The coroner said that a note had been found. The note was passed to the coroner, who asked if Ronald wanted to keep it. Ronald said yes he would.

“Read it out then!” shouted Cody.

She thought she heard the sound of a piece of paper being unfolded and passed around.

“Read it out!”

Beautiful words. She thought she heard a few little sighs, a few little murmurs of grief.

“Read the damn thing!”

No one said anything though. Cody thumped the steering wheel.

Cody tossed the tapes out the window in frustration.

The magnetic tape unspooled and the wind carried it upward and westward and draped it over some Oxfordshire trees.

210

Emma Heron looked up at every pilot. None of them were Graham Johansson. They all looked too contented . . .

209

Miles opened the Wellington Arms for the evening.

The doorman arrived promptly. Dressed smartly.

“Some help you were last night,” Miles complained.

“What?”

“I said some help. There was chaos in there, where were you?”

“Watching.”

“Well, next time, don’t watch, assist.”

“There’ll be a next time, will there?”

“Not if I can help it.”

“I think there should be a next time. I think there should be a next time each week.”

“Comedy nights are over. The Wellington Arms is to be a blood-free venue. Be advised.”

The doorman grunted. Perhaps he could pitch a comedy idea to the Pig and Parrot.

208

. . . and Graham Johansson wasn’t contented. She knew that. He’d told her that he had been thinking about death.

Emma said good for you.

Johansson said that that wasn’t the reaction he had been expecting.

Emma asked what reaction had he been expecting?

He said shocked concern, like everyone else.

Emma said that by the end of August, nineteen forty-five, approximately four thousand Japanese soldiers had crashed their planes.

He said he wasn’t planning on crashing his . . .

Emma said her favorite kamikaze letter said, “It is an honor to be able to give my life in defense of beautiful and lofty things.”

Graham had said there was nothing beautiful or lofty in what he . . .

Emma said death could be about tradition. About spirituality.

He agreed but—

She said there were places where death wasn’t seen in this way and told him that the Wellington Arms was one such place.

He said, a pub?

She said a plane overshooting the runway would hit the Wellington Arms squarely in the face.

He said she’d missed his point.

Emma said she wanted to die in a tragedy. You were remembered better. There was a vanity in death, wasn’t there?

Johansson had said he wasn’t prepared to put the lives of—

She said the whole plane would, at some level, want to die.

He said he doubted that.

She said all the people on the plane would be going to the same destination, they’d go to the same bars, they’d visit the same clubs, the same museums, the same restaurants, they’d eat the same food, they’d sleep with the same people. They all went because they all wanted the same thing. It happened all the time.