Rat Race Part 11

'We haven't seen much of each other yet, have we?'

'No,' I said.

'Can I have a cigarette?'

'I'm sorry... I don't smoke... I haven't any.'

'Oh. Well, give me a drink, then.'

'Look, I really am sorry... all I can offer you is black coffee... or water.'

'Surely you've got some beer?'

'Afraid not.'

She stared at me. Then she stood up, went into the tiny kitchen, and opened all the cupboards. I thought it was because she thought I was lying, but I'd done her an injustice. s.e.x minded she might be, but no fool.

'You've no car, have you? And the shops and the pub are nearly two miles away.' She came back frowning, and sat down again. 'Why didn't you ask someone to give you a lift?'

'Didn't want to be a bother.'

She considered it. 'You've been here three weeks and you don't get paid until the end of the month. So... have you any money?'

'Enough not to starve,' I said. 'But thanks all the same.'

I'd sent ten pounds to Susan and told her she'd have to wait for the rest until I got my pay cheque. She'd written back short and to the point. Two months, by then, don't forget. As if I could. I had under four pounds left in the world and too much pride.

'Uncle would give you an advance.'

'I wouldn't like to ask him.'

A small smile lifted the corners of her mouth. 'No, I can see that, as he's so intent on slapping you down.'

'Is he?'

'Don't pretend to be surprised. You know he is. You give him a frightful inferiority complex and he's getting back at you for it.'

'It's silly.'

'Oh sure. But you are the two things he longs to be and isn't, a top cla.s.s pilot and an attractive man. He needs you badly for the business, but he doesn't have to like it. And don't tell me you didn't know all that, because it's been obvious all along that you understand, otherwise you would have lost your temper with him every day at the treatment he's been handing out.'

'You see a lot from your tower,' I said smiling.

'Sure. And I'm very fond of my uncle And I love this little business, and I'd do anything to keep us afloat.' She said it with intense feeling. I wondered whether 'anything" meant sleeping with the pilots, or whether that came under the heading of pleasure, not profit. I didn't intend to find out. Not getting involved included Honey, in the biggest possible way.

I said, 'It must have been a blow to the business, losing that new Cherokee.'

She pursed her mouth and put her head on one side. 'Not altogether. In fact, absolutely the reverse. We had too much capital tied up in it. We had to put down a lump sum to start with, and the H.P. instalments were pretty steep.... I should think when everything's settled, and we get the insurance, we will have about five thousand pounds back, and with that much to sh.o.r.e us up we can keep going until times get better.'

'If the aircraft hadn't blown up, would you have been able to keep up with the H.P.?'

She stood up abruptly, seeming to think that she had already said too much. 'Let's just leave it that things are all right as they are.'

The daylight was fading fast. She came and stood close beside me, not quite touching.

'You don't smoke, you don't eat, you don't drink,' she said .softly. 'What else don't you do?'

'That too.'

'Not ever?'

'Not now. Not here.'

'I'd give you a good time.'...

'Honey... I just... don't want to.'

She wasn't angry. Not even hurt. 'You're cold,' she said judiciously. 'An iceberg.'

'Perhaps.'

'You'll thaw,' she said. 'One of these days.'

The Board of Trade had sent the same two men, the tall one and the silent one, complete with notebook and bitten green pencil. As before, I sat with them in the crew room and offered them coffee from the slot machine in the pa.s.sengers' lounge. They accepted, and I went and fetched three plastic cupfuls. The staff as well as the customers had to buy their coffee or whatever from the machine. Honey kept it well stocked. It made a profit.

Outside on the airfield my part-time colleague, Ron, was showing a new pupil how to do the external checks. They crept round the trainer inch by inch. Ron talked briskly. The pupil, a middle-aged man, nodded as if he understood.

The tall man was saying in effect that they had got nowhere with the bomb.

'The police have been happy to leave the investigation with us, but frankly in these cases it is almost impossible to find the ident.i.ty of the perpetrator. Of course if someone on board is a major political figure, or a controversial agitator... Or if there is a great sum of personal insurance involved... But in this case there is nothing like that.'

'Isn't Colin Ross insured?' I asked.

'Yes, but he has no new policy, or anything exceptional. And the beneficiaries are his twin sisters. I cannot believe...'

'Impossible' I said with conviction.

'Quite so.'

'How about the others?'

He shook his head. 'They all said, in fact, that they ought to be better insured than they were.' He coughed discreetly. 'There is, of course, the matter of yourself.'

'What do you mean?'

His sharp eyes stared at me unblinkingly.

'Several years ago you took out a policy for the absolute benefit of your wife. Although she is now your ex-wife, she would still be the beneficiary. You can't change that sort of policy.'

'Who told you all this?'

'She did,' he said. 'We went to see her in the course of our enquiries.' He paused. 'She didn't speak kindly of you.'

I compressed my mouth. 'No. I can imagine. Still. I'm worth more to her alive than dead. She'll want me to live as long as possible.'

'And if she wanted to get married again? Your alimony payments would stop then, and a lump sum from insurance might be welcome.'

I shook my head. 'She might have killed me in a fury three years ago, but not now, cold bloodedly, with other people involved. It isn't in her nature. And besides, she doesn't know anything about bombs and she had no opportunity... You'll have to cross out that theory too.'

