of fracture, most likely at the join between the rear and mid-section. If the hull was sufficiently weakened it would have snapped as the tail hit the water. Once that happened, there might not even have been a seat in front for her to hit.’ He lowered his voice, ‘We’ve had a couple from first class. You know the model everyone’s so excited about – Lily someone? – in pieces, literally. Identified from her jewellery.’
Jenny said, ‘Where are you getting all this information?’
‘It gets passed up the line. The rescue crews bringing the bodies ashore are talking to the guys who bring them back here, who are passing what they’ve heard on to our technicians. Kendall gave us all a big speech about how we weren’t to speculate, let alone talk to the press, but you can guess how well that’s working.’
Jenny said, ‘Do you think they’ll let me go down to the beach?’
Dr Kerr shrugged. ‘They can only shoot you.’
Kevin and Dave were off-duty ambulance men who had been diverted from their usual beat in central Bristol to spend the night ferrying the dead from the makeshift pontoon at the water’s edge up to the D-Mort. A damn sight easier than dealing with fighting-mad drunks in the city centre was Kevin’s assessment of their night’s work. Jenny rode with them three abreast in a vehicle that looked like a golf buggy with caterpillar tracks instead of wheels. Behind them, they towed a trailer large enough to hold four body bags. They bumped over a rutted mud road that had been bulldozed out of the field and which snaked between the dunes down to the shore. At the head of the beach they were waved down by two soldiers, who ordered Jenny to stay back while the others collected their load of bodies from the pontoon. Rescue workers and ambulance crew only were allowed down to the water’s edge, but on whose orders they were unable or unwilling to say.
Jenny stood on the muddy shale huddled in the outsize waterproof coat Dave had loaned her and took in a scene of intense activity. A large vessel she recognized as a Severn dredger was moored about three hundred yards out. A bank of spotlights on its deck lit up the water to its port side, facing the shore. Within the illuminated area – the size of several sports fields – were three smaller vessels from which teams of divers were operating. Their powerful searchlights moved like apparitions beneath the silty water. She counted more than half a dozen inflatable dinghies ferrying bodies and equipment to and from a floating pontoon. Some were manned by civilian crew, others by the Royal Navy. The pontoon itself was accessed by ramps and was anchored to the shore by cables attached to two large military trucks. With a tidal range of three vertical yards, the water was constantly moving up and down the muddy beach, and the pontoon had to be moved with it.
Jenny wasn’t sure what she had been expecting to see – some trace of the wreckage perhaps, some small clue as to how it happened, what it had looked like when an airliner carrying six hundred souls fell to earth and shattered. But there was no visible detritus on the water or lying on the mud.
Nothing.
It struck her then that what she was witnessing, and what she had already seen at the D-Mort, was a logistical operation that surpassed anything she could ever have imagined the civil authorities being capable of. In twelve short hours they had raised a small tented city in a Somerset field, assembled an armada of boats and brought together police, coastguard and military in seamless configuration. If Jenny needed any reminding, it confirmed to her that no event could have been dealt with any more seriously.
‘Excuse me, madam. Stand aside, please.’ The young infantryman motioned her away from the makeshift road as several sets of headlights appeared through the dunes.
Three black Range Rovers rounded the corner in single file and gunned straight down on to the beach.
‘Who’s that?’ Jenny asked, not expecting a reply.
‘Guy Ransome,’ the soldier said. ‘But you didn’t hear it from me.’
She watched the cars pull up at the shore. A driver climbed out of the middle vehicle and opened the rear door for the tall, good-looking entrepreneur, not yet fifty, who had made his first fortune in electronics before staking it all on an airline. It seemed to her that it was a lonely figure who walked out along the pontoon, pausing to watch the body bags being unloaded from a dinghy. How did the mind of a rich man work, she wondered? Was he counting the cost to his business or to his own soul?
‘You wouldn’t swap places with him now, would you?’ the soldier remarked.
Jenny didn’t answer.
FIVE
EDWARD MARSHAM, A PRINCIPAL INSPECTOR with the Air Accident Investigation Branch, spoke with the reassuring calm of a former test pilot. He was telling the interviewer that although it was too early to say what had brought down Flight 189, the theory with the most weight was that the aircraft had been struck by an unusually powerful bolt of lightning at high altitude. This would have shorted out critical circuits in the aircraft’s avionics, causing the captain to lose control.
Wasn’t the aircraft supposed to have many layers of backups and fail-safes? the interviewer asked.
No number of back-up systems could prevent a freak accident, Marsham said regretfully. The one crumb of comfort was that such lightning strikes were incredibly rare. In the entire history of commercial aviation only a handful of passenger craft had been lost in such a way.
Should aircraft be flying near thunderstorms when they could be avoided? the interviewer pressed.
According to the Met Office weather data, there was only a small storm in the area at the time, Marsham said. What they could be looking at was an even rarer occurrence: the plane itself causing a bolt of lightning to be discharged from the surrounding clouds; in effect, acting as a conductor for positively and negatively charged areas of cloud. The incidence of lightning, and just what caused the build-up of electrical charge in the atmosphere, was still a phenomenon science was unable fully to explain.
