A Cut Above the Rest

by C B Barrie

  Once all this was done he was satisfied that the first part of his strategy was complete. Next he removed the super hard spool from his pocket, temporarily placed it on the floor of the cab and donned some chain mail gloves. From the carrier bag he took out the UV lamp and illuminated the spool. Using a pair of tweezers from his top jacket pocket he teased the end of the spool wrapped wire until the UV iridescence showed he had a sufficient length. He then applied the battery wires close together along a small length of the unwrapped wire close to the spool and waited until it flared into blinding incandescence. It burned exceptionally brightly for about five seconds and then the light abruptly vanished. Now he had the other end of the wire he needed.

  He then carefully wrapped strong insulating PTFE tape around a right angle bracket locking the right side of the ladder to the cab, and then coiled a wire end around it; with the left side equally insulated he coiled wire around the left hand bracket. He was careful to make the wrap sufficiently tight to keep the wire taught and far enough away to ensure a body would encroach on it.

  But regardless of his care, he noticed the PTFE tape, and the underlying steel of the brackets began to chaff. However, it didn’t matter.

  He then linked two pieces of wire, from the ends of the taught cross wire across the ladder, to a miniature electronic timer that was then connected to the two wires coming from the battery. He did one last check with the UV lamp and saw the shimmering iridescence of the wire strung across the top of the ladder. This, he decided, completed his work.

  He looked at his watch; he had expended thirty-seven minutes of the time he had been allowed by Ed Rowe’s ninety-minute rounds – it was time to go.

  He switched off the flashlight and everything sunk into darkness – he was blind, blinded due to the intense light his flashlight and the burning wire had produced. He had no choice, even the low background light in the foundry was to low for him to see clearly - he had to wait and allow his eyes to adapt to the darkness again; there was no point in slipping off the ladder then stumbling forward and mistaking the direction of the doors, or even worse, injuring himself in a collision with the overhead wire.

  He slowly began to make out the dark silhouettes of the machinery and benches he’d passed on the way in. Now, after a few minutes, he could see well enough and started to make his way down the ladder and towards the doors. He inched though the doors and closed them as quietly as he could. As the fresh air hit him he silently thanked God for it. He dribbled spit from his mouth and spat it out onto the ground, trying to free himself from the acerbic, acrid taste of saliva contaminated by trace metals.

  Now for the lab, he thought, and a return to a little acting.

  Above all he wanted a coffee, and the time to entirely forget what he had just done. After all, he had to get back to the lab and act the innocent as Ed’ Rowe reappeared.

  In all respects, like his recent activities, he had to make a damn good job of it.

  9

  Holden was late in compared to the other Foundry operatives; but that wasn’t unusual for a Monday morning.

  The others usually arrived half an hour earlier than the 8.00 a.m. start in order to get at least two mugs of tea down themselves before the furnaces and smelters were brought up to temperature and the foundry started to to take on the atmosphere of a Turkish bath. It was easy for the men to rapidly dehydrate as each of them was in the proximity of molten metals and converters some running in excess of 1550 degrees centigrade. The foundry air temperature often exceeded forty five degrees Celsius and it was an unwritten rule that there was no restriction on fluid intake so as to avoid the chances of a man with dehydration causing a major accident through fainting or dizziness.

  Holden opened the foundry doors to be met by a deceptively empty workshop. He knew where they were; every one of his co-workers had all migrated to the back of the foundry where an ex-office had been converted to a tea bar and a rest area for all the foundry operatives. It was fitted with an air conditioning system so as to provide relief to those men overcome by the exhausting activity of smelting metals - especially so in the summer months. If it was needed, no one complained.

  Holden inwardly sneered at the way their camaraderie was so blatantly false – he didn’t believe any of it and wanted no part of it. He knew they were friends only so long as one of them didn’t get promotion or any special favours. After that their jealousy turned to vindictive and spiteful comments and deliberate insubordination. But he had no wish or need to make himself a pariah; after all, he was the cabman, the one who hardly got to exchange a word with any of them while he was operating the gantry and the crane. All he did was to acknowledge instructions from the foreman below him using a walkie-talkie, and lift or tip the ladles, smelters or converters when it was wanted. He even resorted to having lunch away from the foundry in order to avoid having to converse or confer with any of the team.

  He looked at his watch, it read 8.05 a.m. and the tea drinking was still in full swing. He had no intention of waiting, so he started to climb the cab access ladder. Half way up he could see an open smelter, already close to completely melting a load of copper iron alloy, and it was already glowing almost white hot. He realised that the team must have started much earlier than he thought – it would have taken time for the electric induction system to heat the smelter, so it had been started long before the tea party at the end of the foundry had begun.

