Seven Bridges

by LJ Ross

  He laughed at what his girlfriend would have to say about that, which dissolved into a coughing fit as his asthma kicked in.

  “Bugger,” he gasped, and rooted around for an inhaler.

  He took a grateful breath or two from the little blue device, berating himself for giving in to the old habit of sneaking a cigarette after lunch. That was the culprit, he thought, as he watched for the green light that would tell him it was safe to cross the railway bridge leading into the station.

  From his cabin at the front of the train, he had a perfect view of the river on both sides. Snow was falling and a shaft of light broke through the grey clouds swirling overhead, sending fingers of hazy light across the city. He watched it as he opened a bottle of Lucozade and took a long gulp of the lurid orange liquid, hoping the energy would see him through for another couple of hours until he made it home. His eye caught on the emerald green arches of the Tyne Bridge and he frowned, thinking of the bomb scare only last night.

  Then, he shrugged it off.

  If he worried about every bomb threat ever to face a train or a bridge, he’d never get out of bed in the morning. Besides, the company would have been in touch if they’d closed any of the other bridges.

  Wouldn’t they?

  As the light turned green, he released the brake and began to guide the train slowly over the bridge.

  * * *

  A few hundred feet further north, Sergeant Sue Bannerman made her way back over the High Level Bridge. Thanks to the extensive news coverage, pedestrian and vehicular traffic had greatly reduced and Bannerman found she was alone inside the cavernous yet oddly claustrophobic interior of the old bridge. Long steel girders ran in symmetrical lines to support the railway track that was still in use on the level above, casting long black shadows when the sun burst through the thickening snow clouds in the skies overhead. To her right, the river ran out to sea and brought with it an icy wind which blew through the metal rods until they whined and creaked and, just for a moment, she fancied the bridge was a living, breathing thing.

  Bannerman shook herself and glanced back over her shoulder, surprised to find she had almost reached the halfway point across the bridge. The south side seemed far away now, and she had the uncomfortable feeling she would not be able to make it out, should anything go wrong.

  She turned back, and the heels of her boots echoed as she picked up her pace a little. Her eyes scanned the railings on either side of the pedestrian walkway which separated the pavement from the road in case she had missed anything the first time around, but she knew there was nothing there.

  Without warning, the metal girders began to tremble overhead, nothing more than a gentle vibration at first and she realised a train must be approaching from the south. She checked the time on her watch and wondered if it would be one of the last to cross the bridge as the noon deadline approached, for it was already a couple of minutes shy of eleven.

  She reached for her radio, intending to give the rest of her team an update on her whereabouts. She had already heard from Kevin and Gary, but Stevie and Paul were still out there somewhere, and it was time they were getting back.

  But the words died on her lips as she looked up and spotted something stuffed into the corner where two steel rods converged on the roof, tucked directly beneath the railway line.

  It was a dark navy canvas rucksack.

  Her fingers grasped the radio and she tried to keep her voice steady as the rumble of the approaching train grew louder overhead and a bus turned onto the bridge from the north, loaded with passengers seeking to get home as quickly as possible.

  “Control, this is Bannerman. Do you copy?”

  No response.

  “Control! This is Bannerman. Do you copy?”

  Back at base, Nobel finished swallowing the last bite of a protein bar and reached for his radio receiver as Ryan re-entered the meeting room and began shaking out of his coat.

  “Yeah, keep your hair on,” he mumbled. “You found something?”

  “Yes!” she almost shouted. “It’s—I’ve found a bag hidden between some steel girders, right beneath the railway line on the High Level, roughly in the centre of the bridge. There’s a train coming, I have no idea whether the bag’s attached to a trip wire—”

  “Sue, I need you to calm down,” Nobel told her, with an eye-roll for Ryan, who had crossed the room to listen in. “How sure are you that it’s a suspect device?”

  At the other end of the line, Bannerman gripped her radio and wished it were her captain’s throat. She raised her voice above the sound of the approaching train as it began its slow approach into Newcastle Central Station.

  “I’m as sure as I can be! We need to—”

  The line turned to white noise.

  CHAPTER 14

  On the stroke of eleven, Ryan heard the loud pop of a fresh explosion.

  As Nobel tried to reach Bannerman on the radio, Ryan ran back outside to where several camera crews remained, ready to capture every second of the unfolding drama on film.

  “Get back!” he warned them, and pushed through the crowd to reach the road which ran directly past the castle gates and continued all the way across the High Level Bridge.

  Uncaring of the shouts from the journalists hovering nearby, Ryan ran down the street until he reached the darkened entrance to the bridge and raised his hand to shield his eyes from the falling snow. There, in the shadows, he spotted the amber glow of fire and smoke and, above it, the dark outline of a passenger train.

  “Good God,” he muttered, and was about to enter the bridge when Yates’ urgent voice stopped him.

  “Sir!”

  Ryan spun around to see her sprinting towards him at full pelt.

  “Sir! Don’t—you can’t go on the bridge! It’ll go up!”

  “What the hell do you mean?” he asked, when she came to a shuddering stop beside him, and automatically grasped her shoulders when her boots skidded slightly against the slippery ground. “The message doesn’t say we can’t go onto the bridge.”

