"What do you want?" he repeated in English as Gant shrugged at the Norwegian.
Slowly, Gant reached into his pocket and flapped Barbara's letter in the small breeze.
"I'm Gant. I'm here to see Olssen. I'll wait until you find him or can you take me to him? It doesn't matter which."
The security guard puzzled over the letter Gant had asked Barbara to write — just in case, he had said, I need to enlist some official help
…I lost my job, remember?
Probably because it assisted the man in unpacking his responsibility, the guard said:
"Olssen told me you would be coming I'll take you to him." He handed back the letter. Gant took it and then turned quickly, alarming the man.
Vance's private jet the one he had built and which now carried his casket rose above the glow of the airport, into the night, navigation lights brighter than the stars. He watched it until it banked slightly out over the fjord, then dismissed it from his mind. The sense of Alan Vance's body on board the plane depressed him with obligation, and promises given.
"Sure. Lead on," he murmured.
The scent of heated metal, fuel, oils restored an awareness of the immediate, the superficial. Work was evidently all but complete on the Sabena Boeing. Men were moving with the crispness of home going or loitering to gossip.
"Mr. Olssen Mr. Olssen!" the security guard called, waving to an overalled figure near the Boeing. This man has come to see you you expected him!" His was the eagerness to pass something that burned.
Olssen was at once studying Gant as he approached, as if matching his frame and gaunt features to some mental photograph. He held out an oil-stained hand, having wiped it on a rag.
"You're Gant," he confirmed.
"Sorry you had to come, that we meet like this."
"Sure." It was hotter in the hangar or perhaps it was the remembered heat of Arizona, and that other hangar where the first 494 had lain like the rubble of a condemned building.
"Thanks for seeing me."
"I understand that it is necessary. You must inspect our schedule, our records, on behalf of the FAA and the NTSB. I am not offended, it is routine."
"Yes."
"You will want to talk to others here, those who worked on the aircraft? They are about finished for the night…"
' I won't keep them — just those who saw the guy who claimed he was from Vance Aircraft. Then I'd like to talk to you you spent time with him, I guess?"
Olssen nodded.
"Yes, of course. And Jorgensen probably no one else. Like you, he came late, when we were almost finished on the aircraft—" His voice tailed away, as if he had suddenly become cautious, or perhaps merely reflective. His eyes suggested that he recollected their telephone call, his own protestations of innocence over the identity of Massey, as he had called himself. He blurted: There is no Massey, you said.
Have you checked with Vance Aircraft? Perhaps—" There's no mistake on my part, Mr. Olssen. Vance Aircraft never employed a deputy chief engineer called Massey. I have that from a man called Blakey, who is the chief design engineer."
Blakey had remained in Helsinki to oversee the further recovery of the wreckage, its investigation by the Finns, its eventual transportation, like the body of Vance, back to Phoenix.
"I am sorry, but I do not see that it is any of my—" Patiently, but with a flavour of threat, Gant said:
"No one is blaming you, Mr. Olssen, not right now. The man who called himself Massey let's talk about him, uh? While you introduce me to your schedule, the other paperwork on the 494 service job you carried out."
"Vance threatened me, this company! We have a good record, this hasn't happened-!"
"Sure," Gant soothed.
"Vance was angry. His company collapsed around his head.
He needed to blame someone."
They were walking towards Olssen's office. Olssen was about the same height, slightly stockier, running to the first fat of middle age. His eyes kept furtively glancing at Gant, who appeared oblivious of his attention.
"Mr. Vance did not come with you?"
"No." Why tell this man, when he could read it in tomorrow's paper?
"He didn't.
Now, Massey…?"
Olssen opened the door of his glass-walled office. The old desk was littered with forms, other papers. Grey filing cabinets, a rickety table piled with books and manuals, the scent of dust, oil. Gant found the cramped place comfortable, familiar.
Olssen dumped a file in front of him as he sat down on the single hard chair on the visitor's side of the desk. The gesture was one of self-satisfaction as well as ingratiation.
"Here is the schedule for servicing on the aircraft. I dug it out when you told me you would be coming. You want some coffee?"
"Mm oh, thanks." He unzipped the sports bag and drew out a small tape recorder.
"First, just describe this guy Massey for me, would you? What did he look like?
His accent, size, manner — take your time…" He placed the recorder on the desk between them. A family photograph lay on its back like a stranded insect amid the foliage of forms, regulations, a calendar.
Take your time," he repeated.
As Olssen cleared his throat, Gant leant forward with an eagerness that seemed to unnerve, even threaten the Norwegian. This man had seen him, the guy who had downed two aircraft and almost killed him in the third.
This man had seen Massey, who had killed Vance and over fifty others
She was alone in the toolshed again, and her arm where the skin graft still showed was burning. She had been trying one of Mummy's cigarettes. The toolshed, in a hot, dry summer, had caught fire from the matches she had dropped when the cigarette made her cough violently. She couldn't open the door and her throat was too raw and choked for her to scream. Daddy… Marian sat slumped into a foetal ball in the hallway of the flat, unable to open the door… She crouched in the farthest corner of the toolshed, her arm filled with pain so badly hurt that she could not relieve the pain by clutching it watching the flames lick up around old seed bags, dry canes, terra cotta plant pots, herself. Under the workbench, there were spiders but their clinging webs, filled with dead moths and flies, had to be ignored. Through a cracked windowpane, she could see the sunlight, the blue sky… The flames from the kitchen had reached the living room and flared garishly, orange-red, on the pale walls. The door wouldn't open, it was jammed somehow.
The sound of breaking glass must have been what had woken her, when something burning had been thrown into the kitchen. She had seen the broken window in the moment before she had recoiled in sudden, recollected panic from the flames. Her arm ached deeply, to the bone.
She could not move, could not get out of the flat.
There was no one else in the building, the other occupants were away on long weekends or business. The burglar alarm was shrilling because of the rise in temperature. Someone would come, would come… She began coughing.
In the toolshed, she was coughing and her eyes were watering and she was screaming so loudly that someone must hear her, must, it was only the back garden of the army house they occupied on one of Daddy's postings somewhere… Someone must come, the burglar alarm was so loud. Someone had to come, she couldn't move, her legs and arms and whole body were frozen with panic. She knew what was happening to her, the past coming like a massive injection of something that attacked the motor muscles, the nervous system. The panic was so enveloping it was no longer fear but paralysis.
Someone must come, Mummy would… was shopping, she had taken the car… Daddy would… was somewhere else, there was a barracks inspection she had heard at breakfast… someone must come… The spell of the past, the straitjacket in which it held her, was too strong to be broken. She was helpless, the pain in her arm, remembered, overpowering her.