‘Mr Óskarson?’
‘You know, blowing up an aircraft, even a large one, by detonating a bomb is easy. I would say trivially easy, given the narrow range of forces the airframe is designed to cope with. But.’
‘But what?’
‘Inspector, my line of work discourages the development of premature hypotheses. If you try enough keys in a lock, you might find one that fits, but it may not be the correct one. Between ourselves, I indulge my imagination a little in that regard. But I can give you two reasons that make me think Saskia Dorfer/Brandt did not blow up that plane with a bomb.’
‘Go on,’ said Mr Shaw. His eyes were fierce. Hrafn began to like him.
‘One, the wreckage pattern tells us that the crash was a C-FIT, or Controlled Flight Into Terrain. The aircraft was in one piece and travelling under power when it crashed.’
‘And the second?’ asked the inspector.
‘The bomber doesn’t usually board the plane.’
Hrafn opened his briefcase and removed the picture of Saskia taken mid-flight. He gave it to the inspector.
‘Is this Brandt?’ he asked. ‘You’re sure?’
‘Alias Dorfer, yes. One of the passengers had a camera. If the date stamp is correct, this was taken four minutes prior to impact.’
Mr Shaw said, ‘You know, there are plenty of bombers willing to give their lives for a cause. The terrorists who flew into the World Trade Centre seemed cool with it.’
‘I have to make decisions based on probabilities, not absolutes. A German woman in her late twenties does not fit the profile of a suicide bomber. Not these days. Besides, she’s carrying a gun in the photograph. That implies that things are, well, complicated.’
‘But whose gun is it?’ asked the inspector. ‘Did the flight have sky marshals on board?’
‘No. Current German transport policy keeps sky marshals on randomly-selected transatlantic flights, not intracontinentals. Now, gentlemen, given the late hour, I must press you. Do you have any information that might help determine the flight’s last moments?’
Again, the inspector and Mr Shaw exchanged a look. Mr Shaw, the taller man, folded his arms. ‘My sister, Jem, has some connection with Saskia Brandt. They were both due to board that flight. My sister–’ Danny faltered. ‘Look, she hasn’t done anything wrong, I promise you. She works in a hairdresser’s.’
Hrafn’s reply was interrupted by the overture to The Marriage of Figaro, which played when Siggi, his assistant, called. As he reached for his phone, he heard the chirrups of two more. Danny Shaw and Inspector Duczyński, each with trepidation, answered their mobiles too. The three men stood in the snow and listened. Their expressions questioned one another.
‘Good morning, gentlemen,’ said a voice in Hrafn’s ear. ‘Call me Mr Self. I’ve taken the precaution of speaking to you simultaneously. I wish to avoid misunderstandings. Now, please listen. We don’t have much time.’
Chapter Nineteen
Jem did not pass another car on her journey into the mountains. After half an hour, there were neither city lights to be seen nor moon. She phoned Ego and spoke about the special regard Germans had for their forests. Then she asked it who Saskia really was, expecting it to be reticent. The candour surprised her.
‘Saskia’s identity is a computerised representation stored on a high-density, solid-state device of uncertain origin. It has been surgically inserted at the back of her brain. Everything about her can be attributed to this device. That is, everything you would consider the product of her mind. When you asked Saskia a question, it was the device that replied. When you reached out for her, it was the device that took your hand. The device felt your touch.’
‘That’s weird.’
‘Think of it as a homunculus, or little person, truly controlling Saskia’s body.’
There was a logic within the idea. It explained Saskia’s perfect recall, her oddness, her virtuoso performance of violence. And yet: Whose eyes had Jem stared into? If Saskia’s conscious mind was contained within the device, what was contained within her flesh-and-blood brain? Was there another woman trapped inside that body, screaming unheard?
‘So the device sent you a mayday.’
‘It did once, and that confirmed its approximate location. It has not signalled since. I can’t be sure if it has survived the crash intact. Saskia may not be recoverable.’
‘God,’ said Jem. ‘It’s like she’s… a black box.’
‘We’re here.’
Jem steered the car into a small lay-by. She extinguished the headlights. The silence and the darkness, though expected, became a space for her loneliness to fill. She closed her eyes for five breaths. They opened with clearer night vision on snow-bright ground and glistening tree-trunks. She remembered the leather spine of the Grimm’s fairy tales that had unlocked the curtained door in Saskia’s apartment. And she recalled a music box that had played something by Bach. She opened the car door. She imagined new sounds in the silence: the patter of a wolf on patrol, its mouth shut and low, the flutter of a witch abroad.
Ssssssssssssss.
‘It’s cold out there,’ said Ego. ‘If your phone’s power fails, warm the battery. We may be separated. Don’t lose heart.’
‘OK.’
‘Do you see the dusky colour reflected by the clouds? That’s Regensburg. Keep it behind you and try to stay walking uphill.’
She locked the car with the radio fob. The indicators splashed orange. Then she took the torch—a metal, heavy comfort—and cut a piece of light from the darkness. She moved through the powdery mires, alert for other footsteps in the hush. The trees were black bars. She drew the cold air through her nose. At first, she could not separate the odours. Then she identified something like incinerator smoke and remembered the putrid rat Danny had discovered that wet August in Poole when they were eight or nine. And the tang of polystyrene melting on the woodland fire that had warmed Jem and her mates when, years after the rat, they downed Diamond White by the bottle, and spun the empties to mark the unlucky victim of an interrogation, sexual and hilarious.
‘One is never too old to play with matches.’
‘KGB or CIA, what’s the difference?’
‘Never follow me. Understand?’
‘I understand.’
She stepped on something that deformed like an oil can, and when she raised her foot, it barked across the forest and she understood that a great space had opened before her. In the failing light she saw scabs of ash and the grave of a whole aeroplane, wings and engines and all. A yellow cordon stretched away to her left and to her right.
Holy fuck.
Then.
Clock hands meeting at midnight. The night, under whose auspices Saskia had blossomed like a moonflower. Perfume drifting: conservative and sensible, mixed for her in the south of France. Her hair was long and never stronger was Jem’s urge to nose its waves. Later: a policeman, unconscious alongside his car, and Saskia reaching back for a fallen Jem.