'Thelma, I'm sorry,' apologized Minstrel. 'Honestly, I was out there watching you, but…’
He tailed off.
'You came inside for the welcome home party,' concluded Lacewing. 'You'd better get a move on, Austin. The lights are going out all over Yorkshire. Starting here, as usual.'
'Yes,' said Greenall making for the door. 'Roger?'
'All right, but it is late,' said Minstrel.
'We'll talk later,' called Middlefield after them in an attempt to re-affirm his authority.
By the time Greenall had got himself ready. Minstrel and Lacewing had manoeuvred the glider into position and the man went off to the towing winch.
Greenall climbed into the cockpit and strapped himself in.
'I gather you were acquitted,' said the woman.
He nodded.
'How do you feel about it?' she asked.
'I'm not sure,' he said.
'Do the police still think you're guilty?'
'I don't know. You'd better ask your friend.'
'Ellie Pascoe?' said Lacewing, frowning. 'She's had – still has – other things to worry her apart from whether you're guilty or not. What about you? What do you think?'
'About being guilty?' he said with a faint smile. 'I'm not very clear yet.'
'I should try to be clear before you land,' she said. 'For everyone's sake.'
She turned away and retreated to the wing tip which she grasped and raised. The signal was given to Minstrel. The winch engine bellowed into life. The glider began to move.
It was a perfect launch. The skills were too deeply grafted into Greenall's sinews and nerves for his enforced lay-off to have damaged them. Released from the towline, the glider soared as he expertly used the wind to carry him over the industrial estate where there was a complex of thermal activity he could read like a contour map.
Why had he chosen the glider? he wondered. The Cub would have taken him higher and further, given him more control. But he knew why, he realized. In the small aeroplane he was always aware of what it had once felt like to have at his fingertips control of such speed and power as most men could hardly dream of. A king of infinite space. Soaring in the glider brought no such memories. This was something different, not mastery of a kingdom by force of conquest, but more like acceptance as a citizen by a kind of naturalization process. Citizen of infinite space. Not quite the same ring about it but at this moment, at this time, the experience brought a peace and sense of belonging which he desperately needed.
‘What were his plans? Middlefield had asked.
What did he think about his guilt or innocence? Thelma Lacewing had wondered.
Stupid questions. Guilt, innocence, the future; these were not things to be decided or even usefully contemplated. He had felt guilty, it was true, else why had he talked at such length to that fellow Pascoe? But with the talking the guilt had lessened, was already going as he talked to the man, and had gone completely by the time that sergeant with a face like a hangman's labourer had come in.
Guilt might return, though it had not returned since then. And even if it did return, he now knew from experience that innocence returned too. So the future must take care of itself, whatever it brought. It was written. He knew it.
He hadn't told Pascoe everything, not quite everything. When he had slipped into Madame Rashid's tent at Charter Park, he hadn't killed the girl straightaway. He had given her his palm to read. She had examined it, murmuring a few well-worn platitudes, then she had gone very quiet, and looked at his hand quite fixedly, and slowly risen, pushing his hand away and raising her own to her mouth. He had punched her then, very hard, in the stomach, and killed her. She had seen he was going to kill her, he was sure of that. And what was going to happen had to happen. Guilt he had felt then, and again, still stronger, after the slaying of Wildgoose. But he was an evil man, a debaucher of youth. He saw that now. There was no more guilt to be felt there.
The flight was doing him good. He had known it would. He felt ready for the earth again, ready to go back and take his place once more and do whatever had to be done.
He looked down to get his bearings. Up here it was still bright but the height made a lot of difference. At ground level the sun was now dipping below the horizon, but it made no difference, not to a citizen of infinite space. He dipped across the airfield in a long descending run with the light wind behind him and turned for his landing approach. To his surprise he realized he was still rather high. Perhaps he was more out of practice than he imagined. To compensate and to reassure himself of his touch, he applied full airbrake and side-slipped to lose height till he was satisfied he was approaching at the optimum angle.
He was now low enough to be out of the full orb of the sun and the gloom of early evening visibly thickened beneath him, but not enough to cause concern. He was coming down parallel to the picket fence which the council had erected to keep the gypsies away from the airfield. To his right he could see the club house quite clearly. The flagpole, brilliant white and exactly thirty feet high, gave him a precise point of reference for his round-out, even though the ground surface itself seemed far from clear. It was rushing beneath him, vague and shadowy. And the shadows were uneven too. Some seemed to be moving across the line of his approach, and these had a look of shape and substance.
'Jesus!' he muttered suddenly, realizing what they were.
No shadows these, but ponies, a whole bloody herd by the look of it, wheeling and swerving beneath him as though driven in panic by the sound of his descent.
The picket fence must be broken again. The bloody things were everywhere. He shouted, knowing they couldn't hear and that it would make no difference if they could; but still he shouted. And still they thundered directly beneath him. Christ, they must be moving! He was doing almost fifty knots and he wasn't outrunning them.
It was time for decisions. Continue the landing as planned and hope the blasted things got out of the way. Or overshoot. He visualized what lay behind that section of the boundary fence directly ahead. Rough ground. Some gorse bushes, very substantial. And then the belt of trees beyond which curved the river.
Perilous country even if he could see it. But black as it was now, certain disaster.
So it had to be the landing as planned. He hadn't got enough speed to gain enough height for another turn on to a different line from the stampeding herd. Only the crassest of novices would try that, a fool, an idiot.
Yet that was what his hands and feet were trying to do. He cursed them and fought back, held the glider level, straight and level, the animals weren't stupid, they would get out of his way.
And suddenly he had won. He felt relaxed, looked out through the perspex. There seemed to be rather more light now. Everything was quite clear. And he could no longer see the ponies.
Suddenly he knew what was happening.
By the time Dalziel and Pascoe reached the airfield, the ambulance had gone and the excited and horror-struck members were busy exchanging notes in the club house. Preece who met them in the car park was equally excited and eager for an audience.
'I saw it,’ he said. 'I was just sitting in my car, waiting. I saw him coming in to land. It looked fine, but he just kept on going and going, made no attempt to touch down or lose speed. Just going and going. Right into the boundary fence. I couldn't believe it. I was watching and I couldn't believe it!'
'Dead?' said Dalziel.
'Oh yes. I was first across there. It was a mess. Broken neck, it looked like. I called an ambulance, but I might as well have called a dust-cart.'
'Let's take a look,' said Dalziel.
The three policemen walked across to the wreckage. The glider had hit the wire mesh of the boundary fence, flipped over and landed upside down with considerable fracturing of metal and fibreglass.