Seven

‘T

he shot came from where?’ Lestrade peered under the window sash.

‘We presumed’, Holinshed told him, ‘that alleyway there, next to the statue of Lord Kitchener.’

The ex-detective nodded with difficulty. There was no shattered glass, no rip in the green-striped awning.

‘Has anything been touched?’ he asked.

‘Nothing,’ Holinshed assured him.

‘Whose idea was that?’

‘Mine,’ Holinshed said. ‘Isn’t that what you police chappies insist upon? Nothing to be disturbed?’

‘Indeed,’ smiled Lestrade. It was rare for anyone to be that informed. Jack Holinshed was one in a million. The mortal remains of Clifford Hanger lay sprawled on the bed, his head lying in a dark pillow of brown blood. The heavy flies of Cairo droned in the room, buzzing off every now and then, only to re-land on their grisly banquet when Lestrade’s back was turned.

‘God,’ Holinshed hissed.

‘Not exactly sweetness and light, is it?’ Lestrade peered at the dead man’s face. ‘Norroy, light that lamp, will you? How long has it been? Since he died, I mean?’

‘Er . . . let’s see.’ Holinshed was glad of a chance to move away to check his wristwatch by the corridor light. ‘Nearly twenty hours. They brought you back at twelve thirty. That’s when we heard the shot.’

Macclesfield blew out the match and the oil lamp’s flare lit the room.

‘Is this wise, guv?’ he asked. ‘If there’s a sniper out there . . .’

‘Get the blind.’ Lestrade ordered. He could barely see the alleyway now, beyond the alabaster bulk of Kitchener. The tropic night was falling fast. ‘Though with Zagloul in the building, I doubt we’ll have any more of it. They’ll be afraid of retaliation if they fire again. Why was his window open?’

‘What?’ Holinshed asked.

Lestrade glanced back and forth. ‘From the angle he’s lying on the bed, he must have been standing by it, facing the window, looking out. If the bullet came from out there, it would have had to have smashed the glass. Unless it was open.’

‘Fresh air?’ Holinshed suggested.

‘Would you risk that, knowing there was an untold number of natives out there with rifles trained on you?’

‘No,’ Holinshed conceded, ‘But then, I’m not in advertising. You must admit, Hanger was a little strange towards the end.’

‘He was a little strange towards the beginning,’ Lestrade observed. He crouched over the body. It was only a minute before the blasted head began to blur and swim in his vision and Norroy Macclesfield only just caught him before he slumped forward.

‘Better sit yourself down, guv.’ he said, although, what with his sling, it was rather a case of the blind leading the blind. ‘He really shouldn’t wander the streets of Cairo at night, you know,’ he whispered to Holinshed. ‘Not at his age.’

‘I heard that,’ Lestrade snapped. ‘Besides, it was nothing to an afternoon stroll in the Jago or the Nichol when I was your age. Hoxton would make Zagloul’s lads look like a Sunday School outing any day of the week.’ His eyes focused again on the dead man. One of his braces had slipped off his shoulder and his tie was at half-mast. Lestrade noticed a pair of cufflinks lay on the bedside table, along with a glass of water.

‘Pass me that, Norroy.’ he said.

‘Of course, guv,’ the Inspector said. ‘Sorry, I should have thought of that myself.’

‘We’re all of us slipping a bit.’ Lestrade took the proffered glass. ‘It’s probably the heat.’ And he dipped his nose towards the contents.

‘Aren’t you going to drink it, guv?’ Macclesfield asked. ‘I’m sure it’s been well passed by the management. This is Shepheard’s Hotel.’

‘I don’t want to drink it, Norroy.’ Lestrade frowned. ‘I just want to smell it.’

Macclesfield looked at Holinshed. ‘Perhaps you’re right,’ the latter said.

‘Look at the wound,’ Lestrade ordered. ‘Tell me how he died, Norroy.’

The Inspector pulled the lamp a little closer. ‘Gunshot,’ he said.

‘Go on.’

‘Entry wound just above the left eyebrow. Exit wound . . .’ he rolled his man over, ‘. . . behind the left ear.’

‘Angle of shot?’

‘Lower right.’ Macclesfield was confident.

‘So where was our marksman?’ Lestrade badgered him.

‘That would depend on where Hanger was standing.’

‘Assuming he just fell back where he was.’

‘Can we assume that?’ Macclesfield wondered aloud.

‘There’s no blood anywhere else to tell us otherwise,’ Lestrade shrugged.

Macclesfield crossed to the window, gingerly lifting a corner of the blind. ‘Mr Holinshed’s right, then; that alleyway has my vote. Behind Kitchener’s statue.’

‘Mr Holinshed, did you see us come in last night?’

‘Heard, rather than saw.’

‘Where were you?’

‘In my room. Number 181.’

‘The floor above this one?’

‘That’s right. But it’s on the far side of the building. I heard a babble of native voices and police whistles. By the time I got to the foyer you and Macclesfield were on stretchers on the floor, together with the Parquet.’

