A Colder War. Чарльз Камминг
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Of course not. If I sense that a pilot is any of these things, I will prevent him from flying. Of course.’
‘Of course.’ Kell had never had much time for thin-skinned bureaucrats and couldn’t be bothered to summon an apology for whatever offence his remark might have caused. ‘You can understand why I have to ask. In order to complete a full report on the accident, Scottish Widows needs to know everything …’
As though he had already grown tired of listening, Makris leaned down, picked up a slim briefcase and set it on the table. Kell was still speaking as two thick thumbs operated the sliding locks. The catches popped, the lid sprang open, and Makris’s face was momentarily obscured from view.
‘I have the flight plan here, Mr Hardwick. I made a copy for you.’
‘That was very thoughtful.’
Makris lowered the lid, passing Kell a one-page document covered in hieroglyphs of impenetrable Greek. There were boxes where Wallinger had scrawled his personal details, though no address on the island appeared to have been provided.
‘The flight plan was to take the Cessna over Aignoussa, then east into Turkey. It is customary for Çeşme or Izmir to take immediate responsibility for aircraft entering Turkish airspace.’
‘This is what happened?’
Makris nodded gravely. ‘This is what happened. The pilot told us he was leaving our circuit and then changed radio frequency. At this point, Mr Wallinger was no longer our responsibility.’
‘Do you know where he was staying on Chios?’
Makris directed his eyes towards the flight plan. ‘Does it not say?’
Kell turned the sheet of paper around and held it up for inspection. ‘Hard to tell,’ he said.
Makris pursed his lips, as if to imply that Chris Hardwick had caused secondary offence by his failure to read and understand modern Greek. He took back the flight plan, studied it carefully, and was obliged to admit that no address had been given.
‘There seems to be only Mr Wallinger’s residence in Ankara,’ he conceded. Clearly, this was a minor breach in aeronautical protocol. Kell suspected that, first thing in the morning, Makris would hunt down a junior colleague at the airport and take significant pleasure in reprimanding him for the oversight. ‘But there is a telephone number,’ he said, as if to compensate for the clerical error.
‘A telephone number on Chios?’
Makris did not need to look back at the code. ‘Yes.’
According to a preliminary report sent to Amelia the day before the funeral, Wallinger had used his own logbook and JAR licence to hire the Cessna in Turkey, his own passport to enter Ankara, but had then left no trace of his movements once he arrived on Chios. His mobile phone had been switched off for long periods during his stay and there was no activity on any Wallinger credit card, nor on his four registered SIS legends. He had effectively spent a week on Chios as a ghost. Kell assumed that Wallinger had been with a woman, and was trying to conceal his whereabouts from both Josephine and Amelia. Yet the lengths he had gone to suggested that it was equally plausible he had been making contact with an agent.
‘Do you recognize the number?’
‘Do I recognize it?’ Makris’s reply was effortlessly condescending. ‘No.’
‘And have you heard anything about what Mr Wallinger was doing on Chios? Why he was visiting the island? Any rumours around town, newspaper reports?’
Kell accepted that his questions were what is known in the trade as a ‘trawl’, but it was nevertheless important to ask them. It did not surprise him in the least when Makris suggested with a light cough that Mr Hardwick was exceeding his brief.
‘Paul Wallinger was just a tourist, no?’ he said, raising his eyebrows. It was clear that he had no desire to improvise an answer. ‘I certainly have not spoken to anybody, or read anything, which suggests other interests. Why do you ask?’
Kell produced a bland smile. ‘Oh, just background for the report. We need to ascertain whether there was any chance that Mr Wallinger deliberately took his own life.’
Makris tried to appear appropriately dignified as he considered the grave matter of Paul Wallinger’s possible suicide. It had doubtless occurred to him that such a verdict would absolve Chios airport entirely of any responsibility in the crash, thus ending, at a stroke, the possibility of a lawsuit against the engineer who had checked the Cessna.
‘Let me ask around,’ he replied. ‘To be perfectly honest with you, I have not yet even discussed the crash with my colleagues in Turkey.’
‘What about your engineers?’
‘What about them, please?’
‘Have you ascertained who was on duty the afternoon of the flight?’
‘Of course.’ Makris had prepared for this, the most sensitive section of the interview, and dealt with it as Kell had expected he would. ‘Air traffic control is not accountable for maintenance and engineering. That is a separate department, a separate union. I assume that you will be holding other meetings with other employees in order to obtain a more full picture of the tragedy?’
‘I will.’ Kell experienced another craving for a cigarette. ‘Do you happen to have the name of the engineer to hand?’
Makris appeared to weigh up the good sense of denying the man from Scottish Widows this simple request. At some cost to his equilibrium – his neck did an agitated roll and there was another delicate cough of irritation – he wrote down the name on the back of the flight plan.
‘Iannis Christidis?’ Kell studied Makris’s spidery handwriting. With this and the phone number he had more than enough leads to plot Wallinger’s movements in the days leading up to his death.
‘That is correct,’ Makris replied. And to Kell’s surprise he immediately stood up and drained the last of his wine. ‘Now, will there be anything else, Mr Hardwick? My wife is expecting me for dinner.’
As soon as Makris had left the hotel, Kell went back to his room and dialled the number using the hotel landline. He was connected to a recorded answering service, but the message was in Greek. Heading back downstairs he dialled the number again, asked the receptionist to listen to the message and to give a rough translation of what was being said. To his frustration he was told that the voice was a default, computer-generated message with no person or corporation named. Kell, by now hungry and thinking about dinner, returned to his room to ring Adam.
‘The engineer who worked on Wallinger’s plane was called Iannis Christidis. Can you see if there’s anything recorded against?’
‘Sure.’
It sounded as though Adam had woken up from a siesta. Kell heard the bump and scratch of a man looking around for a pen, the noise of a dog barking in the background.
‘With a name like Christidis you’ll probably get the Greek phone book, but see if he has a profile on the island.’
‘Will do.’
‘How are your reverse telephone directories for Chios?’
‘I’m sure we can work something out.’
Kell read out the number from the flight plan, checked that Adam had taken it down correctly, then mentally switched off. Having watched the headlines on CNN, he went for a grilled sea bass and a Greek salad at a restaurant halfway along the beach. From his table on a moonlit terrace he could see the distant lights of the Turkish coast, blinking like a runway.
At ten o’clock, smoking a cigarette at the edge of a high tide, he felt the pulse of a message coming through on his phone. Adam had sent a text.
Still working on IC. Number is for a letting agency. Villas Angelis. 119 Katanika, on the port. Proprietor listed as Nicolas Delfas.