Permissible Limits (66 page)

I fed the cats, watered the handful of plants and retrieved the morning’s mail from the front door mat. There were a couple of bills, and a subscription for
National Geographic,
and a bigger airmail envelope with a German stamp on the front. I turned the envelope over. On the back, in the space reserved for Return Addressee, there was an official-looking stamp.
Deutsche Bundesarchiv,
it read,
Fehrbelliner Platz
3,
W 1000, Berlin
31.

I gazed at it a moment, wondering what the envelope might contain, then I remembered all the conversations we’d had about the photo Ralph was trying to get hold of from the German archive people, the one that featured the pilot that Karel Brokenka had shot down. I felt the envelope, trying to guess its contents, then glanced at my watch. Our first flight of the morning was scheduled for half past eleven. I was the one ferrying guests to the airfield and it was already close to ten. Slipping the mail into my bag, I pulled the front door shut and locked it. Later this afternoon, I was supposed to be flying over to Goodwood for the final air show brief. All the other pilots would be there, and with only a couple of days to go it was our last chance to iron out any wrinkles in the display programme.

I sighed, heading up the path towards my car. Was I really in any kind of state to risk flying the Mustang? Could I hack the challenge of performing in front of God knows how many people? Wouldn’t it be wiser to make my excuses and back out gracefully?

I tussled with the problem for the rest of the morning but it was a chance comment from one of our guests that decided the issue. He’d been at Mapledurcombe for the best part of three weeks and he’d loved every minute of it. He’d already had his trip in the back of the Mustang and he was only coming over to the airfield to watch. As
Ellie B
lined up on the runway, and our pilot gunned the Merlin, I felt a hand on
my
arm.

It was our guest. The smile on his face couldn’t have been wider.

‘
We bomber guys used to call them “Little Friends” ‘ he said. ‘And they looked after us just the way you have.’

‘
Really?’

‘
Yeah. And you know something else? About that husband of yours? He deserved a damn medal. A credit to your country. A credit to you. Finest rebuild I ever saw. Yessir…’

We were both gazing up at the Mustang. It was airborne now, soaring away to the west, and watching it I knew exactly the debt I owed to Adam. Backing out of the air show just wasn’t an option. For his sake, as well as mine, I had to do it.

The briefing over at Goodwood went like a dream. It’s a lovely setting, the grass strip and the encircling racetrack
tucked
beneath the soft green swell of the South Downs, and it was lovely to see so many faces I knew.

There were about twenty of us there in the briefing room - all men apart from me - and we each offered a brief precis of the key elements in our own display. In my case, it was pretty basic stuff - a run and break from the east, a slow pass with wheels and flaps down, a steep climbing turn bringing me downwind in front of the crowd, and then a fast fly-by at 300 m.p.h., followed by a couple of climbing rolls and a final pass before I winged over and rejoined the circuit for a landing. As a piece of display flying, it wouldn’t hold a candle to the real aerobats but it wasn’t every day that a woman - a
woman,
for God’s sake - appeared at the controls of a hot American fighter and I could tell from their faces that these men were impressed as well as amused. Nearly all of them had been friends of Adam’s and it was entirely in keeping with their own philosophy that I should have chosen this particular way of sorting myself out. Thank God for our American guest, I thought. Thank God I hadn’t wimped.

At the end of the brief, the airfield manager took us through the safety routines. There’d be the usual ambulances on standby and plenty of helicopters for casevac should anything dramatic happen. The air show was attracting plenty of advance publicity, and given a spot of luck with the weather, he was expecting a decent crowd.

Afterwards, as he walked me out to the Moth, I asked him what he meant by a decent crowd.

He paused, looking back at the enclosures alongside the Aero Club, trying to come up with some kind of figure.

‘
Twenty-five thousand? Thirty?’ He grinned at me. ‘And another five because of you?’

‘
You’re joking.’

‘
Not at all. Put a woman in a classic warbird and you’d be amazed who turns up.’

The moment I
touched
down
,
back at
Sandown
,
I knew
something
had happened. I could see Andrea’s four-wheel drive parked up beside the control tower. She’d had it for less than a month and it was impossible to miss. Lime green, you could spot it from 5,000 feet.

She ran up to me the moment I swung the Moth into wind. Only when the engine stopped could I hear what she was saying.

‘
It’s Ralph.’

‘
What about him?’

‘
He’s come round. He’s conscious.’

We drove to the hospital at Newport. Ralph was still up in the ICU but his eyes were open and there was even a bit of colour back in his face. Absurdly, I felt that I’d got to know him even better over the weeks of unconsciousness and I took his hand at once and gave him a big wet kiss on his cheek. The kiss brought a smile to his face, and when a nurse appeared, I watched his eyes follow her around the room, The sister in charge had warned me that he couldn’t talk, or even lift an arm, but I think I only half-listened. If he could surface after barely a month, then it was surely only a matter of time before he became the old Ralph once again.

I settled down beside the bed, glad that Andrea had to go. The hospital had already contacted Jamie and they told me that he’d be coming down from London at some point in the evening. For now, I just wanted Ralph to myself.

