Final Toll Read online

  “What a hell of a time to grab hold of somebody,” he complained. The voice was hearty. It would plough through complaints and protests with its message of confidence. “They said you were up here, but what...” He turned sideways as the wind blustered. The back-throw from the headlights caught his face for a moment. It was the large, lumpy conglomerate of a boxer. “I’d got this girl,” he went on. “We’d been to a do. I’d about got it made. We reached my place in the square, and this copper had to go and step in...I could’ve killed him. Ten more minutes...Okay. So what’ve we got? Where’s the patient?”

  Marson stepped to one side. This was a character who’d have no patience for build-ups. He allowed him to see for himself.

  The doctor came up beside him and stared a long, long time at the bridge. Slowly he raised his arms and used both hands to shade his eyes. Marson moved his bag to safety, and stood waiting.

  “He’s down there?” No heartiness now.

  “Where else could he be? We haven’t seen any movement.”

  “But you can’t expect...” The doctor’s voice sounded hoarse.

  “I’ve got binoculars, if you want to try them.”

  The gesture was an angry dismissal, and he turned with it, throwing his head back. “Oh, this is great! What am I supposed to do? Clamber down that chain, bag in one hand and stethoscope in the other? Peek in at the window, say: ‘You all right, old chap?’ and toss him a couple of aspirins?”

  It was a brave effort. He nearly achieved the correct tone of dismissive flippancy, but there was a sense of breathlessness, and his eyes were hunting, anywhere but to meet Marson’s.

  Marson said quickly: “It wasn’t what I had in mind.”

  “Then what?”

  “We’ve got to know if he could be alive.”

  “How the hell...” Then he moved restlessly, shoulders forward, the bulking advance of a prop forward, searching the opposition for weaknesses. “I can’t tell you anything from here,” he said at last, his voice in control.

  “As I’d guessed.”

  “So what...?”

  “I don’t know. I’m telling you the truth, now. I can’t see any way, at this stage, to get anybody to him.”

  “Then there’s nothing I can do.”

  “But it’d be useful if you’d hang around until I’m sure.”

  The doctor was eyeing him with uncertainty. There had been no dismissal of the ridiculous idea that he would, in some terrifying way, be transported onto that bridge. “Then I’ll wait in my car.”

  “Could be a long wait.” No definite plan had yet been decided. “I’m Colin Marson,” he said. “Chief Engineer and site boss with one of the motorway teams.”

  Then the doctor smiled and his eyes disappeared in their pouches. He stuck out his hand. “Chris Keene.”

  “We’ll bring him to you,” Marson promised, with nothing to back it up. “I hope to lift him off there and drop him at your feet. There’s a crane coming. A big one. And there’s just one slim chance...”

  “Have I got time to get home and change?” Keene asked. “Just in case.”

  Marson smiled at the childlike eagerness. “We’ll be at least an hour setting up.”

  Keene turned, and began to walk down to his car.

  Marson shouted after him: “Make that an hour and a half.”

  That was in case the girl had waited. Marson turned back to the bridge. It was still there.

  He was alone and free from possibility of interruption. A plan to lift the driver clean off the bridge had already begun to form, and the details were coming to him one by one, filling in the gaps in their own short time. But there remained one crucial factor for him to assess. He reached inside the Land-rover for his rubber-cased torch. The point where he was standing was a few yards to the left of the squat masonry pile over which Josiah Prescott had his chain running. Twenty feet farther back it was anchored into the naked rock. Superintendent Grey had spoken of the danger of flooding if the bridge and wagon fell into the river, but Grey couldn’t appreciate the full danger. Marson crouched and directed the torch onto the rock surface.

  There was no grass layer to soften the rock on the peaks. Here it was grey, slimy with the rain, its corrugations running in line with the river. Marson glanced sideways, at the chain and its low support, and searched with the torch for what he had feared. He found it.

