B006U13W The Flight (Jenny Cooper 4) nodrm (33 page)

Her task complete, she turned the camera around to face the small safe which sat on the floor in the corner of the room. She filmed herself stowing the bags inside it and added for the record that she was the only person who knew the combination.

Jenny remained on edge throughout the entire two-hour drive along the motorway, her white-knuckle grip on the steering wheel sending shooting pains along her arms and into her shoulders and chest. Her eyes were smarting with the strain of staring out into the wet, moonless night, but she had no intention of stopping until she arrived at her destination.

She tried Michael’s number repeatedly, but he wasn’t answering. Fearing that he might be screening her out, she left a message insisting he call her. He didn’t. Eventually, a tired-sounding woman picked up the phone at Sky Driver’s office, but after consulting her computer she claimed that Michael had clocked off earlier that afternoon after a return flight to Newmarket. Jenny guessed that meant he was working ‘off the log’ again. It wasn’t the night to be flying a light aircraft, she thought, let alone dog-tired and suffering far more grief than he dared to admit.

It was eight p.m. when she wove through the crowds of bleary-eyed commuters staring hopefully up at the departure screens and made her way to the left-luggage office at the head of platform twelve. Repeated terrorist attacks in recent decades had resulted in a blanket ban on left-luggage lockers, meaning that each bag had to be checked in over the counter and passed through a scanner. The rules printed on the back of the ticket were clear: the checked bag would only be handed back in exchange for the original ticket.

There wasn’t much business being done at this time of the evening, and the Polish girl manning the office was glancing sleepily at a magazine. She took the ticket and went in search of Nuala’s luggage without a word. Jenny glanced up at the security cameras on the ceiling which covered every angle and realized that evidence of her collection would be sitting on the company’s servers for months, if not years, to come.

‘What kind of bag is it?’ the girl asked, walking alongside a row of suitcases.

Jenny had a moment of panic. ‘I’m not sure. It belongs to my friend—’

The girl looked at her uncertainly, but seemed to relent. Besides, there was no clause requiring the collector and depositor to be the same person; whoever presented the ticket was entitled to exchange it for the luggage. The girl wandered further along the row, briefly disappeared behind some racks, then reappeared with a slender black laptop case, which she placed on the counter.

The girl checked the ticket taped to it against Jenny’s. ‘That’s it.’

‘Thank you,’ Jenny said. ‘That’s definitely her case.’

She was climbing the steps out of the station to Eastbourne Terrace when her phone rang. It was Michael. About time.

‘Jenny?’

‘Michael, where are you?’

‘In some dive of a hotel on the M4. I’m flying from Newbury to France and back tomorrow. What’s so urgent?’

‘I’ve got Nuala’s laptop, not the company one, her personal laptop.’

‘Where . . . How?’ He sounded as nervous as she was.

‘By making myself a criminal. I hope it’s worth it.’

‘Jenny,
where
did you get it?’

‘Paddington. She checked it into left luggage before getting on the flight to the States. Do you want to look at it with me?’

‘
Jesus—
’

‘Michael?’

‘I thought it must have gone down with her.’

‘It didn’t. Which particular dive on the M4 do I aim for?’

‘No expense spared, eh?’

‘The company gets a discount – you can see why.’ Michael closed the door to his room in the Reading service station and drew over the night lock. As motel rooms went it was adequate, but Jenny felt there was something faintly tragic about a former fighter pilot living no better than a truck driver. He looked worn out and smelt of beer. Dressed in faded jeans and an old Levi’s T-shirt, he could have been a roadie for an ageing rock band.

‘Should you be drinking the evening before you fly?’ Jenny said.

‘Could you sleep in here without a drink?’

It was a fair point. She pushed aside his dirty cup and set the bag on the desk by the TV. Michael let her take the chair and sat on the end of the bed. They exchanged a glance, Jenny wanting to say something reassuring but not knowing what.

‘Just open it,’ Michael said.

She unzipped the bag and pulled out a slender laptop – the kind of upmarket model she had never been able to stretch to. She checked inside the bag. There was nothing else. Putting it to one side, she flipped open the screen and switched it on. As she had expected, it asked for a user password.

She looked to Michael.

