What Cropper had rigged was a four-foot board, a foot across, with holes in its corners, through which he’d fastened ropes. He’d looped them over the hook. The small platform swung two feet from the road surface. Chris stared at it, and swallowed.
They took their positions, side by side, and Cropper loaded the gas bottles between them. These were connected by rubber pipes to the cutting torch. Jeff signalled. Marson was gripping the rope with white knuckles. Chris was beginning to realise that Marson was a desk man, a theoretician. This would be agony for him, but he couldn’t back away from it.
Then, with a smoothness and speed that was startling, the flimsy platform lifted, and at once was extended outwards. The wind caught it. For a moment a sheet of rain obscured the two men, then they were shooting over the bridge, tiny and lost, and completely vulnerable. Lord, Chris was glad it wasn’t him.
Four
Marson had to convince himself he’d made the correct decision. They were the best combination, Jeff and himself. Jeff could handle any piece of equipment on the site, and Marson was the one to consider the stresses and opposing forces, and make decisions on his calculations.
He hadn’t reckoned on the abrupt surge into the full force of the wind. The boom projected them rapidly, and the chair bucked and swayed so that for a moment he thought they were going to lose the torch and the gas bottles. But Jeff was calm, and sat with one hand securing the equipment and the other to one of the ropes, while Marson grabbed frantically for both of them his side. Then the upheaval ceased when they were over the vehicle, the rain was on their backs, and he could spare time to assess the situation.
From vertically above, the wagon occupied one side of the bridge, its off-side, and was thrust into a shallow V. The driver’s side of the cab seemed to be hanging over the shattered edge of the bridge’s platform. The whole thing was swaying, though not to their own rhythm, and now that they were closer the creaking of the chain was quite distinct. Marson couldn’t see what was preventing the wagon from plunging into the river. He said: “Signal him down.”
Because the bridge surface at its centre was well below its original level, there was quite a way to go. Tony fed out more cable, and they dropped slowly, but with the extra length there was more influence from the wind. To Marson it seemed that they could be dashed to pieces at any moment.
“He’s not going to do it,” he said.
Jeff grunted. “Tony knows.”
Tony was making small sideways movements with the boom, playing them like a trout fly for the gentle let-down. Marson held his breath, staring down one moment at the cab roof, the next on what was left visible of the platform surface. Then a hand seemed to catch them, steady the chair, and drop it smoothly to the roadway. They plunged away from it, and stood with straddled legs.
Marson saw at once that it was worse than he’d anticipated. With the fracturing of the cast-iron parapet along each side, the platform had completely lost its rigidity. Looking down its length he could see it writhing as though in pain, cracks opening and closing and the surface layer of tarmac tossed up in great, heaving flakes. The front cab unit had its rear wheels thrust down into the lowest point of the V, nose up, and was over at an angle of fifteen degrees, leaning away from them. Piled against it were slabs of the wrecked parapet, up over the cab, though some miracle had preserved the windscreen. Beyond the vehicle, the support hangers had whole sections already broken, and those remaining were quivering with strain.
They had to bend sideways to prevent themselves from sliding down against the cab.
“Where do we start?” shouted Jeff, his face strained.
Then Marson realised the intensity of the noise. It was a constant jumbled howl of tortured steel, of scraping and whining, and came from all round them.
“I’m going to take a look in the cab,” he called back.
Jeff nodded, braced his foot against the front wheel, and helped Marson up. The cab was leaning away from him, and he was spread-eagled across the passenger’s door. He tried to open it, but it was warped, and locked solid. He hefted himself higher. He took his rubber torch from his pocket and held it out.
The driver had slipped down into the far corner, hunched low down against his door, his head just below the shattered side screen. He had dark, massed hair, with a strange white streak through it. Marson couldn’t be sure, but he thought he caught a glimpse of the left eye. One finger seemed to move on the driver’s left knee. Marson realised it was pointing, so followed the direction downwards with the torch’s ray.
