before. “Look, I’ll do these in a sec, okay?” Finley’s reluctant to let them out of his sight. “I’ll give them back to you, I promise.” He’s too well mannered to protest, and I stuff them in my pocket, no doubt making the knots even worse.
The seats in the bar are upholstered in navy velvet with emerald trim, and the hundreds of tiny lights on the ceiling make it feel like a nightclub. All that’s missing is the music. It’s only when you look out the windows that you remember you’re on a plane, nothing between you and the ground but thousands of feet of air.
“The man who died.” I try to keep the urgency out of my voice as I speak to Hassan. “Did you talk to him?”
“I served him drinks. Small talk, you know.” He glances at my hands, and I realize I’m screwing a pile of cocktail napkins into a tight ball.
“Did he say anything?”
“About what?”
I open my mouth, but nothing comes out. About my daughter. About his drink tasting odd. About someone putting a photograph in his pocket. Hassan nods toward Jamie Crawford and his wife, who are sitting in the corner. “He was talking to these two for a bit.”
I cross the small bar. “I’m sorry to interrupt,” I say. “I wondered if—”
“Yeah, sure.” The ex-footballer smiles lazily and stands up, looping an arm around my shoulders. “Caz’ll take it. Where’s your phone?”
“No, I don’t—” I take a breath. Try to calm down. “I wasn’t after a photo. I just wanted to talk to you about something.”
He shrugs, as if to say it’s my loss, and sits down.
“You said the passenger who died was knocking back the port.”
“Must have had about four in the space of half an hour.”
“Did you see anyone—” I cut myself off. If I ask whether they saw someone spike his drink, it’ll be all over the plane within minutes. We’ll be forced to land, and the police will take over and… I think of Sophia’s photo, of my prints all over the empty glass I wrapped in waste paper and hid at the back of a locker, and I start to sweat.
Caz leans forward. “What did he die of?”
He was poisoned.
I swallow. “Um. A heart attack, I believe. I wondered if you’d spoken to him at all?”
“They don’t keep themselves healthy, that’s the problem.” The footballer sighs with the smug self-awareness that comes from having a personal chef and a fitness trainer on speed dial.
“We did speak to him, though, didn’t we, Jamie?” His wife puts her hand on his knee, her fourth finger almost eclipsed by a massive diamond. “He was the one who was a bit pissed and kept wanting to buy you a drink.”
“Oh yeah! I was like, It’s a free bar, but knock yourself out.”
“Did you see him with anyone else?”
“There was a couple with a baby.” Caz screws up her face. “A bloke who said he was a journalist, I think.”
I don’t know what I was hoping for. That they saw someone drug Kirkwood? Nevertheless, I’m frustrated. I thank the Crawfords and push through the curtain to the rear cabin, scanning the seats for the doctor who responded to Erik’s call for help.
She looks up from her book as I approach, her expression a little wary. “Don’t tell me someone else is ill.”
“No, I—I just wanted to thank you again for your help.”
The doctor flushes, clearly uncomfortable with the attention. “I’m only sorry it was too late.”
The woman next to the doctor is eavesdropping unashamedly, but I press on. “Air traffic control is just taking details to pass on to the next of kin, and I wondered if you could give me some more information. What makes you think he had a heart attack, for example?”
“The history given by your colleague and the other passengers was consistent with a diagnosis of cardiac arrest.”
“It couldn’t have been anything else?”
“You asked for a doctor; you didn’t specify pathologist.” She’s smiling, and her tone is misleadingly pleasant, almost humorous, but her eyes are flinty. “Would you like me to attempt a full autopsy? Perhaps I could lay him out on your fancy bar and poke around him with a cocktail stirrer?” The woman next to her suppresses a snort. The doctor glances at her, then looks back at me, and her expression softens. “It could have been a number of things.”
“Such as?”
The doctor sighs. “Look”—she takes in my name badge—“Mina. I did what I could—which sadly wasn’t a