Final Toll Page 6

  But she hadn’t. Not got him, by any means, and she knew it. So when she’d finished that bit she was shaking, and Den knew it’d been all bluff. He had an instinct for that sort of thing. In a second he was at her, both hands clawing at her arms. He banged her down on a chair, standing over her, then with one hand he grabbed her chin, so that she couldn’t help but look at him, and his other fist hovering on the edge of her sight was an emphatic threat. Her shadow of advantage had gone. She didn’t dare to take it any further because Johnny was still far from her, and there wasn’t any way he was going to be able to tell her where they’d got her Harry.

  In effect, it all came down to Harry. He’d been a baby — not much more — when Den came to the farm, but it wasn’t very long before she realised she didn’t want Harry anywhere near Den. It seemed as though Den couldn’t stand the sight of him, probably because he was Johnny’s, and Johnny wasn’t around any more. She was frightened for her child. So when Johnny was sent down, she asked Johnny’s parents to take Harry for a while. They were only too happy to have him. They would have taken Laura, too, but she couldn’t leave her dad alone on the farm with Den. The Parfitts seemed to understand at first. They kept in touch, sent her photographs; sometimes she heard Harry over the phone. But after the first year, things weren’t the same. Their letters became shorter. They were less about Harry and more about Johnny. Once or twice, they even mentioned Den. After a while, she hadn’t heard from them for over a month. Then one of her letters came back marked ‘not known at this address’.

  Laura thought she understood what had happened. They had decided she wasn’t a fit person to have charge of their son’s child. That could be just the way they’d think about it, her living with Den, that sort of thing. Den said that he knew where the Parfitts had gone, that he knew people who knew, but he wouldn’t tell her, not until he was ready. She was in no position to doubt him — she had too little else. But one thing was certain: if Den ever contacted the Parfitts, he would certainly not have told them that Laura would not have him near her bedroom.

  At that time she knew she would never get rid of him. With Johnny turned against her by his parents —or so she imagined — she might never see Harry again, which made her absolutely dependent on Den. And Den never revealed a thing, leering at her, using it to bolster his demands. If not for that, she would have killed him. Yes, she really thought she would.

  But he knew his hold on her was as strong as ever. She’d made the mistake of faltering, right at the end, and he pounced on it.

  “Now you’re gonna tell me,” he said. “The truth. Johnny comin’ to you! Load of rubbish. He was coming to me, with that blasted whisky. To me. Here. But we don’t want the police here. If they’d got to him, they’d be here right now. So out with it! Come on!”

  There wasn’t any point in not telling him. He could go and look for himself.

  “He’s stuck on the bridge.” She had to shake her chin free. “They don’t know if they can get to him. They don’t know if they can get him off, and if they do, he could be dead.” As she was saying it, she felt a deep, sad loss, like something dragging out of her. But the loss was Harry. And for Johnny...oh God, she couldn’t feel anything.

  “Hah!” Den was pleased with that, his tone making her flesh crawl, but the way he pranced about the room meant his nerves were on edge. It was all too close to him, even though the police couldn’t know how close. “So you’d better pray, Laura. Pray good and hard that Johnny dies.”

  She was horrified. “I can’t do that.” She stared at him. “That’s terrible. You shouldn’t even say such a wicked thing...”

  “‘Cause if he don’t, if he seems like saying one bloody word to anybody, then I’ll have to do something about it.”

  Even then she didn’t understand what he meant. She was still trying to sort out exactly what he had in mind when her father wandered into the room, scratching his head and saying:

  “Ain’t you two been to bed?”

  Seven

  Chris realised that there was no point in trying to get a couple of hours’ sleep. He went home only because he didn’t want to watch what they were rigging for him, on the same principle as going missing while the plumber repairs a burst water-pipe. He ran a bath and got something to eat, and sprayed the kitchen with deodorant, then left the cat asleep on the top of the fridge while he went to have a look at the river, no farther away than the bottom end of the street.

