THE PERFECT KILL by A. J. Quinnell Page B

one. First he drove down to London, leaving early in the morning. After a quick lunch he was at New Scotland Yard, conferring with half a dozen very senior policemen and two civilians. One from MI5, the other from MI6. The meeting lasted for two hours. He then drove to Fort Halstead in Kent, which housed perhaps the finest criminal laboratory in the world. The two forensic experts from the FBI were waiting for him. He asked whether they were getting full cooperation and they assured him that they were.
    The briefing lasted for an hour and he noted with satisfaction that the British scientists and their American counterparts got on well together. It had not always been so, but somehow, the scale of the Loccurbie tragedy had blotted out national rivalry. He was shown the tiny fragments of plastic, metal and cloth and how they had narrowed it down, over weeks of meticulous work, to a single suitcase stored in a particular cargo bay.
    They asked him to stay on and have dinner at a nearby restaurant but being tired, and wishing to be alone, he declined.
    About ten miles from Fort Halstead, he found a small country hotel, set well back from the road. It had a three-star RAC rating and fully lived up to it. His room was old-fashioned but comfortable. The food was good and imaginative; the service, efficient and unobtrusive. Afterwards, he had a Cognac in the bar and went to bed.
    He woke, refreshed, at seven o’clock and had a full English breakfast with all the trimmings, before setting off for the Defence Armaments Depot, near the village of Longtown.
    It was there, in a giant hangar, that technicians from the British Air Accident Investigations Board were reassembling the Pan Am 747. It was named “Maid of the Seas”. When he was shown into the hangar, he pulled up abruptly in surprise. He had never seen such a cavernous building before in his whole life. Some of the technicians were even using bicycles to get from one end to the other. In the middle of it, they were literally reassembling the “Maid of the Seas”. They had placed the almost intact nosecone at one end and parts of the tail at the other end. Bits of wing were laid out each side. Dozens of overalled and white-coated men were working on it.
    “It’s like a giant jigsaw puzzle,” the Chief Technician explained after they had been introduced.
    “Your people up there are doing a wonderful job.” He pointed to rows of metal shelves, laden with pieces of metal, wires, bits of seats and other items.
    “In a few weeks, we’ll have it pretty well reassembled, apart from the bits that we’ll never find.”
    “It’s amazing,” Fleming said. “Show me where cargo bay 14L would have been situated.”
    The Chief Technician pointed and said, “There, not far behind the cockpit. It’s why the crew didn’t even have time to reach for the microphone and issue a Mayday. That plane disintegrated within seconds.”
    He looked at the policeman and asked, “Are we getting close to finding out who did it?”
    Peter Fleming was studying the restructured wreckage. He nodded and said in a hard voice, “Yes. We’re getting close to finding out who the bastards are.”
    Leonie Creasy, nee Meckler, had never been to the Maltese Islands before and her first impressions were not good. Malta itself looked like a building site, with apartment blocks and hotels sprawling all over the coastline, and limestone dust drifting through the hot air.
    But once on the ferry her mood changed. It was late afternoon, and as they passed the small island of Comino, she could see Gozo ahead. It was greener than Malta, and much smaller, with a series of undulating hills, each capped by a village, and each village capped by the spires or domes of a church. She stood at the rail watching it, and then turned to Creasy.
    “It looks beautiful.”
    “It is.”
    He had been reticent on the flight, hardly speaking a word, and also in the taxi to the ferry. Obviously he had been deep in thought.
    As