  “He’s—he’s sent a new message,” Yates said, gulping a couple of breaths of cold air into her lungs. “It went through to the news desk, but it’s also been uploaded onto the website for everyone to see.”

  Ryan snatched up the phone she held in front of him and quickly read its contents from the internet browser.

  My terms were clear.

  I said there should be NO attempts to defuse or locate the bomb, or I would detonate.

  Now, there are new terms.

  Nobody is to go on or off the High Level Bridge until the bitcoin total is met, or I will detonate the main charge.

  If my terms are not met, people will die.

  You have all been warned.

  As Ryan looked up again, he barely had a moment to process the new threat when he spotted a bus trundling along the road towards the bridge, laden with passengers rushing to return home.

  He almost threw the mobile phone back at Yates as he leapt into the middle of the road and began waving his arms like a madman to stop it entering the bridge.

  “Stop!” he shouted. “STOP!”

  Luckily, the driver spotted him in time and they heard the hiss of brakes as the bus came to an emergency stop. Ryan retrieved his warrant card and jogged forward to exchange a word with the bus driver, who performed an awkward U-turn a few seconds later and diverted his passengers back to the city centre.

  Once its tail lights rounded a corner, Ryan turned back to his trainee and was grateful she’d had the foresight to wrap up warmly.

  “Mel? I need you to stay here until reinforcements arrive,” Ryan told her. “It’s crucial that nobody goes onto the bridge or comes off it, not until we know the level of threat if they do. I’ll make sure there’s somebody manning the south side, doing the same.”

  Yates bobbed her head.

  “Yes, sir. Do you want me to contact the local police? I won’t let you down.”

  Ryan hesitated for only a fraction of a
second, then nodded. The only way to learn was to do.

  “Alright,” he said. “Keep me updated.”

  * * *

  When Ryan muscled his way past the throng of reporters and re-entered the conference facility at the castle, he found the place in turmoil.

  “Alright, settle down! This isn’t the circus!” he roared, and watched their faces turn in shock. He didn’t stop to worry about hurt feelings but strode into the room, already thinking of the next steps to take.

  “Phillips?” He sought out his sergeant. “I need an impact assessment. Get onto the rail companies and tell them to radio the driver of that train.”

  “What train? There’s a train—?” Phillips blustered.

  “It was on the bridge when the explosion happened,” Ryan replied. “It’s at a standstill, with the first carriage just visible from the road, so I’d say it’s stuck roughly halfway across the bridge. I need to know how badly the train was affected and if anyone’s hurt.”

  “Leave it with me.”

  Phillips bustled away to make the calls and Ryan turned to the head of the EOD Unit.

  “Nobel? Any word from Sue Bannerman?”

  The other man ran agitated fingers through his streaky blonde hair and gave a sad little shake of his head.

  “Nothing,” he said. “I’ll take a team down there to find her—”

  “You can’t,” Ryan interjected, and the other man stood up to face him as if he were ready to square off about it.

  “Look, feller, I’m in charge of my unit—”

  “Check the website,” Ryan said, brushing past him to bring it up onto one of the laptop screens with an angry click of the keyboard. When the website popped up, he spun the computer around and pointed at it. “The bomber has set out a new condition and it’s simple— nobody is to go on or off the bridge, or he’ll detonate.”

  Nobel leaned forward to read the message, noting that the bitcoin counter had jumped up to nearly a million pounds’ worth of donations.

  “I need an ambulance crew on standby,” Ryan turned to MacKenzie, who was standing nearby. “They can’t enter yet, but we don’t know how this thing will play out.”

  “Done,” she said, and turned away to speak in a swift undertone to their colleagues in the emergency services.

  “What’s your take on it?” Ryan turned back to Nobel. “What are we dealing with, here?”

  “That might have been the initial charge,” the man replied. “There could be a bigger one waiting to go off. It seemed to detonate at eleven o’clock or thereabouts, so there’s a chance it was on a timer and was always intended to go off. On the other hand, it could have been manually detonated like the bridge last night. Either way, you’re looking at something packing enough force to blow through steel.”

  Before Ryan could comment, Corporal Kevin Wilson hurried into the room with his remaining colleagues from the EOD Unit in tow.

  “We heard the blast,” he said, trailing slush as he came to stand beside them, wearing a concerned expression on his jovial face. He made a show of looking around the room. “Where’s Sue?”

  “Still on the bridge,” Nobel said. “Instead of keeping calm like any one of us would have done, she found a rucksack and started panicking—”

  “Oh, aye, and I’m sure you’re just like Rambo in a crisis,” MacKenzie’s voice dripped sarcasm. “Ryan? The ambulances and hospitals are on standby. Yates has been in touch; she’s working with the local police to divert traffic from the bridge.”

  Ryan nodded and turned to his sergeant.

  “I’ve just spoken to the train operator,” Phillips pocketed his phone. “They tell me that’s a 125 HST Mark 3 train on the tracks up there. I haven’t got a clue what that means, except that it’s the big train from London to Aberdeen and it has nine carriages.”

  “How many people on board?” Ryan asked.