Way down amongst the pedals there was a tangle of metal. Marson couldn’t see how much of it involved the right foot, but certainly it was trapped. Mangled and trapped. He shouted something, though the driver would never have heard, then slid down and leaned panting against the cab.
“Get him out, Jeff, for Christ’s sake!” he shouted. Beneath their feet the whole thing was flexing. Every inch of the metal cried out to the changing stresses. Sweat began to trickle down Marson’s spine.
Jeff had his head down, trying to catch a light to his cutting torch. He struck match after match before the orange light flamed in a cloud of black smoke, then he turned on the oxygen and the cone became blue and pointed. Marson couldn’t hear its roar.
“Here!” he shouted. “There and there.” Pointing out places to cut.
This was the first part of the operation, to cut the slabs of parapet from in front of the nose of the cab. Jeff was standing with his right leg bent, bracing down with his left, something of Marson’s frantic urgency seeming to have communicated. He worked fast. Marson indicated the most effective positions, the thinnest, the most vulnerable. His brain was racing as he computed stresses and strains. As the sections came free, he threw them out over the river, releasing the hot metal quickly.
They were working with intense concentration. Marson no longer called the directions, merely stabbed his finger — there, there. But the change was noticeable. They both paused at the same instant, heads raised.
All around them the clamour had altered, had intensified. It came from no particular point, but flooded in on them. Abruptly, Marson realised the truth.
They had been permitted to place their feet on it, their weight. But the equilibrium had been finely balanced, and part of it had consisted of the parapet slabs they had been cutting away. There had come a point where the balance was destroyed, and the bridge rejected them. Grumbling, it flexed its strength, and reached for its weakest points.
Their eyes met. Startled, Jeff turned off the torch. Marson realised he was shouting at the top of his voice, but the sound was lost. There was a shrill howl embracing them. It rose higher, then terminated, when Marson thought he could stand it no longer, in an explosion of collapse.
The bridge bucked under their feet. Marson groped frantically for the cab unit’s front wheel, looked down, and saw it rise from the tarmac, an inch, two inches, and remain poised. He felt they were falling sideways. There was a growl, the metal not being satisfied. The forces nudged each other, shuffled, and complained in plaintive whines all along the length of the bridge.
Then the new equilibrium was established. The wheel gently set itself down on the tarmac surface. The platform shuddered beneath their feet.
At last there was nothing but the sway and the sigh. Marson’s hearing was concentrated on it, every other sense withheld. He heard one sound, cutting through it.
It was a scream. It had gone on beyond the rest, persisting, but it, too, gradually died away, with Mar-son straining for it because he knew it proved the driver was still alive.
“Signal him down!” he shouted.
Five
Chris could not move. He had his hand clamped on the rim of one of the crane’s floodlights, and behind him the diesel was throbbing. His eyes were on the bridge. He watched it jerk and throb. For a moment he was sure it had gone, then the two men stood out clear and sharp again, struggling to keep their feet on its surface.
The genius in th
e cab above his head was juggling with the boom as though it was a kid’s cane with his bait dangling from it. The man called Jeff was reaching for the chair, missing, reaching again, then he’d got one knee on it and was hauling himself onto the surface. For a moment Chris lost sight of Marson, then he saw him struggling to his feet, and Jeff lay facedown on the board, one hand stretched down to his boss.
It seemed that Tony linked the hands. Jeff drew Marson from the bridge onto the chair, and suddenly the boom was up and away, with the chair twisting and tossing as he hauled it in. He dropped them gently on the road surface, and they scrambled apart.
Grey put a hand to Marson’s elbow, but he was pushed away. Jeff stood with his head hanging for a moment. Marson was swaying on his feet, his face full in the flush of light, the channels down from his nose engraved. Grey offered his cigarettes. Marson fumbled one out and struggled to light it, then drew deeply on it, his head back, the smoke in his teeth. He gestured with it.
