System Aircraft Maintenance: Copy your situation, one oh one heavy.
Macmanaman: We’re just making grand clockwise circles up here …
SAM: I don’t want to add to your cares, sir. But we’d better start thinking about the NEO window.
Macmanaman: Hey. Come on back. Come on back. Come on back to me.
2. Clint prepares
‘So some so-called 14-year-old’, he typed, ‘has been crying “rape” after a bit of fun in a ditch with an older lad.’
Have you seen this bird (see photo)?
She looks 16 if she’s a day.
And how was he supposed to tell?
The bloke’d had a few, as he freely admits.
He’s getting on a bit and his eyes aren’t as sharp as they were.
And they say in that part of the woods it was so dark you couldn’t even—
Clint paused. He thought: got to be careful with the medication. Overdo it with the Narcopam and what happens? You’re checking into the hotel with the bird slung over your shoulder.
And who does the judge think he’s kidding?
He’s got the gall to tell us there was ‘no provocation’.
When the bird was wearing a school uniform.
What are we, c**ts?
He was sixty-six hours away from the date with Kate: Valentine’s Day (nice touch). He could see himself parking the Av enger and crossing the road. In a kind of saunter. Hands in hip pockets. Just … looning over the road to her door. Well he was like the boyscouts, wasn’t he: always prepared. The Potentium, the His Voluminousness (supplemented by a booster called Volume Control), the Valium, the Hellcat (Legally Not To Be Used Without Partner’s Permission), the Narcopam (ditto), the Diploma from the Academy. The guy was oozing confidence.
3. Waking in the cold
Joseph Andrews sat before the tape recorder. He looked as if he had just climbed out of the swimming-pool; but his clothes were dry.
‘Come on, Boss. Have half a Nurofen.’
In a strained and trembling voice he said, ‘Fuck off out of it.’
‘You had the local.’
‘Against me will. Ready? And Manfred. You transcribe this now, all right?
‘[Click.] Is it a crime to want to die in me own country? [Click.] Apart from a personal family matter and four or five blokes who know fucking well who they are [click] I pose no threat to society whatsoever. And the fact is, I’ve got you over a barrel, mate.
‘Uh. Take out the “mate” and put in uh …’
He intended to add an evocation of his love of England. But the essence of what he really missed about it was waking in the cold, and feeling the rust in his hipbones, all wired up and saddled to a faint need to shit.
‘Where’s Simon? I need me Simon.’
4. Leather on willow
Brendan was reading it out loud and had come to the last page.
‘“And the fact is, I’ve got you over a barrel, Your Majesty. I’m a confirmed royalist, and of course we all worshipped your mother and father. And it would break my heart if I was obliged to make the enclosed material public. I’m just an old man who wants to lay down his bones in the land of his fathers. I want to hear the chimes of Big Ben, I want to hear the sound of leather on willow at the village green, I want to walk down Worship Street and in through the doors of the World Upside Down. I’m coming into Heathrow on the afternoon of February 13, under my own name, and will take to my farmhouse in rural Essex. And that’s the last you’ll hear of me. But if I’m nicked on my way in, then you know the consequences. Respectfully, Joseph Andrews, Esquire. PS. If you don’t mind me saying, you had some front, didn’t you, claiming it was all a fake? I had half a mind to go public then and there, to get some respect. But wiser voices prevailed. Now you can stick to your guns and hopefully it’ll all pass over quickly for the Princess. What with her mum and all. PPS. I see your cousin offed poor old Jimmy O’Nione down Cold Blow way. I knew Jimmy at Knavesmire, where we did an Inspector together. Jimmy O’Nione was one of the best.”’
Brendan dropped his hands to his lap.
Henry uncrossed and recrossed his legs.
He said, ‘And what is that, Bugger, may I ask?’
‘A DVD, sir … A digital videodisc’
‘Well I suppose we’d better …’
The two men were in Brendan’s rooms in St James’s — not otherwise would such a viewing be possible. Not in any of the wintry palaces, the lashed castles … Brendan said,
‘I’m wondering whether you have to expose yourself to this, sir. I could simply tell you what you needed to know.’
‘Stop babying me, Bugger. Call Love and then lock the door.’
5. February 14 (3.44 p.m.): 101 Heavy
Captain John Macmanaman: Come on back to me. Come on back to me. No no no no. Wait. Now … Got to stay ahead of her, got to stay ahead of her. Got to lead her. Can’t get behind her.
System Aircraft Maintenance: Captain, say souls on board and fuel remaining.
First Officer Nick Chopko: Three nine nine. Thirty-six seven, and dumping.
SAM: Only differential power. You’re manoeuvring with the throttles … Slats are out?
Macmanaman: Slats? We don’t have any slats. If we can get ourselves down while we’re still horizontal, we’re going to ditch. We’re descending. Ah, now the nose is coming up. Easy. Easy.
Columbia [South Carolina] Approach: Copy your setting, one oh one heavy. The runway is ten thousand feet long.
Macmanaman: Can’t use it. And we’re not going to make Columbia. Find me a place to ditch on that setting. Nick, put the [landing] gear down.
Chopko: What?
Macmanaman: Throw it down.
Reynolds turned to the man in 2A, and she screamed. ‘What’s that?’ she said. ‘What? … I can’t hear! Take it off!’
‘A smoke-hood. Cost me two-thirty.’
‘Ladies and gentleman,’ said the exalted voice of Robynne Davis. ‘As in all emergency landings we will be evacuating as soon as the aircraft is at rest. Passengers close to the exit doors, those in seats …’
A uniformed man came out of the cockpit. He leant over 2B and whispered something.
‘Ma’am,’ said Hal Ward, in the galley, ‘would you please go to the bathroom and then quietly return to 22D. Business. Captain’s orders.’
The inter-cabin curtains were open, and by straining his neck the man in 2A saw that Mrs Traynor’s new seat was unlike his own. It was slightly narrower, and it faced the other way.