‘The pilot wouldn’t have seen the tractor until after he’d touched down,’ Alam went on. ‘This airstrip doesn’t have runway lights that can be switched on remotely from the plane. If it had, they might have given him a slightly better chance of seeing the tractor sooner and taking evasive action.’

Flowers frowned. ‘Pilots can turn on runway lights?’

Alam nodded. ‘Not all airports are big enough to have control towers, but some do have runway lights. The pilot tunes in to a particular radio frequency that allows him to switch them on. This pilot would have approached slowly because of the short runway and lack of lighting. When he touched down, he’d have lost too much speed to get the plane back in the air, but he’d still be travelling too fast to avoid a collision. Everything would have happened in seconds.’

Silence fell over the group. Flowers stared at the grey tabletop and tried to imagine the pilot’s panic when he realised the runway was blocked. ‘Where are the keys to the tractor kept?’ he asked after a while.

Hoff turned and pointed to a desk barely visible under multiple stacks of paper. ‘In the desk drawer, over there. It’s still locked, and the shed wasn’t broken into.’ The skin on Hoff’s left cheek was raw, as though he’d been singed by the fire.

‘Who else has access to this place, and to the tractor key?’ Flowers asked.

‘Besides me, there are two other pilots,’ said Hoff, before reciting their names and phone numbers.

Flowers nodded and wrote down the details. ‘Who was the last person to use the tractor?’

‘Our regular maintenance man, Orville Parish. He’s been cutting the grass here for over ten years. You wouldn’t find a more responsible person.’

Flowers made a note of the name. ‘Is the key in the drawer the only one you have?’ he asked.

‘Yes,’ Hoff confirmed. ‘As I said, the tractor was parked in its usual spot when I left the airport around five.’

Flowers wrote down hot-wired? ‘Has anything unusual happened lately, anyone hanging around?’

‘Nope. It’s been pretty quiet.’

‘What about kids?’ To Flowers’ way of thinking, joy-riding on a tractor at night might be something kids would do.

‘Haven’t seen any. The local kids know better, but we have a lot of tourists in town now with the ski season under way.’

‘Any CCTV cameras?’ Flowers hadn’t sighted any, but it was always good to check. Plus he’d be reporting all this to Ryder, so he needed to be thorough.

Hoff shook his head again. ‘No, we don’t have cameras here.’

‘What’s this airport mainly used for?’ Flowers asked with a frown, gazing out at the short runway.