‘Near enough twenty-four hours,’ said Pete, looking at his watch.
Tom jerked upright and started coughing.
‘Take it easy,’ said Halo.
But Tom wouldn’t. He looked around wildly.
‘The file,’ he choked out.
‘I got it,’ said Pete, picking it up. ‘Relax.’
Tom couldn’t. He felt like he was going to cough up a lung. Halo came round and hit him harder between the shoulders than Tom thought was strictly necessary, but it worked, and he spat what looked like slimy black metal-flake paint into his hand. ‘Shit,’ he panted in disgust.
‘Charming,’ said Halo.
Tom lay down again, snatching at the air, feeling the panic subside. Pete took the file out of a briefcase he’d laid at the foot of the bed. It was in shreds.
‘What happened to it?’ Tom managed to gasp.
Pete quirked a little smile. ‘Stuffing the evidence down the back of your pants works fine – until some ER nurse has to cut them off you.’
Tom gestured at the file. ‘Is it enough?’
‘Hell, yes. But it can go higher.’ He put the file on Tom’s legs and jabbed at Allway’s signature. ‘This Bruce Allway’s the key.’
‘This is Bruce Allway,’ said Tom, emptying the Polaroids onto the bed.
‘Shit,’ said Pete. ‘Then we’re going to have to work harder.’
Tom thought about Ness, but said nothing. If there was any way of getting out of this without revealing his poker-playing activities, he would take it.
‘Still … it’s a start. It’s hard evidence.’
‘I’m hard evidence! Those sick bastards showed me what I’ve been searching for, then tried to kill me!’ He paused then added quietly: ‘Did kill some people?’
‘About seventy so far,’ said Pete, grimly.
‘And that’s just in the jet,’ said Halo. Tom glanced at him but he was looking at the pictures.
‘I’m sorry about Niño, man,’ said Tom.
Halo nodded and made a ‘what-ya-gonna-do?’ face. ‘Yeah,’ he said, ‘well …’
Carefully he picked up the pictures and put them back into the manila envelope, then replaced it in the back pocket of the cut-up file. He handed it to Pete.
‘Okay,’ said Pete. ‘Jan Ryland is already on her way to Avia Freight with a subpoena. As soon as we get the list of batch 501 purchasers, we can start grounding planes.’
‘Why not right now?’ said Tom. ‘There are potentially sixteen more planes out there waiting to fail – seventeen, if Oklahoma was something different.’
‘We’d have to ground every 737 in US airspace, Tom. That’d take an act of Congress.’
‘Yeah, God forbid lives should be saved just because we can. Christ, Pete!’
‘Where’s the bolt?’ said Pete.
Tom sighed. ‘They took it.’
‘Again?’
‘We can make a case without it, right? I mean, you can, right?’
Pete thought it through. ‘Maybe. Channings over at the FBI seems to think so. But we’re light on physical evidence.’
Halo stood up and, like a conjuror, laid Lemon’s bolt on the bed. They all stared at it, as if it might turn into a bouquet of flowers at any second.
‘Where the fuck did you get that?’ said Tom.
Halo grinned. ‘Under the front seat of my car.’
‘Then what the hell did you give to that sonofabitch in the hangar?’
‘My decoy bolt. Figured if you could have one, so could I. ’Cept I mangled mine better than you did. Better job all round.’
Tom was furious. ‘You crazy sonofabitch! You let that bastard come this close to shooting both of us for a useless piece of scrap metal?’
‘That bolt’s the evidence that can clear Chris. Give Vee and Katy what’s theirs. Just in case, I left a note, telling Vee where it was and who to give it to.’
‘To me?’