  The crack was small, and might not have been noticed in the ridged surface. Marson put his finger on it, concentrating, and felt it move. Again he glanced sideways at the chain, which consisted of huge iron links, eighteen inches long and a foot across. It moved restlessly on its support, groaning. But the chain was safe; it was the cliff that was in danger.

  Three

  Chris Keene stumbled down from the cliff, his feet soggy in their thin pumps, his brain in turmoil. Make no mistake about it, he told himself, there had been a suggestion that he would have to go down to that wagon. He had been temporarily released, to go away and contemplate what horrors Marson might have in mind for him.

  He found his Maestro, which was now surrounded by police cars and other vehicles. He couldn’t see the fire engine anywhere.

  In the square of Lower Prescott he had his surgery, with a couple of rooms over it. It was not much of a practice, but he didn’t really need one. Not for the money; his aunt had been generous in her Will. But his father had started it, and a chap had to do something to justify his existence, he supposed. He would not have called himself a dedicated doctor, unaware that his patients had a different opinion. He had permission to leave his car round the rear of the Crown, and walking back from there, deep into the hush of the night, he could hear the rush of the river across the end of High Street, a couple of hundred yards away. Back there, on the cliffs, it had sounded angry, but at town level it was positively menacing. He paused to listen, worried, and noticed the light on in Frank Allison’s office opposite. Then, as he stared at it, it went out.

  He waited, and as Allison closed his street door he called out: “Hey, Frank.”

  Allison looked startled, then saw who it was and walked across the square. It was not really a square, just that the shops were set back a few more yards around there.

  “You’re up late,” Allison said. It was no more than a comment.

  “You too,” Chris said, and it was a criticism.

  Allison grimaced, and shook his head. He was carrying an umbrella but seemed to have forgotten to open it. Typical. Frank Allison was as tall as the doctor, and about half his weight, and Chris had been watching him fade away over the past two years, watching with professional and personal concern. Allison was around ten years older than Chris, but they had been close friends for a long time. Now Allison looked haggard and drawn.

  “I’ve been drafting a petition,” he said, quietly proud.

  “Not another. You’re too late, Frank.”

  “We’ve got to fight this, and go on fighting,” Allison said, in his quiet, aggravated tone. “We can’t let the motorway come through.”

  His eyes were burning with the internal flame of the fanatic. Chris tried to make light of the obsession. “We’ve done it all,” he reminded him. “For two years or more. Appeals and Committees and Referees. It’s coming, Frank. Hell, it’s closer than you seem to realise.”

  “Fight on...”

  “But would it be such a bad thing? Taken all told — would it really? Look, come up for a minute and have a drink.”

  “No,” Allison said. “I’ll get on home.”

  “I’ll drive you.” He knew Allison walked the mile north along the river road.

  “I’d rather walk. There’re things to think about. I’m basing this petition on the historical significance of Prescott’s Bridge. It’s a new approach. You know they intend to take it down...”

  “Frank, it’s coming down. Right now.”

  It was as good as striking him. This business had got into Frank’s veins, that was the trouble. Like an injected drug. It had all started c
asually enough, years back. It seemed a lifetime ago now, when the motorway had been just a suggestion, and Frank had been elected by the locals to represent them and their livelihoods, just because he was their only solicitor. And because he’d do it free. But it had got hold of him. He didn’t donate just his fees; he gave all of himself, flesh and bones and stubborn soul. He had made his name — and his money — drawing up contracts for small businesses, tightening and exploiting loop-holes beyond the question of honour. But he gave up everything for the community. It became a full-time job, and he was forced to live off his savings. Trips here and there to dig out expert witnesses, briefing counsel, the lot. He beavered away, and the appeal was beaten every way he turned. But he refused to give in. Because it had become a fetish, Chris reckoned, because it was his life. And now, when the motorway was only a few miles away, when nothing could deflect it short of an atom bomb, he had to think up the wild idea of having the bridge declared an historical monument.

  “It’s what?” Allison demanded, his face limp, looking stupid for a second.

  “There’s been an accident,” Chris told him. “The bridge is wrecked, whatever happens.”

  “I’ll have to go and see.”

