It was almost two when Barbara emerged from the intensive care unit, the door swishing behind her, then sucking shut. When she told him that Vance had not regained consciousness and that they could not restart his heart and that she had given the instruction to switch off the life support, he did not look at her, but held her hand loosely, since she seemed to wish him to do so.
After an unmeasured time of sobbing and racked breathing as Barbara stared out of the windows down at the city, she quietly subsided into the chair beside him.
Tentatively, he put his arm around her shoulder and she slid like a child against him, her head pressed into his chest. He felt her grief beat in her cheek and forehead like his own pulse.
As he held her, he stared at a perspective beyond the crashes of the
494, beyond the ruins of Vance Aircraft, and the sabotage that had murdered Hollis and Alan.
The former had tried to be his friend and the latter his enemy, and both of them had failed. Just as neither of them had deserved to die so someone could turn an extra buck.
Out there, somewhere, was a man who doctored microprocessors so that they caused airplanes to crash. And beyond him, there was someone very, very remote, who had ordered it done. Someone with planes to sell, someone with planes to fill and fly… Someone he wanted very badly to find.
CHAPTER SEVEN
Economic Recovery There were footsteps and voices from the platform which sidled into the hot darkness of the tunnel. They were out of sight of the platform because of a slow bend in the tunnel to the point where the construction work had ceased. The track, the tiling of the walls, the lighting all petered out only hundreds of yards from the dusty newness of the metro station. Before Ray had extinguished the lamp, they had seen the roughly excavated workings, as incomplete and inhospitable as a coal mine
To Marian it seemed too sudden, too decided. Petered out was the wrong expression. Work had been suddenly, quickly suspended… three months before by the date on the tattered, dusty copy of The Sun she had found. The newspaper had flapped against her feet as if alive, startling her until the light of the lamp had revealed a bare-breasted female and two lurid headlines expressing moral outrage at pornography on television and violence in films. Twelve weeks ago, work had stopped completely on this stretch of the metro line and probably on the entire system.
"What do we do?" Banks asked breathily, his lips close to her ear.
"Who do you think it is security?"
"Probably. Not day-trippers, anyway."
Weak torchlight fell on the floor and walls of the tunnel. The footsteps were louder, the voices like murmured threats.
"What are we supposed to be doing down here?" Banks asked more urgently. They were standing in darkness, close together. She smelt the tense increase in the overpowering scent of his expensive aftershave, heard his breathing.
"Come on out of there," she heard.
"Come on we know someone's in there." A looming shadow was washed along the tunnel towards them, as if it were pouncing. The voice was suspicious, but hesitant, too. The parked cars would not suggest local yobs, but would mystify.
"Come on-!" more impatiently, confidently.
"What are we going to—? What are you doing?" Banks was startled by the noise of the zipper of her jeans, the rustle of the blouse as she tugged it free, unbuttoned it.
"Just follow my lead!" she hissed, grabbing hold of him. Turn on the lamp!"
She pulled Banks against her, feeling the pressure of his stomach.
Their coupled shadows sprang out on the wall. The beast with two backs… Oh, dear, the things I do for England. She felt, with a curious repellence, his arousal. Hurry up, she thought, disliking the aftershave, the good-living rounded ness of his jowl pressed against her cheek.
"Sorry—" he began to apologise.
"What the bloody hell are you—?" she heard as her cue and pushed Banks away.
His foot moved the lamp and their parting shadows danced on the walls.
At once she began pulling up her jeans.
"Jesus Christ-!"
"I told you I didn't want to!" she snapped loudly at Banks in a passably local accent, her tone harsh with experience.
"Not bloody down here!" She buttoned her shirt as Banks ostentatiously re zipped his flies. Torchlight washed their faces, dazzled them.
"Christ, Ray-! I didn't expect an audience! You and your bloody sex-drive!"
Banks' features were stunned, half-amused, perspiring.
"Who the hell are you, mate?" one of the two figures asked.
They were no more than a few yards away. In the glow of the torch, she could make out the uniforms of security guards. Complete Security?
"You like watching, do you?" she challenged brazenly, tossing her hair away from her face.
"You're trespassing—"
"Ray hasn't got enough puff to do any damage!"
she retorted, making as if to brush past the security men. Complete Security again, she realised. One of them grabbed her arm, restraining her. She smelt onions on his breath, and beer. She shrugged his grip away.
"Come on, fair's fair," Banks began, dropping his voice, so that she only caught snatches of the male-camaraderie bawdiness of his explanation. She turned her back contemptuously on them.
"My secretary… down here just wondering about one of the flats, you know hot day… just seemed, took my fancy…" She wondered, so convincing was the performance as it reached her, whether Banks had experience in such matters. The wife was, at best, dowdy… Cat, she told herself.
"I mean, it's not a crime, is it?"
Banks had already begun moving them all towards the end of the tunnel and the platform. She snorted and tossed her head, more like a colt than a woman, and lit a cigarette; surprised at the ease with which she could adopt brassiness, the accent, the exaggerated walk as she went ahead of them.
"See what you mean but you're still trespassing."
"Look, I don't want any trouble, mate—" His accent, too, was thickly local now.
"I mean, you wouldn't be insulted if I offered—" She glanced at the two men only once, to confirm their uniforms. Complete Security. Then kept ahead of them, her face averted. Stan at the building site of Banks Construction had recognised her, after all. These two one in his thirties, the other middle-aged didn't seem to know Banks, but just in case… And wiggle your hips, she cajoled herself. Her shoes clicked along the platform. Banks' tone was almost that of repartee now. She felt herself beginning to shiver with relief and stilled her body by an effort of will, wearing her new, brazen, adulterous self like a straitjacket.
The sun was hotter, it seemed. She ducked through the fence where it was damaged and hurried to her car. Hot leather seats, the hot paintwork. She dragged her sunglasses out of the glove compartment and put them on to mask her features. Then she sat on the uncomfortable heated leather, turning her face away from the two security men, who watched her for a moment, as if in recognition as much as desire, and one of them announced to Banks:
"You're getting too old to do it in railway tunnels, mate! I should put your name down for one of these flats, if I were you!"
"Ask him when they'll be finished!" she whispered urgently, as they walked off, laughing.
"When when are they going to start selling them, then?" Banks called out.
The older of the two men, the one who had joked about the flats, turned back. His features were cloudy with a sense of having made some slip.
"It'll be in the papers, mate!" he snapped and the two seemed suddenly more reluctant to leave.
That's it," Banks admitted, his hand resting on the door of the Escort, the other waving acknowledgement to the two security guards. Time to bugger off!"
"Agreed… I'll see you then, Ray at the office!" she called out, and started the engine.