Permissible Limits Read online

  ‘There’ll be a reference to the AAIB,’ the policeman was saying, ‘So you should expect a call from them, as well.’

  The AAIB is the Air Accidents Investigation Branch. Until now, thank God, it had been nothing more than another of those eternal aviation acronyms.

  ‘Of course,’ I said dully. ‘I expect I’ll be here.’

  After the policeman had rung off, I went upstairs to the bedroom. Since we converted Mapledurcombe, Adam and I had been living in one wing of the house, a little self-contained suite of rooms off-limits to guests. Having no children, nor much in the way of visiting friends, this corner of the house had been ours to keep exactly as we pleased. The fact that it was so scruffy, so lived-in, was - I suspect - a delight to both of us. The business we’d chosen to run imposed the highest standards. Here, we could be ourselves.

  I lay on the duvet in the darkness, my hands stretched out above my head, my fingers tracing the shapes carved in the bedhead. We’d had the bed longer than we’d had the house. It was French, a big, solid, handsome thing that weighed a ton. Adam had found it in an auction room on Jersey, and shipped it back to the mainland. Like the Aga, and my old bike, and a couple of dozen other items, it had become part of the geography of thirteen years of marriage: comforting, ours, always there. Alone, without Adam, I realised that none of it meant anything.

  I must have drifted off to sleep. I awoke to hear the phone ringing downstairs. It was Harald. It was half past midnight. He was in Cowes. He wanted to come over.

  By the time he arrived, I had the water boiled for coffee. I heard a car crunching up the drive and I opened the front door to find Harald getting out of the taxi. He bent to the driver’s window.

  ‘Give me fifteen minutes,’ I heard him say.

  In the hall, Harald held me at arm’s length for a moment or two, then enveloped me. His leather jacket smelled of oil, Avgas and the little black cheroots he occasionally smoked. To my surprise, he was trembling.

  ‘Shit,’ he said twice.

  I almost asked him what was wrong but the question, of course, would have been idiotic. Over the last year or so, Adam and Harald had become very close. Adam called him a buddy, which for him was rare. Like me, he took few risks with real friendship.

  On the panelled wall beside us I’d recently hung a painting that I’d commissioned for Adam’s last birthday. It showed the Mustang skimming the top of a bank of cotton-wool clouds. The nearside wing was slightly low and the artist had done a wonderful job on our sleek silver bird, but I’d been especially pleased with his figurework. The pilot was sitting well back in the cockpit, and the grin on his face could only have belonged to Adam.

  Harald couldn’t take his eyes off the picture. He’d been to Mapledurcombe a number of times but the last couple of months he’d been back in the States and I don’t think he’d seen it.

  ‘Spooky.’ He was still looking at Adam. ‘You know something?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘I think he knew.’ ‘Knew what?’

  Harald glanced round at me. For a man in his late fifties, he didn’t carry an ounce of spare flesh.

  ‘I think he knew the way he’d go, the way it would happen. He’d never make old bones. Those sort of guys never do.’

  I stared at him. I had the feeling it was meant as some kind of compliment, a reassurance even, but it had exactly the opposite effect. What Harald was telling me was unambiguous, a big, fat full stop at the end of the worst day of my life.

  ‘You think he’s dead?’

  ‘I think he’s happy.’

  ‘Happy? What a horrible thing to say.’

  ‘Not at all. He was the best. Believe me, the best.’

  We had coffee at the kitchen table. Harald never drank alcohol but I helped myself to a tumbler of Adam’s precious malt whisky. I’d never tried it before and I’ve never touched it since. Even now, just the smell of malt is enough to make me want to throw up.

  Harald had flown over from Jersey and taken the hydrofoil to Cowes. He’d been in St Helier on business and had seen Adam for dinner only last night.

  ‘How was he?’

  ‘Fine, just fine. We had sushi at that new Japanese place. You know Adam. Try anything once.’

  I nodded. I wanted a message, some kind of indication that I’d been on Adam’s mind, but I knew Harald wasn’t the kind of man to ask. Too guarded. Too buttoned-down. Unlike the husband I’d so obviously lost.

  ‘So what…’ I shrugged hopelessly,’… happened?’

