wreckage, he could see there were still several of the larger pieces left part of the tail, a wing section, and engine casings minus their propellers.
Like Frank Baine, the author of these books had done plenty of research, and the details of SU-V’s crew were comprehen
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sivc. As Bainc had said, there had been seven men on board the Lancaster four British RAF men, two Poles and the Canadian pilot, Danny McTeague.
Of the British crew, the bomb aimer and rear gunner, Sergeants Bill Mee and Dick Abbott, had been found dead
o
P’
some distance from the aircraft. The text described them as ‘severely mutilated’, but Cooper rccogni/ed the euphemism. The phrase was still used today, in official statements to the press on the victims of serious road accidents or suicides on the railway line. It meant their bodies had been dismembered. The wireless operator, Sergeant I farry Gregory, and the mid-upper unner, Sergeant Alec Hamilton, had been trapped inside the wreckage and had died in the fire that consumed the central section of the fuselage. Burned beyond recognition, they had
O J O J
been identified by the uniforms under their flying suits, and by the contents of their pockets, after their bodies had been taken to the RAF mortuary at Buxton.
Cooper put the book down tor a moment. Fie wondered whether Alison Morrissey had considered the possibility that one of the bodies had been wrongly identified. Perhaps, after all, her grandfather had died in the crash. All this time, it might have been some other member of the crew they should have been looking for. And he wondered about Pilot Officer Zygmunt Fukas/, the flight engineer, who had survived and was now seventy-eight years old.
Gavin Murfin stirred and grunted in his seat. His eyes opened.
‘Where are we?’ he said.
‘Underbank,’ said Cooper. ‘We’re waiting for the recovery crew.’
‘There’s a good Indian takeaway around here somewhere,’ said Murfin. Then he snorted, and his head fell back again.
Weather conditions and primitive equipment Cooper supposed that was the standard explanation for many of these incidents. Otherwise, the crash of Sugar Uncle Victor seemed inexplicable — the aircraft was flying much too low, and it was off course. But it was hinted in the book that the reason it was off course was that the skipper had apparently ignored
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the navigator’s instructions. So was it another example of a
o 1
pilot caught in the trap between high ground and low cloud, finding mountains suddenly in front of him when he thought he was approaching his home airfield in Nottinghamshire? Or had something else gone wrong?
One of the eye witnesses quoted in the account of the fate of Sugar Uncle Victor was the former RAF mountain rescue man, Walter Rowland, who had also keen mentioned by Alison Morrissev. Like Zygmunt Lukasz, he had been unwilling to talk
to her. Unwilling, or unable? Rowland was described as being eighteen years old at the time of the crash. After all that time, memories faded. But sometimes there were memories which were too clear for anyone to want them reviving. ‘}^o sign vet?’ mumbled Murrin.
O V
‘Not yet.’
‘It’s no good, Ren. I’m having curry-flavoured dreams. I’m going to have to go and see if that Indian is open.’
boo 1
‘Fair enough. I’ll still be here when you get back.’ ‘Do you want anything?’
^ V O
‘Some naan bread.’
‘Is that all? You can’t live on that.’
“I wasn’t intending to,’ said Cooper.
Murfin slipped out of the car, and Cooper watched him stumble down the street, clinging precariously to the steel handrail to stay on his feet. If he made it back up with a set of foil trays and a bag of naan bread intact, it would be a miracle.
Cooper looked at his mobile phone. He was trying to remember whether Frank Bainc had said where Alison Morrissev was staying, but he couldn’t recall. There weren’t all that manyhotels in Edendalc, and he could easily give Baine a call in the morning to find out. He might also ask the journalist for Walter Rowland’s address.
I hen Cooper laughed to himself. He was thinking all these things as if he were intending to investigate the fifty-sevenyear-old mystery, which was ridiculous. The Chief had alreadysent the Canadian woman packing, and quite rightly. There was certainly no time to be spared on pointless sidelines, by
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himself or anyone else. He had more than enough to do. So what use would it be for him to know where Morrissev was
j
staying? Why should he need to visit Walter Rowland? No reason at all.
