Hailey Scenes from a Tragedy

an addictive, gripping thriller from the Kindle No.1 bestselling author of The Silence Project
Main
ISBN: 978-1-80546-155-5
Verlag: Corvus
Format: EPUB
Kopierschutz: 6 - ePub Watermark

E-Book, Englisch, 480 Seiten

'COMPULSIVE AS HELL' ABIGAIL DEAN If you hurt me, I'll hurt you. Not right away of course, because where's the fun in that? When an empty passenger plane mysteriously crashes in the Lake District, journalist Carly Atherton is determined to get to the truth of what happened - the love of her life was one of the two pilots on board. But when she contacts the family of the other pilot, the conflicting memories of his wife and his sister draw her into a story far darker than she could possibly have imagined. As Carly delves into the dynamics of a seemingly ordinary family, she realises that the bonds that shape us can also tear us apart - and that sometimes there are monsters living among us, hiding in plain sight... 'MASTERFUL' JANICE HALLETT 'EXTRAORDINARY' JENNIE GODFREY

Carole Hailey completed the six-month Guardian/UEA novel-writing course with Bernardine Evaristo, who imbued Carole with such a love for writing fiction that she abandoned her career in law to study first an MA, then a PHD in Creative Writing. Carole was a recipient of a Desmond Elliott Prize Residency from the National Centre for Writing and her debut novel, The Silence Project, was shortlisted for the Royal Society of Literature Christopher Bland Prize. She lives in Wales with her husband and two rescue dogs. Instagram: @carolehaileyx

Autoren/Hrsg.

Hailey, Carole

Leseproben

Article I

Planet Home.

Last October I boarded a train from Euston in London bound for the Lake District. For each kilometre I travelled my carbon footprint was approximately 41 grams of CO2 emissions, but had I made the same journey on a domestic airline, that figure would have soared to 255 grams per kilometre.

I was heading to the northern tip of the Lake District National Park and the slopes of Big Crag, which boasts one of the highest peaks in England. A popular destination for climbers and hikers alike, Big Crag was thrust into the public consciousness on 9 September 2020 when an Airbus A320 smashed into the upper reaches of its south-east facing slope. The only two people on board – both pilots – died instantly.

I was on my way to visit the site of the crash. It was tragic that two lives had been lost, but although I was thankful that there weren’t more deaths, like many others I wanted to know why there were only two people on board flight GFA578. Why was a plane designed to carry 180 passengers flying empty? In the face of the climate emergency, what possible justification could there be for a pointless 600-kilometre flight from Stansted to Glasgow?

In this series of articles I shall be seeking to answer these questions by investigating the mendacious practices of the airport authorities who impose ‘use it or lose it’ policies on their landing slots, as well as the complicity of governments around Europe who have consistently failed to put an end to this scandal in the sky.

Notes

The inquest into the deaths of Captain Daniel Taylor and First Officer Luke Emery was opened in December 2020 for the purpose of formally confirming their identities, then adjourned to allow the investigators to do their work. It would not be reopened for almost seventeen months.

On 6 January 2021, as England entered its third national lockdown, my brother persuaded an engineer he was friendly with at Goldfinch Airlines to have a Zoom call with me. Before our conversation, I had to agree to two conditions. The first was that I wouldn’t reveal the engineer’s real name, so here I am calling him Anthony. The second was that I would tell no one what he was going to tell me until the data from the two black boxes on flight GFA578 had been analysed and made public.

On the three-way Zoom, my brother and I listened as Anthony explained how Airbus A320s transmit real-time reports to a maintenance operation centre. I hadn’t realised that if a plane develops a fault during a flight the issue is reported simultaneously to both the pilots the engineers on the ground. Anthony said he had been at work on 9 September 2020 and no faults had been reported by flight GFA578.

‘There was absolutely nothing wrong with the plane,’ he said. ‘It was one hundred per cent serviceable.’

‘How about if an engine fails and the plane plummets from the sky?’ I asked. ‘Surely there’s not enough time for reports to be sent back?’

Anthony shook his head. ‘Impossible. Firstly, if an engine fails, the plane will keep flying without any problem at all. Secondly, planes do not from the sky because of some mechanical failure. They just don’t. Thirdly, real-time real-time. GFA578 was reporting itself as one hundred per cent serviceable – that’s the terminology we use – until the moment it hit the mountain. There was nothing wrong with the aeroplane.’

‘So what does that mean?’ I asked.

Jamie said, ‘That’s what you need to find out, Carly. If there was nothing wrong with the plane—’

‘Which there wasn’t,’ said Anthony.

