Chapter 5

Sarge strolled along what was effectively his and Sarah’s own private beach. Years before, he had lived alone in a small shack on five acres with a small piece of beach frontage. In the year he had met Sarah, he had come into an unexpected inheritance and was able to purchase a large adjoining swathe of land that edged the remainder of the beach of the little cove south of Cairns. The house his family now lived in, was far more grandiose than that tired old shack and as he headed back to it, he knew he would regret having to leave it for the next week or so. It was home. It was security. It was sanctuary and it wasn’t up in the bloody air. He understood physics. Something lighter than air would float. A jet aeroplane crammed with luggage and frightened people weighed a helluva lot more than air. It didn’t matter how streamlined it was, when the engines stopped, there was only one direction it would go. The streamlining would only make it go quicker downwards. He’d flown before of course, but the fact that he had escaped what he believed was certain death, just meant to him that there was one less chance he would escape it again on the next flight. He cast his eyes to the sky and looked out across the small reef that enclosed his cove. The breakers crashed down in the distance and just above them were some pelicans heading northwards to the mangroves closer to Cairns. They soared ungainly on updrafts but every so often they had to flap their ponderous wings to prevent themselves splashing down into the sea. He knew for sure that planes didn’t even have the capacity to flap their wings and that he had a lot of sea to fly over to get to Scotland.

There was a toot of a horn back near the house. He wished he could drive to Scotland and was annoyed that he lived on an island. The fact that statistically more people die on roads than from plane crashes, he felt was not even worth discussing. The horn honked again. He knew it was Liz waiting somewhat impatiently to pick him up and take him to the airport. He wondered why she was in such a hurry to meet her maker. Sarge had his own issues with punctuality. His late Auntie Jean had instilled it into him as he grew up. She and her husband Ray, had taken him under their wing when his own parents and his unborn brother had died in a car accident when Sarge was only four. Jean’s sister had been his mother and Ray’s brother was his father. It seemed strange set of circumstances that two brothers would marry two sisters, but according to the locals, both couples were made for each other. Just the mere incidental thought of his parents and his auntie brought a tear to his eye and he removed the sadness from his head with a shake of his whole body. As if imitating him, the ever present black groodle walking with him shook his whole body too. Sarge reached down and patted Tom on the head and said, “Dumb dog.” Tom probably wished he could reach up and paw Sarge’s head and reply, “Stupid man.”

Sarge had already said goodbye to his family as they left to go their separate ways that morning. He had his packed case where it now stood on the inside of the front door. He hauled it out to the car Liz was sitting in working on her phone. It was going to be a long day and a bit, broken up by a one hour stop over at Changi airport in Singapore and a two-hour break at Dubai before landing in Edinburgh. There were no direct flights. Sarge had been grateful because he wasn’t sure that planes could hold enough fuel to get them there. He didn’t like the idea of the pilots exhausting the reserve tank and looking around for a non-existent petrol station in the sky. He patted his pockets for the Valium that had been prescribed for him. It would work as a sleeping tablet as well. He just hoped that the pilot wasn’t taking them too. The thought of amphetamines and pilots was a concern especially as they were often labelled as uppers and downers. Those two words and aeroplanes caused a queasiness in Sarge’s stomach.

Liz was well aware of Sarge’s phobia, but said nothing. Her task was to get him on the plane and if necessary, handcuff him so that he didn’t go up to the cockpit and tell the pilot how to fly the plane. She was her patient and usual self and Sarge sensed that and realised that she would make a better traveling companion than Nat, who would constantly hang shit on him at every opportunity. Sarge could do nothing on the plane to stop Nat doing that because he was too scared to upset even the balance of the plane by getting out of his seat and move away from Nat. Sarge frowned at anyone who left their seat fearing that the pilot would have to rebalance the plane for every little movement. For most passengers, they would have been grateful that it was quite dark in the plane rather than see the glare coming from the bulging eyed recumbent giant with the pallid complexion.

Safely on board, they were heading south to Sydney so that they could go north to Singapore. It seemed ridiculous to Sarge, especially as it added hours to the time he would be strapped into a flying tin coffin. He was not the sort of person who merely set their phone to aeroplane mode, he turned his completely off and if he had his way, would have collected everyone’s and done likewise or thrown them off the plane completely. When Liz took out her laptop just after the plane reached a flying height where it would level out, Sarge was aghast. She saw the panic in his eyes and explained that it wasn’t sending signals within the plane or outside the plane. She was just typing and suggested that Sarge look at the screen in front of him and watch a movie to take his mind off things. Sarge said that movies didn’t really interest him and if he was to watch anything, he would rather go through the footage of the security cameras at the McAllister and Sons factory. Liz sensed the nervousness of her boss and sighed. She had that footage on a memory stick and plugged it in and handed her laptop across. She figured she could watch a movie in the two and a half hours left it took to get to Sydney. It was better than having to put up with an anxious person sitting next to her.

She didn’t get her laptop back for her own use until they had left Changi and were half way to Dubai. How someone could be so totally absorbed in watching the same scene over and over again, she wasn’t sure. For that is what it looked like. From her angle she saw the front forecourt of the warehouse. Sarge had it set at slightly fast forward and cars flitted in and out of frame. Occasionally trucks moved out and once a huge semitrailer pulled in. At one point, Sarge seemed to play over and over again the same scene. It was of Camden McAllister leaving, having locked the building. Liz became distracted entirely from her movie but couldn’t see what was capturing Sarge’s attention. Suddenly Sarge shifted scenes entirely and up came the interior wide angled shot of the warehouse. Sarge seemed to be watching just one section of it and peering closely at it trying to determine something. Liz reached across and showed him how to use the zoom feature and he was most grateful. Again, at one point he played it over and over again and then finally sat back with a smug look on his face. He closed the laptop and handed it over to Liz without saying a word. She was more than peeved and opened up the laptop and played the footage Sarge had zoomed in on and saw nothing.

Liz’s elbow was sharp and painful and wiped the smugness from Sarge’s face changing it to a wince of agony. “Okay, smartarse, what have you found? Tell me or you’ll find that my elbow is just a foretaste of things to come,” Liz whispered in his ear.

Sarge wondered whether she had somehow left her awareness of rank back at home, and thought that the younger generation was sadly lacking in manners. However, he was not going to risk further injury and replied, “The videos have been doctored. I reckon half an hour has been cut and pasted in each one. The time was from just when McAllister locked the premises on the last day he was seen. Someone copied a scene from earlier and pasted it in where a section had been cut out. I reckon that was to cover someone else coming into the frame, someone who either kidnapped or did away with McAllister. Inside the warehouse according to the timer, where we zoomed in, there was a carton unopened in McAllister’s special stock and then suddenly it was open and a boxed bottle missing. Outside, I could tell by the shadows that changed wrongly that just after McAllister locked up a section was cut out and replaced by an earlier piece. There was even a repeat of traffic in the distance. When we get to Dubai, I suggest we contact Inverness and get them to look closely at any security footage around and in the McAllister warehouse there. This is something more than a missing person who may have gone on holiday case. Now if you don’t mind and intend keeping your elbows to yourself, I might just get some well-earned rest.”