CHAPTER 3: RADAR LOVE
"You know, there are days when I wish that I still worked with the living."
"What, and miss all the excitement?" Charlotte asked. "What other job gives you this?"
Dr Beth Adams raised a thin eyebrow. "You mean the psychopaths, the liars, the general waste of human life?" The on-call Medical Examiner slipped a mound of mangled bone and flesh into a plastic bag, applying a plastic seal and initialling it with as much indifference as she would with an ordinary letter.
Beth was 52, with high, sharp features and a steely stare that had, at one point or another, bored through every detective, CSI, lawyer, judge or reporter in the Glasgow metropolitan area. As one of the senior medical examiners in the city, Beth was no stranger to the worst of the crimes investigated by the department, and had been a key factor in convicting many of those responsible.
"Well…" Charlotte said through gritted teeth as she prised open a small access hatch on the chassis of the helicopter before examining the darkened insides with her torch, the beam illuminating an orange steel panel, the aircraft's flight recorder. "…There's no accounting for taste. Damn, we need to get this lot back to the lab…do we have clearance to move the wreckage yet?"
"Knowing Cameron…" Beth said. "He's treading on someone's toes over this, you can be certain of that."
"You know he's just determined."
"Determined to get himself fired, perhaps," Beth replied, casually handling a severed section of ribcage. "He does worry me sometimes."
"You and me both..."
"But you do trust him?"
"Beth," Charlotte replied quickly, before realising there was a definite edge to her voice. "That goes without saying."
"Good."
Charlotte resumed her examination for a moment before pausing once more. "I thought you knew better than to ask that. You know I trust Cameron unreservedly. Yeah, he's made some mistakes, but we all have."
"Charlotte, I believe you. Out of everyone in the department, I know you've stood by him more than anyone, and if it wasn't for you…"
"But?" Charlotte interrupted.
"But, and I'm ashamed to admit it, but you cannot avoid hearing some rumours, some just refuse to go away. And I worry that something will happen, you'll reach breaking point and you'll be gone."
Charlotte smiled slightly. "I'm not planning on going anywhere. I'll admit, he does drive me crazy sometimes. Some of the things he does angers the life out of me, more for what he puts himself through rather than anything else, but more than anything I know why he does it."
"Method behind the madness," Beth joked dryly.
"At least he usually does these things for the correct reasons, even if it's not always the correct method," Charlotte said. "But this much I know, no matter what, Cameron Faulds will always be Cameron Faulds."
But obviously, that's exactly what some people in this department don't want, she suddenly thought. Thing is, is it enough for them to just talk, or does someone actively want Faulds out of CSI?
"Huh, speak of the devil," Charlotte said on hearing the electronic beep from her pocket and flicking open her cellphone. "Mr Faulds?" she asked with a smile, relieved for the tension to be broken.
"Where are we?"
"You are in a nice warm airport, and I'm out on a motorway with body parts. Apart from that, I've collected as much trace as I can from the cabin, but we need to get back to the lab with the rest of the wreckage. What about you?"
"Flight was Belfast-bound."
The statement was simple enough, but it opened up a whole other world of possibilities.
"Are we thinking a paramilitary connection?" she asked after a long moment. Although the destination of the flight could end up being completely incidental, it also could mean there was a link to Irish terrorist groups, many of whom had both the means and expertise to down a helicopter.
The link between Irish terrorism and Glasgow was strong and lengthy, with many members for both Loyalist and Republican sides to be found in the city, as well as scores of supporters within the city's Protestant and Catholic communities. Many prominent members of the various terror organizations had relocated from Ireland to Glasgow over the years, using the city as a relatively safer and more secure base from which to continue their operations.
As was common with many terrorist groups, both sides professed an interest in a greater good, a cause to fight and kill for, but in reality were nothing more than criminal gangs. While they spouted rhetoric of either 'protecting' or 'recombining' Ireland for the good of its citizens, they were heavily involved in drug dealing, weapons smuggling, prostitution and sickening violence.
Violence related to the Irish divide was nothing new in Glasgow, with low-level street attacks common nearly every weekend, but the prospect of a bombing campaign meant a large number of possible targets, victims and suspects, and chilled Charlotte to the bone.
"There's possible evidence of drugs onboard, and now we find out the destination's Belfast…" Faulds mused. "Yeah, get everything back to the lab, as soon as."
Mindful of the conversation with Beth, she turned and lowered her voice. "Do we have the go-ahead on this?"
"We're CSI, this is our call."
"And no-one else has a say on this?" she asked pointedly.
"Don't worry, I'm doing everything by the book." He paused for a second. "Well, maybe my book."
She sighed lightly, deciding to drop the issue, at least for the moment. "Anything else about the flight?"
"I'm looking at documents, flight plans and CCTV of the private departure lounge. Nothing suspicious that I can see on the tapes. No-one following, nothing out of the ordinary around the aircraft. All very normal and everyday. We've got three names from the flight documents, pilot's name is George Boyle, co-pilot is Martin Dehany, passenger was Gordon Carr, I'll run their details once I get back to the lab and see if there's any link to paramilitary groups."
"Progress at least."
Faulds answered with a non-committal hum.
"Something's bothering you, isn't it?"
"Something…something just doesn't make sense about all of this. It has all the hallmarks of a regular bombing, but on the other hand… On the other hand, there's something about this that I can't put my finger on."
"Like?"
"Like if this was a paramilitary hit then why couldn't they wait until the vics were on the ground in Belfast, or struck before they got to the aircraft? All something like this does is draw attention to paramilitary outfits, and that's the last thing they want."