  “You can’t do anything.”

  “All the same, I’ll have to see.”

  Allison couldn’t keep still, all jittery. There was a nervous breakdown coming on, or Chris’d tear up his degree. “Come inside a minute, Frank. You need a night’s rest. I’ll give you something.”

  “No, Chris,” Allison said. “It’s very thoughtful of you, but you know I can’t do that. I’ll get off.”

  Chris tried a last appeal, because Allison was turning away. “Then at least let me run you up to the bridge.”

  Allison paused, looking back, smiling that smile Chris had always loved to see, but which now made him feel empty.

  “You look a mess, Chris,” he said solemnly. “Go and get a bath, then you go to bed.”

  Chris watched him walk away, wondering what he could shout that would fetch him back. Allison’s umbrella was still furled. He was walking with tired, hunched shoulders, his feet dragging. Allison was the embodiment of the community. He was heading for the bridge, and Chris wondered whether he’d even notice the level of the racing river, which threatened them far more than the motorway.

  He nearly trod on the sodden cat. He was always around. Seemed to think he lived there. Chris would’ve booted him off, if he’d owned any boots. It followed Chris up the stairs, and didn’t smell sweet. He’d been catting again. Chris shut him in the kitchen with his dinner, and went to change, then forgot to throw him out again when he ran downstairs in old jeans and a parka, and his cleated hill-climbers. The place would stink to high heaven when he returned.

  He couldn’t think why he was in such a hurry to get back to the cliff. Well, of course he’d given it some thought since the first sight. Who wouldn’t? There had never been anything he hadn’t been able to face. Then they’d stuck the bridge under his nose, and the suggestion was there that somehow he’d get down there, or be got there. He didn’t understand what had happened to him then, except in a theoretical sense. It wasn’t something solid and physical he could go at, that was the point. It was just danger. Cold danger. He had been afraid, and for a moment his mind had gone into a tangle.

  It was a new experience to him. He was not even certain he remembered it correctly, and now was anxious to get another look at the bridge, to check on his original reactions.

  So he raced the journey back, and very nearly drove into the back of their crane.

  Such a huge thing. It blocked the road, and was doing about twenty at the time. He had to drift along in its diesel fumes for almost a mile. It had two cabs, one for driving it and one for operating the boom, which was a squat retracted bulk along its top. That Marson character obviously had something special in mind, Chris thought, his confidence blooming.

  `We’ll bring him to you,’ Marson had said. Dump him at his feet. Well, that sounded all right, and clearly this crane was the instrument they’d be using.

  So he followed it patiently. Nothing was going to happen until it got there.

  There seemed to be a lot more cars around when he arrived. The news had got about. In the dead of night. Marvellous, he thought. He parked off the road and walked on to the cliff top.

  They had run the crane right along the cutting, and where the cliffs rose each side there was only a few feet of clearance for its huge wheels. They had left ten feet of roadway in front of it, and there were a couple of swivel spotlights above its cab, aimed at the bridge. On that end patch of roadway there was a small group, waving their arms around in brisk discussion, and chasing shadows into the cone of floodlit rain. The wind howled and hissed across the end gap, and they were standing only three feet from the absolute edge. Chris had to scramble over the bodywork of the crane in order to hear what was going on.

  He had met Superintendent Grey once or twice before, having done some work for the police. Grey he knew as a solid, reliable man, a bit grim perhaps, humourless and inflexible. Grey was saying something about the driver stranded on the bridge. Chris hung back.

  “...now know that he pinched the thing down south. Obviously, he cut through here to evade our cars...”

  They seemed to take no notice of Grey. Standing beside Marson was a taller man with grey in his hair and a grave face, who was nodding and nodding, but saying nothing. Marson called him Jeff. Jeff was wearing one of those slickers that ship’s captains use, and what must have been thigh-length boots, otherwise the rain would have poured down into his socks. Between them, looking from one face to the other, all perky attention, was a smaller man in his late twenties, with a plastic red-and-white cap perched on his curly mass of hair. He had a knobbly face and small hands, and a wide mouth.

