condescending slowness and now she was having trouble keeping up, but there was no way she was asking him to slow down on her behalf. She concentrated on her breathing and concentrated on her footing, and when she finally stumbled out onto the little beach where the plane lay Alistair touched her arm and smiled.
‘Well done,’ he said in an undervoice.
He didn’t like her, she thought, but apparently he’d decided to put aside their antagonism in the face of a mutual enemy. She could cope with that. She could almost be grateful for it. She’d worked with difficult cops before, but never when the officer causing difficulties was the sole representative of the force. She gave Alistair an uneasy smile in response and the look on his face said he understood exactly.
His expression unnerved her. It was almost as if he had the capacity to read her mind, and she found- increasingly-that it was a really disturbing sensation.
The job. Concentrate on the job.
The plane had crashed into the rockface but there was minimal damage. Blocking out everyone else, Sarah circled the tiny aeroplane until she was sure she understood what had happened. There should be flight investigators here, she thought-they’d come, but this was such a remote area the initial assessment had to be up to her.
What had happened seemed obvious. There were deep wheel marks gouged into the beach from the high tide mark. The pilot had intended to land. He’d been aware enough to get the plane down at the point where he’d had maximum run, and given luck he could have made it. He almost had.
While the others watched on-Barry with a look of truculence on his big face and the others expressionless- Sarah climbed into the cockpit. She stared around her. Things here were almost intact. Only the windscreen had been smashed. She could see how the pilot had sustained an injury to his face. She stared around, wanting more, but there was nothing else. A pile of girlie magazines had obviously been lying on the passenger seat. They’d slid off on impact, though a few had caught in the seat belt. That was all. There was no blood, apart from a slight smear on one of the magazines. No vomit. Nothing to suggest human distress of any kind.
Alistair was right behind her. Just outside the aeroplane. Waiting.
‘The heroin hit must have been so fast,’ she murmured, carefully collecting the magazine with the blood sample and slipping it into a plastic keeper. ‘I’m wondering now whether the condom did burst in mid-air. It seems more likely that the build-up of material in his gut made him feel so ill that he had to land. He did have a real chance of getting down here. But as the plane hit the rockface the pressure of the seat belt would have burst the condom.’ She frowned and looked around her once more. ‘Either way, death would have been fast.’
‘But not for the passengers,’ Alistair said grimly, standing aside to let her climb from the cockpit and move to the cargo area.
She glanced at the ground-at the mass of footmarks. ‘Site preservation?’
‘There were people here before me,’ Barry said a trifle belligerently. ‘They hauled open the back doors.’
‘The doors were all closed?’
‘I think so.’
‘Can you check? And see if anyone noticed whether there were any footmarks around the plane?’ It would have been so easy if she’d been on hand straight away, she thought ruefully. All it would have needed was a look to see if there were footprints leading away from the plane, and they would have been easy to decipher in such soft sand. But to come in thirty-six hours after the event…
‘Barry was the only one to go into the rear of the plane,’ Alistair told her. ‘After he saw the empty gun holster he had to, to see if there was a gun. I arrived about ten minutes after the first group-we sent the fastest walkers first-but already the scene was compromised.’
‘You noticed?’
‘I noticed that the scene was compromised. There were footprints everywhere. But no one but Barry went into the cargo area. It’s too unpleasant.’
He was right there. Alistair hauled open the door into the back of the plane and she only needed a glance to know there’d been real human suffering here.
Someone had been ill. She could smell the vomit. And the blood.
‘Major blood vessel,’ she said softly. ‘And the vomit… Airsick, maybe?’
‘It looks like it,’ Alistair told her.
‘Mmm.’ She stood at the entrance, taking careful note. Heaving her backpack from her shoulders, she retrieved a flashlight, then shone it carefully, meticulously, around every section of the cabin.
‘Someone lay there and bled,’ she said, staring down at a dark, pooled stain. ‘Why?’ Then her eyebrows furrowed. ‘Let’s assume they were sitting down against the sides as they flew. People do. It gives them better balance. They usually don’t sit in the middle of the aircraft. This is a small area, but assuming we don’t have many people they’ll have been sitting leaning against the sides. It fits with where the vomit is. As the plane came in to land they wouldn’t have got to their feet. Maybe they’d have known enough to go into brace position. So what have we got that could have cut them? Caused this amount of damage?’
‘They could have had a bloody nose like our pilot.’
‘Too much blood. This is a major blood vessel. Our AB passenger hit himself on something sharp. Like…’ She stared around some more and her eyes rested on a metal box. The thing looked as if it had been used as some sort of suitcase, but it was open and its edges were raw metal. Sarah leaned forward and ran her flashlight around the rim. And winced at what she saw. A tiny fragment of ripped cloth, what looked like skin and a dark smear of blood.
‘I’m guessing here’s our culprit. We have our passengers in brace position, or similar, but with nothing to hold on to as our plane crashed. They’re feeling bad. These things are appalling to fly in even when they’ve got seats. So they come in to crash land. We have this thing free to fly around at will. My guess is that it’s hit legs. More than one leg. Or a hip maybe. Whatever. Can we bag the whole thing and bring it back for examination?’ Her flashlight kept searching.
‘So we’re looking for bodies?’ Alistair asked.
‘Maybe not.’ Her flashlight was carefully inspecting the floor of the cabin. ‘Where was the tarpaulin-does anyone know? Barry?’
The policeman came up behind them and stared in at the mess over her shoulder, reluctantly co-operative. ‘The tarp was over in the far corner.’
‘Not near the door?’
‘No.’
She nodded. ‘So there’s been no major bleeding near the door. If our man was bleeding to death and intent on getting out of the plane there’ll have been a trail of blood leading out the door. The area around the door is almost clean.’ She cocked her head to one side. ‘What do you reckon was in that metal case?’
‘Drugs,’ the policeman said promptly, but Sarah shook her head.
‘I doubt it.’ She ran her flashlight over it once more. ‘It looks to me like it’s been used as a suitcase. My grandmother had one just like it. They’re cheap and nasty-this one hasn’t got a lock. It’ll have been thrown open as the plane hit and the contents strewn everywhere. And what’s in suitcases-usually-is clothes.’
‘So?’ said Barry, and there was no mistaking the note of belligerence in his voice. He obviously didn’t hold with lady doctors telling him stuff he could well work out himself.
‘So the clothes may well have been used to pad and bind wounds. To provide pressure. You say it took half an hour to get to the wreck? That’s time for someone who knew what they were doing to fashion pressure pads and tie them in place, staunch the bleeding as best they could and then get the heck out of here. That’s the only scenario I can think of that fits.’
‘Which explains the empty case,’ Alistair said thoughtfully, and she nodded.
‘Then they’re still alive.’ Barry turned and stared up at the surrounding hills.
‘But without drugs,’ Sarah told him.
‘Maybe.’
‘And there’s no signs of weapons,’ Alistair added. ‘I’d be happier if you put that damned pistol aside, Barry.’
‘There was a gun. If they’re drug-dealers…’
‘Then they’re drug-dealers who are in deep trouble,’ Sarah snapped. She was starting to feel hugely uneasy about this man. Uneasy enough to radio headquarters and voice her concerns? Maybe. Or maybe she needed to, but
