Permissible Limits (57 page)

‘
It’s really nothing to do with me,’ I said. ‘It’s her business. And yours.’

‘
Ours.’

‘
No, yours. My love, you have to face up to it. If it’s over, and you keep telling me it is, then it’s her baby, her body, her decision.’

‘
I don’t want her to kill it.’

‘
So what
do
you want?’

He sipped at his pint. I was getting to know him really well by now and I could tell by the expression on his face that he’d rehearsed this conversation.

‘
What about adopting it?’ he suggested at last.

‘
You can’t adopt it. It’s your child already.’

‘
I didn’t mean me.’

I stared at him. The implication couldn’t have been clearer. Jamie was asking me to become a mother. Of his child.

‘
Me?’ I said weakly.

‘
Us.’

‘
But…’ I spread my hands wide,’… living together? Bringing it up? Becoming a family?’

‘
Yeah, why not?’

This was such a contrast to my last proposal - Harald’s laboured attempts to turn me into a Blue Angel - that I began to laugh.

‘
You’re asking me to
marry
you?’

‘
Not at all. There’s a problem with the baby. Rather than see it killed, we could give it a home. That’s all I’m saying.’

I realised he was serious. The difficulties were obvious.

‘
What about Gitta?’

‘
I think she might agree.’

‘
Why?’

‘
Because it turns out she’s Catholic’

‘
She never told you?’

‘
I never asked.’

‘
But it matters now? To her?’

‘
Seems to.’

He described a recent conversation they’d had on the phone. It seemed she was resigned to losing him but getting rid of the baby wasn’t as simple as she’d thought. A visit to an obstetrician had revealed an abnormality in her womb. It the abortion was to go ahead, it should happen very soon.

‘
And?’

‘
She’s having second thoughts.’

‘
So what’s the deadline? For the abortion?’

Jamie was grinning now. The fact that I hadn’t said no, hadn’t thrown a fit, was - to him - tantamount to agreement. He reached for my empty glass.

‘
Early August,’ he said. ‘How about another one?’

July was upon us
days
later. With it came a phone call from my accountant, Dennis Wetherall. The sound of his voice wasn’t entirely welcome. Within seconds, I was back in the mess that Adam had left me to clear up.

‘
I’ve been drawing up the final accounts,’ he was saying. ‘I think you ought to come over.’

‘
Put them in the post,’ I said at once. ‘I’m really busy.’

‘
Really? I thought that sister of yours was in charge?’ Dennis sounded vastly amused.

I lied for a moment or two about how we divvied up the work, but Dennis wasn’t having it. He obviously spoke to Andrea a great deal, and the fact that she was running Mapledurcombe virtually single-handed was beyond dispute. The moment I’d left for America I’d surrendered control, and unless she died, or fell in love, or something equally unlikely, that’s the way it was going to stay.

‘
These accounts…’ I began guardedly,’… is there a problem?’

‘
Yes, I think there is.’ I could picture Dennis scowling at the telephone. ‘Come over and I’ll show you.’

It was three days before Jamie could take the time off and I saw no point going without him. Another trip to Jersey wouldn’t do his navigation any harm and if Dennis insisted on the normal boozy lunch, then my pupil could fly me back as well.

We left at eight in the morning. The crossing was a delight - a big high-pressure zone emptying the sky of clouds - and it was barely half past nine by the time Dennis picked me up at the Aero Club. On the way in to St Helier, he enquired about Harald and my trip out to Standfast. I told him a little about what we’d got up to - the flying, the facilities, the fighter pilot school he seemed to run - then said that Harald hadn’t been in touch since.

‘
He’s in Kiev,’ Dennis grunted. ‘Buying aeroplanes.’

‘
The Russian Shuttle thing?’

‘
Yeah, and lots else. The Shuttle was the key to the door. Just now he’s inside, emptying all the cupboards.’

‘
Of what?’

‘
Anything that flies. Anything that goes bang. Jesus, you know the guy. He’ll end up owning an air force at this rate.’ He eyed me across the car, openly curious. ‘He make any moves on you?’

‘
Not exactly.’

‘
What does that mean?’

‘
Nothing you’d understand.’ I patted him on the knee. ‘Tell me about these accounts. I have to be back at the airport by three.’

Dennis parked the Porsche and we took the lift to his new suite of offices on the Esplanade. They looked out across the harbour, a glorious view, and I was still watching a couple entwined around each other on the sun deck of a big fifty-foot motor cruiser when Dennis passed me a stapled sheet of papers.

‘
These are Adam’s Amex statements. The key date’s February the eleventh.’

I stared down at the list of credit-card transactions. The twelfth of February was the day Adam had speared in, the day I’d waited by the phone, hoping against hope that the radar people had got it wrong. My eyes went from purchase to purchase, following the footprints that Adam had left across those first ten days of the month: £12 to a garage in Newport, petrol probably; £19.27 to the off-licence we used near Mapledurcombe; £198.50 to settle his monthly invoice for landings at Sandown Airport. After Monday, the ninth, he’d been on Jersey. There was the charge from the sushi restaurant on the night of the eleventh, and then the bill from the Bon Accueil, settled on the morning he’d left in the Cessna. I’d thought of these places nonstop for months. Seeing them listed here, so cold, so matter-of-fact, was the strangest experience. Was this how Adam had ended up? As a list of entries on a credit card statement?

