by M. R. Hall
Things were getting mixed up. It was as if the walls of her inner compartments had been broken down and her emotions were slopping from one to the other; the past and present were equally potent. She was middle-aged, a young woman, a child, all at once. The realization brought a measure of relief. It was just as Dr Allen had predicted. She was experiencing again, and the pain would pass if she would only let herself feel it. That was fine in theory, but it left her frightened of making an irrational judgement. Could she trust herself in this state of mind?
She had no option.
It had been Michael’s parting suggestion to check the traffic cameras on the Severn Bridge for any sign of helicopters. Jenny called the bridge authorities as soon as she arrived in the office, but was referred to the Welsh Assembly government, who passed her around five different officials until someone finally informed her that all original footage had already been handed to Sir James Kendall. Jenny tried her contacts in the Chepstow police to see if they might work an angle she hadn’t thought of, but got the same answer: the data had been seized within hours of the plane going down. The order had come directly from Whitehall even before Sir James Kendall had been formally appointed.
Perhaps it was just slick contingency planning that had prompted the authorities to move so quickly, but Jenny doubted it. As she and Michael had been leaving the hotel, he had talked about an incident in Afghanistan in which a colleague had bombed the wrong target and killed seventy innocent civilians at prayer in a makeshift mosque. If they’d run the war as well as they’d organized the cover-up it would all have been over in a couple of years, he said. A small army of men and women from anonymous departments emerged from nowhere to make sure every potential channel of information was blocked. Jenny was beginning to see parallels with her own investigation.
Pushing the creeping sensation of paranoia from her mind, she opened the email that had just arrived from Dr Kerr. It was the results of DNA analysis carried out on the scrapings taken from beneath Amy Patterson’s fingernails. It confirmed the presence of Brogan’s skin cells.
The phone rang in the outer office as she was reading his accompanying note: Evidence suggests Amy Patterson was not only alive in the water, but fully conscious. Abrasions to Brogan’s forearms indicate the application of considerable force, presumably in panic.
Alison forwarded the call to her desk, ‘It’s a Mr Galbraith. He says he’s the Pattersons’ lawyer.’
‘Mrs Cooper?’ The voice belonged to a man in his thirties, who was both pushy and ambitious.
‘Speaking.’
‘Nick Galbraith, Caldwell Rose. I represent Greg and Michelle Patterson.’
She recognized the name of Bristol’s most upmarket firm of solicitors from an inquest she had conducted into the death of a wealthy young woman at a private clinic. The firm had represented the clinic, and her impression of them had been of charming old-school manners masking a determined streak of ruthlessness.
‘How can I can help you?’
‘I presume you’ve seen the result of the DNA test.’
‘Yes,’ Jenny answered, asking herself how the information had managed to reach him first. She checked the email again and noticed she had merely been copied in as a courtesy. Sir James Kendall was the first named recipient.
‘This evidence seems to suggest that Amy didn’t die in the crash,’ Galbraith said.
‘That’s correct. Though we already suspect that was—’
‘Mrs Patterson would like to meet you,’ Galbraith interjected. ‘In fact, we both would.’
‘What do you wish to discuss?’
‘Best not to on the phone, don’t you think? Can you make her hotel, two o’clock?’
Jenny made him wait while she checked her diary. ‘If you’re absolutely sure it’s necessary.’
‘Thank you, Mrs Cooper. Goodbye.’ He gave her no time to change her mind.
‘I spoke to his girlfriend.’ Jenny looked up to see Alison bustling in with the pile of mail Jenny had deliberately ignored when she arrived.
‘Oh?’ Jenny said, preoccupied. ‘Whose?’
‘Gerry Brogan’s. Her name’s Maria. They’d only known each other a year, but she was devastated, poor girl. No one had told her. She’d been trying to call him all yesterday evening.’
‘Did she have any idea what he was doing this far up the Bristol Channel?’
‘She didn’t even know he had a criminal record. I don’t think she believed me when I said he’d been to prison. He told her he’d spent the last twenty years sailing yachts.’
