Cole was not at the ground school so they went to the office instead. A young receptionist informed them that he wasn’t at the hangar either. She’d just come from there and had no idea where he was. Asking them to wait in Cole’s office, she offered to locate him.
‘He’s probably done a runner,’ Gormley said drily.
Daniels glared at him. ‘You don’t like him?’
‘Not over much.’
‘Why?’
‘Dunno. Maybe for the same reason you do. Could it have something to do with his exceptional good looks? His toned physique? His thrill-seeking, shit-kicking lifestyle? His fuck-off job?’
Daniels turned away smiling. Through the window she could see the receptionist walking briskly towards a small plane parked on the tarmac, a helicopter with the registration number G-1TWA standing next to it. Wondering if there were other flying schools affiliated to this one but working from the same premises, she sent Gormley out to investigate.
When he’d gone, she glanced idly around Cole’s tidy office. There were no personal pictures on his desk but there were lots of souvenirs, including a paperweight bearing the emblem of the Canadian Air Force, a maple leaf in the sky with a vapour trail encircling it. Next to it sat a miniature Sopwith Camel biplane, the fuselage of which was actually a small box containing a pile of Cole’s business cards.
Picking one out, she casually slipped it into her pocket.
There was a storyboard on the wall, a photographic record of Cole’s exploits over the past ten years. Crossing the room to view it more closely, she observed that the images had been shot at recognizable landmarks all over the world: Ayers Rock, Great Wall of China, the Grand Canyon, to name but a few. Inevitably, a lot of the photographs featured the cockpits of aircraft, both fixed-wing and helicopter. In others, Cole stood beside various aircraft with his arm round the shoulders of other pilots, posing for the camera with a smile on his handsome face. And it was these that sent her heart rate up as she noted four men in total, one of them too old to have been Makepeace.
But the other?
Shit!
The door behind squeaked as it opened.
‘Come and have a look at this, Hank,’ she said, without turning round.
In the absence of further movement behind her, she turned. Stewart Cole was standing in the doorway, his hands and one cheek covered in engine oil, his flying suit a little grubbier than when they’d first met.
He pointed at the storyboard. ‘That’s the best part of being a pilot, we tend to get around. I’ve had some amazing adventures in my time.’
He was being friendly, not conceited. The fact that she was a police officer who might regard him with a certain amount of suspicion because of his past didn’t seem to affect his attitude towards her. Daniels didn’t know why, but she felt drawn to the man. All morning she’d found herself mulling over his question about rehabilitation, unable to shake it off.
‘Who’s this?’ Turning her back on Cole, she pointed to the older man in the photographs, a man with white hair and a winning smile, his eyes covered with wrap-around sunglasses, a man she estimated to be mid-to-late sixties.
‘That’s Mac,’ Cole made his way towards her. ‘Don’s father-in-law. The guy who founded the company. Sadly he’s no longer with us.’
‘And this?’ Daniels pointed at the fourth man.
‘Ex-army buddy of mine. He used to be one of our freelance instructors.’
Daniels turned to face him. ‘Used to be?’
‘He left us around a month ago.’ Cole’s face grew serious as he picked up on her tension. ‘He hasn’t gone and done anything stupid, has he?’