The Survivor

  And then, after scribbling his address on to a crumpled piece of paper, he left. Keller had suddenly felt drained of energy, and had undressed and crawled wearily into bed, falling asleep instantly, sinking into a dark world of whispers. Now he tried to remember the dream, the first he’d had for many weeks, but it was no use; his mind refused him.

  He stubbed out the cigarette, then pulled back the bed covers. Walking through into the bathroom he doused his face with cold water. Still naked, unaware of the cold, he went into the kitchen and made himself some strong, black coffee. He took it into the lounge and his eyes involuntarily went to the picture of Cathy. It was this that reminded him of his nakedness. They had often gone about the flat without clothes during the summer months, both enjoying the sight of each other’s body in natural, relaxed positions; his hard and firm, hers soft, slim, her legs long and tapered, her breasts small and childlike. It was the sense of freedom they had enjoyed; freedom with each other, their nakedness expressing their intimacy. He went into the bedroom and put on his robe.

  As he drunk his coffee, the crumpled piece of paper containing Hobbs’s address caught his eye. It was lying on the floor where it had blown from the edge of the table when the door had closed behind the medium the night before. Keller hadn’t bothered to pick it up because he’d had no intention of contacting the man again. But now he did, and he straightened it out flat on the table before him. It was a Wimbledon address and Keller smiled at the idea of a little man from suburbia being in touch with spirits from the other world. And yet, it was the very ordinary appearance of the man that made his story more plausible. If he had worn a black cloak and spoken in an excited, fanatical way, the whole affair would have appeared absurd, but Hobbs’s quiet and slightly humble manner had an air of authority about it. Whether he was believed or not didn’t seem to matter; he was merely stating a fact. His eyes had been the only strange thing about him; they had looked beyond Keller’s and deep into his inner being. Why had Hobbs appeared so puzzled when he had opened the door?

  And how had he known about his fight with Rogan?

  The co-pilot still couldn’t remember when the argument had taken place and, because he felt it was important, he racked his brain trying to. But, as with many of his thoughts relating to the crash nowadays, the more he concentrated, the more the answers eluded him. There was, of course, one person who would probably be able to tell him: Beth Rogan. He was reluctant to see her after what had happened between them, but he felt he had no choice. He had to know.

  He sipped at the black coffee, the image of Beth clear in his mind’s eye. At thirty-six, she was still a beautiful woman, her maturity somehow making her beauty more clearly defined. How would she react on seeing him again so soon after the death of her husband? Would she, too, hold him to blame as others had done? Or was she glad he had lived? It had been quite a while since he’d seen her last so there was no way of telling what her reaction would be.

  There was something else he had to do as well, and it concerned Harry Tewson’s theory of the explosion on board. He knew Tewson often had wild guesses as to the cause of these kinds of accident, mental leaps he had to work back on to substantiate, and, often as not, he had been correct. So, what could be the reason for a planted bomb? And how the hell could it have been smuggled on board? He would need to get hold of the passenger flight-list and he knew just the person who could get it for him. He realized he could just sit back and wait for the AIB’s report on the cause of the disaster, and that if foul play were suspected the police would take over the investigation as to who and why. But that would take months. And he had the notion that time was running out.

  6

  The Reverend A. N. Biddlestone was deeply disturbed. He trudged along the muddy footpath that skirted the field with his head down, shoulders hunched, arms folded with his hands tucked under his armpits. His breath emerged in frosty clouds into the early morning air. Although he seemed to be watching his own footsteps, his mind was focused on more important matters. His concern was for the change in the town since the awful disaster.

  It was almost as if a grey veil had descended upon Eton; a veil of misery, depression. He supposed it was normal enough after a catastrophe of such major proportions, and the fact that most of the bodies had had to be buried in a mass grave nearby had helped the oppressive atmosphere to linger. Only the easily identifiable bodies had been reclaimed by relatives or friends to be laid to rest in their own private graves. It would gradually lift, he felt sure, once the town had been given a chance to forget, and everything would be right again. He knew he would never forget the night of the disaster. It had held horrors for him that the local townspeople had fortunately not been duty bound to experience. He and his opposite number from the nearby Catholic church had moved among the mutilated dead performing the Last Rites, averting their eyes from the ravaged, barely human shapes, the smell of oil and burnt flesh causing them to retch violently as they prayed. No, the memory might fade in time, but it would never dim into inconsequence; he had learnt more about the fragility of life in that one night than in all the twenty-two years he had been a practising minister.

  He reached the gate leading to the back of the long, narrow garden that ran alongside his parish church and, as he went through and closed it behind him, he looked across at the field and the distant wreckage of the 747. His tall, gaunt frame shivered involuntarily at the bleak sight; the sooner these last remains – this fearful memorial – were removed, the sooner the people of his town could return to their normal lives. The wreckage still served as a macabre shrine for the morbid pilgrimages of sightseers who flocked to the town, curious only about the disaster, hardly interested in the ancient town itself. It upset the townspeople, even though it was good for business. He felt sure most of them now wanted to forget the incident; the experience had been perversely exciting to them at first – frightening even – and they had enjoyed the reporters and the investigators. However, as interest in the crash gradually waned, he had expected the spirits of the local people to lift again, and for them all to be restored to their normal selves. But for some reason, this hadn’t happened. Perhaps it was still too soon. Perhaps it was purely in his own imagination, although the incident the previous night had borne testimony to just how highly strung the people had become.

