Permissible Limits by Graham Hurley

couple of minutes and Steve repeated what Harald had already told me, that the Cessna he’d been flying had only just been through its fifty-hour checks. It was an oldish aircraft, first registered in 1968, and Steve had been looking after it on behalf of the owner, who was currently on an extended business trip to Thailand. They apparently had an arrangement whereby Steve could loan or hire the aircraft to anyone he trusted, but when I pressed him for details - more about Adam than the Cessna - he refused to meet my eyes. The thing was a mystery, he kept saying. He didn’t have a clue what might have happened and as far as he was concerned the whole episode was now in the hands of the AAIB.
    The police had mentioned the AAIB when they’d first broken the news about Adam. The Air Accidents Investigation Branch is a kind of government detective agency, and right now I knew that their inspectors would be wanting to find out exactly what had happened to the Cessna.
    ‘ Have they been in touch?’ I asked Steve.
    ‘ They’ve interviewed me.’
    ‘ Already?’
    ‘ Yeah. They came this morning. Two of them.’ He looked at me, uncertain, not wanting to go on.
    ‘ And?’ I said.
    Steve shrugged, then gestured limply at one of the drawers.
    ‘ They went through the technical logs, all the paperwork. I told them everything was fine. There wasn’t a problem.’ He put his head back and looked up at the ceiling. ‘They wanted to know about Adam, too.’
    ‘ And what did you tell them?’
    ‘ I said he’d been fine, you know, fit, well, nothing wrong with him…’ His voice trailed away.
    ‘ Go on,’ I said. ‘What else did they ask?’
    ‘ They wanted his log book. They wanted to know how much experience he’d had. I couldn’t help them with the log book but I told them he wasn’t… you know… exactly a novice.’
    I didn’t oblige Steve with the smile he wanted. Adam’s log book was back at Mapledurcombe. I could picture it in the top drawer in his office desk. Mine lay beside it.
    ‘ Will they be wanting to talk to me?’ I wondered aloud. ‘Only I’d have thought -’
    ‘ Yeah,’ Steve cut in. ‘They said.’
    ‘ Said what?’
    ‘ Said they’d get in touch. I gave them your number. I didn’t think you’d mind.’
    ‘ Not at all.’ I frowned. ‘So did you get the feeling they’d come to any conclusions?’
    ‘ About what?’
    I stared at Steve, trying not to lose my temper. There were questions I was desperate to have answered but he looked so battered, so physically drained, that I almost felt sorry for him. I took a deep breath.
    ‘ About Adam’s accident,’ I said patiently. ‘What I want to know is whether or not they’ve come up with anything.’
    Steve shook his head.
    ‘ They’ve impounded the ATC tapes,’ he said, ‘and they told me they’d talked to the weather people at Bracknell, but I think that’s about it. Adam just fell off the radar. They haven’t a clue why.’
    I gazed at him a moment longer, then looked away at Dennis. I’d had enough of asking questions for one morning.
    Dennis returned to the incident with Harvey Glennister’s Spitfire. What kind of state was it in? Where had it gone?
    Steve hunted for an envelope in a drawer. He emptied the contents on to the desk, a gesture - it seemed to me - of resignation. Dennis glanced through the photos then passed them to me. They showed the burned-out fuselage and the buckled panels on the wings. The paintwork was bubbled and blistered and the canopy over the cockpit had been shattered by the heat. The cowling was off the nose and damage to the big Merlin engine was plainly visible. In photo after photo, it looked like someone had taken a giant blow torch to the aircraft, peeling back its skin, exposing the bones beneath.
    ‘ It’s gone back to the mainland,’ Steve was saying. ‘They took it away a couple of days ago.’
    ‘ Who took it?’
    ‘ Glennister’s people.’
    I’d got to the bottom of the pile