  “Tony,” Marson said to him, “that cab’s around seventy feet from here. What’s your lift at that radius?”

  “Six tons,” said Tony.

  “There’s not going to be much to spare. Look: the wind — the thing’s swaying. How’ll the boom handle, out there over the bridge? Always remembering that you can’t use your outriggers.”

  Tony grimaced. He knew what he could and couldn’t do. “I can manage.”

  “But I mean—”

  “He can manage,” Jeff cut in flatly. “What’d you got in mind?”

  Marson jerked his head towards the bridge. “We can’t lift the whole lorry with the Kato — we’d need a much bigger machine for that. But the cab on its own can’t weigh much more than a few tons. Those big wagon units — you can’t see, because of all the parapet stuff against the front, but some of them have cabs that hinge forward. Access to engine, or some such thing. Maybe this one’s like that. The seats hinge up with the shell. So...I thought...” He glanced around the faces, uncertain for one moment, then he plunged on. “This is what we do. Get down to that bridge — gently, Tony, very gently you understand —”

  “Will do.” Tony nodded, his eyes on the bridge.

  “— with a gas cutting torch and some bottles, and cut the slabs of parapet away, then if there are any hinges, cut them out, get a chain on the cab, and lift the whole lot out.”

  There was a short silence. Grey tried again to make his point. “He stole the thing. It’s got a load of twenty tons of whisky.”

  “Looks tricky,” said Jeff stolidly. Grey might as well not have been there.

  “Of course it’s tricky. But what else is there?” Marson waited stubbornly for the silence to end.

  “There’s nothing else,” said Jeff in a gruff voice.

  The impression was that he knew that tone, and resented it.

  “All right then. So you lay that on, Jeff. The small gas bottles, a cutting torch. Some way of slinging the stuff over my shoulders—”

  “You’re not going?” said Jeff.

  “Who else?” Marson demanded. “I can’t tell anybody—”

  “Then I’m coming with you.”<
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  Marson opened his mouth, then paused. One of the crane’s lights edged on to his face. His lips were drawn back. Then he spoke quietly. “I’m capable of using a flame cutter, Jeff.”

  “I know you are. But I can do it better. Quicker. There can’t be much time to spare.”

  “And no weight to spare at all.”

  “That wagon must weigh thirty tons. One extra man’s not—”

  “I was going to get there with my foot in the hook. Two’d need some sort of a rig, a seat, something like that.”

  Then Jeff smiled, almost sadly. “I’ve got Cropper rigging it right now.”

  Marson knew it was sensible. He plunged his hands into his pockets. A gust of rain flinched his head sideways.

  “Very well,” he conceded. “Let’s get on with it. Where’s Cropper?”

  “He’s coming.”

  Chris could hear somebody scrambling over the side of the vehicle behind him. He moved out of the way, and thus into the light.

  “Ah, here you are, Chris,” said Marson, cheerfully enough. But he was uneasy. “This is Jeff Fisher, the site foreman. And Tony...” He groped for the surname. Chris covered it by murmuring how-d’you-dos.

  “I’ve met the super,” he said.

  “You here, Keene?” asked Grey.

  “They’re going to get him out for me,” Chris told him. Hopefully, that was.

  Jeff said: “You got everything, Cropper? Good man.”

  Cropper was a squat, round hunk of muscle with a dull-looking face. He peered from one to the other uncertainly. He was about to speak, but Marson cut in, tension catching his voice.

  “Come on, Cropper, let’s have it rigged.”

  It was a signal for Tony to dive for his operating cab. Maybe he was simply getting clear of what might have been an explosion from Cropper. There certainly didn’t seem to be much comprehension in his expression. He was a bulky ape of a man, who wouldn’t possess the subtlety to recognise Marson’s tension. For a moment he looked confused, then Tony had the boom projecting, almost vertically, and was lowering the hook. It fell with a clatter at Cropper’s feet — a gentle hint — before it lifted again to eye level.