‘What else did she say?’
‘Only that he was living on a boat until he moved in with her. He sounds like a bit of a drifter, if you’ll pardon the pun.’ She looked at Jenny with maternal concern. ‘You seem a bit tired, Mrs Cooper. You should try getting some more exercise, you’d feel much better for it. I know I do.’
‘I can see,’ Jenny said, feeling an irrational stab of jealousy. Alison had been regularly visiting a gym and, as she often told anyone who would care to listen, had lost twenty pounds. It had taken years off her.
‘I know it’s not easy – being alone.’
‘You seem to be managing.’
‘Just about—’
Jenny waited, sensing that Alison needed to unburden herself.
‘It’s Terry, my husband.’ She made an attempt at a shrug. ‘His girlfriend walked out on him last month and he’s been on the phone saying he wants to get back together. Spain’s suddenly not so wonderful now it’s just him in a rented flat.’
‘Would you have him?’
‘No,’ she said with less than certainty. ‘He’s got no right to me any more. He’s had my best years, now I want some for myself.’ She was trying hard to convince herself. ‘I’m sorry. I shouldn’t be troubling you with this—’ She turned to go.
Jenny said, ‘Alison – there was a call here on Sunday night, after you’d left. I answered, but whoever it was didn’t speak. Do you think it might have been Terry?’
‘He calls my mobile . . .’ She hesitated, as if hiding something. ‘I know who it might have been, though. It won’t happen again.’
Jenny nodded, knowing not to probe any further. ‘And the photographer’s camera—’
‘I’ll deal with it,’ Alison said, and hurried out on heels that threatened to snap her ankles.
Tired? No one had ever called her that before. But when she inadvertently caught her reflection she saw a face that had been attractive once, which was still slender, but which life had worn and grooved. A history had emerged in her features; there were threads of silver in her hair; she was a woman who could never again be called a girl.
It was less than a half-mile walk to the Marriott on College Green, which stood only a few yards from Bristol Cathedral in the ancient heart of the city. The narrow side streets that led off in several directions with their scruffy old pubs and faded Georgian buildings were a gateway into the city’s seafaring past. This had been England’s first port in the days of tall-masted ships that rode the trade winds across the Atlantic. The thoroughfares and marketplaces would have been filled with American and African voices. Even more so than London, Bristol had been the crossroads of the world.
Galbraith strode out of the downstairs lounge to meet her in the lobby and squeezed her hand in a large fist. ‘Good of you to come, Mrs Cooper.’
He was just as she had pictured him: tall, dark-haired and broad-shouldered. She remembered that the senior partner of his firm, a man named Duncan Rose, liked to tell anyone who’d listen that he had twice played rugby for England. He had recruited in his own image.
‘I’ve booked us a meeting room upstairs,’ he said, leading the way towards the elevator. ‘I thought it might be best.’
Michelle Patterson had set up office in a small meeting room on the second floor. She had a notebook computer, a printer and two phones – one for research, one for fielding calls from the families of other passengers, she explained as Jenny too
k a seat. This was clearly her way of coping, and if outward appearances were anything to go by it was working. Dressed in a formal business suit and with her hair neatly arranged, she could have been about to address an academic conference.
‘I apologize for my husband’s absence,’ Mrs Patterson said. ‘We both find it easier to cope alone, at least for the moment.’
‘I understand,’ Jenny said, although she didn’t. Not at all.
‘My clients would like their daughter’s inquest dealt with swiftly,’ Galbraith explained, pouring them each a glass from an expensive-looking bottle of mineral water, ‘and I’ve advised them that the best way to achieve this is to have the case returned to your jurisdiction. This latest evidence seems to prove beyond doubt that their daughter’s death was subsequent to the crash, in which case I don’t see any reason why she shouldn’t be dealt with separately.’
‘I doubt the Ministry of Justice would agree,’ Jenny said.
