Blind Angel of Wrath (The Blind Sleuth Mysteries 2)

12 Ulysses' homecoming

When a pilot like Richard Clayton refused to take off from Heathrow with his VC10, you knew better than to overrule him. You had the aircraft checked just as he asked, until you found the life-threatening defect that the man had not so much observed or detected, as sniffed out. He had been a bomber pilot during the war, and after that a real pioneer of British intercontinental civil aviation. He was experienced through and through, knew all the globe-spanning routes, and he had been the first one at BOAC to fly the latest flagship of the British aeronautical industry. The sleek Vickers VC10 with its four jet engines bunched together at the rear, just under the elegantly slanting T-tail, was a real beauty and a pleasure to fly.

"First you found fault with your regular kite," Richard's superior, sitting behind his desk, complained, "and when I gave you a replacement, you found fault with that too! You're impossible, Ricky, you're costing us tons of money..."

"I know, Dicky, I know. But it can't be helped; I want to land in one piece, and so do the customers. I mean, we don't have a single parachute on a kite nowadays, can you credit that?"

"Yeah, when you come to think of it, Rick: if they had told us back then, when we were flying bombers, that one day people would pay good money to fly without a chute, we would have laughed at such a silly notion..."

"Exactly! It's a shame that you stopped flying, by the way, but if you want to climb up the corporate ladder, you have to stay on the ground, I guess... You remember flying, Dicky? It's what the birds do!"

"Yeah-yeah! Get out of my office, Ricky! Stay away! I don't want to see your smug face again until the end of the week!"

And so, unexpectedly, Richard Clayton was back in London for a couple of days. He had recently moved to Sidney, but he hadn't told Daisy yet, so he decided to go and see the old girl. Maybe she would let him stay. Maybe they would have a little tryst for old times' sake, as they sometimes did. "There's still sexual chemistry galore there," the middle-aged pilot muttered to himself as he rode into town in the back of a cab.

But when he arrived at the flat in Tufnell Park, the door was locked and Daisy was not answering. Normally it was still Richard's privilege to just knock, push the door open and cry out, "Hello, it's me!" So it appeared that Daisy was out. It wasn't one of her workdays at the practice, but she could have gone to the shops or something. At any rate: very annoying. This could take all afternoon. A blind girl like dear Daisy needed a lot more time for her daily chores than sighted people; she tended to lose track; sometimes she forgot to check her tactile watch and would turn up at the shops long after closing time, firmly convinced that it was much earlier... "What do I do now?" Richard thought.

Just then the door behind him on the landing opened. "Thank God it's you, Richard! I knew I'd heard someone at Daisy's door..."

"Oh hello, Mrs Em! How do you do? I'm looking for Daisy..."

"I'm worried sick about the girl! She disappeared a week ago."

"Disappeared? Good Lord!"

"Please come in, dear Ricky, please come in. I'm at my wits' end and you must help me."

"Of course!"

The old lady filled in the younger man on what had happened: that Daisy didn't come back from a night at the cinema with Margery: "I found her phone number in the book—Margery's—, but she has no idea what could have happened." She told him that Daisy would never go away for a week without giving her the keys so that she could empty the mailbox and water the plants...

"So all this is highly unusual," Richard exclaimed, "what could possibly be going on, have you any idea?"

"Well yes, as a matter of fact I have. Let me show you something..."