Michael shrugged. ‘Tyax?’

She keyed in the now familiar word and the desktop dutifully appeared, revealing a small set of half a dozen icons. Nuala kept her computer as spotless as her flat.

‘Where to first?’ Jenny asked.

‘Look – top left. She backed up her phone.’

He was right – there it was. Nuala had actually bothered to install the program most people toss away the moment they take their new phone out of the box. Jenny clicked open the application and found a number of folders. One held a diary, one a list of contacts, and a third contained photographs. A line of text at the bottom of the window recorded the date of the last back-up as 4 January. Michael insisted on looking at the photographs first. There were shots of skylines taken in shiny new Middle Eastern cities and a handful of Sandy Belling and her baby.

‘You seem disappointed,’ Jenny said.

Michael shrugged. ‘I don’t know what I was expecting. She always used to take lots of pictures.’

That was when she was happy, Jenny might have said, but made no comment. She turned to the diary file. It opened to reveal a month per screen. Starting from the previous June the entries revealed that Nuala had done little except work flat out, flying three or four round trips to European destinations each week until October, when her schedule altered to two runs to either Dubai or Abu Dhabi. The few non-work events entered were usually
Meet Sandy
,
Pilates
or
Gym
. There was nothing out of the ordinary until 6 November. An entry for that date read:
Meet AF H/R T1 17.30.

‘Heathrow Terminal One?’ Jenny deduced.

Michael nodded.

‘Any idea who AF is?’

‘No. Try her contacts.’

Jenny opened the contacts file in a separate window and scrolled through the list of names until she reached F. There was no one listed with an initial A.

‘Keep going through the diary,’ Michael said.

There was nothing more in November beyond the usual routine. December, however, revealed something different. Interspersed between flights to the Middle East were five meetings with
MD
on the 2nd, 7th, 12th, 19th and 28th. More interesting still were the locations:
Heston E/B
;
H’smith Starbucks
;
Langley Plough
;
Windsor Costa.
The final entry read:
Mick D, Datchet Royal Oak.

‘Five meetings with Mick D in one month,’ Jenny said. ‘Do you know him?’

‘No.’

‘Service stations, coffee shops, pubs. All within thirty minutes of Heathrow. Not what you’d call romantic locations.’

‘Look in her contacts again.’ Michael’s tone was curt and Jenny shot him a look.

‘Sorry—’

‘Thank you.’ She worked through the list to D. There were three entries, none of them relating to anyone called Mick. He wasn’t listed under M either. A faint bell rang in the back of Jenny’s mind. ‘Hold on – didn’t Nuala write the initials MD on one of the documents in her files? They’re at my house—’

‘I remember,’ Michael said. ‘It was on the FAA directive ordering Airbus operators to upgrade to heated pitot tubes.’

‘So we’re looking for a pilot?’

‘Not necessarily. Try going online and running a search.’

Jenny connected to the motel’s wireless network and entered her credit card details. Hooked up expensively to the internet she searched
Mick D Airbus
. In less than two seconds the search engine threw up a list of apparently obscure and irrelevant results.

‘There – number four,’ Michael said.

Jenny looked at the entry. It was listed under
Tech Log
and in the text beneath it were the words,
Engineer Mick Dalton describes his path to becoming . . .
She clicked and a page appeared from a trade magazine. Scrolling down, she came to a brief column profiling Mick Dalton, Senior Engineer, Ransome Airways. The photograph was of a balding middle-aged man wearing black-rimmed glasses.

Michael nodded slowly. ‘Remember him?’

‘No—’

‘The guy who left Nuala’s flight case in the car park – that’s him. Check her emails – she used that more than she did the phone.’

Jenny closed the internet browser and clicked on the email tab. An inbox opened and began to fill with newly arriving messages. They were mostly junk – discount and investment offers, but the one midway down the list caught her eye. It flashed with an insistent red exclamation mark and the subject field read:
URGENT
. It was dated 10 January, the day after the crash.

‘Are you going to open it?’ Michael said impatiently.

Jenny paused, frightened of what she might find, then forced herself to double-click the message. A new window opened and a lot of indecipherable computer code spread across the screen.

‘Stop it!’ Michael called out.

