One of Us Is Dead

93 Tuesday 18 October 2022

‘Golf Alpha Victor Uniform Zulu, do you read me?’

Through their headsets both men heard the crackly voice of the air traffic controller, calm but urgent.

His eyes not leaving Taylor’s, Rufus Rorke raised the velvet bag, just a few inches, but enough. Threatening. His expression said, loud and clear to Taylor, Do not respond.

‘This is London Control. You are instructed to land immediately at your nearest available airfield. Repeat, land immediately.’

There was a silence as both men looked at each other.

‘Your aircraft is in immediate danger. You may have a bomb on board. Do you read me, Golf Alpha Victor Uniform Zulu?’

Rufus Rorke shook his head and checked the mic was off before he spoke. ‘You don’t have a bomb, Jamesy, my friend, you have me. And I’m much more devastating.’

‘So you really are still alive,’ Taylor said, calmly.

Rorke pursed his lips into a smile that was not reflected in his eyes. ‘You knew that, didn’t you? The moment you saw me in church you knew that. So why all the buggering about, going to Fiona, then going to John Baker in Barbados? What have you been hoping to achieve? What do you want?’

‘What are you hoping to achieve by being a stowaway, Rufus?’ Taylor retorted. ‘If being dead has made you rich enough to afford to come back to life, surely you can afford the air fare to Jersey? On a good day you could fly there on easyJet for twenty-seven pounds.’

‘Answer my question, James. What is it you want? The same as that asshole, Barnie? You planning to blackmail me too?’

‘Since I gave your eulogy, Rufus, I think I’m entitled to ask a few questions when I see you very much alive two years later.’

‘You always were the goody-two-shoes, weren’t you?’ Rorke sneered. ‘Barnie, the eternal loser — a total tosser. You, the eternal swot. What did we all have in common? The Three Musketeers. How come we were even friends back then?’

‘Golf Alpha Victor Uniform Zulu? Golf Alpha Victor Uniform Zulu, do you read me?’ The London air traffic controller’s voice came through their headsets again.

‘Remember our English master, who was so big on Oscar Wilde?’

Rorke gave him a sideways look. Shannon and he had been quoting Wilde. Coincidence? ‘English wasn’t really my subject.’

‘You should have listened, Rufus. Wilde said about someone: he hasn’t an enemy in the world, and none of his friends like him.’

‘Are you trying to fuck with my head, Taylor?’

The pilot shook his head. ‘It’s been fucked up a long time ago, Rufus. Shall I respond to the controller?’ He watched the instruments. They were climbing steadily: 15,000 feet; 15,500; 16,000. The English Channel was below them.

‘Yes.’ He raised Uncle Johnny higher, even more threatening. ‘Tell ATC you are diverting for operational reasons. And not a word more.’

For operational reasons was code to Air Traffic Control that there was a problem of some unspecified nature, which enabled you to divert from your flight plan without giving necessarily any further reason.

‘Do you seriously want me to disobey an ATC instruction to divert immediately?’

‘You’re listening to me now, not ATC.’

‘Going to kill me if I do say any more, are you?’

In reply, Rufus Rorke swung the velvet bag hard at the large square glass screen in front of the co-pilot’s control column, that housed key duplicated instruments — the compass, airspeed indicator, attitude indicator, altimeter, turn coordinator, heading indicator and vertical speed indicator.

It shattered, imploding from the weight of the knuckle duster into a spider’s web pattern, with some of the glass falling out.

‘Jesus! You’re crazy! What the hell are you doing?’ Taylor shouted. ‘Do you want to kill us both?’

‘Have you forgotten that I have both a full, multi-engine, instrument-rated pilot’s licence and a helicopter licence? I know exactly what I’m doing. We’re going to Brest, initially, then we’ll head on to Ouessant.’

Ouessant immediately rang an alarm bell to James Taylor. It was a small island off the coast of Brittany, where a couple of years ago he’d flown Tommy and his family for lunch at a seafood restaurant with a great reputation. At the tiny airfield, Air Traffic Control was shut between 1030GMT and 1300GMT and there was no Customs and Immigration — they required contact in advance. The closest main airport was Brest. If you were up to something nefarious in a light aircraft, such as this Pilatus, Ouessant wasn’t a bad choice.

‘I can recommend a good restaurant there, Rufus, if you like oysters and lobster,’ he said, trying to bring this crazy guy back to reality.

‘Funny. Answer my original question, Taylor. Why did you go to Fiona? Why did you go to John Baker in Barbados? What do you want? Money, is it?’

The ATC controller’s voice came through again. ‘Do you read me?’

Rufus Rorke raised Uncle Johnny even higher still. Taylor got the message.

‘London Control, this is Golf Uniform Zulu. Diverting to Brest for operational reasons.’

‘Golf Uniform Zulu diverting to Brest,’ the response came back immediately. ‘What is the nature of your emergency?’

Rorke gave him a cut-throat sign.

Obeying him, Taylor did not respond.

‘Repeat, what is the nature of your emergency, Golf Uniform Zulu?’

Rorke ripped Taylor’s headset off him, then tore out its wire.

‘What the hell do you want, Rufus?’

‘No, you tell me what you want, Taylor.’

They were flying along the coast. Taylor looked up at his old school friend. ‘Funny, isn’t it? There we were as kids, and here we are twenty years on. Barnie’s dead. You’re dead — well — not quite as dead as everyone thought. You must have made a lot of friends for so many people to turn up to your funeral. And yet Fiona rang me to ask me to give the eulogy because she couldn’t find anyone to do it. Had all the rest of the people in that rammed church turned up just to make sure you were dead?’

‘That’s not remotely amusing, Jamesy.’

‘You’re the only person who calls me Jamesy.’

‘You still haven’t answered my question.’

‘Let me guess, Rufus. You killed Barnie, didn’t you? Because he was blackmailing you. And now you’ve come to kill me, because I’ve rumbled you too.’

‘You always were too smart for your own good, Taylor.’

Taylor saw the black bag rising to swing at him. He ducked sideways and as he did so, he pushed the control column fully forwards, retarding the throttle as he did so, to limit the stresses on the airframe.

The aircraft bunted over, descending steeply. The velvet bag swung past his face. Rufus Rorke was hurtled by the negative G-force up onto the roof of the cabin. Then, as Taylor pulled the control column fully back, as far as it would go, Rorke, still clinging to the bag, smacked down on his stomach onto the boardroom table.

Then Taylor put the plane back into an abrupt steep descent again, before reverting violently into another steep climb.

Rorke had anticipated it. And was ready. He clung to the table that was securely fixed to the cabin floor. But it was all he could do to just hold on as the plane continued to climb, steeper and steeper, until they were almost vertical, as he hung desperately to the table top, Uncle Johnny sliding to the rear of the cabin, somewhere behind him. Powerless to stop him, he saw Taylor reach up, grab the co-pilot headset, and pull it on.

Rufus Rorke knew they could not keep climbing, they would soon reach the Pilatus’s operating ceiling of 30,000 feet. Then Taylor would have to level out.

And he would be ready.