Night Frost

by R D Wingfield

  ‘You’re doing fine!’

  The voice seemed to come from a long way down. He risked a glance and saw the top of the man’s helmet floating in space below his feet. With an effort he forced himself on.

  There was one frightening section which required him to swap from one ladder to another, holding with one hand to the first and reaching out for the next and swinging across. But not far now, thank God. He must be near the top. The teeth-setting grinding and squealing of the jib, like a giant fingernail scratching down a blackboard, screamed in his ears.

  The ladder stopped and his sweat-blurred eyes were level with a wooden platform. His hands seemed fused to the ladder, but he tore them free and flung himself forward on to the gantry where he rolled across to huddle up tight to the side of the cab, keeping as far from the edge as possible.

  ‘Are you all right?’ A faint voice calling from a hundred miles down.

  ‘I’m fine,’ he yelled, not feeling it. A quick fumble through his pocket for a cigarette, turning his back to the hurricane force wind which, at this height, was making everything shake violently. Far away to his left were the winking dots of light from the Lego town of Denton. His radio squawked.

  ‘Inspector!’ It was Gilmore from the smug safety of the firm ground. ‘Gauld’s round the other side of the gantry to you. Just seems to be standing there.’

  ‘Not much else the poor sod can do,’ he answered. He’d almost forgotten about Gauld, the whole purpose of this nightmare climb. Another squawk from the radio. Gilmore back again. ‘Mr Mullett is here, Inspector. He’d like a word.’ Mullett! Trust Hornrim Harry to be in at the kill. All ready to take the credit should the operation prove a success, and to dissociate himself from it in the more likely event of failure. The thought of realizing a long-held ambition to defecate on Mullett from a great height flashed across his mind as he waited.

  ‘What’s the position, Inspector?’

  ‘I’m just about to go round and talk him down.’

  ‘Good. Let’s tie this up neat and tidy. Bring him down safely, and do it by the book.’

  Stupid sod. How the hell do you get a knife-wielding mass-murderer down from a 200-foot crane by the book? He stuck the radio back in his mac and dragged himself to his feet. The wooden platform creaked and gave slightly under his weight, then the whole structure lurched and the stars danced in the sky as the wind pounded the jib. Through the cracks between the planks he could see straight down to the swaying, yawning black of the bottomless drop. One last drag of his cigarette before he flipped it away. The wind caught it and hurled it over the side where it nose-dived down to oblivion, spitting red sparks.

  He inched round to the other side, keeping tightly to the solid reassurance of the driver’s cab. And there was Gauld, his back to the rail, hair streaming, legs braced against the force of the pummelling wind. ‘Keep away from me!’ In his upraised hand something bright reflected the twinkling blood gobs of the warning light at the end of the jib.

  Frost leant against the cab and wearily shook his head. ‘It’s all over, son. You’ve got nowhere to go.’ He waited for a response, eyeing the man warily. If Gauld decided to put up a fight, there wasn’t much he could do. There was hardly room for a punch-up on this barely 2-foot-wide platform. They’d probably both end up over the edge, splashing blood, brains and guts all over Mullett’s patent leather shoes.

  Gauld moved forward, the arm with the knife still raised, a manic grin clicking on and off. Then his face crumpled and tears streamed. ‘Why didn’t you leave me alone?’

  Shit, thought Frost. Don’t make me start feeling sorry for you, you murdering bastard. He kept his eye firmly on the blade and edged forward a fraction. Gauld, the guard rail pressing into his back, couldn’t retreat. He could only move forward.

  ‘The knife!’ said Frost firmly, optimistically holding out his hand.

  Again the flickering, manic grin. Gauld scrubbed at his face with the back of his hand to wipe off the tears. His eyes glinted slyly and the knife-hand shook. ‘You want the knife? You want the bloody knife?’ He held it out. ‘Here it is. Take it.’

  ‘Don’t try anything,’ warned Frost, ‘or I’ll push you over the bloody edge.’

  Gauld raised the knife higher, then, as Frost steeled himself, flung it far out into the night where it spun and glinted before vanishing into the void. ‘It was only a penknife. You couldn’t cut bloody butter with it.’

  A cold trickle of relief, but Frost moved warily towards Gauld who looked as if he still had a few aces hidden up his sleeve. Tugging out his radio he let the firemen know it was safe for them to come up and give him a hand.