  It was still raining. The water was a noisy surge, almost at his toes, not visible apart from catches of light on its broken surface. The menacing suck and grumble of it drove him away. Looking down-river he could see the concentration of light where they were working on the cliffs, with odd little spurts of blue flame that he couldn’t identify.

  It seemed to him that Marson could well be wrong when he said the falling bridge and wagon would have little effect on the river. The water seemed to be backing and thrusting as it narrowed for the pass between the cliffs. It didn’t seem that it could absorb any further opposition.

  He picked up a blanket and some more equipment from his surgery and drove back to the bridge. Laura worried him. She’d left a number of unanswered questions in his mind, and he’d promised to look her up again — as of course he would have to. She was nowhere to be seen when he got back to the activity on the cliffs. No sign of her car. It was still completely dark. It might have been six o’clock, but time didn’t seem to have any relevance. He walked up the slope to the concentration of light, which was on the eastern cliff, and there found Frank Allison, wet, cold and untidy, and his usual pig-headed self.

  “You’re not supposed to look at the flashes,” Allison told him, having used his usual methods of nosing out what was afoot. “It’s the ultra-violet, or something.”

  The blue flashes Chris had seen were the welding strikes where they were putting together the sturdy tripods to support Marson’s main cables, which were to come later. They had a portable generator throbbing away.

  “Go home, Frank,” he tried.

  “No.” He drew closer, nudging Chris’s shoulder. “I’ve seen the cracks.”

  Chis surveyed the top of the cliffs. It was serrated with a whole surface of indentations, in line with the river. “It’s nothing but cracks, Frank.”

  “You can shine a torch down some of them,” Allison said tensely. “I’ve done it. Chris, d’you think he knows what he’s doing?”

  Just as he was about to answer, Chris had just noticed what Marson was preparing for him. His throat was suddenly tight. He thumped Allison on the shoulder to cover his feelings. “Of course he does,” he said. “He’s a civil engineer. All the qualifications.”

  But he was asking himself what those might be. What looked like a line of thread disappeared into the far shadows, and dropped across in a shallow loop. This end, it began to look like a clothes line, and at his feet it became a half-inch cable. They had brought it fifty feet back from the edge, and wrapped it round the drum of a hand winch, which they’d pegged to the rock. Nobody was near the handle. A small, minor and puny comma of metal was locked into the ratchet. Chris went forward, drawn by the horror of it. Marson was standing with his feet apart near the edge, a loudhailer in his hand, and was belting out instructions across the river. A pinpoint of light answered with a double wink.

  “Does that mean we’re ready?” asked Grey, who was standing at his shoulder. “Where the hell’s that bloody doctor?”

  “He’s here,” Chris said, his voice hard, looking for an excuse to walk away.

  Marson turned. His smile was a little strained. “Ah, there you are,” he said brightly. “We’ve had a bit of luck.” He gestured. “The wind’s dropped,” he explained, because there wasn’t anything lucky that Chris could see.

  The bridge was barely moving. From the cliff top there was little noise, just the odd shudder and whine. The skin was tight over Chris’s face.

  They had used the same four-by-one plank, the same ropes, the only diffe
rence being that they had hooked them over a pulley on the cable, and had a nylon rope from the pulley, both ways across the river. This end, three men were hanging on to it. He could only hope that an equal number were over there in the pitch black emptiness he was due to head for.

  “I’m glad about the wind,” Chris said. “Would somebody please explain what I’m supposed to do?”

  He was expected to sit on it, that was what. Sit passively, while they hauled him to and fro, and lifted or lowered the cable with the hand winch, thus holding him in reasonable proximity to his objective — that broken window on the driver’s side.

  Sensing his lack of enthusiasm, Marson said: “We’ll rig it better, later on, so that we can operate it entirely from this side.”

  Later on! Chris felt a nerve jerk in his cheek. There was nothing he could get at, nothing he could stick a fist into or put a shoulder to. And to what end? For one second his anger at its futility overrode everything else.

