The Rhythm Section--A Stephanie Patrick Thriller Read online

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  To my parents, with love and thanks for your ceaseless support.

  Character is destiny.

  —George Eliot, Mill On The Floss

  Let’s make us medicine of our great revenge, to cure this deadly grief.

  —William Shakespeare, Macbeth

  Acknowledgements

  Of all those who have helped me during the writing of this book, I would particularly like to thank Julian Warren for his technical assistance. I would also like to thank Susan Watt for making editing such a painless process.

  I am especially indebted to Toby Eady for reasons too numerous to list here. Suffice to say that I regard this book as something of a joint venture.

  0617 GMT/0117 EST

  Outside, the temperature has reached –52°C. Inside, it’s a constant 23°C. Outside, there is speed. Inside, there is stillness. Outside, the air pressure is consistent with an altitude of thirty-seven thousand feet. Inside, the air pressure is equivalent to an altitude of six thousand five hundred feet. Made from aluminium and assembled near Seattle, the dividing line between these two mutually hostile environments is just two millimetres thick.

  * * *

  Martin Douglas had his eyes closed but he was not asleep. The occupant of seat 49C, a resident of Manhattan and a native of Uniondale, New York, Douglas focused on his breathing and tried to ignore the tension that was his invisible co-passenger on every flight he took. The airline’s classical music channel piped Mahler through his headphones. The music took the edge off the drone of the engines, masking the tiny changes in pitch, every one of which usually accelerated Douglas’ pulse. Now, however, with soothing music in his ears and with the fatigue that follows relentless anxiety starting to set in, he was almost relaxed. His eyelids were heavy when he half-opened them. An inflight movie was flickering on the TV screens above the aisles but most of the passengers around him were asleep. He envied them. On the far side of the cabin he noticed a couple of cones of brightness falling from reading lights embedded in the ceiling. He closed his eyes again.

  * * *

  When the explosion occurred, North Eastern Airlines flight NE027 was flying over the Atlantic, bound for London’s Heathrow Airport from New York’s JFK. Including flight crew and cabin crew, there were three hundred and eighty-eight people on board the twenty-six-year-old Boeing 747.

  First Officer Elliot Sweitzer was drinking coffee. Larry Cooke, the engineer, was returning to his seat after a brief walk to stretch his legs. The lights on the flight deck were dimmed. Outside, it was a beautiful clear night. A brilliant moon cast silver light on to the gentle ocean below. The stars glittered above the aircraft. To the east and to the north, the sky was plum purple with a hint of bloody red along the curved horizon.

  The countless hours spent in a 747 simulator combined with years of actual flying experience counted for nothing in preparing the pilots for the physical shock of the blast. Sweitzer’s coffee cup flew free of his grasp and shattered on the instruments in front of him. Cooke’s seat-belt was not properly fastened and he was hurled into the back of Sweitzer’s seat. He heard his collar-bone snap.

  Instantly, the flight deck was filled with mist as the howl of decompression began. Captain Lewis Marriot reacted first. Attaching an oxygen mask to his face, he began to absorb the terrifying information that surrounded him. ‘Rapid depressurization drill!’ He turned to his co-pilot. ‘Elliot, are you all right?’

  Sweitzer was fumbling with his mask. ‘Okay … I’m okay…’

  ‘You fly it,’ Marriot commanded him, before turning to check on Cooke. ‘Larry?’

  There was blood on Cooke’s forehead. His left arm was entirely numb. He could feel the break in the collar-bone against his shirt. Gingerly, he hauled himself back into his seat and attached his own oxygen mask. ‘I’ll be … fine…’

  ‘Then talk to me.’

  On the panel in front of Cooke the loss of cabin pressure was indicated by a red flashing light. A siren began to wail. Cooke pressed the light to silence it. ‘I got a master warning for loss of cabin pressure.’

  Sweitzer said, ‘We need to get to a lower altitude.’

  Marriot nodded. ‘Set flight level change. Close thrust. Activate speed brake.’

  A yellow light began to flash in front of Cooke. ‘I’ve got a hydraulics master caution.’ He pressed the light to reset it. Two seconds later, it went off again. ‘We’ve lost one set of hydraulics.’ The 747–200 was fitted with three different hydraulics systems. ‘I also got a fuel imbalance warning.’ A red master warning light came on, accompanied by the ringing of a bell. ‘Fire!’

  Sweitzer said, ‘The auto-pilot’s in trouble. I’m getting a vibration.’

  Marriot looked at Cooke. ‘Engine fire check list. What’s it on?’

  ‘Two.’

  Under Cooke’s supervision, Marriot closed the number two engine, shut off the fuel control switch, and then pulled the number two fire handle to close the hydraulics and fuel valves. Then he twisted the handle to activate the fire extinguishers.

  ‘We’re losing the auto-pilot. The second set of hydraulics is going.’

  ‘Deactivate the auto-pilot, Elliot.’

  Sweitzer nodded. ‘We’re going to have to slow her down. There’s too much vibration.’

  ‘Just keep her steady and make the turn. We’re heading for Gander.’

  Gander, in Newfoundland, was the closest runway to them.

