The Permanent Secretary told me that official attendance at scenes like this was one of the burdens of my office, Mr Skinner. But he couldn't help me to prepare for it.'
The Rt. Hon. Andrew Hardy MP, Secretary of State for Scotland, and his Security Adviser, walked slowly through the valley amid the wreckage and the heather, and at the heart of a forest of white marker flags. Around them the area was strewn with flight seats, some still in rows, some broken apart and lying individually. By now at least, all of the seats around them were empty.
Both men were ashen-faced.
It's your burden, but it's a duty of my job too, Secretary of State,' said Bob Skinner, 'and of every man and woman here. I don't make political comments as a rule, but next time public sector pay, or staffing comes up in Cabinet, I hope you'll remember this morning.
This is the most horrible task Society could ask any man or woman to perform, yet look around you. You'll see tens and hundreds of people carrying it out without question, although every one of them will be scarred by the experience. They'll carry it with them for the rest of their lives. And so will you. I'm sure it will make you an even better advocate on their behalf.'
The politician looked at the policeman, and nodded.
Skinner had got on well with the Secretary of State, ever since he had agreed to continue to act as his Security Adviser. However, he had been careful to deal more formally with Hardy than with his predecessor, having learned from that disastrous relationship that when dealing with Ministers of the Crown it is safest to serve the office rather than the man.
Or as Sir James Proud had put it in a moment of typical candour: 'Now you know, Bob.
Never trust the bastards any further than you can throw them.'
Privately, Skinner felt that he could trust the straightforward, serious Hardy, but hoped that he would never have to put it to the test.
`Where should we go now?' asked the Secretary of State. Skinner had briefed him earlier, in the command trailer, on the disaster and on the witness accounts of an explosion. Hardy had absorbed the information calmly and without any sign of panic.
I suppose we'd better look at the mortuary tent.' The policeman nodded upwards. Just beyond the crest of the slope, they could see the ridge of a great grey marquee which had been set up by the Army.
`Very good. Let's give these chaps a hand.' Two soldiers were walking past them, beginning the trudge up the hill with a laden, blanket-covered stretcher. The Secretary of State took a handle at the front, Skinner at the rear.
`Doesn't bear thinking about,' said Hardy quietly, as they climbed. 'This could be Colin Davey, or Roly McGrath that we're carrying.
Skinner glanced down at a small, bare, bloody foot which showed beyond the end of the blanket, and saw red nail-varnish.
`No,' he said. 'This was a woman.' He saw no point in reminding the Minister that from the accounts of Robert Thacker and the child, Davey and McGrath had been at the heart of an explosion big enough to blow the plane's nose section away from its fuselage.
There had been no room in the Army transporters for trestle tables, and so, inside the long tent, the victims recovered from the valley had been laid on the ground, in neat, ordered rows. Each one was in a black, zippered body-bag.
As Skinner, the Secretary of State and the soldiers laid their stretcher on the ground near one of the tied back entrances to the marquee, Sarah rushed across. Bob opened his mouth to introduce her to Hardy, but she ignored him and bent beside the stretcher. Her face was drawn and her eyes were creased. She was just over thirty, but for the first time ever, her husband saw how she would look in middle age.
Without a word, she drew back the blanket covering the body. Skinner felt the Secretary of State flinch beside him, and heard his gasp as he caught a glimpse of bloody blonde hair, and of a face without recognisable features. 'That's done by the seat in front,' said Sarah, in an emotionless, professional voice, acknowledging their presence without looking up. 'The brace position gives you a chance in a low-level impact, say a crash landing, but in an incident like this, there's no chance at all. All that the doctors here are doing is certifying death' As if to illustrate she placed two fingers against the woman's neck.
'In most cases, even with a post mortem, it's impossible to be specific about the cause. It could be a broken neck, it could be the shock as the impact pulps the internal organs, it could be, and in many cases it probably is, heart failure induced by sheer bloody terror.'
She stood up. 'Okay, boys,' she said to the soldiers. 'Bag her and lace her in order.'
Then: 'As we lay out the bodies, we're trying to Picture the floor of the tent as if it were the valley, south this end, north up there. They're being placed in roughly the position relative to which they were found. We figure it might help in the identification, that it might approximate to the seat order.'
`How many victims have you recovered so far?' asked the Secretary of State, his composure returned.
`They're coming in so thick and fast we ain't keeping a running tab.' She looked along the length of the tent. 'So far I'd guess about a hundred and forty.' She glanced at her watch.