"For argument's sake, what if whoever is behind this found out that the intended victim was flying to Belfast at short notice and had to act quickly?"
"True…" he mused. "But…it's still just not right. Typical paramilitary killings are close, personal. Executions and beatings, and you leave a body as warning to others. A typical bomber who's out to kill likes to blow big and blow hot. This is neither, it's somewhere in between."
"What does that leave us with? A highly violent paramilitary or a self-restrained bomber?"
"It leave us with a nasty little enigma, Charlotte. Someone wanted this chopper to explode, and didn't care about who was hurt in the process. They just got whatever they wanted. This is personal, spiteful…"
"Revenge?"
"Maybe."
"Then there's a link from at least one of our victims to the killer," she said, watching Beth carefully remove the last of the corpses from the helicopter. "And that puts us one step closer to catching them."
XXX
Faulds snapped his Nokia shut, turning to Monaghan.
"What's the deal?" the detective asked.
"Beth's handling the vics, Charlotte's taking care of the wreckage, working up the rest of the scene and dealing with the black box," Faulds replied, referring to the near-indestructible flight recorder found on all aircraft. After the rescue of survivors, the recovery of the black box was always the next step in any air crash, the recorder giving details of the various measurements from the aircraft right up until the moment of the crash; everything from airspeed and altitude to the radio signals sent and received by the aircraft. Often the black box was the key to understanding any air crash, instrumental in determining whether the cause was accidental or sabotage.
"Are you sure about this?" Monaghan asked. "I mean, I'm just a simple copper, bit even I know that this kinda thing falls into the remit of Air Accident Investigation Branch. They're not gonna be happy about us taking over their crash site, and if they mount a legal fight over jurisdiction then this whole case could be tied up for weeks in red tape."
"Craig, let me worry about the AAIB if and when it occurs."
"If?"
"We're running the clock here. If we can pull in enough evidence to clearly mark it as a criminal investigation, we can stall the AAIB long enough for us to put this one in the bag."
Monaghan gave a squint grin. "You know, for a nice guy, you sure are territorial."
"What can I say, I just don't trust anyone as much as I trust my lab. That's why I want to get to air traffic control, get a playback of the radar recordings at the time of the crash and see if there's anything it can tell us."
"I've seen enough disaster movies to ask what a green blip on a screen can tell us that the flight recorder can't."
"You know how they say think outside the box, well it's time we thought outside the chopper."
XXX
"The aircraft takes off at 4:02pm, but we don't catch it on radar until 4:03, as you see here."
"It can't track below a certain height?" Faulds asked.
"100 feet," the radar technician replied. Faulds, Monaghan and the tech were stood around a radar console off to the left of the airport's control tower. The tower would normally have been bustling with activity and staff, but due to the shutdown, a skeleton staff was left diverting incoming aircraft to other airports as well as monitoring the airspace.
"Doesn't that leave gaps in your coverage?" Monaghan asked the tech.
"Not in this instance. There are too many large structures around for us to gain an accurate radar scan under 100 feet, they'd just interfere with our monitoring. Besides, anything below that is visible from the ground."
Faulds meanwhile was staring intently at the screen, displaying a looping playback of the radar scan from the time the aircraft took off until it crashed. Each rotation of the radar dome plotted the course of the aircraft moving steadily away from the airport before it paused for a short time, the radar contact remaining in a stationary position before disappearing completely. As Faulds watched the replay loop over and over, he inadvertently found himself speaking out loud.
"That's why there wasn't a large debris field."
"Excuse me?" Monaghan asked.
"Er, the debris field, it was small for an aircraft crash," Faulds said. "Imagine a moving aircraft when something goes wrong. You've got parts of the fuselage and fuel coming off and scattering everywhere, right? We don't have this out there, the debris is only a small distance from the aircraft…So there's nothing that strikes the chopper?" he asked, turning to the tech.
"You mean like a missile?"
"That or a rocket-propelled grenade."
Monaghan whistled. "You CSIs really do have an active imagination."
"You wouldn't believe the number of times we're right."
The tech looked up. "Well you're wrong this time. Nothing external strikes the aircraft."
"The radar couldn't have missed it on a sweep?"
"No way. Like most major airports, we operate a secondary track system interlinked with the regular radar. It's designed to pick up on anti-aircraft tracking signals and detect any supersonic ordinance launches. If anyone fired a missile or grenade at that aircraft, we'd have seen it. Although if it was small arms fire, rifle, machine gun or whatever, neither of the systems would pick it up. Projectiles are too small, you see."
Faulds did not reply, instead staring at the display screen, watching the radar track repeat over and over.
"So much for your rocket theory," Monaghan said.
"That wasn't my theory," Faulds replied, before pointing at the screen. "That's my theory."
"Listen, I know I've said this on many an occasion over the years, but you're gonna have to explain yourself a little more."
Faulds traced the track of the radar blip with his finger. "The chopper takes off, flies for a minute, then goes into a stationary hover for two minutes before something causes it to drop out of the sky."
"It's feasible that they were having some kind of trouble. Maybe they didn't want to go any further before they checked it out."
"Then why not broadcast a distress signal, or even notify the tower that they would maybe have to return to the field? We know that they didn't make any such call to the tower at least."
"Maybe they didn't think it was that serious. Hell, maybe the pilot just spilled coffee in his lap."
Faulds grimaced as he thought. "There's something behind this. There's some reason why it stopped…before it was stopped permanently."