  “You’re damned crazy!” he said angrily. “What can I do from that thing? How can I get at the poor bastard, for Christ’s sake?”

  Marson looked shocked. He’d been so proud of it. “It’s the best...in the circumstances...”

  “No!” Chris shot out his hands, dismissing it. “The whole thing’s ridiculous.”

  “But you could try, Chris. Give it a try, huh?”

  It was so unlike Marson that it caught Chris at a disadvantage. Not once had he heard an appeal from Marson, but now he looked whipped, and somehow it became Chris who was being ridiculous with his protests. So what alternative did that leave him?

  He hefted his bag. “Do you swear to me that your cable will stand up?”

  “It’d take a bus,” Marson said, suddenly confident again. “Now look, you just sit on it, sideways, bag beside you. I’ll be here with the loudhailer. I’ll watch every move. Do exactly what I tell you — exactly. And Chris — this is damned important — don’t put any weight on the vehicle. Not one bit of weight.”

  Talking steadily, keeping Chris’s mind off it, he got him seated on the chairlift, his feet still dragging on the cliff surface. Chris was aware of a rumble of comment, and realised that a fair contingent of locals had gathered just behind the group of coppers, who were supposed to be keeping them back. He searched for a face in the shadows, and they shot him out over the river.

  He had wanted to prepare himself, or something like that; at least manage to wave to the TV cameras. There wasn’t time. He plunged. The board swung and twisted beneath him. It caught his breath, or he might have shouted out.

  The vehicle seemed endless yards down. Chris was certain he was about to plunge into the river. Its roar reached for him, and he was jolted to a halt. He sat swaying and clearing his eyes of rain, and there before him, and above him because it was leaning right over the chair, was the driver’s side of the towing unit. He was too low. His heart was pounding. He clutched a rope, and waited.

  The steel platform of the bridge protruded a foot beyond the points where the hanger bars had been fixed. Most of them had snapped off in that stretch of the bridge, some short, some longer. The huge driving wheels were pressed out beyond the hanger stubs, and seemed to be flexing, back and forth, only a couple of inches from the ultimate edge. He stared at the cab door. There was just himself and the cab. That seemed to help. The door was buckled but unbroken, though just in front the body was pierced by what appeared to be a piece from the parapet. It had snapped off just on the outside. He looked at it a long while before the significance penetrated his brain. It was at the point where the foot pedals would be.

  All this time the loudhailer was blaring across the river. If any of the instructions were for Chris, he certainly didn’t hear them. The chair swayed and began to lift. The shattered window lowered itself to his eyes. The edges of broken glass were jagged. As there seemed to be nothing he could do sitting there, he stood up, sliding his left hand up the rope.

  The lean of the cab fooled him. Sitting, he’d been well clear of it. Standing, he could almost lean against it — or it against him. The broken rim of glass along the door-sill was opposite his stomach. He was swaying. The board was insecure beneath his feet. He just had to find some support, and gripped the vertical edge of the window with his right hand. Then he did what he could.

  “Johnny,” he called, “I’m a doctor. Can you hear me?”

  There was no answer, or if there was he lost it in all that groaning of metal and the roar of the river. He was cold, and almost in despair. He had never felt so useless. Almost in anger, he hooked the fingers of his left hand in the door handle. The loudhailer was clattering away, out near the middle of the bridge the noise was intense. He stopped trying to hear, and concentrated. He reached inside with his right shoulder, then his head. By straining his back and leg muscles, he managed to put no weight on anything but the door handle.

  There was a little light. Johnny’s head was very low and to Chris’s left. He groped, touching flesh. It was cool and moist. He tried for the jugular, and found it. Faint and slow heartbeat. Shock? Exposure? He snatched at the blanket by his side and forced it in through the window, clumsily covering Johnny’s chest. He felt helpless, and terribly, horribly aware of that shattered steel through the side of the cab. Morphine? It was completely unprofessional, when he couldn’t even check the respiration. But he’d have to have it.

  “Johnny! Can you hear me?”