'She has been going out occasionally with an executive from a firm specialising in demolitions.'

He kept his voice dead even, but he had clearly expected more reaction than he got. I wasn't horrified or even much taken aback.

'She wouldn't do it. Or put anyone else up to doing it. Ordinarily, she was too... too kind hearted. Too sensible, anyway. She used to be so angry whenever innocent pa.s.sengers were blown up... she would never do it herself. Never.'

He watched me for a while in the special Board of Trade brand of unnerving silence. I didn't see what I could add. Didn't know what he was after.

Outside on the airfield the trainer started up and taxied away. The engine noise faded. It was very quiet. I sat. I waited.

Finally he stirred. 'All in all, for all our trouble, we have come up with only one probability. And even that gets us no nearer knowing who the bomb was intended for, or who put it on board.'

He put his hand in his inner pocket and brought out a stiff brown envelope. Out of that he shook onto the crew room table a twisted piece of metal. I picked it up and looked at it. Beyond the impression that it had once been round and flat, like a b.u.t.ton, it meant nothing.

'What is it?'

The remains,' he said, 'of an amplifier.'

I looked up, puzzled. 'Out of the radio?'

'We don't think so.' He chewed his lip. 'We think it was in the bomb. We found it embedded in what had been the tail-plane.'

'Do you mean... it wasn't a time bomb after all?'

'Well... probably not. It looks as if it was exploded by a radio transmission. Which puts, do you see, a different slant on things.'

'What difference? I don't know much about bombs. How does a radio bomb differ from a time bomb?'

'They can differ a lot, though in many the actual explosive is the same. In those cases it's just the trigger mechanism that's different.' He paused. 'Well, say you have a quant.i.ty of plastic explosive. Unfortunately that's all too easy to get hold of, nowadays. In fact, if you happen to be in Greece, you can go into any hardware shop and buy it over the counter. On its own, it won't explode. It needs a detonator. Gunpowder, old-fashioned gunpowder, is the best. You also need something to ignite the gunpowder before it will detonate the plastic. Are you with me?'

'Faint but pursuing,' I said.

'Right. The easiest way to ignite gunpowder, from a distance, that is, is to pack it round a thin filament of fuse wire. Then you pa.s.s an electric current through the filament. It becomes red hot, ignites the gunpowder...'

'And boom, you have no Cherokee Six.'

'Er, yes. Now, in this type of bomb you have a battery, a high voltage battery about the size of a sixpence, to provide the electric current. The filament will heat up if you bend it round and fasten one end to one terminal of the battery, and the other to the other.'

'Clear,' I said. 'And the bomb goes off immediately.'

He raised his eyes to Heaven. 'Why did I ever start this? Yes, it would go off immediately. So it is necessary to have a mechanism that will complete the circuit after the manufacturer is safely out of the way.'

'By a spring?' I suggested.

'Yes. You hold the circuit open by a hair spring on a catch. When the catch is removed, the spring snaps the circuit shut, and that's that. Right? Now, the catch can be released by a time mechanism like an ordinary alarm clock. Or it can be released by a radio signal from a distance, via a receiver, an amplifier and a solonoid, like mechanisms in a s.p.a.ce craft.'

'What is a solonoid, exactly?'

'A sort of electric magnet, a coil with a rod in the centre. The rod moves up and down inside the coil, when a pulse is pa.s.sed through the coil. Say the top of the rod is sticking up out of the coil to form the catch on the spring, when the rod moves down into the coil the spring is released.

I considered it. 'What is there to stop somone detonating the bomb by accident, by unknowingly transmitting on the right frequency? The air is packed with radio waves... surely radio bombs are impossibly risky?'

He cleared his throat. 'It is possible to make a combination type release mechanism. One could make a bomb in which, say, three radio signals had to be received in the correct order before the circuit could be completed. For such a release mechanism, you would need three separate sets of receivers, amplifiers and solonoids to complete the circuit... We were exceptionally fortunate to find this amplifier. We doubt if it was the only one...'

'It sounds much more complicated than the alarm clock.'

'Oh yes, it is. But also more flexible. You are not committed to a time in advance to set it off.'

'So no one had to know what time we would be leaving Haydock. They would just have to see us go.'

'Yes... Or be told you had gone.'

I thought a bit. 'It does put a different slant, doesn't it?'

'I'd appreciate your thinking.'

'You must be thinking the same,' I protested. 'If the bomb could be set off at any hour, any day, any week even, it could have been put in the aircraft at any time after the last maintenance check.'

He smiled thinly. 'And that would let you half way off the hook?'

'Half way,' I agreed.

'But only half.'

'Yes.'

He sighed. 'I've sprung this on you. I'd like you to think it over, from every angle. Seriously. Then tell me if anything occurs to you. If you care at all to find out what happened, that is, and maybe prevent it happening again.'

'You think I don't care?'

'I got the impression.'

'I would care now,' I said slowly, 'If Colin Ross were blown up.'

He smiled. 'You are less on your guard, today.'

'You aren't sniping at me from behind the bushes.'

'No...' He was surprised. 'You're very observant, aren't you?'