  ‘I don’t know. No one knows. He borrowed Steve’s Cessna. That’s where the story begins and ends.’

  ‘You’ve talked to Steve?’

  ‘You bet. I was over there this afternoon. The guy’s shattered. You can imagine.’

  I swallowed another mouthful of malt. Steve Liddell was as plane-crazy as the rest of us. He ran a small engineering business on the edge of Jersey airport. He did maintenance and stuff for private flyers, and Adam had used him for one or two routine jobs on the Harvard and my Moth. Adam had talked about him a lot recently, and had gone as far as suggesting that we take a stake in his business. Given our other commitments, I hadn’t been wild about the idea.

  ‘The Cessna was OK? As far as Steve knew?’

  ‘Absolutely. He says he signed off the last fifty-hour check only a couple of days ago. The aircraft was a hundred per cent, engine, electrics, instrumentation, the lot. No problems. Clean sheet.’

  ‘So what happened?’ I repeated.

  ‘Christ knows.’ Harald shook his head. ‘We’re not talking some rookie pilot here. The guy’s a veteran, born to it. Lucky, too. It just doesn’t happen this way. Not even a radio call? Excuse me -’ He broke off, tipping his head back, swallowing hard, and I realised that grief embarrassed him. Join the club, I thought grimly.

  Harald had regained control, suddenly businesslike. He said he’d chartered a boat from some contacts in St Helier. They were at sea now, pushing down towards the crash site. Harald had ordered them to scour the area until further notice. Money, as ever, seemed to be no problem.

  ‘But what about the search-and-rescue people?’

  ‘They’ll be scaling down. By midday tomorrow, they’ll probably call a halt. We’re talking serious assets here. Helicopter time ain’t cheap.’

  ‘But you’ll stay there?’

  ‘For as long as it takes.’

  I looked at him for a long moment, my eyes swimming, then his hand found mine on the table. It was surprisingly warm.

  ‘He’s dead, Ellie.’ He gave my hand a little squeeze. ‘The question I’m asking is why.’

  After Harald had gone, I poured myself another malt, moving from room to room, a ghost on the long, shadowed first-floor gallery that overhung the hall. I was grateful for Harald’s visit. The days ahead were going to be a trial and I needed that kind of candour, that kind of support, the knowledge that there was someone out there who - in his own way - had known Adam nearly as well as I did.

  Harald Meyler had changed our lives at a point when I knew we were facing financial disaster. Adam would never have used that kind of language - it simply wasn’t the way he’d chosen to lead his life -but I was closer to the figures than he was and I didn’t need an accounting degree to realise that we’d gone way, way over the limits we’d set for ourselves.

  Thanks to Adam, and five years of flying mercenaries around southern Africa, we’d been able to buy Mapledurcombe House, a sprawling Elizabethan manor with sensational views across the Isle of Wight. The place had needed a lot of attention, but even so there’d been just enough cash left for Adam to bid for a couple of World War II aeroplanes at an auction in southern Ireland.

  One of the planes was an old two-seat trainer called a Harvard. The other, in even worse condition, was the shell of a classic American fighter, the P-51 Mustang. It had always been Adam’s dream to rebuild vintage aircraft but the sheer cost of the project had shaken us both. A hundred and twenty thousand pounds is a lot of money for two cr
ated wrecks and a truckload of bits and pieces, but the purchase price quickly seemed a bargain once we’d hired an engineer and started putting the aeroplanes back together again. Spares cost a fortune, as did the premises we leased, and the various certifications we needed. There were certain weeks, I told Adam, when you could stand very still, and cup your hand behind your ear, and listen to the trickle of money draining from our precious company account.

  I paused for a moment in the little timber-beamed bedroom we called the Mitchell Suite. This was the first of the rooms we’d converted for the American guests we were sure would flock to Mapledurcombe. The idea, brilliant in its simplicity, had been Adam’s. Rebuild the Harvard first, give Mapledurcombe a lick of paint, offer gourmet cooking, car hire, free membership of the local golf club, and - best of all - the chance to make one last sortie in the rear seat of the sturdy wartime trainer.