‘Did you hear a shot?’

‘No, but I came down in the lift. That’s in the centre of the hotel and quite lushly padded. I don’t remember a shot after I reached the foyer, though I was intent on checking you and Macclesfield. I was also intrigued to find Zagloul with you. Then there was the re- barricading of the doors to see to.’

‘What else do you make, of the wound, Norroy?’

The Yard man turned back to the corpse. He looked stumped. ‘If you’re asking me what sort of bullet, guv, I don’t know.’

‘Neither do I,’ confessed Lestrade. ‘But I know a man who does. When we get back to the Yard, look up Bob Churchill. He’ll tell you just by sniffing it.’

‘We’ll have to get a doctor in here pretty soon, guv,’ Macclesfield said. ‘People will be starting to talk about Cliff Hanger before too long. Especially those downwind of him. I suppose we should have asked Dr Smith to have a look at him, but he wasn’t here five minutes, just long enough to patch you up. Still, we can at least dig the bullet out.’

‘It’s too late for that,’ Lestrade said.

‘Forensically, you mean?’ Macclesfield asked, peering at the shattered skull again. ‘Too mangled for recognition?’

‘No, Norroy,’ Lestrade said. ‘You’re a good copper, but a spotty young lad named Simpson I met at St Bart’s a few weeks ago can run rings round you. Squat down there by the window-sill.’

‘What? Here?’

‘That’s right.’

Holinshed looked on bemused.

‘Now look up, in a line from where your head is. Imagine you’re following the path of a bullet.’

‘My God.’ Macclesfield’s finger snaked out.

All eyes except Hanger’s followed it. There was a pale mark on the wooden panel of the far wall, a little to the right of a painting of the death of Gordon, hung there no doubt to make the British guest feel at home in a native country that really belonged to somebody else.

‘What is it?’ Holinshed asked.

‘It’s a bullet mark,’ Macclesfield told him, standing round the bed, a penknife in his good hand.

‘You won’t need that,’ Lestrade said. ‘The bullet’s long gone.’

‘How do you know, guv?’ the Inspector asked.

‘Look again at the wound,’ the ex-Yard man said patiently. ‘The entry wound. See anything?’

There was a pause. ‘Jesus,’ Macclesfield said softly.

‘What?’ Holinshed squinted too but didn’t know what he was looking for.

‘Powder burns,’ said Lestrade.

‘What does that mean?’ Holinshed asked.

‘Tell him, Norroy.’

‘It means’, it was the Inspector’s turn to twist his head this way and that along the line of shot, ‘that no one fired from that alleyway behind Kitchener . . .’

‘Or if they did, they didn’t hit Hanger.’

‘Powder burns are only left around a gunshot wound if the gun in question is fired at close range.’

‘Inches,’ confirmed Lestrade. ‘Not feet.’

‘So . . . Hanger . . .’ Holinshed was trying to reason it out.

‘Was standing facing the window, yes. He had his back to the bed. His killer stood there, slightly to one side where Macclesfield is now,’ Lestrade told him. ‘Then he fired – a revolver or an automatic – from his hip. Hanger was leaning forward – perhaps to watch the scene as the Parquet covered our retreat into the hotel. The bullet entered the front of his skull, peppering his skin with powder burns. On its way out, it blew out the back of his head and buried itself into the woodwork over there.’

‘But what makes you think the bullet isn’t still lodged in the wall?’ Holinshed asked.

‘Because whoever our killer is, he – or she – had to lose that bullet. It doesn’t take much of a forensic expert to tell an automatic or pistol bullet from that of a rifle – it’s only about one third the size. He also knew that a pistol shot would be unlikely to do such lethal damage from all the way across the Square. So to make the alley-shot theory plausible, he’d have to dig the bullet out and hide it.’

‘I see.’ Holinshed shook his head. ‘Ingenious.’

‘Except’, Macclesfield said, ‘he hadn’t reckoned on Mr Lestrade here. The powder burns gave it away. If the fatal shot had been fired by a rifle from across the square, there’d be no burns at all.’

‘And I nearly missed it in this half-light,’ Lestrade admitted. ‘Gentlemen, we must keep our wits about us. Whoever killed Clifford Hanger is here in the hotel. And what’s more, he’s changed tack.’

‘Tack?’ Holinshed was lost.

Lestrade nodded grimly. ‘So far he’s killed carefully, with a poison like henbane that the experts can’t quite put their finger on. Now he’s rattled. Using firearms he’s not familiar with. Now he’s making mistakes.’

‘Well, that’s good,’ Holinshed grinned. ‘Isn’t it?’

The current – and ex – Yard men were shaking their heads. ‘No, Mr Holinshed,’ Macclesfield said. ‘That’s bad. It makes him scared. And that in turn makes him dangerous.’

The man in the fez sensed he was fighting a losing battle. All morning he had stood his ground. A hostile mob had gathered shortly before dawn chanting, in English: ‘Death to the British!’ Most of them carried clubs, a few of them swords, a couple had rifles.

