3

My strange, emotional flashback to the events of 1987 in Hungerford was all too easy to ignore once I had made the radio calls, turned the plane onto final approach and landed safely. It’s a Cessna 172 that I share with a syndicate of twenty or so other people in Liverpool. It is my pleasure (and my madness, because door-to-door the train is nearly always quicker), to fly to meetings and post-mortems in other parts of the UK and Ireland as often as I can.

I bounced along the landing strip at the grassy little airfield in broad sunshine, found my stand and shut down the engine. I left the Cessna and saw my colleague waiting for me. I felt fine. As we drove off I began to wonder if I had imagined that something had happened up there. Perhaps I had been short of oxygen in the cockpit? Well hardly, at 3,000 feet. Anyway, I was now sure my reaction could not have been as violent as I remembered. Not a panic attack at all, really.

As I flew back later, the more variable weather conditions demanded my undivided concentration and I hardly thought about Hungerford. Except to avoid it. It did occur to me then, for the first time, that the pilot’s preoccupation with staying alive, which so powerfully suppresses all other thoughts, feelings and fears, may be one of the reasons I fly.

Home at last, the clouds cleared to reveal a soft summer’s evening. I made myself a whisky and soda and sat outside on the patio to enjoy the last rays of the setting sun.

But suddenly, unexpectedly, the pearly summer dusk, and that hushed stillness which accompanied it, reminded me of … Hungerford. Again. My heart beat faster. I felt strangely lightheaded – and I hadn’t taken one sip of my drink. Once more I was moving slowly through a small town’s streets as bodies lay unmoving in pools of blood by lawnmowers, in cars, across the pavement. A sense of dread began to grip my chest and squeeze it hard.

I breathed deeply. To calm down. I reminded myself that I now knew what was happening. I had established my own mind was playing tricks. Obviously. So, with great effort, I must be able to control it. Obviously.

More breathing. Close my eyes. I had to crush this, crush it like ice inside curled fingers.

Gradually my body relaxed. My clenched fist loosened. My breathing deepened. I raised the glass unsteadily to my lips. Yes. Everything was back under control.

By the time I had drained the glass, I could safely answer the two questions I had asked myself in the plane that morning. No, of course I didn’t need to see a psychologist, and certainly not a psychiatrist: the very idea seemed absurd. And there was no good reason for me to stop practising as a forensic pathologist either. Whatever was happening to me today would soon pass and all would be well. For sure.

A few months later, in the autumn of 2015, co-ordinated terrorist attacks on Paris bars, restaurants, a sports stadium and a music venue claimed 130 lives and injured hundreds of others. I was out on a call when I heard the radio news. Behind the reporter were the wails of sirens which accompany every emergency and the gabble of shocked voices. Horror’s soundscape. I had to stop the car.

Sitting in a lay-by near my house, I closed my eyes. But they could still see, and my ears could hear. Ambulance blue lights. Police barriers. Rows of post-mortem tables under the bright mortuary glare, and on them human body parts. Shouting. Police radios. The cries of the wounded. Before me, bodies. In my nostrils, the smell of death. A foot, a hand, a child. A young woman who had been dancing in a nightclub, her intestines unwinding. Men in suits and ties but without legs. Office workers, tea ladies, students, pensioners. Destroyed, every one of them.

I don’t know which of the disasters I have seen I was looking at now: the Bali bombs, the 7/7 London bombing, the Clapham rail disaster, the sinking of the Marchioness, 9/11 in New York, the Whitehaven massacre … or maybe it was all of them.

I waited at the roadside for the tidal wave that was engulfing me to subside. When it was over, I was left with a sense of misery and dread. The smell of human decay seemed to linger in the car for some minutes. I took deep breaths. It passed.

I drove off, shocked but under control.

Maybe I did need to discuss this with a professional after all. A priest, perhaps? Some person, anyway, whose job it is to receive our weaknesses and offer us strength.

Involuntarily I shook my head. Of course not. The events in Paris were terrible but I had not been called to help and they were nothing to do with me. I had a thorough understanding of death and no fear of it. The news from Paris had unexpectedly opened up a seam of memories, but the crevasse had closed again now. Aware of the long night of work that lay ahead of them, I just felt sorry for my French colleagues.

So I continued my journey. Off to the mortuary and business as usual. Surely I would be just fine.