  ‘You’ve got him?’ cried Mullett’s excited voice. ‘What’s the position?’

  ‘Later,’ snapped Frost. ‘I’ll tell you bloody later.’ He clicked off the set and felt for the handcuffs, still watching Gauld like a hawk.

  ‘I panicked,’ said Gauld, suddenly. ‘I had the knife in my hand and I panicked.’ He glared at Frost. ‘It was your fault. Why didn’t you leave me alone?’

  Frost frowned. What the hell was the man talking about? ‘My fault?’ He now had the handcuffs and reached for Gauld’s arm.

  ‘Of course it was your flaming fault,’ yelled Gauld, snatching his arm away. ‘You hounded me. You frightened the shit out of my mother. That’s why it happened.’

  Frost’s mind raced, trying to make sense of all this, but then the wind suddenly wailed and hit the crane jib with a tremendous punch, wrenching the gantry round until the anchor chains braked it with a shuddering jerk. Frost was flung to the floor of the gantry, the stars zip-panning across the sky. And through the creakings and squeals and resounding clangs, the sound of a man screaming.

  In an instant he was up on his feet, trying to regain his balance on the shaking platform. Gauld. Where was Gauld? The guard rail where he had been standing was broken and a section dangled down. Still that screaming. And yells from below as firemen clambered up the ladder.

  ‘Help me!’

  Frost leaned over the edge. A spotlight from the fire appliance on the ground blinded him. He shielded his eyes with his arm. Someone on the ground saw what was happening and yelled for the beam to be directed downwards. It slid down and locked on to a screaming, pleading Gauld who was clinging by his fingertips to the protruding edge of a girder just below the platform, feet kicking wildly in a futile effort to find a foothold before his fingers gave way.

  ‘Hold on!’ roared Frost. A stupid thing to say. What else could the poor bastard do? He flung himself down on the gantry, kicking into a gap in the planking to wedge in the toes of his shoes. With the platform cutting into his stomach he leant out over the edge and reached down.

  Below him, the white, upturned face of the dangling man who was whimpering with terror. It didn’t seem possible that Frost could reach him. The thudding of firemen’s feet on the ladder over on the far side was getting louder. He prayed that they would hurry. Way, way below, tiny dolls held out a circular white canvas, only part of which protruded from an overhanging section of the scaffolding. A tiny, inadequate, very missable target.

  He groped and stretched. The bitter, cutting wind stung his cheeks, roared pain into his scar, and gradually sucked the feeling from his bare hands. He gritted his teeth and stretched further. Something. Cold flesh. Icy cold knuckles gripping raw-edged metal scaffolding.

  ‘Take my hand!’

  Gauld moaned and gave a feeble shake of the head. ‘I can’t.’

  ‘Don’t sod me about,’ shouted Frost. ‘Take the bloody thing!’

  Gauld’s hand fluttered, then snatched. Frost grabbed at wet, blood-slippery fingers, cut by the saw-edge of the metal. It was not a secure grip, but the first fireman was now up on the platform and could take over. As long as Gauld didn’t release his other hand, Frost could sustain him. ‘Wait,’ he yelled down.

  But Gauld wasn’t going to wait. He wanted to be pulled to safety. He let go of the girder and snatched up at Frost, but he co
uldn’t reach and his body started to swing and his fingertips just brushed the hand Frost was straining out to him and his life depended on Frost holding on to his cut and bleeding fingers.

  Frost could feel him going. He gripped tighter, but this squeezed more blood from Gauld’s torn hand. Slippery blood. The fireman flung himself alongside Frost, but even as he did so, Gauld was screaming. Frost, free arm flailing, desperately tried to find something to hold. Gauld’s hair raced through his fingers and the white terrified face grew smaller, smaller, smaller, still screaming. He screamed as he fell. He screamed as he hit and bounced off the protruding girder which broke his back. He screamed as he smashed into the ground. After he was dead, after his heart stopped pumping blood out of his broken body, his screams still rang and rang round and round the building site.

  Friday night shift (2)

  The ambulance took away the pulp in a body bag and the firemen hosed away the mess. Frost, white and shaken, greedily sucked at a cigarette and was hardly listening to what Mullett was saying.