  Sweitzer was struggling with the control column. ‘God, she’s sluggish!’

  The fire bell sounded again in conjunction with a master warning light. Cooke said, ‘We need the second shot with the fire extinguisher. It’s still burning.’

  ‘I think we’ve got a rudder problem and maybe a jammed stabilizer. The trim’s shot to hell.’

  Marriot turned the radio to VHF 1215, the emergency frequency. ‘Mayday, Mayday, Mayday! This is North Eastern Zero Two Seven. We are in emergency descent. We have structural damage. We have an engine fire, not extinguished.’

  * * *

  The violent deceleration hurled everyone forwards. Those whose seatbelts were unfastened were ejected from their seats. Martin Douglas was lifted from his but the belt cut across the top of his thighs and restrained him. His head hit the seat in front. The blow knocked him senseless and his body was immediately snapped back against his own seat.

  He was only unconscious for three seconds. Despite being dazed, Douglas knew that his nose was broken. The back of the seat in front had crushed it and ripped the skin in several directions. Blood was seeping from the star-shaped gash but it was not slithering down his face. It was not staining his shirt or splattering his lap. Instead, it was being sucked off his skin. A sticky stream of crimson drops was hurtling forwards, flying over the seats in front, borne on the rushing air.

  Further forward, part of t
he cabin floor had collapsed. Broken seats were wrenched from their moorings and sucked into the night. A tornado tore through the fuselage, ripping clothes from bodies, bodies from seats, hand-luggage from floors and overhead lockers. All of this debris was inhaled by some enormous invisible force towards the front of the 747. The majority of those who could were screaming, but their pitiful shrieks were lost in the roar of decompression. Others were unconscious. Or already dead.

  The pain in his ears was agonizing, a consequence of the colossal percussive clap and the violent change in air pressure. But compared to the fear, his pain was a minor irritation. The terror constricted his throat, his stomach, his chest. As the aircraft began to descend, Douglas instinctively pushed against the arm-rests, raising himself upwards, stretching himself, as if to counteract, in whatever minuscule way possible, the 747’s descent. The entire aircraft was vibrating uncontrollably. To Douglas, it seemed that this was Hell and that whatever was to follow could be no worse.

  The boy who had been asleep in seat 49B was no longer there. His belt had been fastened but not securely enough. The girl by the window was either unconscious or dead. Her hair was drawn forwards, masking her face, but there was a thick smudge of her blood on the window’s blind. It looked black.

  Oxygen masks fell from the ceiling and were drawn towards the source of depressurization. Douglas reached for one, retrieved it by the plastic tube and yanked it towards him, placing it over his nose and mouth. Breathing through the mask proved to be harder than fixing it to his face; his lungs seemed to be shutting down, each breath becoming shallower than the one before, the time between them shrinking. Small white stars were exploding in his eyes.

  He allowed himself to look around. It was dark in the cabin but of those he could see, he was one of the few who was still conscious. Even as a nervous flyer, he had never imagined that any fear could be so acute, that his worst nightmare made real would be quite so surgical in the way that it sliced him apart.

  * * *

  The fire bell sounded again. Cooke didn’t know where to start. Every light was ablaze. He guessed—because he didn’t want to admit to himself that he knew—that the fire, which was still raging, was burning through the third and last of their hydraulics systems. The aircraft’s descent was transforming into a plunge.

  He gripped Marriot’s shoulder. ‘The fire’s spreading. You better make the call.’

  Marriot checked the 1215 frequency. ‘Mayday, Mayday, Mayday! This is North Eastern Zero Two Seven. We are in emergency descent. We are going down. We have an uncontrolled fire on board. We have a complete hydraulics failure. We cannot complete our turn for Gander. This is our last call. Our position is fifty-four north, forty west. We will try to–’

  * * *

  Martin Douglas was on the verge of hyperventilating, a condition that would have been welcome. To pass out would have been a merciful relief. There was smoke in the cabin.

  He had been in a car crash once. Travelling at over seventy miles an hour on a road that cut through a forest in Vermont, he had hit a patch of black ice. His car had skidded sideways and veered on to the wrong side of the road. Fortunately, there had been no oncoming traffic. Unfortunately, there had been pine trees lining the road. He’d had time to think, then—a few moments to anticipate the collision, to feel fear, to contemplate death as a serious possibility. This was different. Death was not a serious possibility. It was an inevitability. The aircraft was falling like a rock. Essentially, he knew that he was already dead.

  When his breathing could become no shallower or quicker, he stopped. For a second. And then took a deep breath. With it, the accumulated tension flooded out of him. He felt it drain from his head, through his chest and stomach, down his legs and out through the soles of his feet and into the frame of the disintegrating 747.

  And for one moment in his life, Martin Douglas was at peace inside an aircraft.

  1

  Lisa’s World

  1

  She’s a chemical blonde.

  The carder was a stout skinhead in a Reebok track-suit who carried a canvas satchel stuffed with prostitutes’ advertising cards. Along Baker Street, he moved from phone-box to phone-box, sticking the cards to the glass with Blu-Tack. Keith Proctor watched him from a distance before approaching him. He showed him the scrap of card he’d been given by one of her friends and asked the man if he knew who she was. It cost fifty pounds to persuade the carder to talk. Yes, he knew who she was. No, she wasn’t one of his. He’d heard a rumour she was working in Soho.