  “Best guess is somewhere between five and six hundred. It’s not at full capacity, today.”

  Ryan felt the blood roar in his ears as he thought of the potential toll, should anything go wrong.

  “How badly was the train hit?”

  Phillips tugged at his ear as he thought back to the garbled conversation with one of the train managers.

  “The blast came mostly from below, so it hasn’t caused any real damage to the train and there are no casualties, so far. The driver says people are getting restless and starting to panic but the train crew are doing what they can to keep them calm. The biggest problem is, they can’t be sure how badly the line has been affected without getting some engineers up there to check the tracks. It’s not safe for the train to continue crossing the bridge, even if The Alchemist hadn’t already forbidden it.”

  Ryan realised it was time to make a judgment call.

  “We know which bridge has been targeted now, so I’m authorising a full blockade on both sides,” he said.

  “Won’t that make the bomber angry?” Wilson said. “I thought he wanted his instructions followed to the letter?”

  “Why would he detonate now that he has hundreds of ready-made victims? The latest message warned nobody else to go on to the bridge. He has collateral, added to the fact his bitcoin counter is ticking higher and higher,” Ryan said, and moved across to look down at the press gang outside.

  “Whoever’s responsible for this chaos must be loving every minute.”

  CHAPTER 15

  Sergeant Sue Bannerman had been thrown to the floor by the explosion, scattering her radio across the pavement and into the gutter nearby. As her vision slowly cleared, her ears rang—one long hum as they recovered from the blast.

  She fell heavily to her knees and when she lifted her head she inhaled the overpowering smell of smoke and burnt rubber. Coughing, she struggled to her feet and stumbled away from the blast site, noticing for the first time that her clothing was singed and torn and that her hands and chin were bleeding.

  The blast had made a small hole in the metal separating the upper and lower layers of the bridge and she held an arm in front of her nose and mouth as she limped across to peer at the flaming edges.

  Her toe kicked something solid and she almost wept as she reached down to pick up her radio.

  “Control? Are—are you receiving?”

  Her voice sounded ragged and she tried again, a little stronger this time.

  “Control. This is Bannerman. Do you copy?”

  Back at the castle, Ryan grabbed the radio before Nobel made it halfway across the room.

  “This is Ryan. Copy loud and clear. What is your position, Sue? Are you injured?”

  She let out a long, jittery breath and closed her eyes, never happier to hear another person’s voice.

  “I’m—I’m okay,” she said. “A bit shaken up, but I’ll live. There’s a small hole between the upper and lower levels of the bridge, roughly halfway along. There’s a train directly above me. I’m heading back now. Over.”

  Ryan prepared to tell her the bad news.

  “I’m sorry, Sue, but you need to stay on the bridge. The bomber’s new terms are that nobody enters or leaves until the bitcoin total is met.”

  Bannerman listened to Ryan’s disembodied voice and watched wisps of ash float on the cold air, hovering in front of her face for a second before gushing out between the tall pillars holding up the eastern edge of the bridge. The wind was bitterly cold, and she was shivering badly now, but her army training had prepared her for worse conditions than these.

  “Understood,” she said. “I’ll await further instructions.”

  There was a short pause before Ryan’s voice came across the wires again.

  “We won’t forget about you, Sue. We won’t forget about any of you. I promise.”

  After signing off, she limped a little further along the walkway until she found a dry spot before sinking to the floor to wait.

  * * *

  When Anna caught the late morning news, she felt her heart shudder against her chest in one hard thump. It wa
s often this way, she thought. Fear and worry came as part and parcel of being next of kin to a man whose vocation demanded that he fight every day for what he believed to be right. It was simultaneously the most attractive and frustrating quality Ryan possessed.

  She spent the first half hour telling herself that she needn’t worry but, when she saw footage of him running past photographers and reporters towards the latest bomb site, she could stand the loneliness no longer and decided to call the one person whose need for comfort was greater than her own.

  At first, she thought he wouldn’t answer.

  Eventually, he did.

  “Jack?”

  A pause.

  “Hello, Anna.”

  She almost cried at the sound of his voice, at the sheer exhaustion she heard beneath the polite greeting.

  “I hope you don’t mind me calling you,” she said, a bit nervously. She wasn’t exactly sure whether she was supposed to be speaking to him, but he had been released without charge, so where was the harm in calling her friend? Besides, Tebbutt could have the phone records, if she wanted them.

  “Of course not,” he said, robotically. “Um, how are you keeping?”

  She almost laughed.

  “Jack, have you seen the news? Ryan’s out there battling against time to stop another bridge blowing up, while I’ve been at home researching the various types of bird nesting on Holy Island. Much as I like birds, they aren’t doing much to calm my nerves at the moment.”

  At the other end of the line, Lowerson smiled and when the skin stretched around his mouth it felt rusty and tight.

  There was another pause, while he thought of something to say.

  “How are you, Jack?”

  Her gentle voice was his undoing and he sank down into one of the chairs in his parents’ dining room to stare at the fussy floral wallpaper his mother liked, then over at something she called an ‘accent wall’ that consisted of a chimney breast painted in an unusual shade of pink.