  It had been around ten o’clock and he had just returned from visiting a sick parishioner, an elderly woman, whose passage from this world into the next was being made as smooth as possible by the hospital in Windsor, when he’d heard the distant screams. He had stood and listened on the wide stone path that led up to the church, unsure of what he had heard. It had come again from far away, but was shrill enough to carry across the cold night air. He had hurried along the path, through the war-memorial garden with its representative grey slabs, past the tall, grey-stoned church and its grinning gargoyles, and on towards the iron gate at the rear of the garden which led into the fields beyond. His steps had quickened as the screams, still faint, had seemed to grow more urgent, more piteous. He had run into the fields and was startled to see a black shape hurrying towards him. A flashlight had been shone in his face and he had been relieved when he heard Constable Wickham’s familiar voice. He was on guard duty with another policeman, protecting the wreckage of the Jumbo jet from scavenging souvenir hunters, and he, too, had been alarmed at the sudden cries from across the field.

  Together, the vicar and the policeman had gone to investigate the sounds, glad of each other’s company. In the land on the other side of the long field, parked close into the side of a hedge, they had found a small, dark car, and crouched on the floor inside a shaking, hysterical girl. When they had opened the car door, she had gone into paroxysms of absolute fear, struggling to get away from them, tearing at the floor of the car with bare hands. The policeman had struck her hard to calm her, almost knocking her cold, and she had fallen into a quivering heap in his arms. The only sense they could make out of her mumbled ravings was that someone had
run away and left her. They would have suspected a lovers’ quarrel except for the sheer terror there had been in her screams, a terror which was now very much in evidence in her voice and trembling body. Without hesitating, they had taken her to the hospital, the vicar’s second trip that night, and she had been heavily sedated.

  So there it was: the incident had somehow exemplified the atmosphere hovering over the town; a feeling of suppressed hysteria that was just waiting to be tipped into outward emotion. The girl had obviously been caught up in the strange feelings of the town, and the slightest shock – it may have only been an animal scurrying around in the bushes – had sent her into that demented state. And now, there was the body which had been found down by the river that very morning.

  He had been out on his usual early morning walk along the river-bank when he had seen a cluster of people near the river’s edge, most of them in the blue uniform of policemen, and they appeared to be dragging something from the water. He had approached them to see whether he could be of any assistance. He was told only prayer could be of any use to this poor wretch, and he saw for himself the gross body that now lay on the bank. The vicar had recognized the dead man, even though he hadn’t been one of his parishioners, for he had often seen him fishing in a small boat, made to look even smaller by his huge bulk, when on his morning stroll. He had always waved and bade the man good morning and, if the boat was close to the bank, they had chatted for a few minutes. The man’s name had been Bumpton, or something like that, and he had run a small shop in Windsor. A big man, but as far as Reverend Biddlestone could tell, a gentle man.

  Apparently people on a passing launch had seen the empty dinghy drifting in midstream and had kept an eye out for its owner. Soon, they had spotted an arm protruding from the water, its hand still clutching on to the reeds at the river’s edge. The police had thought the man had either overbalanced and fallen into the river, subsequently drowning, or that he had suffered a heart attack (and the purplish tinge to his cheeks and bluish lips seemed to support the theory) and then fallen into the river. The autopsy would tell them which.

  The vicar had prayed briefly over the dead body for a few moments then sadly returned to his church, his mind greatly disturbed by the events. Had they been two unrelated incidents? First the girl, frightened out of her wits, and now the man, dead, probably from a heart attack. What had caused the heart attack? Had it been exertion – or had it been fear? Or was it all in his own imagination?

  With a weary sigh, he turned away from the dreadful field and walked down the path towards the front of his church. He could have used the side door, but he liked to enter the church first thing in the morning from the front, so that its full splendour – and its humbling solitude – would hit him instantly. Somehow, the approach to the altar, the long walk towards that sacred place, prepared him, gave him time to cleanse his mind for his converse with the Almighty.

  He was fumbling in his trouser pocket for the long key that opened the heavy wooden doors to the church when he heard the sound. It was as though someone had bumped against the door from the other side. Startled, he took a step back and looked up at the entrance. It was much too early for Mrs Squires, the woman who cleaned the church and made sure the flowers were always fresh, and she wouldn’t have been able to get in without his key anyway. In fact, nobody would have been able to get in unless he unlocked the door. He pointed the key at the lock and stepped forward again, curious and a little irritated. He wouldn’t put it past one of those boys from the College to have locked himself in overnight as a prank, or perhaps as a bet with some of his school chums. It wouldn’t have been the first time they’d been into mischief in and around the church. Well, this time he would teach them a lesson. This time he would take the matter further instead of letting them off with a reprimand.