With the arrangements for the air show still fresh in my mind, I told him all about Sunday’s plans. How it was my first public display. How nervous I was already at the thought of all those people watching. How much I’d picked up from my six weeks away in Florida. Mention of Florida brought a flicker of recognition to Ralph’s face and I found myself taking him through the training I’d done. The outings in the Harvard. My first solo in the Mustang. Even that hot, grey afternoon I’d flown into a tropical thunderstorm and only survived a lightning strike thanks to
my
very own Good Shepherd. The memory brought me to a sudden full stop. It was Harald who had done that. It was Harald who had saved my life.

‘
Harald? You remember Harald? Harald Meyler?’

Ralph had his eyes closed. For a moment, I thought he’d gone to sleep or - even worse - lapsed back into unconsciousness. I was aware of a nurse beside me. Normally busying from job to job, she was standing there, watching him.

Finally, Ralph’s eyes opened again.

‘
Harald?’ Another try. ‘Harald Meyler?’

I swear he nodded. I swear it. I bent a little closer, remembering our trip to Chicago. Karel Brokenka. Why on earth hadn’t I mentioned him before? The prize catch in Ralph’s research trawl?
Ellie
B’s most distinguished pilot?

‘
I went to see him,’ I told Ralph. ‘We flew up there, to Chicago. Karel, Ralph. Karel Brokenka.’

The name drew another tiny nod of recognition. I described our visit to the lakeside nursing home and then went over Karel’s story, telling it the way the old man had done, second by second, the Mustang plunging after the 109, reeling it closer and closer until the moment came to pull hard on the firing trigger and watch it disintegrate in the gunsight.

A hint of a smile ghosted over Ralph’s face and it was then that I remembered the post I’d picked up at his bungalow. The airmail envelope had come from the German archives. If we were lucky, it might contain a photograph of
Ellie B’s
one and only kill.

I took the lift down to the car park. The envelope was still on the passenger seat. Back at Ralph’s bedside, I opened the gummed flap at the top. The covering letter had come from an assistant called Gundren Hensch. Attached to it were three photos. I removed the paperclip, spreading them across the bed.

The first showed an Me 109 drawn up in front of a hangar. The canopy was open and the cockpit was empty. There was snow on the ground and tyre tracks everywhere. The second photo was more formal, a squadron or perhaps a larger unit of pilots, three rows of rather drawn faces, staring at the camera. I turned the photo over, hoping for a guide to a particular face, but there was nothing on the back.

I picked up the third photo. It was black and white, like the rest, but this time there was a single face staring out. He was standing beside an Me 109, the same plane and the same snow as I’d seen in the first shot. The pilot was wearing a long, double-breasted leather coat, but despite the cold he was bare-headed.

I stared at the face, meaning to show the photo to Ralph. For a long moment, everything seemed to go very quiet. I shut my eyes, then opened them again, looking down at the man in the leather jacket. I’d seen this face only a month or so ago. It had been there in the house in Florida, in the Casa Blanca, mounted in Monica’s pretty little frames, and it had been there as well in Harald’s study, propped against his laptop, the night I’d found him asleep. The same deep-set eyes. The same aggressive tilt of the chin. The same look of gaunt exhaustion.

Very slowly, I turned the photo over. This time, there was a name. Reinhard Mehler.
Staffelkapitan.
Killed in action, 1 January 1945.

Chapter nineteen

It took me most of the evening to find the card that the detective had left me, way back in February. His name was DC Perry. I was sure of it. And he’d told me to ring if there was anything he could do to help.

I called him on the mobile phone number he’d scribbled on the back of his card. By the sound of it, he was sitting in a pub. Very briefly, I explained what had happened. I told him about Harald, about recent developments in Jersey, and finally about the photograph from the Bundesarchiv.
Staffelkapitan
Mehler had gone down at the hands of Karel Brokenka. That’s why Harald had subjected the old man to such a grilling in the Chicago nursing home. That’s why he’d wanted to know every last detail of Brokenka’s finest moment. Harald’s father had been killed by our Mustang.

DC Perry seemed confused.

‘
But you say the Jersey police are handling it?’

‘
That’s right. An Inspector Roper.’

‘
Then it’s his case, his call. Why phone me?’

‘
Because I’m frightened.’

He was at Mapledurcombe within the hour. We sat in the kitchen and drank red wine while I went through it all again. My husband was dead. Harald had killed him. As far as I was concerned, he still wanted my plane and he still wanted me, and he just wasn’t the kind of man who ever entertained the remotest possibility of failure. According to Roper, he’d disappeared. But what was likely to happen next?

‘
He’ll be arrested.’

‘
Who by?’

‘
Depends where he is. It might be the Yanks. It might be the Russians. Or he might turn up in Europe somewhere…’ He shrugged. ‘There’ll be a warrant out for his arrest. Then you have to go through all the extradition procedures. It can take months. Years sometimes.’

‘
But will he be locked up? Behind bars?’

‘
For murder?’ He nodded. ‘Almost definitely.’

Almost wasn’t a word I liked, and I pressed him harder still. What if he came back to this country? What if he turned up on the Isle of Wight?

Perry laughed.

‘
After all the evidence he’s left behind him? He’d have to have a death wish to do that.’

Perry left long after midnight. I’d been meaning to ask for some kind of police protection but the way he seemed so certain that Harald wouldn’t be paying any surprise visits rather dissuaded me. Maybe he was right. Maybe Harald would be mad to risk coming back.