  On the fragment of dirty yellow card there was a photograph of a woman offering her breasts, plumping them between her hands. The bottom half of the card—the half with the phone number—was missing.

  An hour later, Proctor hurried along Shaftesbury Avenue. The falling drizzle was so fine it hung in the air like mist but its wetness penetrated everything. Those who were heading across Cambridge Circus towards the Palace Theatre for the evening’s performance of Les Misérables looked suitably miserable, shoulders curved and heads bowed against the damp chill. The traffic on the Charing Cross Road was solid. Red tail lights shivered in puddles.

  There was a cluster of four old-fashioned phone-boxes on Cambridge Circus. Proctor waited for five minutes for one of them to become free. As the heavy door swung behind him, muting the sound outside, he realized someone had been smoking in the phone-box. The smell of stale cigarettes was unpleasant but Proctor found himself grudgingly grateful for it since it mostly masked the underlying stench of urine.

  Three sides of the phone-box were covered by prostitutes’ advertising cards. Proctor let his eyes roam over the selection. Some were photos, in colour or black and white, others were drawings. Some merely contained text, usually printed although, in a few cases, they had been scrawled by hand. They offered straight sex, oral sex, anal sex. They were redheads, blondes and brunettes. They were older women and they were teenagers. To the top of the phone-box, they were stacked like goods on a supermarket shelf. Black, Asian, Oriental, Scandinavian, Proctor saw specific nationalities singled out; ‘busty Dutch girl—only 21’, ‘Brazilian transsexual—new in town’, ‘Aussie babe for fun and games’, ‘German nymphomaniac, 19—nothing refused’. One card proclaimed: ‘Mature woman—and proud of it! Forty-four’s not just my chest size—it’s my age!’

  Proctor took the torn yellow card out of his pocket and scanned those in the phone-box. He made a match high to his left. The one on the wall was complete, the phone number running along the bottom half. He forced a twenty-pence piece into the slot and dialled.

  A woman answered, her voice more weary than seductive.

  ‘I … I’m in a phone-box,’ Proctor stammered. ‘On … on Cambridge Circus.’

  ‘We’re in Brewer Street. Do you know it?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘The girl we’ve got on today is a real stunner. She’s called Lisa and she’s a blonde with a gorgeous figure and lovely long legs. She’s a genuine eighteen-year-old and her measurements are…’

  Proctor felt deadened by the pitch.

  ‘It’s thirty pounds for a massage with hand-relief and her prices go up to eighty pounds for the full personal service. What was it you were looking for, darling?’

  He had no answer at the ready. ‘I … I’m not sure…’

  ‘Well, why don’t you discuss it with the young lady in person?’

  ‘What?’

  ‘You can decide when you get here. When were you thinking of coming round?’

  ‘I don’t know. When would be…?’

  ‘She’s free now.’ Like a door-to-door salesman, she gave Proctor no time to think. ‘It’ll only take you five minutes to get here. Do you want the address?’

  * * *

  There were Christmas decorations draped across the roads and hanging from street lamps. They filled the windows of pubs and restaurants. Their crass brightness matched the gaudy lights of the sex shops. Proctor passed a young homeless couple, who were huddling i
n a shallow doorway, trying to keep dry, if not warm. They were sharing a can of Special Brew.

  The address was opposite the Raymond Revuebar, between an Asian mini-market and a store peddling pornographic videos. The woman answered the intercom. ‘Top of the stairs.’

  The hall was cramped and poorly lit. Broken bicycles and discarded furniture had been stored beneath the fragile staircase. Proctor felt a tightness in his stomach as he started to climb the stairs. On each landing there were either two or three front doors. None of them matched. Most were dilapidated, their hinges barely clinging to their rotting frames, rendering their locks redundant. On the third floor, though, he passed a new door. It was painted black and it was clear that a whole section of wall had been removed and rebuilt to accommodate it. It had three, gleaming, heavy-duty steel locks.

  The door at the top of the staircase was held open by an obese woman in her fifties with tinted glasses. She wore Nike trainers, a pair of stretched grey leggings and a violet jersey, sleeves rolled up to the elbows. The flat was a converted attic. In a small sitting room, a large television dominated. On a broken beige sofa there was an open pizza carton; half the pizza was still in it. The woman steered Proctor into the room at the end.

  ‘You want something to drink, darling?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘All right, then. You wait here. She’ll be with you in a minute.’

  She closed the door and Proctor was alone. There was a king-sized mattress on a low wooden frame. The bed-cover was dark green. On the mantelpiece, on the table in the far corner and on the two boxes that passed for bedside tables, there were old bottles of wine with candles protruding from their necks. On top of a chest of drawers there was a blue glass bowl with several dozen condoms in it. The room was hot and reeked of baby oil and cigarettes. Proctor walked over to the window, the naked floorboards creaking beneath his feet. Pulsing lights from the street tinted curtains so flimsy that he could almost see through them. He parted them and looked down upon the congested road below.