What evidence beyond the weather data was there for a lightning strike? the interviewer enquired.
Divers had photographed a pronounced scorch mark on the forward starboard section of the hull, Marsham said. It was close to the avionics bay, which was situated forward of the hold beneath the cockpit. A bolt of lighting could be many thousands of volts and up to 30,000 degrees centigrade – the temperature at which sand and silica fuse to form glass.
The reception on the car radio broke up and vanished temporarily as Jenny entered the forested gorge between St Arvans and Chepstow. She caught only fragments of the remainder of Marsham’s interview, but what she did notice was that he was allowed to go largely unchallenged.
Her phone rang as she was driving the straight mile alongside Chepstow racecourse. Alison’s sleep-laden voice came over the speakers, talking to her from all four corners of the car.
‘They’ve delivered your yacht, Mrs Cooper.’
‘Delivered it?’
‘It’s on the quayside at Avonmouth. DCI Molyneux just called to let me know. They had a dredger bring it up on the early tide.’
‘Why’s he being so helpful all of a sudden?’
‘They wanted it away from the main site,’ he said. ‘They’re clearing the rear section of the hull this morning and raising both sections to the surface this afternoon. It’s going to be a hell of a job getting it all ashore and transporting the pieces by road to the AAIB hangar at Farnborough.’
‘No word from the incident room on our John Doe?’ Jenny asked.
‘Do
give me a chance, Mrs Cooper. My head barely touched the pillow.’
‘Let me know what they say, oh, and see if you can get me a number for that farmer who saw the lights.’
‘What for?’
‘I want to buy some sheep – what do you think?’
‘Fine. But don’t expect me before ten,’ Alison said curtly and hung up.
The security guard at the entrance to Avonmouth docks greeted Jenny like an old friend and directed her to the quay. Late the previous summer the bodies of twelve emaciated Somali stowaways had turned up in the bilge tanks of a cargo ship registered in Karachi. The find had caused her many trips to visit the ship’s captain and crew, who had refused to come ashore for fear of arrest. She had reluctantly certified the deaths as having occurred accidentally, but she had had her doubts. Talking to men in the docks canteen, she had heard lurid second-hand tales of foreign crews tossing stowaways overboard in the middle of the ocean.
Wearing the obligatory yellow hard hat she had been issued with at the gate, she walked out along the quay towards what was barely recognizable as the wreckage of a yacht. She could see a section of mast and the pointed end of the stern, but the rest was a broken heap of wood and canvas. A man dressed in the ubiquitous fluorescent yellow coat was standing nearby, taking photographs with a camera mounted on a tripod.
‘Good morning. Jenny Cooper, Severn Vale District Coroner.’
The man looked up from his work. ‘Dick Corton, Marine Accident Investigation Branch.’ He squeezed her hand in a powerful grip. ‘Not much of this left.’ His voice was gentle and his accent pronounced. He wasn’t local – Norfolk, Jenny guessed. She placed him in his early sixties, though it was hard to say. His face was a lattice of veins broken by the weather; his eyes were narrowed to slits as if permanently fixed on a far horizon.
‘I’d forgotten you’d be involved as well,’ Jenny said.
‘Not a lot to trouble us, to be honest,’ Corton replied. ‘You can see it’s been ripped in half. I’d say part of the plane’s wing caught it as it ditched on the water. Bad luck – only vessel out there as far as I can tell.’
Jenny could see that half the hull was virtually intact. The wheel was still bolted to the deck, but the stairs that would have led down to the cabin below were absent. The galley area was still recognizable: there was half a table, some cupboards, a stove, but beyond that there was little remaining that resembled a boat.
‘It looks as if there’s a lot of it missing,’ Jenny said.
‘Smashed to pieces,’ Corton said. ‘Some of it would have been washed out on the tide. I’d put money on one of the engines having struck it. Look at where the hull’s fractured and you can see burn marks.’
Jenny stepped closer and examined the jagged edge of the broken hull. Even with her untrained eye, it looked as if the wood had been scorched, and the layer of foam between the inner and outer skin of the hull appeared in places to have melted to the consistency of burnt treacle.
‘Would the aircraft’s engines have been that hot? We’re not even sure if they were still working.’
‘I wondered about that. One for the AAIB, I’d say,’ Corton said, returning to his camera. ‘I’m just boats.’
Jenny looked up and down the wreckage for any identifying marks, but there were none that she could see. ‘Do you have any idea where it came from?’
‘I can tell you exactly.’ Corton dug into his pocket for a notebook. ‘She’s called the Irish Mist, 43-foot ketch registered in Dublin. Built in ’85 and owned by a Mr Peter Hylands. I got hold of him first thing and he tells me he’s just sold it through Hennessy’s yacht brokers in Dublin Bay to a fellow called Chapman in Jersey. The sale went through last week and Hennessy’s took possession. They didn’t answer their phone. I left them a message.’
‘How does that work – with the broker, I mean?’ Jenny asked.
‘Often they’ll employ a man to deliver the vessel to the buyer – for a fee, of course. Sometimes two men, depending on the size of the boat.’
‘What about this one?’