‘—which there wasn’t,’ Jamie continued, ‘then something else caused the crash.’

‘Why would a perfectly functioning plane hit a mountain?’ I asked.

‘My first thought was a bomb,’ said Jamie.

‘It wasn’t a bomb,’ Anthony said, and Jamie nodded – they’d obviously discussed this already.

‘How do you know?’ I asked.

‘Because, as I said before, the plane was serviceable until the moment of impact. If there had been a bomb, there would have been a catastrophic failure at some point impact.’

‘So what else?’ I asked. ‘Why would a fully functioning plane fly into the side of a mountain?’

‘The real-time data lets us know if there’s anything wrong with a plane – mechanical faults, software issues, that sort of thing,’ Anthony said. ‘The one thing it doesn’t tell us is what the pilots are doing. That’s the information recorded on the flight data recorder and the cockpit voice recorder, what you’d call the black boxes.’

I stared at Anthony through the laptop screen. I had a horrible feeling I knew what he was getting at. ‘So …?’

‘So, we know there wasn’t a mechanical failure and there wasn’t a bomb. Which only leaves one alternative …’

We looked at each other, and when I didn’t say anything, he continued, ‘That plane was deliberately flown into the mountain.’

I sat back in my chair.

‘Fuck,’ I said.

Jamie was looking down, away from the camera, and I thought he might be about to cry. I knew my brother was thinking of Luke. I was thinking about him too. I swallowed back my own tears. One of us had to hold it together. ‘You really think that’s what happened?’

Anthony nodded. ‘I’m certain. It’s not like there were many other planes flying that day, what with the Covid restrictions still in place, so I was monitoring the flight even more closely than I might have at other times.’

‘Fuck,’ I said again. ‘So …?’

‘So,’ Anthony said, answering the question I hadn’t asked, ‘either someone else on board made them do it, which could be possible—’

‘But very unlikely,’ Jamie said, looking up.

‘Why’s that?’ I asked.

‘Because it would mean someone having to evade airport security, stow away on board, force their way into the cockpit through a door that cannot be opened by anyone except the pilots and make one of them deliberately crash the plane, all without air traffic control having any idea what was going on.’ My brother shook his head. ‘I don’t see it.’

‘I agree,’ said Anthony. ‘I don’t believe it either.’

‘So what did happen?’ I said.

‘One of the pilots deliberately flew into the mountain,’ Anthony said.

Before I could say anything, my brother leaned forward, his face filling my laptop screen. We spoke at the same time. ‘It wasn’t Luke.’

Anyone who knew Luke knew it was inconceivable that he would have taken his own life. seen him at his lowest. been the reason he’d been down there. And, sure, he was sad, really sad and upset and angry, but never once had he shown any sign that he might do something like that.

But if Luke wasn’t responsible, that meant Daniel Taylor – the captain of the aeroplane and father of a young daughter – had deliberately killed himself and murdered Luke.

And, until the data from the black boxes was released, I was the only journalist to know this. I needed a story and here it was.

was the story that would get my career back on track.

The idea of deliberately flying an aeroplane into a mountain is terrifying. I couldn’t even begin to imagine what sort of person would be capable of doing something like that. Jamie had flown with Daniel Taylor on many occasions, and while he described him as friendly, he didn’t consider him a friend. On the occasions they were away overnight, Daniel would always refuse – albeit politely – to join the rest of the flight crew for dinner, preferring instead to eat alone in his room.

My starting point had to be Daniel Taylor’s family. I approached his widow, Grace, but she refused to talk to me, as did his father, which is when I contacted Daniel’s sister. She had no hesitation in agreeing to meet me, and shortly after the final lockdown restrictions were lifted I arranged to meet Izzy Taylor in a coffee shop near her father’s house in Richmond.

I was already seated at a table when she arrived, and my first sight of her was a well-dressed woman standing outside the café checking her reflection in the window, smoothing down her coat and flicking perfectly groomed hair back over her shoulders, before pushing the door open and striding in. Once I’d introduced myself, she removed the coat to reveal a gorgeous cornflower-blue wrap dress, spotless suede pumps and a handbag costing more money than I made in months. She looked considerably younger than her thirty-six years. Right from the beginning, I understood she was someone who did not like being ignored.

She also had an intensity about her. Her speech was rapid and energetic, and I found myself looking down at my notebook more than was necessary in order to give myself a break from maintaining eye contact with her.

Izzy was very friendly towards me in our first...