  He continued his climb looking down at the top of the smelter. It was just as his head approached the top rung and lifted up that he suddenly went blind. A reflex action meant he was still trying to move his legs in order to continue his climb. A thin line of blood bubbled from the top of his head down each side of his cheeks and across his neck, and for a second or two the cleaved parts stayed together, but now his face and the front part of his head had been severed; as too the front of his chest, for at that moment he had lifted his body and tried draw away from slowly fading terror he was experiencing. The section of his face that had separated then slipped away and, dropping down, ricocheted off a ladder outrigger. It hit the molten surface of the copper smelter with an explosive expansion of steam, momentarily bobbing about until after a few seconds it boiled away and disappeared.

  The rest of his lifeless body toppled sideways, but a foot caught in a rung and pulled the leg upright as it fell. The force of the descending body weight then snatched the trapped foot free from the rung. Since now nothing impeded it, the body followed the head, first half wrapping itself around the outrigger and then, from its impetus, slipping forward and sinking into the molten contents of the smelter. There followed a huge surge of steam and exploding tissue as the1550 degrees of the smelter instantly consumed all the organic matter. In no more than ten seconds the surface of the liquid alloy had returned to quiescence and there was no sign that any foreign entry had taken place or that anything abnormal had happened.

  In the cab above, a hidden timer set to 0807 waited patiently and then connected to the Stellite wire across the ladder’s upper framework. Just like the body parts entering the smelter, in no more than ten seconds the wire had gone from effective invisibility to a brilliant, blinding incandescence followed by complete burnout and a widely dispersed micro particulate cloud, none of which was ever to be seen again.

  There was no one to witness it, nor was there anyone to witness what it had caused. Even the molten metal in the converter had nothing to say, nor did it invite any questioning.

  It took three days before Holden’s disappearance was reported.

  Metlab’s personnel department received a curt notification that a member of the foundry work force was absent. He had failed to appear for the first three days of the week, this without any telephoned notice of sickness from the man himself, or any sign of a medical certificate in the post. In itself this wasn’t usually cause for concern, too often a temporary malady developed into something more serious, only then warranting a visit to an employees GP. It was only then likely that a medic
al certificate would be issued and that might not find its way to Metlab for another four to six days.

  In this case however, there were more ominous overtones. Holden’s car had been parked in the car park on the Monday morning, but remained unmoved for the next three days. Furthermore, he had not made an appearance in the canteen for lunch for the same period of time. Telephone calls to his home stayed unanswered, and even a visit to his home by one of the personnel department’s secretaries was to no avail.

  Questions to those who worked with him in the foundry resulted in even more confusion, he had definitely arrived for work on the Monday, his car was in the car park to prove it, but no one amongst the foundry workforce had seen him enter the foundry on that day.

  Added together, it was not only perplexing, but also highly suspicious.

  In the end it was decided that the police should be informed and that regardless of company policy, the police would be given access to the laboratory complex.

  When the call came in to the old Victorian police station in St Ives, it was Sergeant Mike Nichols who took it.

  For a provincial, secluded and outlying station in a remote part of the country, the possibility of a major crime was as remote as the place itself. As such, Sergeant Nichols had no expectation on that bright Friday morning that he was to be immersed in a murder investigation, but that was what it was to become.

  At first the caller identified herself as the secretary to the assistant personnel officer at the Metlab research station near Morvah. An operative by the name of Holden had failed to appear for work and regardless of the research station’s investigations he had gone missing. It wasn’t the fact that he was missing which required police intervention, but the fact that he had vanished without trace, leaving behind all the indications that he had actually reported for duty on the previous Monday but nobody had set eyes on him at the time, nor since.

  Nichols jotted down the facts as given and inwardly sighed. He was St Ives senior police officer and had only four uniformed men to police the town and just one officer graded as a detective constable. His lack of resource didn’t matter too much, the St Ives station was soon to close and all policing would be done from Camborne some twenty miles way. The idea amused him, having to investigate a problem in Morvah, more than fifty miles from Camborne, would, on the face of it, be a joke.

  In the summer, with throngs of holidaymakers, his force was inadequate; and now with the spring taking hold, he had no idea how the Devon and Cornwall Police were going to hold things together in the summer months with no local police presence in St Ives at all. But there it was, and since he was still, at least for the time being, in charge of the nearest police force to Morvah and the research station, he supposed he had to do what he was obliged to do.

  He picked up a phone and dialled detective constable Alec Meredith.

  As he headed for Morvah along the B3066 Meredith was far from happy having to investigate a missing person.

  So called missing persons inevitably turned up after a short time with some lame excuse for going walk-about, and it usually meant a waste of police time and resources. However, at least this time the circumstances were reasonably intriguing, if not perplexing, and might at least justify the drive from St Ives. What he knew so far constituted a strange state of affairs and he was optimistic that it would be the ideal excuse for not having to return to the police station for a good while; he welcomed anything to break the St Ives monotony.

  He reached the research stations security barrier and showed his credentials – the guard waved him through with instructions to drive up to the car park and to find a visitors parking bay; thereafter to report to reception.