'It's just gone eleven-thirty. Not bad for around two hours' work.'
`Will identification be a problem?'
`Not as great as it might have been. Quite a few of the bodies even have ID in their clothing. Normally, in a high-impact accident you'd expect widespread disfigurement and dismemberment, with bodies burned and personal effects destroyed. Most air accidents turn into human jigsaw puzzles. Not this one, though.'
‘Any ideas as to why?' asked Hardy.
`Well, in this case the plane seems to have been well into its descent when the incident happened, so the seat-belt signs would have been on. That will have had an effect. The people on board seem to have been fairly well disciplined, too. I'm no expert, but from what I've read on the subject, in a situation like this, people often unstrap themselves, so that on impact, they're thrown about, sometimes right through the fuselage, and torn apart.
Not all, but most of the bodies recovered here have still been strapped into their seats.
`Most of all though, I'd say it was the heather. It's so thick up here it seems to have had a certain cushioning effect. When the plane impacted, the fuselage disintegrated, the seats were ripped up and their occupants thrown all around. They were probably all killed instantly at that stage, incidentally. When the bodies landed again, you'd have expected dismemberment to a great extent, but the heather seems to have stopped that.'
Skinner thought of the body which he had found on the hillside and nodded.
`What about burning?' he asked.
`Not much,' said Sarah. 'The explosion of the wing-tanks and the disintegration of the fuselage seem to have happened simultaneously, so apart from a few scorched people in the central area, that hasn't had the effect you'd imagine. What is noteworthy, and the point that will interest you most, is that the greatest burning effect and the greatest damage to the corpses seems to have been found on those recovered from the far end of the valley, and we assume from the front area of the plane.'
`Where the Defence Secretary was sitting,' said Skinner.
She looked at him. Was he on board?'
`Yes. Let's look at the front of the tent.' Rather than walk among the rows of bodies, he led the way out of the marquee and walked along its side to the eastward entrance.
Three body bags, side by side, lay along the end canvas wall. `The flight crew?' Skinner asked.
`Yes. They were brought in about ten minutes ago.'
One of the bags seemed smaller than the others. Skinner knelt beside it and unzipped it from the top. As it opened, he saw the grey, dead, but unmarked face of April, the stewardess who had saved young Mark McGrath's life. Dark, wet hair was plastered against her temples.
I will order an autopsy on her, for sure,' said Sarah. 'As I thought, the two pilots have broken necks and seat-belt crushing injuries, but I'm almost certain that she drowned.'
Alarm flooded Skinner's face in an instant. She read his mind. 'No, Bob. She'd have been dead for quite a time before you found the boy. You can't save the world, you know.'
He shrugged his shoulders. It was a gesture of helpless frustration.
`These bodies here,' he asked, after a few seconds, 'these are the ones with burns?'
`Yes,' she said, 'but not like they've been in a fire.'
`Like they've been in an explosion? Like last year?'
She stared at him. She had been so involved in the gruesome business of certifying and arranging the dead that she had not had time to ask herself the questions which would have been second nature in a more normal situation.
`Yes,' she said softly. 'But not at the seat of a blast. Caught in its heat, but not torn by it.'
And these are the bodies found furthest north?'
`Yes. They were still in their seats, the recovery teams said, in rows. There were none beyond them, and the whole of the northern half of the valley has been cleared. The eighteen bodies in the three front rows are the most mutilated we've recovered' She pulled down the zip of a body bag. Skinner glimpsed a black, scorched woman's face surmounted by frizzled hair.
`We've got to do some more searching,' Skinner said to Hardy, who stood stiff beside him, teeth clenched. 'So far we haven't looked south at all. We've been assuming that the plane's tail marked the beginning of the wreckage. But none of these…' he waved a hand towards the lines of body bags `.. can have been in the front row.
`Why not?'
`Because there are six of them to each row. Wee Mark McGrath was in the cockpit, so we know that one seat was empty when the disaster happened. Major Legge and I did an air search to the north of here and found nothing between the main crash site and the reservoir. And the divers had a look at the cockpit below the water. They reported that it was torn off around the bulkhead, with no seats attached.
`We need to find the centre of the explosion before we can begin to find the cause. Those front-row seats, and what's left of their occupants, must be out there somewhere. I have to get the choppers airborne again.'
Once I've done that, Secretary of State, I think it's time we gave a statement to the press.'