‘What can I do for you?’

Dammit!

‘I called you for a second opinion.’

‘On what?’

‘On what caused that 737 blade off.’

Tom hesitated. ‘Mr Jackson, I don’t even have a first opinion. I was just first-on-scene there. That really doesn’t involve any investigation. It just means preserving the evidence as early as possible for the Go Team. You’d need to speak to the lead investigator.’

‘I already did. That Munro guy? No offence, but he seems kinda like an idiot to me.’

Tom tried not to laugh, and warmed to Halo Jackson for the second time. He wasn’t about to volunteer to help him, but he certainly welcomed any anecdotal evidence against Lenny Munro. ‘In what way?’

‘In the way that means he’s wrong. His report was all wrong. He said a cigarette pack got caught in the engine but that’s bullshit.’

‘How do you know?’

‘I know cos Chris Stern din’t smoke. He just kept one cigarette – not a pack – in his top pocket. He’d take it out now and then and have, like, a fake drag, then put it away and button his pocket down again. I saw him do it a million times.’

‘Isn’t it possible—’

‘No. It ain’t possible.’

Mentally, Tom rolled his eyes. He wasn’t getting into this. ‘You know, Mr Jackson, if you have any complaints you really need to be talking to the people in DC.’

‘I already did. And the other team members.’

This surprised Tom. Jackson was a pretty persistent guy. ‘So Munro didn’t listen and DC didn’t listen?’

‘That’s right.’

‘And I’m your last port of call.’

‘That’s right.’

Tom was stung. He didn’t want this man bothering him but, hell, if he was going to be bothered, he wanted it to be as a priority, not a last resort. The last vestige of his professional persona blew away like mist. ‘Why do you give a shit?’

‘He was my friend.’

‘So? Being your friend doesn’t mean he can’t be careless. He shouldn’t have been smoking.’

‘He wasn’t. He was giving up,’ Halo countered, with spirit.

‘Listen, I saw a cigarette myself – on the floor right next to his body.’

‘You see a pack?’

‘Could have disintegrated in the turbine,’ said Tom.

‘Not if it was in his pocket.’

‘Listen,’ Tom said impatiently. ‘The guy was smoking. It’s highly likely the cigarette was in a pack and just as likely the pack could have been sucked in. It wasn’t found on his body.’

‘You saw his body, Mr Patrick.’

Tom hesitated. He knew what Halo Jackson meant – Chris Stern’s body had been severed mid-torso. The pocket of his coveralls was sliced in two. Who knew whether the cigarette and/or pack had spilled from it before or after the Pride of Maine had become a spectacular death machine? Lenny Munro’s probable cause relied on circumstantial evidence, but then, this wasn’t an exact science.

Halo continued doggedly: ‘They’ve taken his death benefits. And his pension. His wife and kid can’t have them. They’ve lost Chris and they’re losing everything else too. Now Air Maintenance say they might sue his estate to recover the compensation they have to pay out. They could lose their home.’

‘That’s not my problem.’

Halo was silent for a long moment. ‘I saw you on the TV a while back. You were on the news. Telling some New York witch to get off some pilot’s back.’

‘So?’

‘You get into trouble for that?’

Tom paused, glancing out at the godforsaken fuel tanks. ‘Some.’

‘Yeah, I thought you would. Soon as I saw it.’

‘What’s your point, Mr Jackson?’

‘Well, my point is, I need someone who’s not afraid of trouble.’

‘Good luck finding him,’ said Tom, and hung up.

*

The Rubstick was smaller and shabbier than the LA clubs, but once Tom sat down, everything was the same. Same game, same green tables, same people – men in net truckers’ caps or comped casino jackets, a few women, all too fat or painfully thin.

He bought in for two hundred dollars on a no-limit Hold ’Em table. First hand, he was dealt pocket sevens. Another came up on the flop and Tom was off. He walked out at ten thirty p.m. a thousand dollars richer than he’d been at eight o’clock.

Tom wouldn’t have left if he hadn’t got to be at the Amoco farm tomorrow at eight and he was still buzzing from the high of winning. Half a mile from the Motel 6, he spotted the Sawmill, with its flickering pink neon sign and, underneath that, ‘Gentlemen’s Club’.

Tom didn’t want to sleep. He felt better than he had in a long time. Since his rapid demotion to pipelines. Since he’d come home to find Ella sitting on the couch with her bags packed around her, and a cab running its meter outside.

‘Hi,’ he’d said.

‘I’m going,’ she’d said.

‘Where?’

‘Somewhere else.’

Shit, why’d he have to think about that just when he was feeling so good?