‘Their decision was taken in ignorance of the full facts,’ Galbraith said. ‘A vital part of the coroner’s function is to provide swift and conclusive findings for grieving families. I can’t see why they would stand in the way of that.’ He smiled. ‘We would need your full support and cooperation, of course.’
‘My husband and I really would be most grateful,’ Mrs Patterson added expectantly.
Jenny noticed a look pass between them. She suspected that there was an aspect of their request that they had yet to share with her.
Jenny said, ‘If you’re worried about the release of your daughter’s body, I’m sure that can happen imminently, perhaps even in the next few days.’
‘It’s a concern, of course—’ Mrs Patterson said, but left her sentence incomplete. She glanced again at Galbraith.
‘What’s your feeling about the correct procedure, Mrs Cooper?’ he asked. ‘Do you agree with us that it would be unfair to ask grieving parents to wait possibly a year or more for Sir James Kendall to make a finding when you could deal with matters much more rapidly?’
His speech felt to Jenny like a clumsy attempt to disguise his true intentions. Having spent several minutes in the room, she was beginning to form a clearer picture.
Caldwell Rose probably charged out at over £200 an hour. They were eager for business, and in her grief, Mrs Patterson was prepared to give it to them.
‘Let’s be frank, Mrs Patterson,’ Jenny said. ‘You want to know why an aeroplane fell out of the sky. Even if I were to get your daughter’s case back, it would be on condition that I left that particular question to the disaster inquest. I would be strictly confined to determining her immediate cause of death, which we already know.’
‘That’s true up to a point,’ Galbraith began, ‘but—’
Mrs Patterson cut across him. ‘I’ve read reports of your previous investigations, Mrs Cooper, and my lawyers have confirmed their accuracy. You’ve made quite a reputation out of asking the questions from which others have shied away.’
‘I’m afraid the system is conspiring to keep people like me in their place, Mrs Patterson. Recent changes in the law mean that I’m no longer quite the free agent I once was.’
‘Which makes it all the more important to keep up the fight, surely?’
Jenny could tell from Galbraith’s expression that his client had already strayed well beyond their agreed script. He gave an apologetic smile. ‘I think what Mrs Patterson is trying to say—’
‘I understand perfectly,’ Jenny countered, ‘but what neither of you has told me is the reason you think Sir James Kendall won’t deliver what all the relatives of the deceased would expect.’
Galbraith looked at her with the troubled expression of a lawyer suffering a conflict between his own feelings and his professional ethics. But if he was asking her to help trick a court into believing her inquest would be one thing when they all intended it to be another, she felt he had an obligation to get his hands dirty too.
She looked him in the eye and waited.
‘As I think my client may already have told you, she has some experience of the aerospace industry,’ Galbraith said. ‘It’s a global business upon which all major countries depend, yet there are only a handful of major aircraft manufacturers. You wouldn’t have to be a conspiracy theorist to imagine that a government would work extremely hard to protect those interests.’
‘A coroner is an independent judicial officer. I don’t conduct inquiries according to any agenda.’
‘Which is precisely what we fear Sir James Kendall might be tempted to do. You might be interested to see this.’ Galbraith motioned to Mrs Patterson, who handed a two-sheet document across the table.
It was a report written on Civil Aviation Authority stationery and headed: Ramp-Check on Ransome Airways Airbus A319. The text below was marked CONFIDENTIAL.