‘Zagloul for Prime Minister!’ they roared, the women with them ululating, several paces behind their menfolk, of course.

‘I tell you, it is impossible,’ the man in the fez persisted. ‘They have told us that any aircraft attempting to take off from this airport today will be shot down.’

‘Shot down?’ Howard Carter repeated. ‘Good God, man, they’ve got rifles, not Howitzers!’

‘Anti-aircraft guns,’ Captain Mainwaring corrected him. ‘Howitzers are rather passé nowadays. Look, Ahmed, Flight Controller you may be, but Olivia is out there on the runway, ticking over nicely. Veronica’s got all the tea, coffee and G and Ts on board, haven’t you, Veronica?’

‘All tickety boo, Captain.’ She flashed her best air-hostess smile at him.

‘But I cannot be held responsible,’ Ahmed insisted. ‘What if they fire at you while you are crossing the tarmacadamized surface? They, fellow countrymen that they are, are an ugly looking bunch.’

‘Look . . . er . . . Ahmed, isn’t it?’ Merton of The Times waded in. ‘No one’s held an Egyptian responsible for anything for four thousand years.’

‘Quite,’ Mainwaring concurred. ‘And anyway, some of us have been fired on before. I don’t think a few Egyptian fellahin are going to measure up to Boelcke’s Circus, do you?’

Lestrade had once spent several weeks with George Sanger’s Circus. He didn’t remember it as being quite that bad. But then, ex-Chief Superintendent Lestrade was between a rock and a hard place. Behind him lay Zagloul’s snipers, fanatical patriots who had already had a damn good attempt to sever his head from his body; and in front the prospect of another flight into hell in the wicker death chairs of the de Havilland Hercules.

Macclesfield and Mainwaring got their heads together in a corner of the departure lounge. The senior inspector beckoned over his two juniors.

‘Captain,’ Macclesfield whispered. ‘How far to your plane, would you say?’

Mainwaring squinted across the sun-baked flat. ‘Four, perhaps five hundred yards.’

‘That’s a bloody long way.’ Hambrook shook his head. ‘Once we’re all on board, how long ’til take-off?’

‘Five minutes,’ Mainwaring said. ‘Less than three in a Sopwith, but the Hercules is a big job and Olivia’s a bit of a bitch to get up in the morning. Rather like my wife, actually.’

‘How many of us are going, Norroy?’ Fabian asked.

‘Well, if we’ve got any sense, all of us. But I think the Holinsheds have just come to see us off.’

‘I’m not overjoyed at the prospect of taking that Zagloul chappie home with us,’ Hambrook said. ‘Some sort of dissident, isn’t he?’

‘Or some sort of national hero, whichever side you happen to be on,’ Macclesfield countered. ‘Anyway, we’re not taking him. He’s coming with us.’

‘Er . . . the subtlety of that remark has got a little away from me, Norroy,’ said Fabian.

‘Well, he’s not any longer our prisoner as I understand it. We can’t hold him for the death of Hanger. He wants to go to London to talk to the Prime Minister, whoever that is at the moment, and yours, Captain, is the next available flight. The Parquet would rather he was out of the way.’

‘He’s also our insurance policy,’ Hambrook said. ‘With him in tow we stand less chance of being hit.’

‘Right,’ said Mainwaring. ‘So you chappies are the experts. How do we play it?’

Macclesfield mused a little space. God, he had a worried face. ‘Women in the centre. Emma . . . Miss Lestrade and your Veronica.’

‘Ah, but she’s an employee of Imperial Airways,’ Mainwaring said. ‘Her first duty is the safety of the passengers.’

‘Even so,’ Macclesfield said, ‘I’m going to have to insist.’ Mainwaring shrugged. ‘All right. Then what?’ ‘Hambrook, you lead.’

‘Ah, a sort of Policeman’s Excuse Me.’

‘You might say that,’ Macclesfield scowled.

‘Shouldn’t that be me?’ Mainwaring asked. ‘As the only one who understands the mechanical gubbins out there?’

‘Yes, it should.’ Macclesfield nodded. ‘But that’s precisely it. You’re too precious to lose. Chances are the first man on the tarmac will be a target . . .’

‘Ah,’ Fabian beamed. ‘Let me guess – something like “chances are the last man on the tarmac will be a target”.’

‘Something like that,’ Macclesfield said. He saw the crests collapse from his colleagues. ‘Look, lads,’ he said, ‘I’m not one to carp, but there is a little matter of two inspectors of Scotland Yard getting themselves incarcerated – if that’s the right word – in a Cairo bordello for two days. If a little thing like that were to reach the reasonably enormous ears of Chief Constable Wensley . . .’

‘Whereas a nice bit of heroism at Cairo airport. . .’ Hambrook had caught Macclesfield’s drift.

‘. . . Would go down said ears a treat,’ Bob Fabian finished his sentence.

