by M. R. Hall
‘It really doesn’t matter, does it? They’re all dead.’ He turned away and started off across the car park towards the roadway.
‘Michael?’
He kept on walking.
‘Michael, please—’ She was confused. She hadn’t expected him to react emotionally.
As she started after him, her phone rang. It was a caller she couldn’t ignore – Simon Moreton.
‘Hello, Simon.’
‘Ah, Jenny – good news all round, I hear?’
‘Really?’
‘You’re being sensible and Sir James Kendall is addressing the world’s press at the D-Mort in the morning. I was thinking of making the trip down. I’m so grand these days, they’ll even give me a car.’
‘There are nicer places for a day out.’
‘Why don’t we go together? Spot of lunch afterwards? It’s about time we caught up.’
Moreton always couched his invitations as if they were pleasant social engagements, but Jenny had learned that was just the way the game was played. The only reason he left London was to stamp his authority on the rebellious provinces, and if he could manage some gentle flirting at the same time, so much the better.
‘Why not?’ Jenny said.
‘Excellent. I’ll pick you up from your office at ten.’
As she put away her phone, Jenny scanned the darkness for Michael, but he had disappeared through the gates and away down the road. She jumped into her Land Rover and drove in the direction she thought he had gone. There was no sign of him on the deserted pavements. He seemed determined not to be found.
As she turned round and began the long journey home, she pictured him flying through the night back to Bristol, alone with his ghosts. And for a fleeting moment she wished she were with him.
FIFTEEN
SIMON MORETON WAS ON SPARKLING FORM. Revelling in his elevation to the rank of Director at the Ministry of Justice, he now referred to himself as a ‘mandarin’. Jenny was supposed to be impressed, but she had never been one to admire a man for his status. Her ex-husband was an eminent heart surgeon, but in her experience the higher up the greasy pole he climbed, the more self-important and objectionable he had become. Her former lover, Steve, had been a failed architectural student scratching a living from the land when they had first met, and his complete disinterest in all the things by which most men marked their achievements had been one of the qualities that attracted her most.
As Moreton whisked her through the north Somerset countryside in the back seat of a sleek government Jaguar, she was expected to play the willing consort, and she dutifully obliged.
Whatever he had come to say, he was leaving it until later. For the time being it was all gossip from the corridors of power intended to make him seem important and to seduce Jenny into feeling part of the in-crowd. The latest excitement centred on a senior High Court judge (no names, only subtle hints at his identity) who, it turned out, had been entertaining a young man at his official lodgings at the public expense. It was sufficient grounds to demand his resignation, only he had intimated to the Lord Chief Justice that were he to be pushed out he would make sure that the dirty linen of an unspecified number of his colleagues would also be washed in public. Everyone in the Ministry was on tenterhooks, waiting to see who would blink first.
‘That’s the problem with today’s world,’ Moreton mused, ‘no sense of honour.’
‘I hope you’re not trying to make me go quietly, Simon,’ Jenny joked.
‘Good gracious, no – I’m your number one fan. Think how complacent I’d become without you to keep me on my toes.’
The government car swept unhindered through the roadblock outside the D-Mort and deposited them at the entrance to a covered walkway leading directly to the marquee, which the previous week had served as the reception centre for the relatives of the dead. Once inside, they were greeted by a young lance corporal from the Welsh Guards who directed them to the seats in front of the dais from where Sir James would be making his announcement. In the large open space behind the few rows of chairs, the world’s press and broadcast media were jockeying for position. Photographers and news cameramen perched on stepladders, TV and radio reporters rehearsed their intros in a dozen different languages, and the old-fashioned newspaper men gathered in huddles trading rumours.
‘I can’t say I’ve ever been to one of these before,’ Moreton said excitedly.
‘What about the families?’ Jenny asked. ‘Are they allowed to attend?’
‘As far as I know this is strictly for the media and the likes of us. It’s not in anyone’s interests to have a lot of grieving relatives exploited for the cameras.’
‘Or asking awkward questions.’
‘Jenny, Jenny, you really are a cynic.’ He found their reserved seats at the centre of the front row. ‘Best in the house – you can’t say I don’t look after you. All I ask in return is that you give me a brief tour of the campus afterwards. Heaven forbid we’ll ever need to build another, but you never know.’
‘My pleasure,’ Jenny said drily.
As the final minutes to midday ticked by, she was struck by a mounting sense of unreality. The anticipation among the waiting crowd was like that of an expectant theatre audience. The tragedy of the previous week had given way to the drama of the unfolding story. The relentless twenty-four-hour news schedule demanded another segment of the narrative, and Sir James Kendall and his colleagues knew that if they didn’t provide one someone else would. If they were to stay in charge of events, they had to lead the media.
Sir James mounted the platform with a man whom he introduced as Edward Marsham of the Air Accident Investigation Branch. Jenny had heard Marsham on the radio and had pictured a more imposing figure than the man who hovered at Kendall’s side. The primary purpose of the news conference was, Kendall explained, for Marsham to outline initial findings into the cause of the accident. Then Kendall would give a brief update on the status of the bodies held in the D-Mort.
