Invasion by Dc Alden Page B

door slammed below and again she wondered who might be down there. There were six flats in her block and the gay couple opposite her were the only ones who owned a car. They were presently on holiday somewhere in the Greek Islands, so it couldn’t be them. The other five flats were all single occupancy and none of those people had a vehicle either. Except one.
    Yes, maybe it was Alex. Kirsty finished drying her hair and hurried back to the balcony in her bathrobe. Now, he was worth being woken up for. He was a bit older than Kirsty, mid-thirties maybe, but handsome with grey flecks in his dark hair. But she’d always gone for older men, anyway. Not too old, of course, but something with a little bit of mileage on the clock, as her friend Annie would say. She’d seen Alex many times since he’d moved in a few months ago, but she really hadn’t spoken to him that much. He worked odd hours and that made it difficult to ‘accidentally’ bump into him. Still, he always flashed her a smile and exchanged a few pleasantries when they did meet and, as far as Kirsty knew, he hadn’t brought another girl home since he’d been there. Maybe there was hope after all.
    She slipped onto the balcony and lay back on the sun lounger, keen to play it cool. Didn’t want to look too eager. She’d glance over the railing, a subtle cough to attract his attention, a wave maybe. Hi, Alex. Nice night, huh? Fancy a drink later?
    It was very quiet down there. What was he doing? If she moved now she’d probably scrape the lounger, then it would look like she was spying on him. She didn’t want to look foolish or desperate; but then again, he might leave in the next few seconds and she may not get another opportunity for a while. It was then she noted the approaching whine of aircraft engines. That was nothing new for Kirsty, or anyone else who lived in West London, residing as they did under a major flight path into Heathrow. But the noise of the aircraft would give her cover, a chance to stand up and have a peek below. She’d give it a minute, when the noise was louder, and chance it then.
    Clever girl, she smiled.
     
    ‘Roger Speedbird T woN inerS even, you are cleared to land, runway one-one-four.’ Captain Lewis Ainsworth sat a little straighter in the cockpit seat of his double-decked Airbus A380 and gently pulled back on his central control thrusters, easing the 385-tonne giant back several knots.
    Another few minutes and he’d be on the ground, thank God. It had been a long trip ; London to LA and then on to Hong Kong for a two-night layover. From Hong Kong, he’d flown the twin-decked super-liner via Moscow, skirting Arabian airspace, as was the norm these days. It meant flying a roundabout route, crawling north-eastwards up the spine of the Himalayas and across the western Siberian plain into Russian Federation airspace.
    Unusually, Moscow air traffic control then routed them north again, much to Ainsworth’s annoyance. The quickest route would be due east into Polish, then German, airspace, but the Russians had other ideas. After repeated requests for information, a Russian Air Traffic Controller had informed him that there had been a security incident near the Polish border involving some kind of surface-to-air weapon and all civilian traffic was being re-routed away from that particular sector. Fair enough, he thought. If there was one thing that could give a pilot the jitters it was the thought of some nut brandishing anti-aircraft weapons around. Best keep well out of their way. The Russians had passed the Airbus into Finnish airspace, whose controllers very kindly vectored them southwest to London. By now, Ainsworth had had enough of this particular trip and was looking forward to getting the aircraft on the ground.
    He was due a little time off. He would take Jessie away for a few days, he decided, down to the cottage in Devon, or maybe up to Scotland. A trip to the Highlands, like last year. They’d have a chat about