  This package would be targeted at ageing USAAF veterans, men who’d flown against the Germans in the war. Retired now, they’d have the time and the money to treat themselves and their loved ones to a very special vacation. With his air transport pilot’s licence and our rebuilt Harvard, Adam would put the Americans back in the air over Europe. With a pile of cookery books, and a bit of local help, I would offer them the softest of landings.

  We called the company Old Glory. In our first summer season, we took enough money to make a hefty dent in the costs of the Harvard rebuild. The letters that arrived from the States guaranteed an even better second year. On the promise of these advance bookings, Adam - ever impulsive - gave Dave Jeffries, our engineer, the go-ahead to start on the Mustang. The Mustang ate money like the thoroughbred she proved to be. By the time the fighter was airborne, we owed the bank £177,000.

  Adam, of course, said it didn’t matter. The rebuild had gone way over budget but that was because we’d decided, rather late, to go for the full dual conversion. Most Mustangs, including ours, were single-seat. Enlarging the cockpit and adding a second seat had confronted Dave Jeffries with the kind of engineering problems that could only be solved, alas, by massive injections of cash. To Adam, who was nerveless when it came to money, this was simply an investment. With two spare seats - one in the Harvard, one in the Mustang - we could double our takings. That, in turn, would mean yet more bills to pay for extra bedrooms at Mapledurcombe, but in Adam’s eyes this was the clinching evidence that we were finally on a roll. Spend money to make money, he’d murmur, hunched over his flying maps on the kitchen table, plotting the best route back to Schweinfurt or Berlin.

  After a fashion, it worked. But as successful as Old Glory became, we still hadn’t paid off even half the overdraft. Adam had incorporated our little enterprise in Jersey to protect us from the Inland Revenue but I don’t think it had occurred to him that bank managers in this offshore low-tax paradise were just as canny and unforgiving as their brothers in the UK. When it came to the crunch, the message from our accountant in St Helier was brutal. Adding three extra rooms to Mapledurcombe had returned the overdraft to six figures. Insurance rates on the aircraft were going through the roof. We needed someone to invest a lot of cash. Quickly.

  That someone was Harald Meyler. He’d been in touch with Adam before, the result of an article in one of the aviation magazines about our Mustang rebuild. Harald had appeared within weeks, curious to know a little more about the aircraft’s history. The log books we’d acquired from the auctioneers were incomplete but the aircraft had flown with 336 Squadron, part of the US Eighth Air Force, and this fact had duly been noted in the article. Harald, who knew a great deal about classic aircraft, had stayed long enough to spend a couple of evenings with Adam and it was these conversations, I’m sure, that laid the foundations for what followed.

  Harald fascinated Adam. He was an American, with homes in Florida and Switzerland. He was older than we were, fifty-five according to the passport I once saw, and he’d built the kind of life that invited lots of questions. How come he was so wealthy? What, exactly, did he do for a living? And why had he put together, in his phrase, ‘one of the neatest collections of fighter planes in the free world’?

  The planes evidently included a Thunderbolt, two Hellcats, a Lightning, three Mustangs, a Trojan, a Tigercat, two Warhawks plus a handful of early jet fighters. The aircraft were quartered on a remote airfield in Florida and Harald flew them all. The latter impressed Adam no end - envy as well as admiration - but what struck me was the sheer outlay involved. Nursing just two of these casualties back to health had forced us dangerously close to bankruptcy. Maintaining a small airforce - as Harald obviously did -compelled serious respect.

  The problems over the bank loan came to a head in 1994 and it was Harald who rescued us. Impressed by the quality of the rebuild, he’d already made Adam an offer for the Mustang. At the time, determined to keep his nerve, Adam had turned him down. But when the company’s survival was finally on the line, the two of them met up again and a lengthy negotiation gave us the breathing space we needed. At first, Harald had wanted to buy the Mustang outright. In the end, he settled for a forty-five per cent share, reviewable after three years, at a price of $405,000, payable in three instalments. The first $135,000 saved us from going under. I, for one, was profoundly grateful. I was back in the kitchen now, still thinking about Harald. Unlike the other Americans we’d got to know - eager, open, friendly - he’d never once invited us back to the States, or opened even the smallest door to his heart or his past. Put this way, Harald sounds charmless, even cold, but like Adam I found him compelling and oddly likeable. There was something in his face that spoke of a great deal of pain. He looked weathered, emotionally, and in a small way I became fascinated by the kind of life he must have led. After the negotiations over the Mustang were done, Adam started calling him our Guardian Angel, and though it’s a daft phrase I knew exactly what he meant. He had strength. He was one of our kind. And he’d saved Old Glory from spearing in.

