The Aeoroplane (1)

Kit Handsome was having a pretty shitty night. He had the beginnings of a summer cold and he couldn’t sleep for the constant need to shove his nose in a tissue. The issue was made worse by the big bushy moustache he had grown recently to please Sally, his new girlfriend on the mainland.

 

He tried drinking a cup of cheap powdered lemon in water (Jones the Shop refused to sell Lemsip) which tasted of chemicals and did nothing to relieve his symptoms.

 

It was almost a relief when Megson rang him at 5.30 to say that a plane had crashed near a farm by Faraway Point.

 

“Whose plane?” he asked. Boonhill was not a big island, and Handsome knew pretty much everyone on it, and there were only a dozen or so pilots amongst them.

 

“We don’t know,” Megson said. “Just a standard two-seater. Nobody reported missing.”

 

“Have you spoken to Wenders in the tower?”

 

“Wenders didn’t know anything about it. It wasn’t a scheduled flight and it didn’t send out an emergency message. It just came ‘Bamb’ out of nowhere.”

 

“Strange. Faraway Point, you say, I’ll drive there now.”

 

“Hang there Handsome, I’ve sent Harkaway to pick you up.”

 

Harkaway was there before he’d finished getting dressed. He finished buttoning his shirt as Harkaway set off. He’d take a shower when he had a chance, for now the priority was getting to the scene as soon as he could, before the day blew the clues away. Now he was on his feet his nose had stopped running. Maybe it was the thrill of being on a case, or maybe it was simple verticality, but he felt better.

 

He used the journey as an opportunity to mull over the case. “According to Wenders this wasn’t a logged flight, which means it probably wasn’t heading for the airport, so where was it planning to land?”

 

Harkaway shrugged, concentrating on the drive. Faraway Point was a tricky drive if you hadn’t made it a thousand times before, as it wasn’t on the map and there were no signposts. Some of the island maps at the station included the marking ‘CSBH’, meaning cartographers stopped bothering here.

 

Handsome continued his speculations. “So what was it doing? Maybe just a private plane flying back from the mainland, but if so why out at Faraway Point. Smugglers? Drug runners, weapons, what else was smuggled these days? But if so where from, and where was the end destination?”

 

Harkaway said nothing. Dawn was rising and the road was starting to become clearer, but it was still an effort to navigate.

 

“Could it be a spy plane?” Handsome wondered. “There are defence instillations on the mainland. Maybe it was mapping out the area, going where no cartographers have been before. Looking for a vantage point.”

 

After ten minutes of this speculation Harkaway finally exploded. “We don’t know, it could be any of those things. Or none of ‘em. For all you know the plane was packed with nuclear weapons and brought to Earth by SuperDuck, in his latest bid to save mankind.”

 

Kit was silent for a long while. “I hadn’t thought of that,” he said eventually.

 

xxx

 

The fire trucks had been busy. By the time they arrived the fire was out and the plane covered in white foam. They were greeted by the chief fireman, Pete Hewson.

 

“Kit.”

 

“Pete.”

 

“Shit.”

 

“I can see. Recognise the plane?”

 

“Not one I’ve seen before. Wenders might know it, it’s not one of us though.”

 

“Mainlander?”

 

“Maybe. Or an outlander.”

 

“Outlander?” Handsome said, surprised.

 

“Just a hunch really, but if the plane came from the mainland it had no business this far out.”

 

Handsome walked towards the plane.

 

“I’ll warn you, it’s not a pretty sight. They were fried the instant the plane hit the ground, it’ll be a dental records job.”

 

“They? Megson said it was just a single occupant.”

 

“One human, but it looks to have been some sort of flying ark. I can’t identify the species, but there’s hoves and beaks amongst the carcasses.”

 

“Flying animals? What was he, a farmer?”

 

“What, giving his cows a bit of a late-night spin? I don’t think so. Must be something to do with the trade in exotic animals. Endangered species, there’s a lot of money it.”

 

Handsome nodded. It seemed a plausible explanation for a late-night plane. He went to inspect the plane, to see if there were any recognisable markings.

 

“Don’t touch the foam. It’ll be another half hour before it’s safe to remove it, there could still be gas left in the tank. Let it cool, forensics will be here shortly.”

 

Handsome nodded. Of course, this was a major incident, the type of which Boonhill weren’t equipped to deal with, so he’d be handing this to the mainland police as soon as the day came. It was his curse, anything more dramatic than a stolen herring and it was taken away from him.

 

With nothing else to do while the plane was still cooling, he went to interview the farmer who had reported the crash. Harkaway drove him to the farmhouse, though the track was so circular it would have been quicker to have walked across the field.

 

“Kit.”

 

“Giles. You reported the crash I hear. What d’yer see?”

 

“She were up there buzzing like a fucked off bee. Woke us up she did.”

 

“What time was this?”

“4.30.”

 

“And she went down when?”

 

“4.52.”

 

“Twentytwo minutes. What was she doing meantimes?”

 

“Buzzing round like a fucked off bee she was.”

 

“She didn’t land?”

 

“Not what I’d call landing. More a bloody great bang.”

 

“I mean before that. Did you see what she was doing?”

 

“Oh yeah, circling round like a …”

 

“Like a fucked off bee?”

 

“I was gonna say like a vulture. Some funny bees you know. Just going round and round she was.”

 

Handsome gained nothing else from the interview with the farmer. Still, there was enough to be going on with. “It was just circling,” he said to Harkaway as they drove back. “Going round and round for twenty minutes or more. As if it was waiting for a signal. Or for an agreed time.  Maybe he was early. Or lost. Of course, he could have been scouting the area.”

 

Harkaway said nothing.

 

“That’s if it was the same plane. There could have been more than one. Or maybe the farmer’s watch was wrong, and it was only there a few minutes. That’s if he’s not lying.”

 

Handsome’s speculations were interrupted by his phone. It was Megson. 

 

“Say that again,” said Harkaway, when Megson had finished.

 

“I said we’ve arrested SuperDuck. He’s claiming he brought down the plane in order to save mankind. Do you want to talk to him?"