Uncomfortable in the glare of the spotlight, Marsham’s forehead gleamed with perspiration as he stepped up to the microphone. Relying heavily on his notes, he introduced an animated re-creation of the last minutes of the flight. Displayed on a pair of large, flat-panel screens mounted either side of the dais, it showed the ill-fated 380 climbing upwards towards the level-off height of 31,000 feet.
‘Initial weather data from the Met Office suggested that there were no storms active in the flight’s path,’ Marsham explained. ‘However, data has now been gathered which establishes beyond doubt that between fifteen and eighteen minutes into the journey, the aircraft passed through a dense bank of cumulonimbus, responsible, we believe, for the turbulence which caused First Officer Stevens to remark at 09.16.07 on the cockpit voice recording that it was “bumpy”. He also appears to query whether passenger seat belts might be appropriate, but Captain Murray seems to disregard the suggestion. We also know that several seconds after this, at approximately 09.16.24, the aircraft stopped transmitting flight data via ACARS.
‘It’s a well-documented fact that the action of an aircraft passing through clouds containing positively charged ions can actually provoke a discharge of lightning. It is highly probable that this is what occurred here. The American FAA estimate that each commercial airliner is on average struck by lightning once a year. Aircraft hulls are so designed that the lightning is simply conducted along the outside and back into the air. The electrical systems on the A380 are further shielded with surge and grounding protectors. In nearly all cases lightning has no discernible effect on the aircraft or its systems, except perhaps for a small flickering of lights or instruments lasting less than a second. Indeed, in comprehensive tests carried out by NASA in the early 1980s, aircraft were deliberately flown into storms on 1,400 separate missions. They were struck by lightning a total of 700 times with no ill effect.
‘That said, while most lightning carries a negative charge to the ground, the rarer form of positive lightning – which, as i
ts name suggests, carries a positive charge to the ground – is characteristically up to ten times more powerful than its negative counterpart. Positive lighting can travel distances of up to ten miles, and may be triggered by man-made objects in the atmosphere such as rockets or aircraft. While there has only been one aircraft lost to positive lightning in the last forty years, it is conceivable that a bolt of a billion volts or so may have caused a temporary disturbance in some of the aircraft’s electrical systems, including flight computers. While it’s too early to say exactly what effect that might have had, we are increasingly certain that this was the inciting cause for the sequence of events that followed.’
The image on the screen showed a lightning bolt striking the aircraft on the lower side of the nose beneath the cockpit. Marsham tapped some keys on the computer and switched the image on the screens to a still taken of the aircraft’s nose on the quayside at Avonmouth.
‘Look carefully on the underside of the nose directly beneath the cockpit windows. You will see a distinct black discoloration, a streak, if you will, angled upwards from right to left. We believe this was caused by the heat of the lightning.’
He clicked to another image, which showed a closer view of what resembled a scorch mark on the white hull.
‘There is the point of impact, on the hull directly outside the avionics bay. It caused no physical damage to the structure of the aircraft, but may – and I stress may – have caused an electrical failure of some sort. What we now know from the cockpit voice recording is that a speed warning was issued at 09.20.41 at a time when data from air traffic control suggests that the aircraft was travelling at a cruising speed of 479 knots. The speed warning was repeated several seconds later.’ He paused, and for the first time in his presentation looked up from his notes. ‘The speed warnings were clearly anomalous.’
The marquee was momentarily lit up by a barrage of camera flashes capturing the moment of admission. The reporters had their story: the world’s largest airliner humbled by the forces of nature.
The image on the screen flicked back to the animation of the aircraft in flight. In a deadpan voice, Marsham explained the final movements of the aircraft through the air as it pitched upwards, then began its erratic, see-sawing descent. The journalists fell silent as professional objectivity was temporarily replaced by raw, human horror at what nearly six hundred passengers on board must have endured throughout those six tortuous minutes.
The precise sequence of stalls was a matter of educated guesswork based on the air traffic control data, Marsham emphasized, but what was known from the condition of the wreckage was that the aircraft struck the water belly first, snapping cleanly in two places due to the force of impact combined with the stresses it had endured in the air. The animation on the screen showed the final break-up: the hull hit the water tail-first and broke into three pieces; the fore section tipped forwards and torpedoed down to the seabed, where it lodged in the silt; the mid- and tail sections flooded with water in a matter of seconds and sank.
‘Again, this remains a matter of speculation, but we are of the opinion that, given perhaps only a few hundred feet more, the aircraft might have slowed sufficiently to have avoided break-up on impact. We are of the view that Captain Murray had succeeded in gaining at least partial control. At this early stage it remains impossible to say what precise effect pilot actions had on the final outcome of the flight, but we are as certain as we can be that neither Captain Murray nor First Officer Stevens was responsible for initiating the fatal chain of events.’
Jenny wondered why Marsham hadn’t seized on the conclusion that Glen Francis had reached in the simulator – that Murray had reacted out of fear and contrary to correct protocols, in effect causing the sequence of stalls – but then realized that his preliminary findings had left the door open just enough to allow that possibility through at a later date. The lightning theory was convincing enough for now. The news media would be kept amused for the next few days trawling universities for experts on freak weather to fill their schedules. The blame could yet be switched to Murray if circumstances demanded.