“I said, didn’t I? Not one foot on it, I said.”
“You heard?” Jeff asked quietly. He was reaching out an old, black pipe.
Marson glanced away. “Yes.”
“He screamed,” said Jeff, staring at his fingers as he stuffed the pipe.
“He’s alive. We’ll have to get you to him, Doctor. We certainly can’t get him out.”
“Have to?” Chris asked. Nice of Marson to have made the decision. That fear was back again. “To him?”
Grey put in: “But you just said: nobody to go on that bridge.”
“Not on it,” said Marson. “There could be another way. Let’s get out of this bloody rain. We’ve got to talk about this, have a conference.”
Grey refused to accept the sound of a scream in all that noise. “Did you actually see him? Really there, and moving about?”
Marson began to push past him, then paused. “Yes, I saw him. Over against the driver’s door. I thought I saw a finger move. He’s alive, Grey. A youngish chap. Long face. Dark hair with a kind of white streak. Got all that down?”
Grey was making clucking noises, apologising for having been misunderstood. Chris thought he heard a muffled cry of distress from behind him. He turned, but the floodlight completely blinded him. Then he distinctly heard a voice speak in choked appeal.
“Johnny!” It was a woman’s voice, on an intake of breath.
He moved round the light, but couldn’t see anything. His eyes were still blinded. There were stumbling sounds, then silence.
When he turned back, Tony had climbed down to join the group. Jeff had an arm round his shoulders and was thumping him. “That was great, Tony. Lovely work.” And the youngster smiled in delight as they turned away together. Marson called after them.
“You’d better be there, Jeff. We’ll get together in the back-up truck. In a quarter of an hour.” As Jeff and Tony scrambled back over the crane’s bodywork, Marson realised it was too late to offer Tony his own congratulations and thanks. “Christ, but I could do with a cup of tea,” he said.
“This back-up truck,” Chris said. “How do I know it?” He had to be in on this meeting; he didn’t dare to turn his back on it in case they planned something for him he couldn’t handle.
“Green canvas cover,” Marson said. “You can’t miss it.”
Chris turned away, and went searching for her.
Behind the crane it was very dark. A few headlights swept across the health, went out, flashed on. Engines revved. On the cliff tops, Grey’s men stood guard, well back from the edge. There were now enough sightseers, even though it was three o’clock, to make vigilance necessary. He walked rapidly along the road towards his car. He had a dozen bottles of brown ale on the back seat.
She was sitting in a battered old Mini, only a few yards from his own Maestro. He knew she was the one by her stillness, and by the fact that she was simply sitting, staring forward and yet clearly not seeing him. He stopped, and tapped the side window. She jerked round, startled.
“Can I have a word with you?” he asked, mouthing it.
She was frozen, and a turning car threw light into her wide, huge eyes. He opened the passenger’s door.
“I’m Doctor Keene,” he introduced himself, smiling, trying to put her at her ease. “I’d like to talk to you. Just for a minute.”
She looked away, but didn’t tell him to go to hell, so he took that as a welcome and slid in beside her. She had her hands passive in her lap, the fingers curled up like a child.
“It was you, wasn’t it, up there?” he asked gently. “Do you know him?”
“His name’s Johnny Parfitt,” she told him, her voice low and hoarse. “Johnny.”
He probed for her name. “And you?”
“I’ve seen you about,” she muttered.
“But you’re not one of my patients.”
“I’m never ill,” she said, indicating by her tone that she couldn’t allow herself to be.
Yet she looked ill. The strain was in the line of her neck and the wrinkles from her eyes. She had a strong line to her jaw, and a wide mouth, tight, with her lips thin. No colour on them. A practical young woman, in her late twenties, he guessed.
“You didn’t say...” He let it tail off gently, persuasively.
“Laura...” She coughed and covered her mouth, but he knew she hadn’t been about to say ‘Parfitt’. The way she’d used his name. No wife would say that.