‘I can see why you boys are in the Flying Squad,’ Macclesfield beamed at them. ‘You make a chap proud to be a policeman.’

‘Where are we going to put the civilians?’ Mainwaring asked.

‘I want Zagloul near the back. Fabian, you take one arm, I’ll take the other. I want him walking backwards.’

‘Backwards?’ the pilot and two of the Yard men chorused.

‘Yes,’ Macclesfield confirmed. ‘I want those herberts at the perimeter fence to see his face at all times. Just in case one of them gets trigger happy and forgets who he is.’

‘I thought they wanted Carter,’ Hambrook said. ‘Isn’t that what this bit of nonsense is all about?’

‘So they do,’ Macclesfield nodded. ‘So he’s Merton’s and Weigall’s problem. They’ll have to hedge him round as best they can. They’ll be tucked in behind you, Captain, just ahead of the ladies.’

‘That leaves the old guv’nor.’ Fabian nodded in his direction. ‘Sunstroke, senility, concussion. He won’t make twenty yards.’

‘He will,’ Macclesfield nodded. ‘But he’ll be on his own. We’ll tuck him in behind Zagloul, Fabian, just ahead of you.’

‘But that . . . that makes him the last man on the tarmac,’ Hambrook noted.

‘I can’t help that. Zagloul’s been hit in the groin. He’s not going to break any Olympic records and there’s no stretcher and no wheelchair. The Ghaffirs have already said we can’t have theirs. After all, they are Egyptians. Loyalty only goes so far you know. And Lestrade doesn’t have the strength to hold the Wog up.’

‘Well,’ Hambrook twisted his immense moustache, ‘I can’t say I like it.’

‘Oh, you don’t have to like it,’ Macclesfield told him. ‘But there’s got to be a certain amount of lumping along the way.’

And he formed his motley crew up in the departure lounge, Ahmed, the Flight Controller complaining bitterly throughout.

‘Tooled up?’ Macclesfield asked Hambrook, checking his line like a general.

The Inspector waved a chair leg at him. Best not to enquire where that came from.

Macclesfield clapped the man’s shoulder. ‘Captain Mainwaring?’

‘My trusty Webley.’ The pilot patted his trouser pocket.

‘Standard issue for Imperial Airways?’ Macclesfield frowned.

‘Standard issue for Guy Mainwaring,’ he smiled.

‘Gentlemen of the Press,’ Macclesfield invited them into line.

Weigall and Merton stood loosely around.

‘Mr Carter in the middle.’ He leaned to whisper in the archaeologist’s ear. ‘Can’t have those two side by side, can we?’

The archaeologist scowled. ‘You know we’re all going to die, don’t you?’ he said, loudly. ‘What difference does it make where we stand, for God’s sake?’

‘Ladies?’

Veronica and Emma came next. ‘There, there, Mr Carter,’ the hostess said. ‘Once you’re on board, I’ll make you a nice cup of tea. And you can go forward and look in the cockpit.’

‘Madam,’ he turned to the girl in her trim powder blue, ‘I have gazed on the Eighth Wonder of the World. Looking at a few dials and a steering-wheel can hold no pleasures for me.’

‘Joystick,’ Veronica corrected him.

Emma squeezed Macclesfield’s hand. He blushed a deep crimson. ‘Tooled up,’ she nodded, and bent to remove her shoes. ‘Lotus and Delta Daintyheels,’ she smiled. ‘Death at twenty feet. I’ll get two of them before I go down.’

He smiled.

‘Norroy,’ she held his sleeve, ‘Look after Daddy.’

He nodded. ‘Mr Zagloul, you will turn round.’

‘Why?’ the wounded man asked.

‘I want you to walk like an Egyptian,’ Macclesfield told him. ‘I shall be on one side of you, Inspector Fabian on the other. At any movement from a rifleman among your people you will call upon him to desist. And you will do it in English so that I know what you are talking about. Captain Mainwaring is armed. One signal from me and he will put a bullet in your brain.’ He waited until Fabian had linked his left arm through Zagloul’s. The junior inspector raised his right fist. It held a bicycle chain.

‘What are you doing with my bicycle chain?’ Ahmed, the Flight Controller wanted to know. ‘I will lodge an official complaint,’ he shrieked.

‘You do that,’ Macclesfield said. ‘In triplicate, please. Care of Chief Constable Wensley, Scotland Yard. Guv?’

Sholto Lestrade had jammed his Panama hat on to his newly bandaged head. His face was the colour of the desert sand, but his eyes still flashed fire. ‘Tooled up,’ he said softly and his brass knuckles glinted in the early morning light.

‘You’ll be the last man on the tarmac, sir,’ Macclesfield said.

‘Story of my life, Norroy,’ Lestrade shrugged.

‘Mr Lestrade.’ Jack Holinshed extended a hand, ‘it’s been an experience. Give my love to dear old Blighty.’

‘Who?’