Dennis was getting impatient.

‘
Next page,’ he said. ‘Turn over.’

I flipped the page. The settlement date on Adam’s account happened to fall on the twelfth of every month. The next page should have been empty. It wasn’t.

I stared at the single line of type. On Friday 13 February, Adam had bought £83 worth of Avgas from the refuelling agency at Hurn Airport.

Hurn Airport serves Bournemouth. I looked up.

‘
He couldn’t have done,’ I said. ‘He was dead.’

‘
That’s what I thought.’

‘
Then it must have been a mistake. Wrong card, wrong account, whatever.’

‘
It wasn’t a mistake. I’ve been through it with the Amex people. Twice.’ He jabbed at the statement with his finger. ‘On Friday the thirteenth of February, someone used his card at Hurn.’

‘
And you don’t think it was Adam?’

Dennis shot me one of his looks. From the start, he’d dismissed any thought that Adam might have staged some kind of disappearance. He’d known him well, he’d rated his judgement, and in his book Adam didn’t play games like that.

‘
He’s dead, Ellie,’ he grunted. ‘That’s the bottom line.’

Suddenly, something occurred to me.

‘
Did Adam have more than one card?’

‘
Not according to Amex.’

‘
But that’s impossible.’

‘
Why?’

‘
Because his card was in the bag they fished out, the one that Harald’s people found in the Channel. Harald showed me himself. They found the bag over a week later.’

‘
I know.’ Dennis was nodding. ‘You told me.’

‘
When?’

‘
February 22nd.’ He tapped his diary. ‘I made a note.’

I sat back, overwhelmed. The implications were horrible. I didn’t want to think about them. I looked out at the sunshine, at the yachts in the harbour, half-listening to Dennis. Accountants, I thought, live in a very black-and-white world. Doubt wasn’t a commodity they had much use for.

‘
Harald showed you the bag, Adam’s bag… right?’

‘
Yes.’

‘
And the card in the side pocket was definitely his… right?’

‘
Yes.’

‘
So the bag couldn’t have been in the aeroplane, could it?’

‘
No.’

‘
So Harald’s blokes couldn’t have found it, could they?’

‘
No.’

Something was snagging in my mind, something I’d half-felt at the time but had never pursued. I had my address book in my bag. The man I’d met from the AAIB was a Mr Grover and I’d made a note of his telephone number.

‘
May I?’

Dennis passed me the phone. When I got through to Grover’s office, they said he was out on an investigation. They gave me a mobile number. He answered on the first ring.

‘
It’s Ellie Bruce, Mr Grover. We had tea at Southampton airport a while back. My husband, Adam…’

The name finally registered. We swapped courtesies. Dennis was standing behind me, staring out of the window. The rattle of change in his pocket meant he was getting impatient. Mr Grover asked me how he could help.

‘
That bag I gave you,’ I said. ‘Have you still got it?’

‘
The Jaguar bag? The one they found in the sea?’

‘
That’s it.’

There was a long silence. From his end, I could hear the whine of an engineering tool.

‘
I think I do,’ he said at last. ‘I think it’s in a locker at the office. I’ll check when I get back.’

‘
When’s that?’

I listened to his answer, then thanked him and said I’d ring again. The moment I put the phone down, Dennis was back behind his desk.

‘
Well?’

‘
He’ll be in his office next week, fingers crossed.’

‘
Next week? Phone him again. I’ll talk to him.’

He pushed the phone at me but I shook my head.

‘
I have to think about this,’ I said. ‘I want a bit of time.’

‘
What is there to think about? We either go to the police or we don’t.

If we don’t, we’ve got to have a bloody good reason why not.’ He picked up the statements I’d left on the desk. ‘This is
prima facie,
Ellie. The least we’re looking at is fraud.’

I thought of the entry again. Eighty-three pounds buys you a tankful of Avgas. Provided it’s a small plane.

‘
Give me a week,’ I said. ‘Please.’

‘
To do what? Have a think? Bit of a wobble? You don’t need it, Ellie. What you need are the guys who know what they’re doing. Round here we call them policemen.’

‘
No.’ I shook my head. ‘Can I have a photocopy of this?’

Dennis left the office. When he came back, he was carrying two sheets of paper. The second photocopy was a duplicate of the sales chit. The name of the agency at Hurn was Wessex Refuelling and the date, beyond any shadow of a doubt, was Friday 13 February. I peered hard at the signature but it really told me nothing. Anyone could have forged Adam’s scrawl.

Dennis folded the photocopies and held them out. They might have been the Crown Jewels, the way he watched me slipping them into my bag.

‘
What about the AAIB guy’s mobile number? You’ve still got that?’

‘
Of course.’ I patted my bag.

Dennis looked at me a moment, then shook his head.

‘
Thank Christ for that.’ He sank into his chair again. ‘Phone me the moment anything happens.’

Jamie flew me back to Sandown that afternoon. He didn’t ask me what Dennis had said and I didn’t tell him. For
the
time being, I wanted to keep this shattering development to myself. If I’d misinterpreted Adam’s death, if I’d got the circumstances all wrong, then I needed to be the first to know why.