Blindside - By Gj Moffat Page 0,1

bed, rubbing sleep from his eyes.

‘Is this Alex Cahill?’ a woman asked.

He didn’t recognise the voice.

‘Take it downstairs,’ Sam said.

Cahill stood and went out of the bedroom, past his daughters’ rooms and downstairs towards his study at the back of the house.

‘This is Cahill,’ he told the woman on the phone.

‘I’m calling about Tim,’ she said.

The woman’s voice was thick, like she had been crying. Cahill rubbed at his hair, his mind not functioning yet at full capacity.

‘Tim who?’ he asked as he padded barefoot into his study, closing the door behind him.

‘Tim Stark. This is his wife, Melanie.’

Cahill sat in the leather seat behind his large desk and swivelled to look out the window into his garden.

‘Sorry, Melanie,’ Cahill said. ‘It’s early here. What about Tim?’

‘I didn’t know who else to call,’ Melanie Stark said. ‘I mean, I’ve tried the police and the people at the airport but they won’t tell me anything.’

Cahill closed his eyes, forcing himself to think despite the fuzz clouding his brain.

‘Melanie, I haven’t seen Tim in a while. Not since I was in the US last summer. In Washington. And it’s five in the morning here. What’s this about?’

‘Sorry, I forgot about the time difference. It’s just …’

Cahill switched on the desk lamp and reached for a pen, writing ‘Tim Stark’ at the top of a blank page in his notebook. He could hear Melanie sniffing back tears and felt a knot of anxiety form in his stomach. Tim was a good friend and something was clearly wrong.

‘Okay, listen, Melanie. I need you to slow down. I mean, let’s start with the basics. You said something about an airport. Which airport?’

‘Denver International.’

Cahill jotted that down underneath Tim’s name in the notebook.

‘Are you there right now?’

‘No. I’m at home in Kansas City.’

‘I’m not following you, Melanie.’

‘It’s the crash,’ she said. ‘It’s all over the TV. Haven’t you seen it?’

The knot in his stomach twisted inside.

‘Give me a minute.’

Cahill got up, still holding the phone to his ear, and went to the couch where he lifted a remote and pointed it at the TV. The screen came to life and he switched to a news channel.

Fractured images showed onscreen in a loop: firefighters tackling a huge blaze and ambulance crews rushing in and out of frame while the blue lights of their vehicles filled the night.

Cahill muted the volume and looked at the info bar scrolling along the bottom of the screen, describing a plane crash outside Denver, Colorado. His home town.

He sat on the couch watching the screen.

‘I see it now,’ Cahill said into the phone, his voice sounding hollow.

‘Tim said he was going to be on that flight,’ she said. ‘He was in Denver and called me to say that he had business in Washington and that he’d got a late cancellation on the flight. He took it and—’

She was speaking in a rush.

‘I’m not sure I understand why you’re calling me,’ he said. ‘Or what you think I can do to help you. I’m based in the UK now. In Scotland.’

‘I know that,’ she said. ‘I found your contact details in Tim’s desk. You were in the Service together, weren’t you? The Secret Service.’

‘We were.’

‘He talked about you and the other guys a lot. About what it was like back then. Said you were the best.’

She stopped talking and sobbed. Cahill didn’t know what to say. The info bar on the TV screen continued to scroll, telling Cahill that there were no survivors expected from the crash.

‘Melanie, I’m real sorry about this. Tim was a good man. A friend.’

Cahill ran a hand over his face and up through his hair, feeling like all he wanted to do was sleep. But he knew that he would not get to sleep with images of the plane wreckage seared into his mind.

‘Tim got fired from the Service in the Fall of last year,’ Melanie said. ‘Didn’t even get his pension.’

‘I didn’t know. He seemed fine when I saw him.’

‘He wouldn’t tell me why he got fired. Then he got another job. Said it was something he couldn’t tell me about but that it paid well.’

Cahill’s antennae started to twitch.

‘But it didn’t pay well,’ Melanie went on. ‘I mean, not so far as I could see. It didn’t pay at all. Not officially. But there were always cash deposits in our account. Nothing huge, just enough for what we needed. Like he was being careful not to put any more in the account. I was worried and