  ‘You’re absolutely certain Gauld was the Ripper?’

  Frost took one last gloomy drag then chucked the cigarette away. Up until half an hour ago he was positive, but now the shrill, insistent nagging voice of doubt kept raising the terrible possibility that he might have hounded an innocent man to his death. ‘Yes, I’m certain,’ he said without conviction.

  ‘Did he admit it?’ persisted Mullett. ‘We’re a little short of solid proof and it would make things neat and tidy if I could tell the Chief Constable that we got a verbal confession.’

  Admit it? It was those last words of Gauld that triggered the doubts. ‘It was your fault,’ Gauld had said. ‘You hounded me . . . that’s why it happened.’ That sounded more like an apology for stabbing Burton, not an admission that he was the Ripper. ‘No, he didn’t admit anything.’ He searched for his cigarette packet.

  Mullett gave a deep sigh. Couldn’t Frost take the smallest hint? Gauld was dead. No-one would know whether he had actually admitted guilt or not, and if Frost was certain Gauld was the Ripper, then where was the harm in a little white lie? ‘Are you sure he admitted nothing?’ he asked, slowly and deliberately, giving the inspector the chance to amend his answer.

  ‘Of course I’m bloody sure,’ snapped Frost, turning his back on his Divisional Commander.

  Mullett’s lips tightened. But he wouldn’t create a scene here. Just wait until he got Frost back to the office. ‘By the way,’ he hurled at Frost’s back, ‘the hospital called. Burton is quite comfortable . . . all he required was a few stitches. His wounds were quite superficial.’

  ‘Good,’ grunted Frost, his mind whirling, his doubts multiplying. Superficial! None of the Ripper’s other victims had superficial wounds. That poor cow with her head hanging off – that wasn’t superficial. The canker of doubt gnawed and chewed and got bigger and bigger. But it had to be Gauld. It just had to be. Only vaguely was he aware of Gilmore answering a radio call in the car, then hastening across to Mullett and murmuring something in his ear.

  ‘What?’ Mullett couldn’t believe what he had been told. He listened, open-mouthed, as Gilmore repeated it, then spun round to Frost, his whole body shaking with uncontrollable anger. ‘You were so damn sure!! While you were chasing Gauld with his Boy Scout’s penknife, the real Ripper has struck again.’

  Frost went cold. Icy, shivery cold. He could only gape at Mullett. He looked pleadingly at Gilmore, willing him to say it was all a mistake.

  ‘Elderly lady,’ said Gilmore. ‘Slashed to ribbons. They’ve rushed her to Denton Hospital.’

  Hospital! Then she was still alive. He almost knocked Mullett over as he dashed for the car.

  ‘Come here, Frost,’ choked Mullett. ‘I haven’t finished with you yet . . .’ Doors slammed and the car roared off. ‘My office!’ screamed Mullett to the dwindling red lights. ‘I want you in my office . . . now!!’ Panting with fury, he gasped for breath, then was aware of someone at his side. A stocky figure in a dark blue anorak poking a miniature cassette recorder at him.

  ‘Mr Mullett, I’m from the Denton Echo. Is it true you’ve caught the Ripper?’

  Hunched over the steering wheel, dragging savagely at a cigarette he didn’t want, he went over the night’s events again and again. Could he have saved Gauld if he had tried that much harder to reach out and grab him? Was it his stubborn certainty that Gauld was the Ripper that stopped him from trying harder? And now, it seemed, Gauld was innocent.

  He lurched to one side as the car spun into the main hospital access road. Out of the corner of his eye he was vaguely aware of an ambulance parked outside the mortuary and the stretchered body-bag being carried in.

  The car had barely stopped when Frost was running up the steps and barging through the swing doors. A uniformed constable seated on a wooden bench by the night porter’s cubicle snatched the cigarette from his mouth. ‘She’s in Intensive Care, Inspector.’

  His running footsteps clattered and echoed along the empty corridors. The night sister in Intensive Care looked up angrily as they barged into her domain and was completely unimpressed with the warrant card Frost flashed at her.

  ‘One minute, that’s all I’m giving you.’ She led him across to a bed where liquid-filled plastic bags dripped through tubes into the veins of a barely breathing woman who was swathed in white bandages through which blood seeped. The nurse adjusted the flow of one of the drips and gave the plastic bag a squeeze.