  Before he could turn the key, two loud bangs rattled the door on its hinges, causing him to step back again in surprise. It was the strength of the blows that shocked him.

  ‘Who’s in there?’ he called out, then leaning his face towards the centre crack he repeated his question. ‘Come on, who is it in there? If it’s some of you boys from the College, you’d better answer up now!’

  But he knew mere boys would never have had the strength to shake the doors in that fashion. He reached tentatively towards the protruding key, the silence beginning to unnerve him almost as much as the loud thumps had.

  And then the pounding started again, but this time it did not stop at two blows but continued in a steady tattoo, becoming louder and louder, filling his head with the sound so that he was forced to put his hands to his ears. The door shook, the wood seemed to swell and move out towards him under the force. He felt sure it would splinter and break. The pounding sounded as if it were going on inside his head and he staggered back away from the entrance. He looked up at the building and even the ugly grey gargoyles appeared to be grinning down at him. He looked back in horror at the door; it was bound to break, he couldn’t understand how the old lock had withstood the terrible strain for so long. The noise increased even more in volume, it seemed to be reaching a crescendo.

  He opened his mouth and screamed: ‘Stop! In the name of God – stop!’

  He wasn’t sure, and later, he was even less sure, but at that moment he thought he heard a laugh. No, it was more like a low chuckle, not loud, but somehow audible above the noise of the pounding. It was just as he was about to run from the churchyard, no longer able to suffer the terrible noise, that the knocking stopped. The quiet was almost as great a shock as the noise had been. The door was still, as solid as ever, unmarked by strain. For an instant, he almost doubted if anything had happened, so peaceful was the silence. He approached the door warily, and put an ear to it, ready to spring away at the slightest sound. Was he mistaken again, or did he hear whispers?

  Reverend Biddlestone was not a particularly brave man but he was a rational man. He could hardly go along to the police and complain there was someone trying to get out of his church. They would probably smile and inquire why he wouldn’t let them out? And that banging: it had been heavy and loud, but somehow muffled – not caused by a sharp object. And human strength couldn’t have bent those solid oak doors in that way. As a sensible, well-adjusted man, he found explanation difficult; and if he couldn’t explain it to himself, how could he explain it to the police? But whoever – whatever – was in there, it was inside God’s house, the house he, as a member of the clergy, had been ordained to keep. He turned the key.

  The vicar waited a few moments before pushing the door inwards. There was a small, dark entrance hall, shut off from the church itself by two separate doors. It was empty.

  The vicar swung both sides of the double door wide to allow as much light as possible to flood in, then took a cautious step into the opening. He listened for a few seconds before moving towards one of the smaller doors that led directly into the church. He pushed the door open and peered through.

  Sunlight shone through a high stained-glass window in brilliant shafts, the small swirling particles of dust defining them clearly, but various parts of the interior were in deep, impenetrable shadows. The small door swung shut as he went through, creating another area of blackness behind him. He looked around from wall to wall but everything appeared to be in order. He walked towards the altar, his footsteps echoing hollowly around the huge, cold building. He had only gone a few yards when he saw the black shape ahead, kneeling in the pew close to the altar at the front of the church. It was barely visible, for a shaft of sunlight shone down strongly between the figure and himself, making the shape vague through the rising dust. The figure seemed to be wearing a cloak or heavy coat, but at this distance it was hard to be sure. Without speaking, he moved forward towards it, expecting the figure to turn at the sound of his footsteps. But it didn’t.

  He drew nearer, but it was still hazy on the other side of the bright beam of light, and now he wasn’t certain if it were a figure at all. It seemed too dark all over. He pass
ed through the glare from the high windows and, dazzled by the brilliance, had to blink his eyes to accustom them to the sudden gloom. Slightly blinded by the change in light, he stopped behind the kneeling figure, reaching out a hand to touch its shoulder. As he did so, the head slowly began to turn towards him.

  The vicar was suddenly aware of the chill, much more intense than the usual early morning church coldness, a chill that penetrated his bones, froze his eyes in their sockets. And he was aware, too, of the low growling sound, a barely recognizable chuckle, as the head came round, and the black charred holes that should have been eyes met his.

  Mercifully, all awareness left him as he fainted and collapsed in a heap on to the hard, stone floor.

  7

  Keller steered his car into the secluded driveway, the crunching noise of tyres on gravel announcing his arrival. In the glove compartment he had a complete passenger list of the fatal 747 flight, obtained from the young Despatch Officer who had been on duty that particular night. The man had been reluctant to hand the list over at first, but after a little persuasion (using the argument that Keller could easily obtain it from the newspapers anyway), he had succumbed and given him some extra information about the passengers as well, which was, of course, what the co-pilot had been hoping for. Keller intended to go through the list carefully later on in the day; exactly what he hoped to find he was not quite sure – but he had to start somewhere.

  His immediate intention, though, was to see Beth Rogan, the dead pilot’s wife. It was a task he didn’t relish: bringing up the past, opening old wounds.