  It was three in the morning before I finally went to bed. I slept badly, waking twice to swallow water from the tumbler at my bedside. I dreamed of some nameless, godforsaken piece of ocean. It was always rough, always grey, always cold. From time to time the outline of a ship drifted by, and there came the sound of a child’s voice calling for help. I awoke in tears, the pillow wet beneath my cheek. Downstairs, the phone was ringing.

  It was the police again, a woman this time, relaying a message from the coastguard. They’d had a helicopter up since dawn. An hour and a half ago, more or less where they’d expected, the crew had seen one or two bits of wreckage in the water. The chopper had marked the position and passed the data to the rescue co-ordination centre. A naval frigate, on exercise off Dorset, had been asked to investigate.

  I clung on to the phone. My head hurt.

  ‘This wreckage…’ I began, ‘… was it an aircraft?’

  The silence told me everything. After the policewoman had said how sorry she was, I thanked her and put the phone down. Harald had been right. Even without a body, I knew that Adam was dead.

  Chapter two

  The television people arrived at lunchtime. They’d phoned earlier, asking for an interview, and I think I’d been too dazed to say no. They parked their Volvo estate by the front door and carted in all kinds of equipment, setting up light stands in the little snug that Adam and I used during the winter.

  I’d met the interviewer before. She was a slim, pretty redhead who’d recently done a feature on the Mustang, and I knew she’d taken Adam’s eye. The interview wasn’t very long - five minutes at the most - and I was handicapped by knowing so little about what might have happened. It turned out they’d already talked to the coastguard and they had pictures, too, of the search-and-rescue helicopter returning to Lee-on-the-Solent. Given all this footage, the most I could contribute was a kind of numbed incomprehension, but it occurred to me as they left that this was exactly what they’d come to record. They’d rearranged the furniture a bit, and hung the painting of the Mustang on the wall behind m
y chair, and after they’d gone I was left alone in the snug, staring at a pile of old photos I’d let them film, realising just how hard it is to voice something as raw and powerful as grief.

  There were more calls from the media during the afternoon, newspapers mainly, and by five o’clock, weary of explaining that Adam hadn’t gone down in the Mustang, I decided to flee for a couple of hours. One of the calls I had to make on my own account was to Adam’s parents. They’d emigrated to Vancouver only last year and I knew I had to break the news as soon as possible. If I was back in Mapledurcombe by eight, my call would probably find them preparing for lunch. In the meantime, I could gather what strength I had for what I knew would be a difficult conversation.

  Ralph Pierson lived by himself on the island’s south coast. He had an immaculate chalet-bungalow on a wooded lane that wound down to the lighthouse at St Catherine’s Point. His garden unrolled from the back of the house and from the patio he’d built he could look out across the broad expanse of lawn to the undercliff and the sea.

  Adam and I had known Ralph for nearly three years. He was in his mid-seventies, still fit, still alert, a fund of wonderful stories. As a young pilot, he’d flown Spitfires and Typhoons during the war and had contacted us after news of the Mustang rebuild had made a paragraph or two in the local paper. We’d liked each other on sight and after the sudden death of his wife, he and I had become close friends. I’d lost my own father at about the same time and I can’t pretend that Ralph wasn’t something of a substitute.

  He was waiting beside his open front door when I got out of the car. He was a tall man, nearly as tall as Adam, and he was wearing the blazer and slacks he favoured for semi-formal occasions. He put his arms round me, and kissed me on top of the head, and then led me inside. There was a tray of tea on the low table beside the sofa and he’d even found the time to rustle up some crumpets.

  I stood beside the big picture window, staring out. The sea looked grey and forbidding and I couldn’t get rid of the memory of the voice in my dreams. All day I’d heard it. Calling and calling.