"Frosty patches on the hangar floor, mysterious oil leaks—under hydraulic pipes that were drained more than twenty years ago when it was taken out of service—nothing really unusual, seeing where it came from, if you follow my drift. But then there was the business with Marcia and the instrument panel, and I thought it might be a good idea to call you chappies directly."

Clunk. A domino slips into place in my mental map. This enquiry didn't come through the RAF, this came direct from Hastings. "You've worked with us before."

"Not exactly . . ." He pauses beside an anonymous door, and extracts a fat key chain: "But I was with the Squadron, on ground crew. Once you're in, you never really leave." Click. "They like to stay in touch."

What squadron? I wonder, annoyed but afraid to display my ignorance. "Tell me about Marcia," I prompt, as he opens the door to reveal another prefab tunnel between buildings, this one windowless and stifling.

"Volunteer airframe conservator Marcia Moran. Age twenty-nine, completed her short service enlistment, then signed up with BAE Systems maintenance division when the defense review came down—she's solid. Was solid."

He took a deep breath. "She should never have been allowed to work on XR727's cockpit instruments. We had them round the back, under padlock and warded by a class two repulsion geas. She shouldn't even have been able to see them. She'd have twigged straight off that it wasn't a normal F.3 integrated flight system and weapons control board. She wasn't qualified to work on it."

He falls silent as he trudges along the passage.

"What happened to her?" I repeat.

Hastings shook his head. "You'd have to ask the doctors. I'm not sure they know; they say she might be safe to release next month, but they said that last month too."

Another domino. "XR727 was one of the, uh, Squadron's planes. Yes?"

"They didn't brief you?" He doesn't sound surprised. "In here, Mr. Houghton." I don't bother to correct him as he shoves open a side door and steps into an echoing, gloomy cavern of a room. "See for yourself."

The room we're in resembles an aircraft hangar the way a mausoleum in a graveyard resembles a bedroom. It's dimly lit, daylight filtering through high windows, and the light reveals the mummified skeletons of half a dozen fast jets littering the oil-stained concrete floor. Their severed limbs are stacked in jigs and frames, their viscera embalmed in the canopic jars of parts bins—patiently awaiting resurrection, or at least reassembly into the semblance of life. There's junk everywhere, toolboxes, rodent control traps, workbenches piled high with parts. Closest to the door hulks the fuselage of a Lightning. Its tail is missing, as are its outboard wing segments and the conical spike of its nose radar, but it's substantially intact. Close up, the size of the thing is apparent: a pit bull to the chihuahua of an old Russian MiG—squat, brutal, built for raw speed. It's big, too—the wing root high enough overhead to walk under without stooping.