Tilly Holinshed leaned forward and pecked him on the cheek. Her perfume wafted over the ex-Chief Superintendent and his bandage collided briefly with her dark glasses. ‘Take care of yourself.’ she said.

‘You’re sure you won’t come with us?’ Macclesfield asked. ‘I’ve got a feeling Cairo isn’t going to be very safe for us British for a while.’

‘We have business to tie up here.’ Holinshed said. ‘I’m not armed, I’m afraid, but we’ll keep a look-out for you and shout a warning at the first sign of trouble.’

‘Thanks.’ Macclesfield looped his arm through Zagloul’s. ‘Up your tower, Flight Controller. Hambrook, you’ve got the column.’

‘Actually,’ hissed Merton, ‘I’ve got the column.’

Hambrook clicked back the door and they began their walk in the sun.

‘Dashed annoying, Captain,’ the Inspector said, ‘having no porters. This suitcase isn’t exactly light.’

‘No dashing!’ Macclesfield growled. ‘Parade ground formation, Hambrook. Think yourself back to S Division.’

‘It was cutlass drill in my day,’ Lestrade muttered.

As Hambrook reached the edge of the building’s shadow, a great howl erupted from the perimeter fence and the mob began rattling the wire like enraged monkeys in a cage, jostling each other to get at the cursed Englishmen.

‘Tell them, Zagloul.’ Macclesfield nudged the Egyptian in the ribs with his good arm.

‘No shooting,’ Zagloul bellowed above the hubbub. ‘“Now lettest thou thy servant depart in peace.”’

‘That’s very good, Mr Zagloul.’ Fabian said. ‘St Luke, Chapter 2, Verse 29, if my old Sunday School teacher wasn’t having me on. Mind you, he had a lot of us on – his knee, mostly, but that’s another story.’

‘I am gratified’, Zagloul said, ‘that you are impressed by my grasp of your Scriptures. Unfortunately, that lot aren’t. You see, it’s not in the Qur’an.’

‘Allahu Akbhar!’ they screamed at the perimeter fence and rifles came up to the ready.

‘Daddy!’ Emma bit her lip, but it was too late. She’d cried out.

‘Steady,’ his calm, soft voice reassured her. ‘Look at the plane, Emma. Just look at the plane.’

‘I feel like one of those ducks in a fairground shooting gallery.’ She tried to laugh.

‘Why do you always want the impossible at times like these?’ he chided her. Nobody was listening to them.

Suddenly there was a rattle of gunfire and the shattering of glass. Instinctively, the whole group out on the tarmac turned; even Zagloul, who was now facing the plane. The Holinsheds, brother and sister, came hurtling out of the double doors of the airport lounge, a machete-waving mob at their heels.

‘They rushed the building,’ Jack shouted, ‘as we tried to get a better vantage point. I don’t believe it. I just don’t believe it.’

‘They let us get out of the hotel,’ Lestrade said, swerving awkwardly as Tilly Holinshed hurtled past him. ‘I thought that was too easy.’

A bullet kicked dust spots off the ground feet from them. ‘I think about now, Norroy,’ Lestrade shouted and the tight little formation scattered. Only Zagloul still staggered, wedged as he was between the policemen, his feet slithering on the tarmac. Mainwaring crouched, crooked his arm and aimed his Webley.

‘Oh, bugger,’ Carter heard him say as his bullet found the shoulder of Ahmed, the Flight Controller. ‘The only Egyptian out there marginally on our side and I have to shoot him. Oh bugger, oh bugger.’

‘You’ve got to watch those,’ Lestrade said as he wobbled past the crouching Captain. ‘They have a tendency to kick to the left.’

‘Imperial Airways announce the immediate departure of their Flight 401 from Cairo,’ Veronica was shouting, lying prone at the top of the steps beside the plane. Stray bullets were thudding into the silver fuselage, an almost painful blur in the sun.

Hambrook hauled Carter up the steps and threw him inside, then Weigall, then Merton. Both pressmen reappeared within seconds, their noses pressed against the glass of the windows, scribbling notes furiously as the scene unfolded before them.

‘Can you use one of these?’ Mainwaring threw his pistol to Lestrade. ‘I’ve got to start the bus up.’ And he leapt up to the propeller, swinging one of its blades down with all his body weight. ‘Veronica’, he shouted, ‘the red button. On the left. Just above my lucky St Christopher.’

‘What about it, sir?’ he heard the girl scream back.

‘Push the bally thing, dear!’

And she scurried inside the aircraft.

Tilly and Emma had reached the steps, and the ex-Chief Superintendent’s daughter whirled to face the running foe. Her father was crouching on the steps below her, his good hand held steady, his fist full of Mainwaring’s revolver. There was a whine as a rifle bullet ricocheted off the handrail and there was a blast from Lestrade’s gun. A running Egyptian jack-knifed and went down. A second later, another fell, victim of a masterly lob of a Lotus and Delta Daintyheel.

‘I see they kick to the left too,’ Lestrade grinned at his girl.

