The pilot moved the Merlin about fifty yards away to make it easier for Crane to tow the raft. Once it was secured, the helicopter moved directly over the raft again while O’Reilly and the aircrewman began lowering the rope to which Crane and Richter had secured the aqualung sets. Below them, still buffeted by the downwash, Crane struggled to heave them into the raft. Once the last set was on board the fragile craft, the helicopter again moved a few yards away.
As soon as the Merlin was clear of the raft, Richter stepped out and dropped into the sea. Entering the water was a mild but very pleasant shock. It had already been hot inside the Merlin, and both he and Crane had got a lot warmer very quickly once they’d pulled on their wetsuits. The water was cooler than the air, and Richter immediately felt more comfortable as he surfaced and looked round for Crane. Above him, the helicopter peeled away to his left. There was nothing else the aircraft could do, so O’Reilly had decided earlier to land it on Gavdopoula and wait there, rotors running, until the two men resurfaced after their dive.
Richter reached the life raft just as Crane had finished securing the end of the aqualung rope to it. Together the two men lowered the weighted end of the coil down into the sea beneath them, their extra sets of breathing apparatus vanishing into the depths, to hang suspended beneath the raft.
‘You ready?’ he asked, and Crane nodded. ‘Keep your eyes on me, please,’ Richter added. ‘It’s a long time since I’ve done any diving, so if I start doing something stupid, just stop me.’
‘You bet.’ Inserting their mouthpieces, both men ducked beneath the surface, lifted up their legs and began their descent. Richter led the way, mainly so Crane could keep watch on him, following the path of the anchor rope attached to the buoy.
As they descended deeper, the light gradually faded, the azure of the surface water giving way slowly to darker shades of blue and finally almost to grey as they reached eighty feet down. When the seabed loomed up quite suddenly, Richter halted his descent by abruptly grabbing the buoy rope. As Crane drifted down beside him, the two men gazed around them.
The dunking sonar had already provided an extremely accurate position for the wreckage, so the buoy had been dropped as close to it as possible. Nevertheless, Crane, like Elias before him, had come well prepared. As Richter waited, Crane reached into the pouch attached to his weight belt and withdrew a roll of thin but very strong nylon cord. He expertly tied one end of it to the buoy rope about ten feet off the bottom then, after making sure Richter was still beside him, began to pay out the cord as the two men swam westwards.
Just over a minute later they halted again on spotting the ghostly shape of the Learjet wing, one end driven deep into the seabed, looming in front of them. The Merlin crew had dropped them virtually on top of the wreckage they were seeking.
Richter turned to Crane and gave the ‘OK’ sign. The two men then moved on, beyond the wing, searching for what was left of the aircraft’s fuselage. Crane held a rough plan drawn on a waterproof board, showing the relationship between the sonar returns detected earlier on the seabed. He checked his compass again, tapped Richter’s right arm and led the way across the murky grey sea floor. Less than two minutes later Crane spotted the lifting bag that Spiros Aristides had attached to the major section of the Learjet’s fuselage.
Meanwhile, inside the wreckage and tucked well under the seats where Elias had tossed them, the chemicals inside four pencil detonators were slowly eating their way through the membranes that protected the water-activated switch and the battery. When Crane spotted the lifting bag, the detonators had already been live for a little over two hours and twenty-five minutes.
Chapter 18
Friday
‘Mr Westwood?’ The gruff voice on the telephone was unmistakable.
‘Good morning, Frank,’ Westwood replied. ‘You have some news for me, I hope?’
Detective Delaney’s chuckle echoed over the telephone line. ‘More like no news, I guess. We’ve done the usual house-to-house in Crystal Springs, where James Richards lived, and we’ve also pretty much taken his property to pieces.
‘Basically, nobody saw anything unusual, nobody heard anything. Three neighbours – smartasses after the event – claim to have seen a suspicious-looking character lurking near Richards’s house early that evening. The composite description gives us a black Caucasian male between five seven and six two in height, weighing between one-twenty and one-ninety pounds, cleanshaven with a full beard, wearing a black or tan or blue overcoat. It’s just possible there’s a description of this unsub in there somewhere, but I wouldn’t count on it.
‘Our forensic guys managed to lift just over four hundred full and partial prints, mainly latents but a few visuals too, from the lounge and hall of Richards’s home. Three hundred and eighty-five of these were left by Richards himself, and all but four of the rest were deposited by his neighbours. The four remaining were glove prints, not fingerprints. Fine quality leather, the techs tell me.
‘We found faint traces of mud on the lounge carpet, but it could have come from pretty much anywhere in that area, maybe even from Richards’s own garden. We also picked up seven head hairs that didn’t come from Richards or any of the neighbours we’ve interviewed. All the lab can say so far is that they came from a Caucasian, probably male, dark hair turning grey. So until we find ourselves a suspect, they’re as much use as tits on a boar-hog.’
‘And Hawkins?’
‘Pretty much the same scenario,’ Frank Delaney continued. ‘At his house, two partial glove prints – the same fine quality leather – and several indistinct glove marks on Mary Hawkins’s throat and arms. Three hairs from the same source as those picked up in Crystal Springs, so at least we now know that the killings are related. Traces of mud on the carpet, but that definitely came from the street right outside Hawkins’s house. There was no other physical evidence inside the property that couldn’t be accounted for.
‘The third crime scene was Hawkins’s car. We found glove marks on the passenger-side door handle, one gloved hand-print on the dashboard and the same on the outside of the passenger door window. We also found a single hair on the headlining on the passenger side, just above the door – from the same source as the others. But nothing else. The one deduction we could make from finding that hair, apart from proving that the same unsub committed all three murders, is that he’s probably fairly tall, which supports the Popes Creek neighbour’s description of an unknown male seen entering the Hawkins’s residence. But, basically, we got zip. Whoever this guy is, he’s a pro.’
As Delaney had been speaking, Westwood had jotted down a few notes, and once the detective finished he scanned over them. ‘That’s not a lot to go on, Frank,’ he said finally.
‘Tell me about it,’ Delaney muttered. ‘You got anything from your end? Any idea about motive?’
‘Nothing yet,’ Westwood replied. ‘
‘Beats the shit out of me, too,’ Delaney growled. ‘If our boys come up with anything else, you’ll be the first to know. And you find out anything, you tell me – otherwise, don’t call me, and I won’t call you.’
‘Got it,’ Westwood replied, and put down the phone.
They swam slowly with easy, energy-conserving strokes towards the hollow shell of the Learjet’s fuselage. Richter stopped at the rear end, beside what had once been the tail-plane and engine nacelle, and looked closely at what was still visible of the registration number. Someone – presumably Spiros Aristides – had cleaned off some of the marine growth, so the letter ‘N’ could clearly be seen.
Richter gestured to Crane for the waterproof board and pencil, and he passed them over. Richter pointed at the letter ‘N’ and wrote down ‘USA’. Then he cleaned more growth off the fuselage, looked again at the registration number and copied it onto the board below the word he’d just written. With this, he could initiate a check through the Federal Aviation Administration database and then positively identify the aircraft. That was
