The Labyrinth Makers

But Stocker was the one to watch, particularly as Audley had never quite understood the exact role, or at least the ultimate power, of the JIG.

Fred gathered them with a glance.

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'You've all read the Steerforth File now. What do you make of it?'

Butler would be first.

'A collection of non-information,' said Butler in a voice that was Sandhurst superimposed on Lancashire. 'A lot of clumsy people looking for something, and we never came close to finding out what it was.'

'I don't think they were all that clumsy,' said Roskill mildly. 'I think they were in a hurry.'

'Well, we were clumsy. The interrogations weren't handled firmly–

there was no co-ordination. We should have leaned harder on the ground crew. And on the Belgian.'

Audley wondered what a firm Butler interrogation would be like.

'The RAF Court of Inquiry was just whitewash. The trawler captain's evidence proved nothing.' Butler was getting into his stride now. 'And the survivors' evidence was conflicting.'

'Baling out isn't a clear event,' protested Roskill. 'I once baled out of a Provost. I don't believe I gave a very clear account of it, though.'

Butler shook his head.

'The conflict was between the two who were vague and the two who rehearsed from the same script. It was all too pat–first the radio, then the engine. It smells–to me it smells.'

Good for Butler, thought Audley. He was worrying the right bits of evidence, sniffing instinctively at the weaknesses. A firm Butler interrogation might be a lot more subtle than the man's personality suggested.

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'On this evidence,' concluded Butler, 'there's no proof that the Dakota ever came down at all. It could have been a put-up job from start to finish.'

Good for Butler again.

'But it did crash,' said Roskill. 'We've got it.'

'Roskill has the advantage of you there, Butler,' said Fred. 'You've been out of England–and you're not such an avid newspaper reader as Dr Audley. The Dakota came down in an artificial lake in Lincolnshire, not in the sea at all. And last week that lake was accidentally drained–it was an accident, wasn't it, Roskill?'

Roskill nodded. 'Carelessness, anyway.'

'And Steerforth?' Butler asked.

'Steerforth was still in the cockpit,' replied Fred shortly. 'Now, gentlemen, as you will have read, our interest in this began by pure chance, when it was learnt that the Russians were interested in the missing aircraft. First there was the known agent, Stein. Then there was the military attache. And there was also the Belgian, Bloch, who claimed he had nothing to do with the others.

'We couldn't touch the attache, of course, and as Butler has pointed out, we didn't get anything out of anyone. We came to a dead end.

Officially Steerforth was a dead hero, who chose to crash at sea rather than hazard life on land. Unofficially he was a smuggler who'd picked up something so hot he didn't dare crash with it. You will note the references by the crew to the unauthorised boxes in the cargo space. Steerforth's property, apparently.'

'But at least the other side didn't get anything either, so the matter dummy4

was more or less shelved. Until the Dutch got in touch with us in 1956, that is.'

He pushed three slim files across the table.

'Ever since the war they've been busily reclaiming more bits of the Zuyder Zee, and in every bit they find wartime aircraft wrecks–

German, British, American. They're very good about them. Very correct and dignified, with no sightseers or souvenir hunters allowed.

'But one day they came to ask what was so special about Dakota wrecks. Every time they came across a Dakota they'd had all sorts of Russians sniffing around. Just Dakotas. British Dakotas. It didn't take much checking to decide which Dakota interested them.'

Butler cleared his throat.

'But we've got Steerforth's Dakota now.'

'Indeed we have. We've got the Dakota, and Steerforth, and the mysterious boxes. But there was nothing in the Dakota, and nothing in the boxes either.'

'Not exactly nothing.' Roskill unwound himself. He was a nonchalantly clumsy man who gave the impression that he hadn't finished growing, and that upright chairs tortured him.

'Builder's rubble, that's what the boxes contained. Or perhaps I should say bomber's rubble, because the experts are more or less agreed it's Berlin stuff, vintage '45. Otherwise the Dakota was clean.' He grimaced. 'If you don't count a ton of mud.'

'Had the boxes been tampered with?' asked Butler.

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'The wood was pretty rotten, of course. But no–the lids were untouched. I'd say they were as consigned.'

'Identification positive?'

'Steerforth or the plane?'

'Both.'

'Oh, yes. No trouble there. Numbers for the plane, perfectly readable. Identity tags and teeth for Steerforth –and an old arm break. Absolutely no doubt.'

'Cause of death?'

'We can't be precise there. Drowning while unconscious is my guess. There was no evidence of physical damage.'

Butler looked round the table.

'And nobody spotted it for twenty-four years?'

Roskill shrugged. 'It was out of the search area. Overhanging trees, thick weed. God only knows how he put it down there. And the weather was poor for a week or more afterwards, the worst sort of search weather. It's not so surprising–it's well off the beaten track.'

Roskill added three more slim, identical files to those on the table.

'It's all in there. Plus my estimation of the probable course of the aircraft–he must have made a much wider turn than was assumed after the crew and the passenger baled out. That's what put the search off the scent, apart from the low cloud they had to contend with. He would have crossed the coast again a good ten miles south of the direct route–if he hadn't put down in the lake. Which was a damn good piece of flying, as I've said.'

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'Why did the plane crash?'

'It's in my report,' said Roskill, with the smallest suggestion of asperity.

Butler persisted. 'How well does it tally with what the crew said?'

Roskill shook his head. 'It's going to be very hard to say. It was the port engine they complained about, and it took a clout from a treetop coming in. That and twenty years under water–it doesn't make the detective work easy.'

He looked round the table. 'To be honest, we may never know.

There can be a million reasons. If it's plain human error, like fuel mismanagement, we'll certainly never know now. They'd been losing height–we know that from the survivors; I've known cases where a pilot had an engine malfunction and simply shut down the wrong engine. Not even a DC-3 would stay up then, and at that height it would have been fatal. Or maybe he simply misread his altimeter. I tell you, there are a million ways it might have happened.'

'All right, then,' said Fred, heading off any further technical argument. 'How does this fresh information change your interpretation of the original conclusions, Dr Audley?'

Audley looked up from his notebook to meet Fred's mildly questioning gaze, which in turn caused the other three men to look at him. He had been reflecting just a moment before, with satisfaction, that so far he had not said a word since arriving.

But then he really had nothing yet to say–nothing, at least, which he could say in front of strangers. He certainly couldn't say 'What dummy4

am I doing here, for God's sake?' at this stage in the proceedings.

'Dr Audley?'

It would be an interesting academic exercise to discuss the nature of an unknown object which was able to retain its value over so many years. No secret terror weapon, no list of traitors now in their graves or their dotage could last so long. Newer and far more terrible weapons had made the technology of the 1940s antediluvian. And a whole generation of younger and differently-motivated traitors had superseded the honest simpletons and rogues of Steerforth's day.