As he drove he was concentrating more on the smoke signals than on the road, and so, when his eye was caught at last by the shapeless, mangled body he had to brake hard, throwing himself painfully against the restraining seat-belt.
The thing lay across the roadway, blocking most of it, only a few yards short of the crest of a steep climb. At first, Skinner registered only a red, torn mass beyond the bonnet of the BMW. Breathing heavily, he squeezed his eyes shut as he composed himself. Then, running his fingers through his steel-grey hair, he braced himself and stepped out of the car.
SIX
It was a sheep.
As Skinner stared at it, shuddering in spite of himself, he could see, protruding from the carcass, the long, jagged piece of metal which had caught the animal as it plunged from the sky, eviscerating it and hurling it, in a trail of gore and entrails, from the heather in which it had been grazing across the road. It was almost wholly red, looking for all the world as if science had produced a new strain of pre-dyed wool. His nostrils were filled with the smell of it, the almost palpable reek of blood and guts and faeces, and he turned his head away, staring back down the slope where the rest of the flock had gathered together as if for security, against the terror which had seized one of their number.
Suddenly his senses were caught by another odour, one which overcame even the stench of the sheep. It was an acrid smell of burning, of the reek of ignited aircraft fuel which still hung over the fields. He looked up the slope, to its crest; his dread returned as he realised that he was very close to the disaster scene. As he stared, a faint voice reached his ears, borne on the breeze.
With an effort of will, he switched off his revulsion. Seizing the dead sheep by its bloody forehooves, he dragged it from the roadway into the heather, ignoring the slithering sound it made as more of its innards were loosed into the light of day.
Wet tendrils of vegetation tugged at his calves, soaking his woollen trousers, and he swore softly. Leaving the animal to the attention of the huge black crows which were circling above, he jumped back out on to the tarmac and opened the BMW's boot. Rummaging inside he found his trusty old black Wellingtons and pulled them on, discarding his black Loakes. He had carried his rubber boots, and their predecessors for as long as he could remember, all year long in successive motor cars.
The pedals were awkward under the heavy, ridged rubber soles, and so he eased the car slowly up the last few feet of the climb, pulling it off at the summit into a flat grassy area, beside a navy blue police personnel carrier which had been parked there. Inside sat a man, his face buried in his hands. Skinner looked at him and decided, quickly, that he could wait.
The long shallow valley spread out before him, like a subdivision of Hell. The closest of the four smoking columns was perhaps thirty yards away. The heather around it was burning and its heat reached out to him, yet not even the high octane fuel could make much progress through its thick growth, saturated as it had been by the heavy, almost continuous rain of one of the wettest Scottish autumns on record. Beyond the fire, as if contained by it and the other three main blazes, hundreds of yards away in the far slopes, a great black slash, perhaps half a mile long and fifty yards wide, had been scorched into the valley floor. Here and there, isolated flickers of flame and tendrils of smoke drifted upwards. At the head of the valley, lay the plane's twin engines.
Skinner closed his eyes. As vividly as if he had been there, he saw the plane's belly crash into the ground, exploding in a white-hot blast. He saw the engines cartwheeling on. He saw the deadly rain of jagged metal plunging from the sky.
He opened his eyes to escape the vision, and felt a renewed trembling wrack his body. The sheer scale of the disaster seemed almost too much to take in. As he looked down into the valley, he thought of his own recent flights, and felt the guilt as an involuntary surge of relief swept through him, that others were lying there, not him nor his own.
Standing out against the dark scar, and around it, against the purple of the heather that remained untouched, Skinner saw a sea of myriad spots of colour. There were reds, blues, greens, yellows, whites, hundreds of them, scattered in a great circle all over the walls and floor of the valley. Some lay still on the dark ground, others flapped on the breeze.
Skinner knew what many of these coloured markers represented, and his eyes moistened at the realisation. Among them were more than a few Day-Glo splashes. He guessed that they might be life-jackets donned in some last faint hope.
The aircraft had blown apart on impact. All around Skinner, and all around the crest of the site, pieces of shrapnel, like the one that had slaughtered the sheep, were tangled in the undergrowth, or sticking into the ground. The only part of it that remained more or less intact was the tail section. It lay, recognisable but upside down, at the top of the southern slope.
For a second the DCC felt that he would be overwhelmed by the immensity of the thing, but suddenly looking down, he saw five small figures moving among the wreckage. They were all in uniform, and all wore Wellingtons. The officer closest to him, who was perhaps 300 yards away, wore a cap heavy with silver braid.
`Charlie!' Skinner shouted. The man looked up, and the two headed towards each other through the heather, one down the slope and one back up, each of them looking not at the other, but at their feet, as they walked.
They were fifty yards apart when Skinner's eye was caught by something away to his left.
A grey line showed just above the stubby, thigh-high shrubs. He veered towards it, motioning Radcliffe to follow, but not looking at him. As he drew closer, he saw that the grey shape was at the centre of a deep circular depression in the ground-covering plant. A fist of apprehension grasped at his stomach.
He was still almost ten yards away when he knew for certain that it was an aircraft seat. It was lying on its side, its back towards him and it was impacted into the ground. As he closed the distance, he realised that the seat was still occupied. He stepped around to the other side.
The body strapped into the chair was that of a man. It was intact, but the head hung at a grotesque angle, and the legs were broken and bent back under the chair. The face was bloody and unrecognisable, and the blue business suit was torn to shreds. Skinner guessed that while the heather might have cushioned the impact as the seat hit the ground, it had taken its toll too.
Chief Superintendent Radcliffe's footsteps sounded behind him and then stopped. Skinner heard his colleague's heavy breathing interrupted by a sudden sharp gasp as he caught sight of the victim.
`God, sir,' he said. 'We've all rehearsed this often enough, but it doesn't really prepare you, does it?'
Skinner turned to face him. 'No, Charlie. Nothing ever could.' He nodded towards the valley. 'What's it like down there?'
`Carnage, Bob. Sheer bloody carnage. Bodies all over the place, and not all of them in one piece. My lads are being thorough, but there's not a cat's chance of finding anyone alive.'
I know, Charlie, but we've got to look. We owe it to them: to them and their families.'
Suddenly in the distance, they heard the sound of sirens. `That'll be the reinforcements.