Macclesfield and Fabian threw the wounded Egyptian into the aircraft and turned back to drag Emma, her blood up, inside. The roar of the de Havilland’s engines announced to a tense and waiting world that Veronica had found Mainwaring’s red button and Mainwaring in turn had leapt again for the propeller blade and kicked the engines into action. Even allowing for the pressure he was under, the sudden rattle of the steps and the heat and the flies, it was not Lestrade’s best shot. The luckless Ahmed was just dragging himself off the forecourt when the ex-policeman’s second bullet found the Flight Controller’s other arm and he nose-dived to the tarmac.

‘I think we’d better make our excuses, Mr Lestrade,’ Mainwaring said, bounding up the steps. Together, he and Holinshed made for the door and momentarily wedged themselves there.

‘After you, Mr Holinshed,’ Mainwaring insisted. ‘The passenger comes first every time. Mr Lestrade,’ the Captain called back, ‘I really am going to have to more or less insist now.’ And he grabbed the kneeling ex-Yard man by the collar and dragged him inside.

As Veronica slid the steel door shut, a barrage of sticks and stones clattered against it. Lestrade rolled over and lay still.

‘Well,’ Mainwaring said, ‘we don’t appear to have a Flight Controller, so we’ll just have to hope the runway’s clear for take-off.’

‘Could you fasten your seat belts, ladies and gentlemen?’ Veronica shouted as trays and glasses slid the length of the aisle. But the interior of the Hercules looked like a battlefield; men and women, fighting for breath, bandages unravelling as she spoke. The only one sitting in a chair was the Captain and he kicked the de Havilland to the left.

It was over the Delta that things began to go wrong. For a man with a bullet in his groin, Said Zagloul Pasha was good behaviour itself. But then, an ounce of lead where your wedding tackle is usually housed does tend to slow a man up. He had not only himself but his four wives to think of. And a future Prime Minister of Egypt could not afford the scandal of a divorce, a Decree Isis as it was known in those days. Weigall and Merton sat at opposite ends of the passenger lounge, each of them writing an article that was going to win them the Adie Prize For Reporting From Dangerous Places. The three serving policemen sat together, swapping notes on the incident they’d left behind at the airport. Sholto Lestrade sat hunched over his knees, trying not to have a stomach. One or two more bits of turbulence and he wouldn’t have.

Veronica was just serving cocktails to the ladies when the Hercules coughed and jerked upwards.

‘Bloody Hell!’ Carter was sketching something like a hippopotamus, except that now it had the tail of a kangaroo.

‘Veronica!’ a strangely strangled Captain Mainwaring was summoning his Johanna Factotum.

‘Feels a bit rough, Wally,’ Fabian frowned, watching the piece of lemon dancing on the surface of his G and T.

‘Bit like that old Crossley old Wensley tried to palm us off with in the Squad.’

‘Er . . . should the sky be that way up, Norroy?’ Fabian asked. ‘I only ask because you’re normally nearer to it than we are.’

Macclesfield jammed his nose against the window, not by choice, but because the lurching of the aircraft gave him no alternative.

‘I don’t think there’s much in it,’ he said. ‘Not when we seem to be falling out of it rather after the manner of a stone.’

Zagloul raised an eyebrow. It was the only fear he’d ever show, in front of the cursed English, that is. Allah was good, he kept telling himself. And Mohammed was his Prophet.

Merton of The Times was on his feet, striding manfully for the blunt end, where the driver was. ‘Mainwaring,’ he called. ‘Mainwaring, what’s going on?’

A rather oddly coloured Veronica blocked the gangway, the green of her face clashing slightly with the powder blue of her dress. ‘There’s no cause for alarm.’ She smiled, but her teeth were gritted and the dimples in her cheeks were like bullet holes.

‘Good God!’ Arthur Weigall was the first passenger to notice it. ‘The port engine’s cut out! The blades aren’t working!’

‘It’s perfectly safe,’ Veronica assured him. ‘Routine, in fact. Captain Mainwaring does that every so often. It’s called feathering.’

‘Feathering be buggered!’ Percy Merton was peering out of a starboard window. ‘This one isn’t working either.’

‘Ah, no.’ The Imperial Airways girl knew panic when she smelt it. ‘That’s important for balance, you see. Feathering has to be done in pairs, or it . . . doesn’t work. A plane like the de Havilland can easily function on one engine.’

‘What happens if that one stops?’ Carter asked.

‘Well,’ Veronica giggled a little hysterically. ‘Then we really would be in trouble.’

And, as if on cue, the Hercules’s growling died away. All they heard now was the moan of the wind through the fuselage and a staccato rattle that turned out to be Zagloul’s false teeth. Veronica didn’t hear either of those things, because she’d slid to the gangway floor in a dead faint.

‘If my Elementary Physics serves me aright,’ Merton told the assembled company, rather gratuitously, ‘we’re going to hit the ground in . . .’ he checked his watch for good measure, ‘one minute, eighteen seconds. Seventeen. Sixteen . . .’

