Unnoticed by the child, he switched on a black tape recorder which lay upon the table.
`Mark,' said Maggie, 'why were you in the cockpit?'
He looked up at her. 'April took me in,' he said through a mouthful of KitKat. 'Mr Shipley wanted to show me how to fly the plane, she said.'
Was that good? Did you enjoy it?'
He nodded vigorously, chewing and swallowing.
`Do you want to be a pilot when you grow up?'
He shook his head. 'Can't.'
`Why not?' said Rose, intrigued by his earnest answer. 'Cos I'm going to be Prime Minister. Daddy says.'
The Inspector suppressed a smile.
`When you were in the cockpit: do you remember what happened?'
The child screwed up his eyes, as if to emphasise that he was concentrating. 'There was a huge Bang!' He squealed the word, for extra effect, and the listeners started slightly. 'From behind the door.' Rose glanced at Skinner.
`Then what?' she went on quickly.
`Mr Shipley said to put our seat-belts on. I didn't have one, but April sat down and put hers on, then put an extension thing around. Then she cuddled me. It was nice. She gave me a sweet.'
`What else did Mr Shipley say?'
`He said 'We're going to do an Emergency Routine now, Mark. You have to sit with April.' Emergency Routine.' He stuck out his chest once more, as if pleased by his pronunciation of the phrase.
`Then Mr Shipley started saying 'Madie!' into his microphone. He told me that you have to shout 'Madie!' in an Emergency Routine.'
`Then what happened?'
He looked at her, puzzled.
`What did you see?'
`Nothing. Because April was cuddling me. She was holding my head. In there.' A small hand emerged from the folds of the blanket and pointed to Maggie's bosom. 'I could hardly breathe.'
`She was cuddling you tight, in there?'
`Mmm.' He spoke through another finger of KitKat. Did you hear anything, apart from Mr Shipley?'
The child munched and knitted his brows. 'Nothing.' He paused. 'No noise. No engines.'
`Then what happened?'
Listening and watching, Skinner realised suddenly that he was holding his breath. He filled his lungs.
`The plane went 'Boinng!' and bounced. There was a huge big splash, and it went
'Boinng!'. My tummy went all funny. Daddy and Mummy took me to Alton Towers, on the great big ride there. It was just like that, only my tummy went a lot more funny this time.' Mark's eyes were shining — with the memory of his terror, Skinner imagined.
`Then it went 'Boinng!' again, and again.'
And all this time April was still cuddling you?'
Until she made a funny noise and let me go.'
`When was that?'
I think it was just before the plane stopped.'
After the water came in?'
Mark creased his brows again, his special concentration sign. `No. Before.'
Did the water come in all of a sudden?'
`No. Slowly.'
`Did Mr Shipley say anything else? Or April, or Mr Garrett?' `No. I asked Mr Shipley, 'Is this still Emergency Routine?' but he didn't say anything.
`Were you frightened when the water came in?'
Not really,' said the boy slowly. He was an unconvincing liar. `What did you do?'
I undid my belt, and climbed up, till it stopped.'
`Were you frightened at all?'
Mark turned his head and looked up at Skinner, shyly embarrassed. 'Yes,' he said, reluctantly and quietly. 'Most of all when Mr Bob banged on the window and broke it.'
`Why were you especially frightened then?' asked Maggie. 'Cos I thought he was a big thing come to eat me, like in Power Rangers.'
Again, Skinner laughed aloud. 'No chance of that, Mark. I don't eat wee boys. Just policemen!'
THIRTEEN
They sat in the small private area at the far end of the mobile office, a few feet away from the child survivor, who crouched in his blanket, still unconcerned, drinking Coca-Cola from a can, through a straw, and now devastating a Tunnock's Caramel wafer.
`Tell you something, Mags,' said Skinner. I'm going to make sure that flight crew, and especially April the stewardess, get some sort of posthumous award. I don't think I'll have too much trouble persuading the Secretary of State to recommend it.
I saw the co-pilot. His neck was snapped by the whiplash of the first impact, and I think his seat-belt had cut right into him. That girl must have kept calm and held on to wee Mark with the last breath in her body.'
Maggie Rose looked at the boy. 'I can't get over it, sir. The only child on board, and the only survivor.'
`Don't dwell on it. Like I said, million to one shots do come up. Someone wins the lottery every week.'
`What about the mother?'
`Jim Elder phoned, while you were getting the wee chap his Coke. The Scottish Office people in London were going to break the news to her, and arrange for her to be brought up. Roland McGrath's father is on his way out here to pick up Mark. He's collecting some clothes for him on the way. D'you hear that, Mark?' he called out to the boy. 'Your grandpa's coming to get you. He'll take you to meet your mum.'
The child looked up and grinned. 'Can we go to UCI?' In the afternoon? That would be a treat, wouldn't it.' `Can I come and see your police station?'
Skinner smiled, and knelt down by the boy's perch on the table. 'Very soon, you can come and spend a whole day with Maggie and me. You can be a police cadet. We'll show you all over our headquarters. You'll even meet the Chief Constable in his big silver uniform.'
`Honest?'
`Dead cert, cross my heart honest.'
He ruffled the child's blond hair, dried now but streaked with mud, and left him to his Coke. As he did so, a phone sounded at the other end of the van, but stopped on the second ring.
Skinner looked towards the sound. 'That'll be Jim Elder's fax,' he said. 'He told me that they had identified most of the passengers, by address, next-of-kin and job, and that he would send it out here.' He glanced back towards Rose. 'He said it would make our hair stand on end.'
The Inspector walked across to the fax machine and watched as the last of the five pages rolled silently from its printer. When it had stopped, she picked them up, checked the page order and handed them to Skinner.
The DCC glanced through the list, then re-read it, more slowly. He looked through it a third time, as if to confirm what he had seen.
The final page was a summary of the list. 'Jesus, Maggie,' he muttered, 'would you look at this! In that plane, we had a member of the House of Lords, two Directors of the Bank of Scotland, seven senior executives of major insurance companies, five directors of a major brewery, eighty-five administrators of various companies, thirteen civil servants of various grades, and one senior policeman — one of our own. On top of that, we had twenty-seven foreign businessmen — eight Japanese, five Americans, four Germans, six French, two Spanish, one Israeli, and one Czech. Last but not least there were the six MPs we know about — one Nat, one Lib Dem, two Tories and two
