smoke is all behind us now.'
`How far is it to the cockpit?'
About a couple of hundred yards.'
`What do you see between here and there?'
`Bits of the aeroplane; wreckage; luggage and duty-free bags. There's a bottle of vodka over there, sticking in the mud, and it's not even broken. The people are, though. There are bodies, lots more bodies; some of them in bits. Oh look, there's a girl over there, one of the stewardesses. Aww, no, no, no, that shouldn't be.' His voice was high, almost whimpering.
Aren't you stopping to help any of them, Bob?'
`No. I don't think they can be helped. Anyway, McGuinness says no. He says other people will do that. He's leading us on towards the cockpit. I don't want to go, though.'
`Why not, Bob, why not?'
`Because I don't want to see what's inside. But he's making us go anyway.' On the bed, wrapped in his dressing gown this time Skinner's legs began to twitch, then writhe.
Are you there yet?' asked O'Malley.
`Nearly.'
`Describe the wreckage for us, please.'
It was white, but it's dirty now, as if it had rolled over. The part behind the cabin, where the plane ripped apart, is crushed into the ground, and the nose is sticking almost straight up into the air. There's a man's body caught underneath it where the fuselage goes into the ground. I can only see his head and shoulders. His face is all yellow.'
His forehead creased. 'Who, sir? Me?'
`Who are you talking to, Bob?'
Inspector McGuinness. He's telling me to climb up there and look in the cockpit, just to make sure.'
`To make sure of what?'
'That everyone in there's dead!' he snapped back at the psychiatrist Okay, Bob, okay. Just keep telling us about it.' The entranced body on the bed began to move once more, jerkily. 'What are you doing now?'
I'm climbing, up towards the windows. There are torn bits in the outer casing. I'm using them as hand grips and footholds. It's not too difficult: I'm nearly there now. Bugger! That was sharp: I've cut myself.' His right hand jerked suddenly, but his legs continued to move.
`Right, I've made it. I'm going to look in the window.'
Skinner fell silent. O'Malley, sitting beside the bed, and Sarah, in her corner seat, watched his face intently. And as they did it changed. Where it had been that of someone in a deep, if troubled sleep, it took on the appearance, even with eyes closed, of a man confronting something dreadful, something too awful to be contemplated.
The sound, when it came, was one of grief. Pure, deep, inconsolable grief.
'No!' he keened, he wailed. 'No! No! No! Please, you bastard, don't let this be.'
As they listened, the wife and the counsellor realised that, apart from its misery, there was something else that was different about his voice. It sounded rougher, and more mature, as if the last innocence of youth had been rubbed away.
`Bob,' said O'Malley, very quietly. 'How old are you?' `Twenty-eight.' He was sobbing, tearlessly.
`Where are you?' luffness Corner. Between Aberlady and Gullane.'
And what are you doing?'
'I'm looking through the window.'
`Which window?'
Of the Mini. The window of the Mini.'
`What do you see inside? You must describe everything.' On the bed he shuddered, and shook his head.
`Yes, Bob, you must. I'll keep you locked in there until you do. Tell me, and release yourself.'
In his trance sleep, he began to whimper. Sarah was appalled by the sound, and terrified.
`The car's against a tree,' he moaned, at last. 'The front end's smashed in. I see the engine, inside the body compartment. That's the thing about Minis. That's what happens to them if they hit something hard enough. I see wires and cables all over the place. There's one of them almost under my eyes. It's the brake-fluid pipe. It's got a nick in it. Not a tear. A cut.
D'you see it?'
`Yes, yes, I see it,' O'Malley responded urgently.
`Do you understand me? It's been cut, by a blade. About a third of the way through. The fucking thing's been sabotaged.'
I see it. I understand. Now, what else do you see?'
He shook his head again. 'No, please. I can't look any further `We must finish it, Bob. You must finish it. Look through the window!'
They waited, but not for long. His mouth opened in another long, howling cry.
`Myra! I see Myra. The steering column is through her chest. There's glass in her hair.
There's blood on her hands, and on her face. I can smell the blood, and the oil, but above it all, I can smell her perfume. It's Chanel No. 5. She always wears it. The bottle's in her handbag, on the passenger seat, and it's smashed.
And she's dead. Oh, God help us, my wife is dead!'
Down to his right, in the corner, O'Malley was aware of Sarah, her face buried in her hands and her shoulders shaking,
`Bob,' he said. `You will leave the dream now.' As he watched, Skinner's face relaxed.
'But I'm not going to bring you up yet. I want you to sleep calmly, for fifteen minutes, to recover.'
He stood up, lifted the weeping Sarah from her chair, and led her from the room. Outside in the corridor, it took some time for her to compose herself, but eventually, her sobbing subsided. A passing Sister saw her and looked at the door of Skinner's room in alarm, but O'Malley waved her away.
`Has he ever mentioned that to you before?'
`No,' she whispered. 'He told me that Myra had been killed when her Mini went off the road and hit a tree, but he never said that he'd been there, that he'd seen her. Why couldn't he share that with me?'
`Sarah, my dear, if he couldn't acknowledge it to himself, how could he tell you? Come on, let's go back in. I'll give him a few minutes more rest, then I'll bring him back up. But I warn you, I wasn't expecting anything like this. I've no idea how he's going to react to the memory.'
EIGHTY-SEVEN
‘Five. Four. Three. Two. One.’
Skinner's eyelids flashed open, wide. His eyes seemed to stand out slightly as he stared at the ceiling, but they did not seem to be focused on anything in the present.
`Think your happy thought, Bob,' said O'Malley. `Concentrate on your present happiness, and let it drive everything else to one side. Concentrate, and talk me through it as you do.
What are you thinking about right now?'
`Sarah and Jazz,' he said at last. 'In Spain, by the side of the pool. The sun's going down, and I've got a beer in my hand… Alex, on the day when she came back from Europe and took us all by surprise. Sarah again, and me, on the day we got married.'
`Good. That's your reality, remember. That's your life today. The memories that we've unlocked over the last three days might be terrible, but they are things in the past, and they can't hurt you any more than they have already.'
Bob pulled himself up to a sitting position on the bed, drew Sarah to him, and hugged her, hard enough for him to wince from the pain of the healing wound in his ribs. 'I know that,' he said, looking over her shoulder at O'Malley. 'But it amazes me that I was able to keep them so deeply suppressed, and for so long. Imagine, for all
