None of which mattered to Simon Crozier, who lost patience with people when they let their lives outside the Department get in the way of their work. He was a large man in his early fifties, with iron-gray hair cut close to his skull. His eyes were deep brown and penetrating and his hawk nose gave him a predatory aspect that was reflected in his manner. Simon Crozier was not a man to suffer fools gladly and made no pretence that he did.
The atmosphere created by his austere office and his fierce manner was almost like being in church, Jane realized. As a strict Catholic, and bringing her children up within the faith, she found her own church comforting. Crozier’s office was religious in appearance but held little comfort.
He leaned further back in his chair and crossed his legs. ‘Kulsay Island,’ he said. ‘What do you know about it?’ There was something about his appearance today that was different from usual, but Jane couldn’t quite decide yet what it was.
Jane thought for a moment. The name was ringing bells in her mind but it took her a few moments to retrieve the information. ‘It was in the news a few weeks ago,’ she said finally. ‘It’s an island off the east coast of Scotland. There was a helicopter crash. Wasn’t it something to do with an adventure holiday going horribly wrong?’
‘Yes…’ Crozier said. ‘…And no. It wasn’t an adventure holiday but one of those Outward Bound courses that misguided company directors like to send their middle-management people on. Take a handful of highly stressed, out of condition, soft living people and dump them in some extreme conditions to see how they cope and interact; that kind of rubbish. There was a helicopter but it didn’t exactly crash.’
‘But I remember seeing it on the news. Footage of the Navy searching for the wreckage,’ Jane said.
‘Yes, but that was all part of the cover-up. An elaborate fiction to satisfy the families of those poor souls who went missing. It was a smokescreen, designed to hide what really happened.’
Jane was intrigued. She ran her fingers through her cropped brown hair. ‘So what really happened?’
Crozier leaned back in his chair and steepled his fingers. ‘Ah, now that’s where it gets interesting. Nobody really knows. Six people in the management group, the helicopter pilot, and the entire staff of nine from the island. Sixteen people, disappeared without a trace. The Ministry of Defense sent a team out to Kulsay to search the island and they found nothing. Not even the helicopter, and that was the most extraordinary thing. They know the helicopter landed there from the last communication from the pilot, a man named Harrison, ex—U.S. Air Force, very experienced. He contacted them just as he was coming in to land. But there were no further communications, nothing to say that he collected his passengers and took off again.’
‘So what does the Ministry think happened? Come to think of it, why were the MOD involved in the first place?’ There was a huge bruise on Crozier’s lower jaw, that was what was different about him.
‘The missing people worked for Waincraft Software, and Waincraft are fairly tied in with the Ministry. They provide the software for various missile systems and defense projects of a highly sensitive nature. The MOD is not speculating. There were some half-hearted rumors of a Middle Eastern conspiracy, but I think that was just pie in the sky; if no other explanation fits, blame Al-Qaeda. You know the thinking. But I think the truth is that they really haven’t got a clue what happened on Kulsay.’ He sat forward in his chair, opened the black file on his desk and took out a sheaf of paper. He slid it across the desk to her. ‘These are the personnel files of those who disappeared.’
Jane flicked through the pages, staring for a few moments at each of the small photographs attached to each individual file. Six average-looking people, captured in that flat, rabbit-caught-in-the-headlights style of all passport photos.
‘Do we have the files on the island’s staff, or the pilot?’
‘Any day now. They were all employed by the Kulsay Development Corporation, the owners of the island. They’ve promised me “every assistance.” They are a division of The Anderson Corporation, one of the U.S.’s Top Ten companies. International as well as national. Into every sector you can think of.’
‘So have we been assigned to investigate? And what happened to your face?’
‘The Minister thinks what happened might fall into our sphere of operations.’ He totally ignored the remark about his face. Since being hit by Carter he had suffered a couple of loose teeth, some bruising, but mainly a lot of damaged pride. He wasn’t a physical man, and had never been in a fight in his life. In fact that was the first time he had ever been hit by anyone.
‘I see,’ Jane said. ‘So they’ve exhausted all rational explanations.’
‘It would appear so. And there’s something else. There was another incident like this. Remarkably similar in fact.’
‘On Kulsay?’
He nodded.
Alarm flashed in her eyes, but it was quickly extinguished. She knew Crozier well enough to know that he didn’t make unsubstantiated remarks. He was a very careful man. ‘You’re really sweetening the cake, Simon,’ she said. ‘Have you got any details?’
‘I haven’t got them to hand, but I can lend you Martin Impey for the rest of the day. He’s been researching it for the last twenty-four hours. I’m sure, by now, he’ll be able to give you chapter and verse. You know how thorough he is when he gets his teeth into something like this.’
‘A dog with a bone,’ Jane said. She knew Martin well and had worked with him many times in the past. A painstaking and tireless researcher, he was the Department’s fount of all knowledge.
Crozier was watching Jane’s face carefully. He was confident that despite any initial doubts she might have, she would take the assignment. She was one of the Department’s greatest assets. She’d earned a master’s degree in psychology at Cambridge and was the owner of an astute and incisive mind. Intellectually, Jane could wipe the floor with the majority of the Department — in fact with most of the people he knew, himself included. Crozier’s only reservation about her was her tendency to let domesticity come between herself and her work. He’d known David, her husband, for years, and was indirectly responsible for bringing the two of them together, but he felt now that David was the worst thing that could have happened to her. Being with David had softened her and dampened much of the fire that had previously enlivened her work.
She laid the files on the desk and sat back in her chair. ‘I don’t know,’ she said. ‘When would you need a commitment from me?’
‘I want to proceed on this as quickly as possible, so I need an answer today.’ He was slightly surprised she might consider his request as something to consider. In his world a request was the same as a demand.
She raised her eyebrows but said nothing. What David was going to say was uppermost in her thoughts.
Crozier pressed on. ‘Would you like me to call Martin in?’
She nodded and he stretched out his hand, hitting a key on his laptop. ‘When you’re ready, Martin.’ he said.
Somewhere within the microchips of the machine his words were transformed to a printed message and flashed directly onto the screen of Martin Impey’s computer in an office down the hall.