Death Crash Horror

The day had not started well at the Airport. The roads were gridlocked again and it was raining. Another day I might have been grateful for a little wettening of the air, damping down the dust, but today it seemed uncalled for.

I wasn’t bothered with the traffic as I rode in on the train, but the rain played with my perception and I half hallucinated and half daydreamed as I nodded in time with the railway. A wooden bench morphed into a horse and ran alongside my carriage. I was sure it was looking for a way onto the train, perhaps a way out of the rain. We passed Box Hill. I knew it to be that particular hill as an earnest fellow traveller had pointed it out to me. He could not explain the origin of the name. It was not square, nor were its sides particularly planiform. The horse tormented me for miles.

Once I got in to work I settled down a little. My co-workers were busy trying to burst the miasmic atmosphere. This office was an island, no, a bright ship on a grey sea. It was a shame I had to put ashore and traverse the strange country that is the Airport.

I was having problems with the Engineering Leadership Team. It was their job to check and issue all Permits to Work and they were being particularly picky today. I thought maybe the weather was getting everyone else down too, even making the Permiteers jumpy.

David had been an ELT Manager for as long as Santa Claus had been in business and, like St Nick, loved the detail in anything. His gift was in his ability to pick out the subtlest problem in any Application for a Permit to Work. Compliance was his watchword. We would wait for the onset of rigor mortis at times waiting for his approval. It made no difference what our programme said. Eventually we built the predicted time frame into our programmes and priced in his possible delay as a costed project risk.

“I’m sorry but I cannot issue a key to that door to you.” David looked up at me over the top of his varifocals.

“But David, I have all the paperwork in place and signed off for access into the Motor Room, have I not?”

“That is correct,”

“Then why can I not have access?”

“I can issue the key to the Motor Room if that’s what you want.”

“Yes. That is what I want.”

“But I cannot issue the key to the Plant Room through which you would have to pass to get to the Motor Room.”

“Why not?”

“Because you do not have the correct compliance qualifications regarding the live plant in the Plant Room.”

“But no-one will be working on anything in the Plant Room.”

“Not with these papers.”

I mulled over the conversation with the Guardian of Permissions as I began the walk back to the railway station that evening. He firmly believed that he was protecting us from our urgent selves. As I made my way through a planted area on a so-called informal path I heard a very urgent call.

“Let me be! Let me be! It’s my life!”

A woman strained against the lobster-like grip of a security guard. He held her with one hand clasped about her right upper arm. In his other hand he was trying to dial a ‘phone with one massive clumsy thumb. Traffic thundered past on the Airport Approach Road.

“Hey Boss,” The guard called me over, “can you find out where the Police are please? This lady wants to kill herself under a bus.”

“Let me be!” The woman made a mighty effort to break free as a fifty-seater coach stormed around the corner. She made the guard’s point for him. He jerked her backwards and let go of his ‘phone. It fell incredibly slowly, turning end over end before it exploded on the kerb. Its screen lit up for a moment and then died as the battery dropped onto the tarmac and skidded into the road.

I took my ‘phone out of my jacket pocket and dialled the emergency number.

I had taken a call earlier, while I was with the ELT Manager to confirm what I thought I knew.

“The maintenance engineer for the Motor Room walks through the Plant Room every day and he does not have this mysterious qualification you speak of.”

“He does not need one as he comes under the MIF.”

“The what?”

“The Maintenance Integration Framework.”

“And this Project does not because?”

“You are replacing a Capital Asset that has to be integrated into the Maintenance Framework following completion.”

“So I can work in the Motor Room only if I can access it some other way than through the Plant Room?”

“That’s right.”

“Is there any other access?”

“No.”

“So what do I have to do?”

“You need to book onto a course.”

“Life’s too short.”

I knew I should not have said it. We both knew what I was referring to. It had only been a week since the accident. A woman had been killed when a bus crushed her little city car into a barrier on the main roundabout right outside the terminal building.

She had just dropped a friend off at the Airport, driven her the first hundred miles of her holiday journey and not made it through the first junction on her homeward trip. Who knew whether her friend was aware? In the bustle and stress of check in and airside and boarding gates and “please switch off your mobile ‘phone until we are airborne”?

I imagined their fond farewells, the gratitude for a favour done, or a debt repaid, instructions to have a safe journey and a great holiday.

My colleagues and I watched from our fourth floor office as the air ambulance ascended into a clear blue sky above the roundabout and sped away from the scene at a terrible speed. Below us the terminal building was filling up with arriving passengers. No one was able to leave except on foot. Some did. The roundabout was closed and the Inter-Terminal Transit had been shut down due to the grandstand view it afforded of the accident site.

I walked through the concourse on my way to another meeting in another office. A low-key murmur of mild discontent filled the air like a mist. There were queues for the lifts, the escalators, the toilets and the stalled Transit. I took the stairs to the ground floor and slipped quietly through the crowd.

Two weeks ago they had had to close the runway. Flights were delayed or cancelled and the terminal had filled with the quietly bored and the exhausted and desperate. The body of a West African man had fallen from the wheel housing of a ‘plane as it had landed. He had frozen to death at more than thirty thousand feet.

Hope you have a good holiday. Hope you get on well. Hope your plan for a new life in the UK works out. Hope you do well. Hope to see you soon. Send a postcard. Send for you. Thank you.

“I can give you the application form for the course. Once it has been filled in and countersigned by your line manager I will be able to check availability for you.”

“Can you not give me an indication of how long?”

“No. Sorry.”

“How long is the course?”

“Just three days, usually Monday to Wednesday, but sometimes Tuesday to Thursday.”

“Not Wednesday to Friday?”

“Would you prefer that?”

“Not especially.”

“You can do it over three weeks?”

“Not really,”

“Let me be!”

The woman strained and fought against her captor, determined to shed her skin. She dug into her own pocket and pulled out a ‘phone. She flipped it open and stabbed at the numbers. It flashed as it dialled through and before it connected she was screaming at it.

I was talking to the Police. They assured me they were on their way.

“Let me be!”

The woman tried to jump off the kerb again. Her hair was wild and there was a little foam at the corners of her mouth. I could see tears starting in her eyes.

“Let me be,” I said.

Time to Make a Name for Yourself!

Sold! Some would say down the river. Others would say about time. Time Gentlemen Please! Time to make a name for yourself chasing favour with the new owners. Show them how effective you are. Show how you add real value to the way things work at the Airport. Show them how indispensible you are, what an essential cog in the vast machine!

So much scurrying and currying, posturing and posing, the concourses have become catwalks. No one wants to be the next in line, not since the big boys got the chop. Everyone is whispering 'who's next'?

Who cares? Take me! Make me forge a new life for myself beyond the citadel of regulation and self made rules and deathly process.

Give me the key. I've got a permit.

All you have to do is sign it.