‘For God’s sake, shut up, Merton!’ Arthur Weigall waddled forward and stepped over the fallen hostess, batting aside the powder-blue curtain. Guy Mainwaring was wrestling with the controls.

‘If I can just keep her nose up’, he barked, ‘we might make the sea.’

‘Will that help?’ Holinshed was at Weigall’s elbow.

‘I may be able to pancake,’ the Captain told him.

‘I couldn’t touch a thing,’ Hambrook muttered.

Everybody fell silent. It was strangely eerie, gliding at six . . . no . . . five . . . no, four thousand feet, at the mercy of the Mediterranean winds.

‘Our Father,’ Carter began and Tilly Holinshed seemed to be mumbling something alongside him.

‘I don’t think we need that just yet,’ her brother snapped. ‘Mainwaring, I know a bit about engines. If we can get a prop going, will that pull her round?’

‘It would get us to Palermo,’ the Captain said. ‘I hadn’t really envisaged returning to Cairo.’

‘Right. Help me out.’

‘What?’ almost everybody chorused.

‘You can’t be serious!’ Merton shouted at him. ‘Holinshed. Snap out of it, man. I didn’t think you would be the one to crack.’

‘He might have something.’ Mainwaring leapt out of his seat but the Hercules yawed to starboard and the blue-grey horizon swivelled in the windshield. ‘One of us can’t do it alone. The force of the wind will rip you off the wings in seconds. Besides, I’m the only one with the skill – not to mention the insurance cover – to free a de Havilland engine. Holinshed, take my hand.’

The big man did so. ‘A human chain,’ he shouted. ‘Come on, Merton!’

‘Somebody will have to stay at the helm,’ Mainwaring shouted, throwing his hat on to his seat. ‘Keep pushing that red button. And keep the joystick back. If her nose goes down, we’ve all had it.’

‘I’m sorry,’ Weigall sniffed, ‘but nothing will induce me to hold hands with him.’ And he sneered at Merton, folding his arms for good measure. Carter plugged the gap as Mainwaring slid open the little port window and clambered out. The wind whipped his tie up his nose and blew his trousers against his legs. Immediately he dropped on to his chest and lay on the silvered wing. The women rushed to the side, but the wing was above them and only the good Captain’s legs were visible, flailing about as he edged himself along the struts towards the far engine nacelle.

‘I’ll have to sit this one out,’ Macclesfield apologized, his left arm useless in this situation. Hambrook grabbed Weigall’s left hand and Fabian Hambrook’s. ‘I hope this isn’t going to get back to the boys in the Squad,’ he said pointedly to Macclesfield. One by one, the humans of the chain emerged on to the rocking aircraft’s wing. Holinshed’s hair was blasted backwards but he buried his nose on to the metal skin and flexed both his arms.

Merton tried to say something, but the rush of air knocked the breath out of him.

Lestrade was on his feet, but only just, and he glanced down at the seated Zagloul. ‘I will have to decline,’ the Egyptian said. ‘What with my trouble . . .’ and he waved in the general direction of his groin.

‘Hmm,’ Lestrade nodded. ‘I guessed there’d be some Moslem reason why you couldn’t lend a hand.’ And he snatched the wriggling fingers of Walter Hambrook and held on.

‘Daddy,’ Emma was alongside him. ‘You’re in no fit state.’

‘Macclesfield,’ Lestrade ignored her, ‘can you fly this bloody thing?’

‘Er . . . no,’ the Inspector told him, staring in disbelief at the rows of dials in front of him.

Emma elbowed him aside. ‘Men!’ she snorted and whipped off her cloche, hoisted up her skirt and gripped the joystick firmly in both hands. By now, Lestrade was perched half in and half out of the lounge, the devilling wind blowing his moustache hairs up his nostrils.

Macclesfield snatched the guv’nor’s flapping hand and jammed his shoulder, the painful one, against the fuselage. Emma stared ahead, ramming her finger again and again against the red button. The Hercules coughed as Mainwaring’s right hand hit the upright propeller. They were losing height fast now, plummeting towards the grey-green of the Nile Delta, criss-crossed with the river’s brown.

In the lounge, Tilly was bringing Veronica round; slapping the girl’s face – anything to keep herself busy, to fight the panic she felt inside. It might have been kinder, she suddenly realized, to keep the hostess out of it. ‘Fasten your seat belts, ladies and gentlemen,’ the girl slurred, as she came to. ‘We’ll be coming in to land shortly.’

‘How often do these planes crash?’ Tilly asked her, trying not to sound hysterical.

Veronica’s eyes flickered upwards. ‘Only once,’ she said, and her head lolled back again.

Tilly looked up. Beyond the flapping blue curtain, she saw Emma Lestrade wrestling with the controls, the biggest of the policemen reaching out of the fuselage and up to where the band- aged ex-Chief Superintendent was dangling like a puppet on the struts, buffeted mercilessly by the air currents. Then, there was a roar, and the Hercules barked back into life.