‘One man could do it,’ Corton said, moving his tripod around for a side-on shot of the wreck. ‘What I couldn’t say, though, is what they’d be doing this far up the Bristol Channel en route from Dublin to Jersey. The weather was nothing ugly, even around Land’s End. He was forty miles out of his way – unless he had business in Bristol. I called the coastguard, but he hadn’t put any messages out on the radio.’
Jenny thought of the dead man’s holster and asked herself why she had no intention of telling Corton and why she hadn’t yet mentioned it to the police. She had no answer, except that experience had taught her to share information only with those in whom she had complete trust. She couldn’t yet get the measure of Corton, and she could sense he felt the same about her.
‘Where would you keep the lifejackets on a boat like this?’ Jenny asked.
‘There’d be a locker either side of the cockpit. Nothing to see now, though – that part’s all gone.’
Jenny stepped over a section of broken mast to take in another angle. She wanted to imagine the accident from the perspective of the dead man, presuming he was at the wheel as the plane came towards him. With what remained of the vessel lying on its side, the handrail that ran around the stern was at shoulder height. She peered over it at the section of deck on which he would have been standing and saw that individual planks had been ripped out. Several remained in place, though they were largely splintered and broken.
‘What’s happened here?’ Jenny said. This damage doesn’t look like it was caused by the accident. It looks fresh.’
Corton finished taking his picture and wandered over, carefully studying the shattered boards.
‘You’re right. That’s been done since it’s been out of the water. Someone’s chopped open the deck to check the void beneath.’
‘Why?’
‘Just to be sure, I expect,’ Corton said. ‘I wouldn’t read anything into it.’ He strolled back to his equipment and started to dismantle it. ‘I take it you’ve got a body, or you wouldn’t be here.’
‘Yes. A male, dressed in sailing gear. No identity as yet.’
Corton nodded and quietly continued with his task.
‘The pathologist said he looked like a regular sailor – Dubarry boots, apparently – but no lifejacket. Does that strike you as odd?’
‘A solo sailor would normally wear one, certainly.’ Folding the tripod into its case, Corton went on, ‘Will you be wanting to hold onto the wreck or shall I arrange for it to be disposed of? I’ve no more use for it.’
‘I won’t get rid of it just yet,’ Jenny said. ‘You never know what might be needed.’
She watched him for a moment, wondering if he knew any more than he was letting on. It occurred to her that he had offered less than he might have done.
The farmer’s name was John Roberts and he wasn’t answering his phone. Jenny left a message but was impatient to talk to him. As far as she or Alison had been able to ascertain, he was the closest thing to an eyewitness that existed. The farmhouse was half a mile from the D-Mort, several hundred yards outside the cordoned-off area, yet close enough to it to hear the constant throb of the generators.
She approached the farm down a rutted track and turned into a yard in which two rusting tractors stood idle. The business had clearly seen better days.
It was Mrs Roberts who answered the door to her, a younger woman than Jenny had expected, with a worn-down face and a grizzling infant on her hip.
‘He’s not here,’ she said, when Jenny explained the reason for her visit.
‘Will he be back soon?’
‘No idea.’ She shrugged one shoulder, her guarded expression saying she hoped Jenny would hurry up and go.
‘Do you mind if I ask where he is? Does he have a phone?’
‘He’s over there.’ She nodded towards the D-Mort. ‘They wanted him to give a statement or something.’
‘My inquiry relates
to a boat the plane seems to have struck when it crashed.’
The woman shook her head. ‘He never said nothing about a boat.’ She took a step back and went to close the door. ‘Sorry.’
‘You must have heard it too. Is that your kitchen window looking out over the estuary?’
‘I didn’t see nothing, just heard the bang, that’s all.’
‘What kind of bang?’
‘How many kinds are there? Like a bomb going off, I suppose. There was nothing to see out there – just mist.’
‘No flames?’
Mrs Roberts shook her head and switched the child to her other hip.
‘Didn’t you hear the plane flying in low? It must have come very close.’
‘No.’
From where she was standing, Jenny could see between the gaps in the farm buildings all the way over the fields to the crash site. She could even hear the buzz of the dinghy engines and the low rumble of the dredger’s crane.
‘How loud was this explosion?’
‘Not very.’
‘But loud enough for your husband to go and investigate.’
‘He was more curious than anything, especially when he heard the helicopters.’
‘Oh? When was that?’
‘Right after.’
‘Can you be any more precise? It would be very helpful.’
Mrs Roberts said no, she couldn’t. The baby had been crying and she hadn’t been paying much attention.
‘But you’re sure there were helicopters?’ Jenny persisted.
She shrugged. ‘That’s what he said.’
There were protocols to be followed, procedures set down in the Coroner’s Rules which required her to make written requests for production of computer records, all of which in due course she would do, but in Jenny’s experience there was never any substitute for an unannounced visit. A worried-looking junior official was sent out to meet her at the staff entrance to Bristol International Airport with orders to schedule a formal appointment, but Jenny insisted there were time-critical questions she needed answered immediately. Buckling under her veiled threat that failure to cooperate might amount to an obstruction of justice, the official signed her in at the gate and instructed her to follow her car to the air traffic control tower.