He leaped up and grabbed the mouse from her hand but it was already too late. The computer screen turned solid blue and the cursor vanished. Michael hit the enter key. There was no response.

He slammed the edge of the desk with his fists. ‘Shit!’ He looked at Jenny. ‘You know what that was, don’t you?’

‘I’ve got a pretty good idea.’

Michael switched off the power, removed the battery, then tried to reboot, but the laptop remained frozen on the same blank screen. He quickly switched it off again, reasoning that the damage done by the Trojan Horse contained in the email could be limited and some of the data on the computer’s hard drive retained, but Jenny didn’t hold out much hope. Whoever planted the virus had known exactly what they were doing, and they had acted quickly.

‘We didn’t even get to look at her documents,’ Jenny said.

Michael sat back on the bed with a look of disbelief. ‘Who the hell sent that?’

‘Whoever shut down Airbuzz?’

‘If the left-luggage ticket was in her wallet, why not just go and collect her computer?’

‘You’re presuming whoever it was had access to the physical evidence. Maybe they didn’t?’

They sat in silence for a moment, both contemplating what might have been.

‘I feel stupid,’ Jenny said. ‘Anyone knows you don’t open messages like that.’

Michael sat, shoulders hunched, pale and exhausted. All the energy seemed to have drained from his body.

It was up to Jenny to make the running. ‘I need to speak to Mick Dalton. Where do I get his number?’

‘David Cambourne?’

‘No. I don’t want them talking.’ She got out her phone and handed it to Michael. ‘You know how airports work – there must be someone you can call at Heathrow.’

Jenny waited on tenterhooks while he first dialled a main switchboard for the British Airports Authority, then slowly worked his way through three other offices before finally being patched through to the chief engineer on duty for Ransome Airways. Michael placed a hand over the receiver. ‘Who shall I say I am?’

‘Tell him you’re with the coroner’s office.’

Moments later he was writing down Dalton’s number on the motel menu card and Jenny was simultaneously entering the digits into her phone. She had pressed dial even before Michael had rung off.

She waited nearly half a minute for the phone to be answered. A male voice said a cautious hello.

‘Mick Dalton?’ Jenny enquired.

‘Who is this?’

‘Jenny Cooper, Severn Vale District Coroner. I need to meet with you, Mr Dalton – this evening if possible.’

Dalton was silent for a moment. ‘It’s past ten o’clock—’

‘Would you prefer me to call on you at work?’

‘No—’ He hesitated. ‘I thought I’d already dealt with the coroner’s office.’

‘It was you who left Miss Casey’s flight bag in the Heathrow car park, wasn’t it? Mr Cambourne must have mentioned my name.’

Silence.

He was frightened. She would have to leave him no choice. ‘I’m quite certain you’ve been contacted by Sir James Kendall’s office since then, and that you have been asked not to speak to anyone else, but they can’t stop you from talking to another coroner, nor are they entitled to. I’m dealing with the death of a man killed on the water. I’ve also seen Nuala Casey’s diary and a number of her papers. You met with her five times last December and I’ve seen your initials on sensitive documents in her possession.’

Now she had terrified him.

‘Mr Dalton? . . . Mr Dalton, are you there?’

‘I can’t . . . I can’t afford to lose my . . . I . . .’ He ran out of words. Jenny sensed that she had brought the sky crashing down on his head.

‘Do you think the truth about something this huge can be concealed for ever? Six hundred people died, Mr Dalton. You can’t afford not to talk to me.’

D
ALTON PICKED THE RENDEZVOUS:
a lay-by off a country lane named Drift Road, a short distance from the motorway and halfway between the motel and Heathrow. Tired as he was, Michael insisted on coming with her, saying that it wasn’t safe for a woman to drive out to such a remote spot alone. Jenny didn’t know whether to feel grateful or patronized, but as she turned off the M4 onto a winding lane virtually empty of traffic, she was glad not to be by herself.

They pulled into the lay-by shortly before eleven p.m. and waited in silence for Dalton to arrive. Over the course of ten minutes several vehicles passed by but none pulled over.

‘Do you think he’s too scared?’ Jenny said.

‘Given that he’s already driven past three times, I’d say he was a little nervous.’