The body of the text was couched in technical language which Jenny barely managed to follow, but she caught the gist: the previous July, a CAA inspector had, for a reason unspecified in the document, carried out an unannounced inspection of a Ransome Airways plane at Heathrow airport. He had checked the aircraft’s defect log and found evidence that the plane had flown with a significant fault that should have been repaired before it took to the air. The summary paragraphs read:
Approximately forty minutes into the flight from Heathrow to Prague an ELEC GEN 1 FAULT message appeared on the Electronic Centralized Aircraft Monitor (ECAM) and a FAULT caption illuminated on the overhead panel. The crew checked the Electrical System page on the ECAM and confirmed that the No. 1 generator had tripped off-line. Attempts to reset the generator proved unsuccessful, and in accordance with prescribed procedure the No. 1 generator was selected OFF. The Auxiliary Power Unit (APU) was started and its electrical generator supplied the left AC bus. Twenty minutes later an ELEC GEN 2 FAULT message appeared on the ECAM. The crew again checked the Electrical System page on the ECAM and confirmed that the No. 2 generator had tripped off-line. Attempts to reset were similarly unsuccessful, and No. 2 generator was selected OFF. The APU was therefore engaged to supply the right main AC bus. The flight continued to Prague without further incident. Once on the ground, an airline engineer successfully restarted both No. 1 and No. 2 generators and recorded a finding of NO FAULT FOUND in the defect log. He certified the aircraft fit for take-off.
These faults demanded thorough and detailed investigation, but the flight log shows that the aircraft returned to Heathrow ninety minutes after landing. The airline maintains that the decision to accept the engineer’s certification was the pilot’s alone, but Captain xxxxx denies this, claiming that instructions to return the aircraft to Heathrow as scheduled came directly from the airline. There was no reported repeat of the faults during thirty-two subsequent flights by the aircraft and no detailed investigation of the faults has been conducted by the airline.
Recommendation: refer to prosecuting authorities
‘I’ve emailed it to a number of pilots, who were all appalled,’ Mrs Patterson said. ‘The general consensus seems to be that the airline was fortunate not to have all its planes grounded immediately. A major electrical failure could be catastrophic, all the more so on a fly-by-wire plane. We can find no record of a prosecution.’
‘How did you come by this?’ Jenny asked.
‘Interesting you should ask,’ Galbraith said. ‘One of Mrs Patterson’s colleagues found it posted on the internet on Sunday afternoon. An hour later it had gone, along with the whole site.’
‘What was this site?’ Jenny asked.
‘It was called Airbuzz,’ Mrs Patterson replied. ‘Apparently it was a forum for insider talk in the airline business. According to my colleague, this was just one of a number of similar hair-raising reports from around the world.’
Jenny looked at the blacked-out spaces covering the captain’s name and wondered if it was Nuala Casey’s. Even if it was, it might just be a collision of coincidences: for all she knew such risk taking might be commonplace in the airline business, but her gut t
old her it was more than that. And despite its chemical straitjacket, her heart was beating hard against the inside of her ribs.
‘It’s not exactly a smoking gun,’ Galbraith said, ‘but it does say something about Ransome’s attitude to safety.’
‘Right,’ Mrs Patterson added. ‘It’s not worth losing money over.’
‘Would you agree, Mrs Cooper?’ Galbraith said.
Jenny could see trouble ahead, a lot of trouble, but she could also see the little girl lying on the beach, swept to her on the tide along with Brogan.
‘Yes,’ Jenny answered.
‘Then you would be as anxious as we are to see that every avenue is explored in determining the cause of the crash.’
‘That goes without saying, but we have to be realistic,’ Jenny said. ‘If you’re correct about the intentions behind the official inquest, then I can’t see any court returning jurisdiction over your daughter’s death to me.’
‘That may or may not be necessary,’ Galbraith said. ‘We may not need that. In fact, it might be best if we didn’t go down that avenue. I imagine the last thing you want is to attract more controversy.’
Jenny was confused. ‘What do you mean?’
‘The thing is, Mrs Cooper,’ he said, gesturing with his palms like a skilful politician, ‘most, if not all, of the questions we would like to be addressed could fall within the scope of your inquest into Mr Brogan’s death. If you were to allow us full representation as interested parties, then it might serve all our objectives.’
It was a perfect lawyer’s play. Caldwell Rose would get to collect their fees without running the risk of having to convince a sceptical High Court judge that their clients alone amongst six hundred grieving families deserved special treatment. All they needed to seal the deal was for Mrs Patterson to hear Jenny promise to give her what she wanted.
