Free These Demented Lands by Alan Warner Page B

the limo, crossed and unlocked the garage doors, ‘You take the Volvo.’
    I started it up, revving high and sliding the heater control to the red though only cold blew out. Chef Macbeth appeared in the Volvo headlights, slouching towards the wee van. I watched the tail-lights of the limo bump across the deep, circular tyre-ruts of the turning place. I revved up and followed, moving the gearstick into second. I braked as Chef Macbeth in the van came right up behind, headlights creating dark shadows inside the car with me.
    In my full beams, Brotherhood parked, stepped out the limo with his open coat swinging. He marched the gate open and crossed in front of his headlights. Even when it was open I could read the angled sign . . .
    AIRFIELD
    NO ADMITTANCE
    ACCESS TO
    SHORE ON
    LEFT
    The limo accelerated ahead fast. I drove through the gateway; Macbeth peeled off to my left, his headlights swinging across the grass of the strip showing the life-belt on the jetty,momentarily lighting up a cold-looking birch sapling on the shoreline which I noticed had a piece of seaweed hung from one twig.
    I followed the patches of limo headlights hovering across the grass towards the southern threshold. I accelerated up into fourth along the edge of the runway . . . a month since we had used the car headlights for a night-landing: there were no tracks on the grass. I hunched toward the windscreen, squinting, careful not to stray on to even the edges of the grass strip. At the threshold the limo veered over the far side and I angled the full beams ahead, out towards the river delta beyond the whin bushes. I pulled up the handbrake and, leaving the engine running, walked over to the limo with my hands in my pockets.
    Brotherhood seemed startled when I appeared in the dark, just standing there. He jumped, leaned over and unlocked the passenger door.
    â€˜Jesus you nearly made me crap myself.’
    â€˜You must have a guilty conscience, or is it all the ghosts parading round this end of the runway that worry you?’
    â€˜Your ghosts,’ he said. ‘How is,’ and he paused to curl up his lip, ‘
Work
going?’ he kept staring out of the windscreen.
    Cautiously, I said, ‘I don’t have the propeller from Alpha Whisky; I need a diver to go down and find it if it’s at the end of the runway here. There are prop marks on one of the Hotel Charlie wings, I can calculate impact speeds by the distances between the gashes. I can tell all sorts by the prop, the exact angles of impact, pitch, engine conditions . . .’
    â€˜Quite the forensic scientist aren’t you? When you’rechomping away on the bint from 15 I bet you can tell the blood type of the last man who squirted up there.’
    I smiled, ‘The answers are always there, in the wreckage; the answers are
always
in the wreckage, Brotherhood.’
    For some reason, and I remember this clearly, Brotherhood murmured, ‘Maybe it was a ghost last squirted up there.’ Then he asked, ‘Do you think, even if you got out the wreckage, you could swim that distance on a winter night in pitch darkness then climb up a hillside . . .?’
    â€˜That’s what happened. A night circuit and they crash into each other . . . right, it’s their own fault for trying anything so crazy, but at the same time, as a professional, I’ve got to know exactly what happened. I know those planes were going in the same direction when they came in. Why did Alpha Whisky fly into Hotel Charlie?’
    â€˜And who gives a shit about happenings ten years’ time ago; it won’t bring the fellows back.’
    â€˜It doesn’t matter, you dignify those horrible seconds of terror when you have it clear what happened. Like at Mount Osutaka when I was with the Boeing guys, we had five hundred and twenty dead up there and we were in in five hours. The rear bulkhead had collapsed and the Captain,