'The tapes run for thirty minutes,' Rayn said, 'and then erase themselves. That's considered long enough to give us all we need to know about an accident situation. Often it's much less, maybe a couple of minutes or even a couple of seconds, like when they hit a mountain in the fog.' Sitting slumped in the tubular-frame chair, he reached for the box again. 'Okay, we'll just give it a whirl.'

While we were listening I peeled off the Red Cross parka; there was no air-conditioning in the small cluttered office. Rattakul sat upright near the window with his hands on his lap, his eyes uneasy; on our way out of the jungle he'd told me he'd survived a major crash three years ago, and still had nightmares.

Altitude 24,000. Airspeed 250 knots.

Then there was some conversation in Thai, and I asked Ryan to give me anything important; he was fluent.

We heard some laughter, and I looked at the American, but his eyes were closed; his head was forward and I thought he might be dozing off.

Heading 347. Medium aircraft at nine o'clock, four miles, five to six thousand feet below.

I looked at the map on the wall. Flight 306 was at that time fifty miles or so northwest of Chathaburi, on an almost direct course for Bangkok.

Airspeed 250. We're descending to There wasn't a crump or anything but Ryan's eyes came open. It had sounded more like a break in the transmission, but now there was muffled noise coming in and he started translating from the Thai as speech broke out.

'That's the captain, telling everyone to stay calm. Says there's been an explosion and he's going to try putting the ship down at the nearest alternate.'

There was a jumble of sounds and then the flight-deck door clicked open and a woman's voice came clearly.

'She says there's a hole blown in the cabin, oxygen masks are mostly in place, there's not too much panic.'

But we were listening to screams now, one of them a child's. Then in accented English - There has been some kind of explosion in the rear section of the cabin. We are losing height, airspeed and directional capability. Please have Chathaburi give me a runway and - There was a break, then more voices in Thai, quick and urgent. The door was still open to the sounds coming from the main cabin. I glanced at Rattakul; he had his eyes shut now, squeezed shut.

Eleven minutes after the explosion the jet's altitude was only two thousand feet. Ryan was sitting upright, peeling the silver paper off a packet of chewing-gum, his eyes on the box.

We are now out of control and starting to spin, a left spin A lot of noise came in and the loudest was the screaming, and I heard Ryan say fuck under his breath before he prodded the stick of gum between his teeth, his eyes never leaving the box.

It is reported that fire has broken out in the rear section and we are sending extinguishers back there, but me - Sound of buffeting now, and a steady roaring in the background, probably the air-rush past the hole in the cabin wall. The screams went on and I thought of the little girl and the nuns and the Australian while the captain started talking again but now in his own tongue.

'Says there isn't anything more he can do,' Ryan told us. There was sweat on his face, on all our faces. 'Says they're just going to -' then he broke off and stared at the box in silence for a while.

I told Rattakul he could go outside if he wanted to, but he didn't answer, maybe didn't take it in.

'Okay, he's - they're praying now, just praying and -' Ryan got out of his chair and stood with his hands dug into his belt, his body in a crouch. 'Just doing that and asking to have messages sent to their mothers, Jesus Christ, it's always -'

Then a lot of sound like drumming, drumming and creaking and buffeting, and a man's voice in Thai.

'He's saying - Jesus, can you beat these guys - he's telling the captain it's been an honour to serve with him ...'

A lot of sound now, and I got up too and stood with my back to the box and began counting for some reason and got to nine before there was a break in the transmission and silence, total silence.

It went on for a bit and then Ryan said in frustration, 'I mean, I just don't know how many times I've had to listen to that bullshit but it's never any different, it still gets to you.' He went across to the coffee percolator and busied himself, making a noise. 'You guys ready for your caffeine shot?'

Rattakul went out now, his face pale, and closed the door quietly, circumspectly.

'The rest of it is,' Ryan said, 'we've started getting some stuff from the aviation toxicology lab.' He looked for some papers on the desk near the silent box. 'Case No. 5023, received by J. Mathieson from Dr Lee Yu, samples; one bag of human bone, one container each of muscle and hair - I'll have them give you copies of all this stuff as it comes in, okay?' He dropped the sheet onto the desk and paced around the office, a cup in his hand. 'Some of it's always misleading, like we get a whole lot of heart-failures on this kind of trip, but often they're not actual failures or even heart-attacks. When people know they don't have a chance any more they produce tremendous tensions, and it just rips at the heart muscle and breaks it down. What I'm saying is, you shoot a guy in the back of the head and the autopsy doesn't show any heart-failure, but these guys on the flight-deck can see it coming and they'll build up so much tension in them that it kills. We've had control columns torn clean out by the roots, and captains with their arms broken by the force they used trying to get the nose of the ship up - it isn't the contraction of the muscles that does that; it's the amount of pre-tension in them. But I'm not an expert on this stuff -they could give you a more accurate picture at the tox. lab. But I doubt you'll find that bomber died of what looked like heart-failure. Jesus, anyone who can board a plane and sit there waiting to get blown up with it had to have pretty good nerves.' He drained his cup and took it over to the sink. 'Do you think his motives were drug-related?" He swung his head up to look at me. 'I'd say the only thing that isn't drug-related in this whole area is the Salvation Army. And you know what that jet was carrying, don't you? There'd been a slip-up somewhere along the line - no one ships poppy-milk from Singapore to Thailand - that's the wrong way around.'

'The name on the passenger list was Burmese.'

'Doesn't have to mean anything. In this area you get people who are Chinese-French-Cambodian, British-Malaysian-Indian, you name it. Shifting populations, adopted refugees, mixed blood from colonial times, that kind of thing, then there's Singapore.' He picked up his flight-bag, cupping a yawn. 'I don't know about you but I'm ready to crash. Jesus, what am I saying ..."

* 'Where are you?'

'Chathaburi Air Force Base, Thailand.'

A tall steel mast flexing in the night-wind, 4 a.m., Cheltenham, six thousand miles away. I'd slept until noon.

'Why did you miss the flight'"

'I was warned off it.'

'Who by?'

'I don't know.' I told him about the voice on the paging phone.

'It could only have been the Thais.'

'No. They'd have stopped the flight and made a search.'

A young lieutenant came into the office, whistling. 'Oh. Excuse me.' He went out again.

'What?' I asked Pepperidge.

'Then you've got friends out there.'

'Not the kind I like.'

'You mean the woman on the phone was involved?'

'It points to it.'

'What are you doing to find out who they are?'

'Everything I can, but that's not much. That stuff you sent,' I said, 'looks clean enough, but you wouldn't be able to pick out a mole. Can't trust the Thais totally. Or anyone. Why did you send it to me through the McCorkadale woman?'

'Because she's impeccable.'

'Spell it out for me.'

'Her father's Sir George McCorkadale, the MP. She was at the Foreign Office for five years and she's been in Singapore for three. The British High Commissioner speaks highly of her. Otherwise,' he said tardy, 'I wouldn't have used her to pass the material.'

'She sent me to a man called Chen, and he tipped me off to take that flight.'

'I've done some homework on him, too. At the moment he's in shock - the co-pilot on that plane was his best friend.'

I didn't say anything. I was thinking.

'Does that help?' he asked me.