“You know him well? I mean, it could be helpful. Is he strong? Young?”
“Oh...strong!” She turned to face him at last, loose chestnut hair flying from beneath a plastic rain hood. Her words tumbled out. “You’re not going to get him off there. I just know it. From what that man said. You’re not!”
“They’re not sure yet.” He tried again. “You know him well?”
Then the passion went out of her voice, and she sounded dull and beaten. “We were living together, at the farm, till they took him away. He’s been in Parkhurst for four years. I didn’t think...never imagined he’d want to come back to me. But he was, wasn’t he? Coming back to me.” She ended it in stunned wonder.
So Grey had been wrong. Not just to evade the police. That hadn’t been Johnny’s sole reason for using the bridge, but to reach his woman as soon as possible.
“It seems he was coming to you, Laura. But it was rather unconventional transport. A wagon loaded with whisky.”
She was suddenly flustered. “Whisky?” Her eyes wandered, disturbed by concentrated thought. Then she laughed abruptly, but there was no joy in it. “Just like Johnny. The great idiot. It’s just the sort of thing he’d do.”
“An expensive joyride,” he suggested.
“That’s what he was, a lorry driver.”
It wasn’t really an answer. They were silent. He offered her a cigarette, but she shook her head. She seemed still to be deeply in thought. He waited. Then at last she spoke quietly.
“We had a little boy. Perhaps that was why Johnny was heading for the farm, probably thinking he’s there.” Then, having tried to divert Johnny’s motive from herself, she jerked away from the idea. “No, that can’t be right. He must know where Harry is. He’d be five now. Harry.”
Chris waited, scarcely breathing. He was unprepared for her wild entreaty.
“But you’ll get him out of there. Please! Say you will.”
“We’ll try our very best,” he said weakly.
“Say you will. Please. Promise me.”
He was reluctant with promises, aiming always to keep them. “If it’s up to me, of course.”
“You’re the doctor.”
“For now. They could find someone better qualified.” Easily, he thought grimly.
Her eyes were swimming, moving as she examined his face. “But it’ll be you. Promise.”
“All right. I promise.” Or he’d have had another patient on his hands. “I don’t think you should stay, Laura. Nothing’s going to happen for a long while.”
“You’ll let me know? Troughton Farm.”
“I’ll come and let you know.”
His reply seemed to have disconcerted her. “No, not the farm. I have to stay. I’ll be here.”
Now he was anxious to leave. Her intensity was disturbing him. She was close to hysteria, and he found himself struggling to consider her with the detachment he would have had for a patient.
“There’s a conference,” he told her. “I’ll have to be there. I’ll see you again, Laura.”
She nodded, smiling, her eyes bright. He slammed the door and walked away.
Moving along the road was a van with ‘Midlands Television’ on its side. It hadn’t taken the media long to latch on to it. Their presence irritated him. He went to find the truck with the canvas cover, taking an armful of bottles from his car.
There were five people there already, sitting on oil drums round a hurricane lamp, with the rain pattering on the canvas and the wind flapping its corners. He pulled himself up with the rope.
Marson had it, and himself, in hand. The group sat round the lamp like a coven of witches, but to Marson it was as though he presided at the head of a conference table. Even in this setting he felt the comfort of his more natural ambience. At his right sat Jeff Fisher, his legs apart, head down, staring at his feet. To Jeff’s right, the Fire Chief, still trying to be helpful. Grey was seated on Marson’s left, rigid, somehow excited.
Chris said: “I brought some beer.” Six bottles, he realised, as he put them down. Just right.
The sixth was Frank Allison. What he thought he was doing there Chris couldn’t imagine, but he supposed it was in Frank’s blood. He’d be protecting the community’s interests, if any. Trust Frank.
“Good man,” said Grey, reaching for a bottle. Chris found an oil drum. “I just saw a TV van arriving,” he told them.
Final Toll Page 4
