Tom bent down and unzipped the flyaway bag that investigators were required to keep with them at all times. It was packed with everything from paperwork, through a department-issue laptop, to his gym kit. Not that he went to the gym – or had ever been to the gym – but the track pants and T-shirt were good for watching TV in any motel in the south-western United States.
He took the digital video camera from its hard case and began to record the scene.
As always, once he’d started, the rest of the world melted away around him, and he felt the low-level adrenalin drip that made this job not unlike an afternoon at the Bicycle Club.
Tom panned across the scene once, then panned back with the camera pointed up at the destroyed hangar. Then he turned a slow circle, taking in the entire scope of the scene. Glancing at the LCD screen to ensure he was getting everything, he started to move and talk, giving time, date, location and brief circumstances of the incident so far.
‘Six injured men have been removed from the scene to LA County Hospital. Two critical with amputations, two stable with open fractures, two with minor wounds and shock.’
He walked past the nose of the plane and into the hangar. The automatic aperture took a second to adjust to the gloomier interior.
‘This is body number one – estimated to be twenty yards off the starboard side approximately in line with the …’ he looked up ‘… main accessory hatch aft of the nose-gear.’
Still shooting, Tom placed a bright orange flag on a small weight beside the body. It was face-down on the cement. He zoomed in. ‘Few visible injuries. Minimal blood from the nose and minor cuts.’
He stepped over the man’s body, glanced up briefly to see where he was heading next, and stepped into the cool darkness of Hangar Six.
‘Body number two.’
Tom raised the camera to show the tattered remains hanging six feet up the wall on a hook made of twisted corrugated-iron sheeting.
When Tom was a kid the garbage men in his neighbourhood used to tie dolls and teddy bears they found in the trash to the front of their truck. Now he had to force that image out of his mind.
‘Body is caught up on metal sheeting presumably torn loose by the incident. It is approximately eight yards from the tip of the starboard wing and approximately six feet from the floor.’
He placed a second flag in the puddle of blood under the dangling black work boots and stared up at the body.
‘Cursory inspection shows multiple open wounds and massive loss of blood. Also …’ He stopped and squinted into the evening sunlight that streamed through the torn metal, then used the camera zoom to help him out. ‘Also a substantial piece of metal embedded in the lower abdomen, possibly a fan blade.’
He turned away and looked for body three. As he crossed the floor, he bent down and looked at something small and white. The stub of a cigarette. He marked it and moved on.
Nearby, the lower half of what used to be a man was sprawled on the floor beside a large metal tool cabinet.
‘Body three.’ Tom placed a flag beside a blue-coveralled knee. ‘Part one.’ He looked around him and found part two – the upper half of a man, his left arm severed mid-forearm, the right crooked across his chest, his eyes half closed and a spray of his own blood under his chin. Tom frowned as he noticed the man’s right hand – frozen with its two forefingers extended like a V for Victory.
He became aware of someone standing beside him, and turned to see a wiry black man in blood-spattered coveralls and a blanket. He was also looking down at the dead man’s hand.
‘Sir, you need to get back behind the tape.’
But the man seemed not to have heard him.
‘Scissors,’ he murmured. Then – never taking his eyes from the body – he held up his own flattened ‘paper’ hand to explain to Tom. ‘He woulda won.’
2
IT WAS DARK by the time Lenny Munro led the Go Team through the small throng of reporters and out to Hangar Six.
Tom had already arranged eternal daylight, courtesy of high-beam magnesium arc-lights. That was the thing about working in LA – the town was never short of lighting equipment. One team of paramedics had departed with bodies one and two, and the pair who’d lost the toss were now picking up the disparate pieces of body three and placing them gingerly in the black bags.
‘Tom?’
Tom looked up from his notebook.
Lenny Munro was a heavy-set man of forty-nine, with a ridiculous buzz-cut that he fondly imagined made him look like a retired astronaut, but actually made him look like the hopeless dad in a 1950s sitcom.
‘Pete told me he’d sent you.’ It was a statement of fact, but Tom could tell Lenny was pissed. What the hell? Let him be pissed. Tom wanted back in on planes, and if he was prepared to swallow his pride and be first-on-scene for a dick like Lenny Munro, then that was Lenny’s good fortune.
Tom rose off his haunches and shook his hand briefly. Lenny was flanked by two investigators in appropriate clothing – Jan Ryland, a slim, bookish woman in her early thirties, and Jim Crane, a tall, greying man with a salt-and-pepper beard.
‘Hey, Jan, Jim.’
They nodded – embarrassed to see him. Lenny Munro got down to business.
‘What are we looking at?’
‘Secured area. Most of the injured were removed beforehand. Maintenance crew was ten-strong. Three dead inside, six in hospital, all hanging on.’
‘What about the tenth man?’
‘He’s over there.’ Tom pointed to Halo, who was now behind the tape.
‘What’s he doing here?’
‘The paramedics have checked him out but he refused to go to hospital until his friend was accounted for.’
‘Where’s his friend?’
‘Right there.’ Tom pointed to the shapeless black body-bag being rolled into the nearest ambulance. ‘And there.’ Two paramedics carried a second bag between them.