‘Keep her nose up,’ Mainwaring yelled, but no one heard; him, not even Holinshed who was at full stretch, holding grimly on to the pilot’s left hand.

Emma had the joystick jammed back under her breasts and the ground was hurtling beneath them now.

‘Undercart down! Undercart down!’ Mainwaring was screaming. It was all to no avail of course. Emma couldn’t even catch his orders, still less did she know which lever to push. Or was it pull? She saw the sparkling sluggish waters of the Delta as they gushed their way to the sea, the clumps of palm trees and the dusty roads. She saw the little sand-blown homes and the fellahin dashing for cover in all directions. She even saw the nodding yellow heads of the henbane flower, flattening in the rush of the aircraft’s downpull. Lestrade felt something hit him in the left foot, the one that was dangling below the wing. Only Zagloul, from his position in the lounge, realized that it was the top of a fig tree. Then the Hercules soared upwards, the chain gang on its port wing sliding backwards with a concerted scream. Merton, for his part, was glad he’d worn the brown trousers that morning.

With his free hand, Mainwaring jabbed towards the fuselage and slowly, as if afraid to believe their luck, they crawled back inside. Macclesfield hauled his old guv’nor down to safety and so it went on until Mainwaring jumped on to the carpet and stood there, grinning widely.

‘I believe we have you to thank for our lives, Mr Holinshed.’ the Captain said. ‘Frankly, if we hadn’t just done it, I wouldn’t have believed it possible.’

There was a clearing of a throat behind him.

‘Ah, Miss Lestrade.’ the Captain retrieved his cap, ‘I think you’d better wear this from now on.’ And he planted it on her head, along with a kiss. ‘If you don’t mind, Mr Lestrade.’

Hambrook and Fabian minded greatly. So did Norroy Macclesfield but he wasn’t going to show it.

‘Any chance of waking your girl up?’ Zagloul asked. ‘All you people had to do was risk your lives on the wing. I had to watch it. I’d kill for a G and T.’

So they came back, on a wing and a prayer. As the Pope himself was to do two generations later, when the Hercules touched down at Palermo, Zagloul kissed the tarmacadam. Well, it was a nice gesture and a useful one for a future Prime Minister in search of allies.

Three days later, the battered little company, Olivia’s engines fixed, roared into Croydon. Said Zagloul Pasha was escorted by officials of his own Embassy to the Savoy. Unfortunately, he’d have to wait to see the Prime Minister because Mr Bonar Law had resigned with a throat problem, and His Majesty was dithering as to the choice of successor. It was likely to be Lord Curzon, currently at the Foreign Office, but you could never rule out the Chancellor of the Exchequer, Stanley Baldwin. Of course, the unimaginable could happen and somebody might think of Neville Chamberlain, the new Minister of Health. No, come to think of it, nobody would think of him. Ever.

Sholto and Emma Lestrade wrapped themselves in the arms of Fanny in the arrivals lounge at Croydon and all was right with the world. ‘Emma,’ her father scolded her, ‘you shouldn’t have sent Fanny that telegram. She’s cut her holiday short now.’

‘Now you leave her alone, Sholto Lestrade.’ His wife thumped his good arm. Not, after hanging on to the Hercules’s wing, that he had one, really. ‘She was concerned, that’s all. I didn’t know whether to get to Egypt or come home. Anyway, Cousin Val was just about driving me up the wall by then. And France seemed to have come to a full stop because of the death of Sarah Bernhardt. Just as well you’ve retired, dear. What would you do in the Police Revue now?’

‘Ah,’ smiled Lestrade. ‘Her voice was liquid gold.’

Fanny looked at him. ‘That’s very lyrical for you, dear.’

‘Yes, isn’t it?’ he said and neglected to tell her that it was something he’d read in one of Percy Merton’s columns.

‘What now?’ Fanny asked him as the three of them bundled into a cab and the April rain began to bounce on the windows.

‘Well,’ Lestrade sighed, looking from right to left at the two loves of his life, ‘first, a bath, a brandy and a good cigar, not necessarily in that order. Then a visit to Lady Carnarvon, I think.’

‘Was it the sun, dear,’ Fanny said, stroking the nut-brown of her husband’s face, ‘that Emma spoke of in her telegram?’

He looked wryly at her, then into the middle distance as the car taxied off the runway. ‘Oh, no,’ he said. ‘That was the poison. A mixture, I fancy, of henbane and something else. I think we’ve all come nearer to death in the last few weeks than we know.’

‘And then, there were the engines,’ Emma said.

‘Yes,’ Lestrade chuckled. ‘Rather ironic, that. Escaping poison and nationalist bullets to end up in some Egyptian mud flats because of engine failure.’

‘But they didn’t fail, Daddy,’ his daughter said.

‘What?’ He turned to her.

‘I had a long chat with Guy Mainwaring in Paris yesterday, while he was waiting for the plane to be double-checked. All three engines had been tampered with. It was sabotage. We were all supposed to die.’