waiting for the circuits to click out a conclusion. There was no aggression anywhere in his manner, no vengeance in his motivation. A fact finder, a cause-seeker: like a truffle hound. He knew the scent of truth. Nothing would entice him away.
‘And it sat on a shelf in the changing room all afternoon,’ I said. ‘And no one is allowed into the changing room except jockeys and valets.’
‘We understand that that is so.’ He smiled. ‘Could the parcel have been the bomb? Weightwise?’
‘I suppose so.’
‘Miss Nancy Ross says it contained a large fancy bottle of bath oil.’
‘No pieces in the wreckage?’ I asked.
‘Not a thing.’ The tall man’s nose wrinkled. ‘I’ve seldom seen a more thorough disintegration.’
We were sitting in what was called the crew room in the Derrydown office on the old R.A.F. airfield near Buckingham. Such money as Derrydown spent on appearances began in the manager’s office and ended in the passengers’ waiting lounge across the hall. The crew room looked as if the paint and the walls were coming up to their silver wedding. The linoleum had long passed the age of consent. Three of the four cheap armchairs looked as if they had still to reach puberty but the springs in the fourth were so badly broken that it was more comfortable to sit on the floor.
Much of the wall space was taken up by maps and weather charts and various Notices to Airmen, several of them out of date. There was a duty roster upon which my name appeared with the utmost regularity and a notice typed in red capitals to the effect that anyone who failed to take the aircraft’s documents with him on a charter flight would get the sack. I had duly taken all the Cherokee’s records and maintenance certificates with me, as the Air Navigation Order insisted. Now they were burned to a crisp. I hoped someone somewhere saw some sense in it.
The tall man looked carefully round the dingy room. The other, shorter, broader, silent, sat with his green bitten HB poised over his spiral bound notebook.
‘Mr Shore, I understand you hold an Airline Transport Pilot’s Licence. And a Flight Navigator’s certificate.’
He had been looking me up. I knew he would have.
I said flatly, ‘Yes.’
‘This taxi work is hardly… well… what you were intended for.’
I shrugged.
‘The highest possible qualifications…’ He shook his head. ‘You were trained by B.O.A.C. and flew for them for nine years. First Officer. In line for Captain. And then you left.’
‘Yes.’ And they never took you back. Policy decision.
Never.
He delicately consulted his notes. ‘And then you flew as Captain for a private British airline until it went into liquidation? And after that for a South American airline, who, I believe, dismissed you. And then all last year a spot of gun running, and this spring some crop spraying. And now this.’
They never let go. I wondered who had compiled the list.
‘It wasn’t guns. Food and medical supplies in, refugees and wounded out.’
He smiled faintly. ‘To some remote African airstrip on dark nights? Being shot at?’
I looked at him.
He spread out his hands, ‘Yes. I know. All legal and respectable, and not our business, of course.’ He cleared his throat…. ‘Weren’t you the… er… the subject… of an investigation about four years ago? While you were flying for British Interport?’
I took in a slow breath. ‘Yes.’
‘Mm.’ He looked up, down, and sideways. ‘I’ve read an outline of that case. They didn’t suspend your licence.’
‘No.’
‘Though on the face of it one might have expected them to.’
I didn’t answer.
‘Did Interport pay the fine for you?’
‘No.’
‘But they kept you on as Captain. You were convicted of gross negligence, but they kept you on.’ It was half way between a statement and a question.
‘That’s right,’ I said.
If he wanted all the details, he could read the full report. He knew it and I knew it. He wasn’t going to get me to tell him.
He said, ‘Yes… well. Who put this bomb in the Cherokee? When and how?’
‘I wish I knew.’
His manner hadn’t changed. His voice was still friendly. We both ignored his tentative shot at piling on the pressure.
‘You stopped at White Waltham and Newbury…’
‘I didn’t lock up at White Waltham. I parked on the grass outside the reception lounge. I could see the aeroplane most of the time, and it was only on the ground for half an hour. I got there early… I can’t see that anyone had a chance, or could rely on having a chance, to put