  Meredith found himself at the reception desk waiting for a staff member to meet him – he felt slightly disorientated, there was a distinct metallic odour to the place which was not only slightly disconcerting but made his taste buds react. He was in need of a coffee, anything to swamp what was happening in his mouth. He was about to ask the receptionist for the location of the nearest vending machine or cafeteria when a man entered the foyer from a side door and approached him.

  ‘Good morning, I’m Charles Felton, assistant personnel officer, I assume you are from the police, here to try to make sense of our missing employee, Mr. Eric Holden.’

  Meredith shook the outstretched hand of Felton and nodded.

  ‘Detective Constable Meredith, pleased to meet you; I’m informed there are some peculiar circumstances around this case, please tell what you know.’

  ‘I can’t tell you very much I’m afraid, all we know is that on the face of it Holden arrived here to start work, his car was parked in the car park, and even now it’s still where he parked it. Yet he was never seen, his work mates in the foundry never encountered him on the Monday morning, nor did anyone else on staff see him arrive. Now, it’s not possible to exit or enter this complex other than by the single exit and entry barriers you passed through on your way up here. The security fencing is eight-foot razor topped meshed steel, and proximity alarms are spaced every twenty feet. Trying to get in or out other than through the barriers is virtually impossible. Yet, or so it seems, Holden may have accomplished it. So, you can see why we are perplexed, he disappeared apparently while in this station, and for all our enquiries at his home, or within the confines of this complex, he has vanished.’

  Meredith gave the report some thought, for all its obvious inconsistency he found it hard to believe that a human being could simply vanish, the man Holden had to be somewhere, and it was better to start at the beginning.

  ‘Can you show me where Holden worked Mr. Felton, I need to get a feel of things – talk to his workmates, see if there is a flaw to the idea that he disappeared while here on this site. Then we’ll have a look at his car.’

  Felton smiled, ‘Of course, follow me, we are going to the foundry, it’s very hot and very unpleasant; steel yourself - and that isn’t a pun.’

  They skirted the outside of the laboratory block and turned past the end of the right angle that completed all of the laboratory’s housing.

  The foundry was close to the lab block but not directly attached. Two large sliding doors provided ample room for the transport of skips, ores and refined metals. One sliding door had a single, normal height auxiliary door, hung by welded hinges and opened by a handle on the outside. Felton pushed the handle down and pulled. The door came open and they both entered.

  Felton had far from understated the deeply uncomfortable atmosphere; it was the first time ever that Meredith was profoundly thankful he had chosen the police force as a career. The heat was overwhelming, like a blast from Hades, and in the deafening noise from the incessant trip hammers, he instantly wished he was outside again.

  He looked around, seeing men in heatproof overalls either ladling molten metals into casting moulds or adding metals and powders to huge open smelters. The foundry was a vast cavern of smoke emitting activities and of showering sparks, all coming from glowing, molten metals at temperatures high enough to burn through a man in an instant.

  Felton walked on, threading his way through and around men, machinery and lines of floor mounted sand moulds, all still steaming from their red hot innards.

  Meredith followed on, negotiating his way around all the blatantly hazardous objects that Felton seemed oblivious of. They came up to a sweat covered man sporting a long black beard - the only clear sign of his face hidden underneath a helmet and visor spattered with shiny, star shaped globules of solidified molten metal.

  Felton tapped him on the shoulder and pointed to the rear of the foundry. He made signs to the man to retreat so they could talk and, without dissension, the beard nodded in agreement.

  It was noticeably quieter in the tearoom but no less cooler. The man with the beard lifted his visor and removed his helmet. He smiled, his face shone with perspiration and two rivulets of sweat had terminated into beads of water around his mouth. As he smiled one of them was dislodged and continued down his
neck.

  ‘Mike Leach, this is Detective Constable Meredith.’

  Felton turned to Meredith.

  ‘Mike here is foreman in the foundry. Now, Mike, DC Meredith wants to ask you about Holden – about his disappearance last Monday.’

  Leach nodded his assent. ‘Can’t tell you much – we thought he had phoned in sick when he failed to turn up for the morning start. Most of us had been in for at least forty five minutes – we’d started the smelters, cleared the mould frames, and began the casting blocks before we completed our morning… er’… refreshments. We returned to the workshop at about 2015 and Holden hadn’t clocked in. He wasn’t where we expected him to be, up in his cab to operate the crane and gantry. I made enquiries but no one had seen him. It was only when we were told his car was in the car park that things got strange.’

  Meredith decided to ask the obvious question. ‘Did anyone see him go home on the Friday night before the week end – it’s possible he left on foot Friday and left his car behind.’

  Leach and Felton shook their heads vigorously.

  ‘No, any car left in the car park over the weekend would be reported by security - even one belonging to an employee, we can’t risk allowing an intruder to range around the site or for a bomb to be planted.’ Felton said.