  ‘Will she live?’ asked Frost.

  The nurse shrugged. ‘Cut throat . . . slashed abdomen. She’s barely alive now. She regained consciousness for a couple of minutes, then drifted off in a coma again.’

  ‘Did she say anything?’

  ‘She tried to. It was all garbled. Something about her son. She said he did it.’

  Her son? Frost pushed the nurse to one side and bent close to look at the face. Shrivelled and sunken with her dentures removed, she looked a hundred years older than when he last saw her.

  It was the mother. It was Mrs Gauld.

  Her eyelids quivered, then fluttered open to reveal watery colourless eyes. She didn’t seem surprised to see the blurred face of Frost hovering over her. Her lips moved and her voice was so weak he had to press his ear close to her mouth and feel the hot rasp of her breath on his cheek. ‘I told him it had to stop or I’d tell the police. That made him angry. He always had a temper.’ With a strain of effort that made the nurse look worried, she lifted her head from the pillow and stared pleadingly at Frost. ‘He didn’t mean it. Not his own mother.’

  ‘Of course not,’ whispered Frost.

  ‘You won’t hurt him?’

  ‘No,’ said Frost. ‘Of course we won’t hurt him.’

  She managed the ghost of a smile as her head dropped back.

  He sat with her until she died.

  ‘So it was Gauld?’ Mullett’s mind was racing. Frost had dropped him in the mire yet again. The phone on his desk was still warm from his call to the Chief Constable, explaining that Frost had screwed up and Gauld wasn’t the Ripper. Having dumped the blame for the debacle on Frost, it was going to be difficult to claw back any credit for himself.

  ‘Yes, Super,’ said Frost, dragging the visitor’s chair across the carpet and flopping wearily into it. ‘Those photographs of the victims I showed his mother apparently did the trick. She told him she was going to shop him, so he knifed her. Then he panicked and went on the run.’

  ‘I see.’ Mullett pointedly fanned away the smoke which drifted across from the cigarette Frost was puffing at without permission. ‘Well, somehow or other you seem to have muddled through to a correct result on this one.’

  ‘Thank you, Super.’ He pushed himself out of the chair and brushed away the cigarette ash that was all over the front of his coat. It snowed down all over the blue Wilton carpet. Making no attempt to cover his mouth, he gave a loud yawn and moved towards the door. ‘If there’s nothing else, I’m going home.’

  Mullet
t looked down at the long list of casualties from the pub fight. The men returning from sick leave would not make up the deficiency and the manning level would be worse than before. Damn Frost. Why did he have to be saddled with such an incompetent? His eyes glinted malevolently. He’d almost forgotten. He’d poked through Frost’s in-tray earlier that evening and, to his fury, had found the inventory return, completely untouched. ‘Oh.’ He tried to keep his voice casual. ‘Before you go, Frost, I’d like you to drop in the completed inventory return. I’ve promised County they’ll get it tonight.’

  ‘Sure, Super,’ muttered Frost. He pulled the door shut behind him and felt his shoulders slump. How the hell was he going to get out of this one?

  Back in his office, watched by Bill Wells, he retrieved the bulky wad of blank forms from the depths of his in-tray and thumbed through them despairingly. ‘The bastard,’ he moaned. ‘He knows damn well I haven’t done it.’

  ‘But you told him you’d finished them,’ said Wells.

  ‘He knew I was lying,’ said Frost. His eyes skimmed round the room. ‘Two desks, two chairs and a filing cabinet.’ He flipped through the pages and scribbled in the figures.

  ‘You’ve missed out the hat-stand, the typewriter, the filing trays, the telephones, the stationery stocks. You’ll never do it, Jack.’

  The cigarette packet was generously proffered. ‘But if you helped me, Bill.’

  ‘If I did, it would cost more than a lousy cigarette. There’s no way you’re going to get it done tonight, Jack, even if we all pitched in. It used to take Mr Allen the best part of a week with three people to help him.’

  Frost admitted defeat. He dragged his scarf from the hat-stand and wound it round his neck. ‘I’ll give the bastard the blank form and tell him to stick it up his arse. He can only sack me. Then I’m going home. I think I’ve got a dose of flu coming on. With luck, it’ll kill me.’