Something in the Water(40)

It’s hard to know where to even start to look for these people. These ghost people. Google offers no information on missing flights over the past few days beyond a story about a missing light aircraft in Wyoming. I think I can safely say this is not our guys. Some weekend hobbyist, I suppose, who got carried away, or a crop farmer who made a fatal mistake. I’m sure that mystery will solve itself. Either way, there’s nothing to be found online about our missing plane.

I search for private airports in Russia. There are loads, of course, and I’m guessing if you’ve got money, air traffic control can probably keep you off the grid there, if need be. Perhaps that’s true anywhere.

I’m suddenly reminded of the people we saw in the first-class lounge at Heathrow. The millionaires who didn’t look like millionaires. Why weren’t they flying in their own planes? Or chartering? A quick search reveals that chartering a private jet from London to LAX costs around four thousand pounds for one person on an empty leg flight and thirty thousand for the whole plane. A standard first-class ticket, without using any points, is about nine thousand pounds round trip. If you’re rich enough to fly first-class, why not just hire a jet? Hell, why not buy one?

Maybe they’re not savvy enough. Maybe they’re not rich enough. Maybe the people in that lounge weren’t even paying for their own tickets.

Either way, it all feels very different now. First class doesn’t seem quite so impressive somehow. It all feels a bit…well, silly in comparison.

These ghost people live in a world that, up until now, I had no idea existed. A world I wouldn’t even begin to know how to access.

I’m not sure we’re going to find out anything that these people don’t want us to find out. I mean, let’s face it, I’m not a spy; I don’t have access to databases. Resources…

But then…that does give me an idea.

Maybe Mark would be able to recognize them. He saw them, after all, he saw their faces. Albeit in pretty unnatural circumstances. I try to imagine what he must have seen, those corpses swaying like reeds, bloated in the water. Don’t go there, Erin.

“Mark, if I showed you some pictures, would you be able to recognize any of them? The pilots? Those passengers? The two men and the woman?”

He takes a moment. “Why? Did you come up with something?”

“I’m not sure yet. But do you think you could?” I tap away at the keyboard, trying to find what I’m looking for.

“Yeah. Yeah, I do. I’m pretty sure I’ll never forget what they looked like.” That’s the first time he’s talked about them that way, as if he too is haunted by them. I sometimes forget he feels things too. Does that sound strange? But by that, I mean I sometimes forget he has fears too, weaknesses. I try so hard to suppress mine I forget he must be doing the same. He sits down next to me on the edge of the bed so he can see the screen. I’ve pulled up the Interpol website. I click on the Wanted Persons tab top right. There’re currently 182 wanted persons listed, 182 photographs for Mark to look through. I think it’s fairly obvious what we’re dealing with now. I know two million dollars is fuck all to people who can afford a sixty-million-dollar jet, but I have the feeling this bag isn’t the sum total of their business.

Mark looks up at me. “Seriously?”

“It can’t hurt, can it? Scroll through. Check.” I hand him the laptop and leave him to it.

I grab my phone and go out onto the decking. I want him to check the FBI wanted list next and the British National Crime Agency list after. I find them easily with a quick Google search on my phone. Rows of FBI mugshots load up just like the Interpol site.

They’re a seedy-looking bunch. But then, to be fair, I suppose you could put a picture of Mark’s mother on an FBI watch list and she’d somehow manage to look seedy. I glance back at him through the glass door, his face lit up by the screen’s glow. It can’t hurt to check, can it? Even if he sees nothing, at least we’ve tried. And we will find something eventually or he’ll have to go back down there. We need to find some clue as to who they are, or we’ll just have to go back, leave the money down there, and forget the whole thing.

I suddenly remember the iPhone. It’s still in the gun box in the bag, which I’ve hidden at the top of the wardrobe behind the spare hotel pillows. Right at the back. Mark’s already vetoed using it, even turning it on. He insists we should chuck it. But it could save us so much time if we just used it. Just once.

The battery’s dead. I know this because I’ve already tried pressing the power button. I tried it while he was in the shower earlier. But no power.

If I could just charge it, then we’d know immediately who they were. We could stop searching.

I look at him again through the glass: his face is concentrated, focused. He’s worried about culpability, of course; I know he is. He’s thinking ahead, he’s thinking practically: if something happens, if we have to go to court. If we turn the iPhone on, it’ll be solid evidence that we have the bag. It’ll pick up signal and the account will show when and where. Even if we put it all back underwater, in the plane, under the sea. It’ll show up on some network server somewhere that it was receiving a signal after the crash. It’ll prove someone found the crash, the dead people, all of it, and told no one. Hid the evidence.

But then again it might just all be fine. I might just turn the phone on and find out whose it is and that could be it. I mean, if I make sure it’s on airplane mode, it won’t pick up a signal at all and that should be fine. No mobile phone record. No evidence. I can definitely do this. I can fix this. I know I can.