  There was not a movement beneath his fingers. If Johnny had been conscious, Chris might have got him to take down a couple of tablets. But now it’d have to be by syringe. And how the hell was he going to do that with one hand?

  He had always considered that he did a reasonable job as a doctor, but this was outside all reason. He was hashing it, he knew, being too aware of his own danger, rushing and fumbling, and cursing himself because he was falling short of his own standards.

  On his knees on the board, he managed to get the bag open, broke a pack of ampoules, tore the cover from a sterilised syringe. God, that was hygienic, with the rainwater streaming from his chin onto his hands! He gave it half a grain, poised the syringe, and heaved himself to his feet again. The chair plunged, and he waited, barely breathing, for it to settle. His knees were shaking. He straightened, high on his toes, leg muscles on fire. The blasted board beneath his feet wouldn’t stay still.

  He had to get both elbows inside. The shards of glass were painful beneath his arms. Left shoulder low, he reached for a wrist. There had to be a wrist, for heaven’s sake. He found it. Both shoulders were inside now. He was trying for intravenous. The vein came up. He was dully aware of the loudhailer, forcing itself into the edges of his consciousness. There was no time for finesse. Needle in, plunger down, slowly and steadily...straight into the vein...

  Johnny groaned and stirred. “You’re all right, Johnny,” Chris said. “It’s not going to hurt any more.”

  That was a prayer, for both of them. He tossed the syringe aside. He found he couldn’t see or feel the board at all by that time, and he had to kick for it, wriggling himself out, toes reaching for the bag, fearful of pushing it over the side.

  The loudhailer cracked out at him: “Get down out of there, you damned fool!”

  He blinked down for the board, blinded by sweat and rain. His hands were on the shards of glass, but he couldn’t feel anything. He contacted the bag with his toe, allowed himself to slip down a couple of inches, then had a foot down, both feet, and slowly, shaking with exhaustion and sheer, bloody terror, he crouched down, one foot each side of the bag, his head lowered, and sick with the swing of the chair.

  For a while he fumbled to open the bag. His hands seemed useless. It was necessary to keep telling himself that he’d got to get antibiotic into Johnny. But he couldn’t make any definite or positive movement towards accomplishing it, or even concentrate on what was required.

  “We’re bringing you in.”

  He realised it had been blasting at him for some time, and raised his head. The
re was nothing but a glare of light, like a whole fleet of cars roaring down on him. He tried to shout: No! Give me two minutes, he wanted to cry out. Give me time to get my nerve back.

  But he didn’t get time. Suddenly the chair fell beneath him as though the cable had snapped. He remembered thinking that the bastard had promised him it would take a bus, then he was plunging down towards the water.

  Eight

  Marson knew there was nothing wrong with the chairlift. In the time they’d had, it was something of an achievement. Not his. Jeff had supervised it, using two teams of half a dozen men in each.

  They had used the Kato with its fly-boom on to ferry them across, and to send over the end of the half-inch cable. Marson went across with his foot in the hook, like the others, and after the episode on the bridge it had seemed quite tame. He wanted to show them where to anchor the cable and where to locate the tripod, but Jeff didn’t seem in a good mood. Impatient with him, somehow. So Marson had left them to it, though watching hadn’t done his nerves any good at all

  By that time they’d brought most of the caravans along, and the rest of their equipment was on its way. Peterson had got the mobile kitchen going, so Marson went along for a cup of tea, thinking he might have a boosting chat with some of the chaps who were there, but they weren’t responsive, and soon drifted away.

  Marson had been eight years at head office, feeding figures into the computer and running off photocopies of bridge designs. He’d been bored with it, and getting nowhere. As Sievewright said, in one of his rare mellow moods, Marson was heading up a blind alley. He needed field experience. So when a JCB rolled onto Big Jim Corrigan and killed him, Marson applied for the job, and got it. He was the only applicant. Everybody else knew you couldn’t pick up with Big Jim’s team, everybody except Marson.