Sir James Kendall stepped forward to chair the brief question-and-answer session that followed. For the most part, the press made only predictable enquiries. Could Marsham be certain a bomb hadn’t been detonated inside the plane? Had the possibility of hijack been ruled out? Could he discount the rumour that an RAF jet had been scrambled to shoot the aircraft out of the sky when communications with the ground failed? All of these Marsham dealt with easily. It was only when discussing Captain Murray that he displayed signs of anxiety.
‘Is it true that Captain Murray was called in as a last-minute replacement for the pilot scheduled to fly the plane?’ a journalist from the Spanish newspaper El País enquired.
‘Yes, I understand Captain Murray took the place of Captain Finlay, who was unable to fly through illness,’ Marsham said, ‘but there are often changes to flight crew late in the day, especially in the wintertime, when pilots come down with colds and flu like the rest of us.’
The journalist persisted. ‘Is it true that Murray hadn’t taken leave for over seven months?’
‘I must confess I haven’t examined his flying records in detail.’
Sir James Kendall pointed to a young female reporter from CNN. If he had hoped she would prove more sympathetic, he was to be disappointed.
‘Why didn’t Captain Murray switch on the seat-belt signs when First Officer Stevens suggested it? It leaves the impression that he wasn’t overly concerned with the safety of his passengers.’
‘Captains make these judgements every day,’ Marsham stalled. ‘I’m sure he would have done nothing to jeopardize the safety of those on board.’
The young woman shot back. ‘You had a captain who was clearly overworked, and an under-slept first officer who was planning a wild night out in New York. Is this responsible behaviour for men with hundreds of lives in their hands?’
‘We will of course be checking that flight crew were abiding by all the appropriate regulations.’ Marsham’s voice held steady, although it was clear from the sweat now trickling from his temples that he had been caught off his guard.
‘This is all about money, isn’t it?’ the reporter countered. ‘When you have two tired men flying six hundred passengers you know too many corners are being cut. Does Ransome Airways skimp on its maintenance engineers too?’
Sir James Kendall eased Marsham aside. ‘The purpose of this news conference is to share with you what we already know, not to speculate on things about which we have incomplete knowledge. The practices of the airline involved will of course be examined closely. We’ve time for one final question. The man in the brown jacket—’
A reporter with a pronounced Chinese accent spoke up, announcing that he was from Taiwan Television news. ‘Can you please tell us, are you investigating the theory that this aircraft was targeted because it was carrying several important and noteworthy passengers?’
Sir James Kendall looked uncomfortable. ‘The evidence all points to this aircraft having been brought down by a freak natural event, and every transatlantic flight invariably carries important and noteworthy people.’
‘So you have closed your mind to this possibility?’
‘My task as coroner is to deal with the evidence as it presents itself, not to indulge in theorizing. Thank you, everybody.’
Kendall gathered his papers and, ignoring the clamour to answer further questions, ushered Marsham from the platform.
‘There’s always one, isn’t there?’ Moreton said. ‘Why can’t people be content to believe that there’s such a thing as an accident?’
‘Perhaps if they trusted the messenger they would.’
‘Kendall’s as straight as they come,’ Moreton protested.
‘I’m sure he is.’ Jenny changed the subject. ‘Well, if you’re still feeling strong enough, I’ll give you a tour of the sights, shall I?’
‘Excellent.’ He glanced beyond her
to one of the dignitaries sitting further along the front row. ‘I’ll catch up with you outside in just a moment. It’s the Permanent Secretary from the Department for Transport – I ought to say hello.’
‘No problem.’
Leaving Moreton to grease the wheels of government, Jenny seized the chance to disappear into the crowd of departing journalists and catch up with the Taiwanese reporter whose question had prompted Kendall to bring proceedings to a halt. Dodging between news crews busy sending live pictures out across the world, she collared him just inside the entrance to the marquee.
‘Excuse me,’ she said, tapping his shoulder.
He turned, a little startled by her unannounced approach. ‘Yes?’
Her eyes dipped to the press pass all journalists were obliged to wear around their necks and she saw that his name was Wen Chen.
‘Jenny Cooper, Severn District Coroner.’ She fished into her jacket pocket and brought out a business card. ‘I’m inquiring into the death of the man who was sailing a yacht—’
‘I know about your investigation, Mrs Cooper.’
‘Oh –’
‘I’ve spoken to Mrs Patterson, or rather she has spoken to me.’
‘I see.’ She glanced back through the crowd and saw that Moreton was deep in conversation with his colleague. ‘Would you have a moment, Mr Chen?’
His eyes flitted left and right and he motioned towards the exit.
They stepped out of the marquee and sheltered from the steady drizzle under the canvas awning.
‘What can I do for you, Mrs Cooper?’ Chen asked cagily.
‘I was interested in your question. I know about Jimmy Han, but you seemed to imply there were other passengers on board with significant enemies.’
‘Yes—’
‘I’d be interested to know who you think they are.’
