The Tin Kicker by Ian Fraser

Author:Ian Fraser [Fraser, Ian]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Published: 2019-12-30T22:00:00+00:00

— 39 —

A Perfect Match

Alex parked in the usual spot and stepped outside. He felt a spot of rain on his hand as he locked the car, and another on his face. Looking skywards, he saw cumulonimbus clouds rolling in, and a brief gust of a chill, northerly breeze whipped at his hair. That one flurry of cold, arctic air acted like a death knell to the summer.

He was right about the fault. He knew he was. He just had to prove it. Somewhere overhead he could hear a plane going over, but it was invisible behind the cloud layer.

'Boeing 777,' Les Thompson read his thoughts as he climbed the steps outside the DERA building to join him. The sound of the jet diminished, to be replaced by the perpetual splashing of the fountain. 'Around twenty thousand feet, I'd say, with two,' he frowned as he listened, 'Rolls Royce Trent 800s, if I'm not mistaken.'

Alex shook his head in bewilderment. 'Morning, Les. I don't know how you do it.'

'When you've been listening to engines as long as I have, you begin to recognise some of the little quirks of these things.'

'I can imagine. How did you get on with the simulator tests after I left on Saturday?'

'Pretty much what you'd expect. We tried various approaches, but there was nothing revealed that we didn't already know, or suspect.'

Alex nodded. Sometimes he felt that they relied too heavily on the evidence of the flight recorders. They were the Holy Grail at a crash site, the small boxes of tricks that would be the answer to everyone's problems. Sometimes, though, they just could not answer the big questions.

'What's next, then?' he asked.

'Correlate the data with 4401's Flight Data Recorder, then begin work on the graphic reconstruction. That'll be a long job. Lots of work involved, there,' Thompson effortlessly dropped the hint that he did not wish to be rushed.

'Then I won't keep you any longer,' Alex smiled, and left the scientist to head for the analysis lab, while he proceeded to his own office.

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