Night Frost djf-3

by R D Wingfield

  He rammed the useless torch in his pocket and fished out his matches. Up the stairs to the landing. The match burnt his fingers. Swearing softly, he shook it out and struck another. A door, slightly ajar, to his right. He nudged it open with his foot, then poked the hand with the match inside. He nearly dropped the match. On the floor, in the flicker of the flame, a face. Another match. God, it was Burton, his face a sweat-soaked dirty white, his lips mumbling incoherently.

  Frost dropped to his knees on to a puddle of something wet which soaked his trousers. Another match. He was kneeling in a pool of blood. Burton’s hands were clasped round his stomach. A red trickle oozed from between slippery, red fingers. He was trying to say something. Frost brought his head down to Burton’s lips. ‘Gauld. The bastard stabbed me.’ His eyelids flickered and closed.

  ‘Up here!’ yelled Frost at the top of his voice. He tugged out his radio. ‘Control. Burton’s been stabbed. Get an ambulance over to Wedgewood Street… now!’

  The ambulance men adjusted the strap around the red-blanketed Burton, then wheeled the trolley up into the ambulance. One of the uniformed men hopped in the back with it.

  ‘Got a stack of your chaps in Casualty,’ the ambulance driver told Frost cheerfully as he climbed into his seat. ‘Blood and broken noses everywhere. A bunch of yobbos breaking up a pub or something.’

  Oh, sod! thought Frost. I’d forgotten all about that. He radioed through to the station.

  ‘We’re being massacred,’ Wells told him. ‘Things are getting out of control and bloody Mullett’s not answering his phone in case he should have to make a decision.’

  Gilmore tugged at Frost’s sleeve. ‘Gauld’s been spotted. He’s got into that building site.’ He pointed in the direction of the giant crane.

  ‘Damn,’ said Frost. There were a hundred places Gauld could hide in in the sprawl of the building site. Back to the radio. ‘We know where Gauld is. Without more men we’ll lose him. Pull more people out from the pub.’

  ‘I can’t,’ insisted Wells.

  ‘Just bloody do it. Then phone County and get reinforcements from other divisions,’ said Frost.

  ‘Mullett won’t like that. He’ll do his nut.’

  ‘Sod Mullett. Just do it.’

  Wells hesitated. ‘If it blows up in our face, will you take the can back, Jack?’

  ‘Don’t I always?’ said Frost.

  The building site covered almost twenty acres and would eventually house a hypermarket, shops, and two tower office blocks which, at the moment, were skeletons of scaffolding and girders. The car picked its way along a muddy, temporary road to the main gates.

  Chain link fencing encircled the area. A notice in red warned Keep Out. Guard Dogs Loose On This Site. The main gates were locked and chained, but there was a smaller gate to one side which sagged where it had been kicked in. Beyond the gate a brown and white shape twitched and whimpered in the mud. The knife-ripped guard dog.

  Gilmore’s radio reported the arrival of reinforcements. Three pub-battle-scarred warriors were in position at the back entrance of the site, ready to move in from there. ‘It’s not enough,’ said Gilmore.

  ‘As the bishop said to the actress, son, it may not be much, but it’s all I’ve got.’ He took the radio and warned the newcomers to be careful. Gauld had a knife and was prepared to use it. ‘Right. Let’s go in.’

  Near the entrance stood a green-coloured Portakabin. Frost tried the handle. Locked. He flashed a torch through a window. Desks, phones and drawing boards.

  Other torches bobbed in the distance as the rest of his thinly stretched team carried out the search. The site was littered with hills and mountains of building materials; earthenware drainage pipes, concrete blocks, bricks on pallets covered with polythene sheeting, bag after bag of cement. And then there was machinery. Bulldozers, earth-moving equipment, cranes, and overshadowing everything, a giant skyscraper of a crane on its tower of scaffolding. The muddy ground had been churned into a Somme battlefield by the wheels of countless lorries.

  It was a slow, laboured search. Heavy items had to be man-handled out of the way, planking covering drainage trenches removed, builders’ huts forced open and searched, canvas and polythene sheeting stripped away. They squeezed between stacks of splintery timber shuttering, crawled under wooden sheds and, finally, mud-caked, dishevelled and disheartened, there was nowhere else to look and Gilmore was wearing his ‘I told you so’ smirk

  They gathered round Frost who was dishing out cigarettes, forming a tight circle as he struck a match to stop the rising wind from blowing it out. ‘Now what?’ asked Gilmore.

  ‘We go back and search again, son.’

  ‘He could be miles away.’

  Frost’s chin poked out stubbornly. ‘No. He’s here. Laughing at us. I know it.’ He held up a hand. ‘I thought I heard something.’ Someone’s radio was burbling away about casualties and ambulances and shortage of manpower. ‘Turn that thing off.’ The offending radio was silenced. ‘Now listen.’

  They listened. The wind, working itself up into a paddy, rattled chain link fencing, flapped polythene sheeting, and made the temporary overhead telephone wires sing and hum. Almost 200 feet above them, the jib arm of the giant crane, with its warning light on the far end, creaked and groaned and shrieked as if in pain.

  A sudden clatter. All heads turned. Jordan grinned sheepishly. He had knocked over a stack of empty lubricating oil drums.

  Frost shook his head. Whatever he thought he’d heard wasn’t going to repeat itself. Then he clicked his fingers. ‘The crane. We haven’t looked up there!’ Heads turned up and up and up. The distant warning light, a pin-prick of bright against the night sky, seemed almost another star.

  ‘It’s bloody high,’ croaked Jordan.

  ‘Yes,’ agreed Frost, now wishing he hadn’t suggested it. The damn thing seemed to go up and up and up for ever.

  A yell from Gilmore. ‘Someone’s up there!’ And as the moon elbowed through black clouds, there was Gauld, on the ladder, nearly 100 feet up, clinging for dear life and looking down at them.

  Making a megaphone with his hands, Frost yelled up into the night sky. ‘You can’t get away now, Gauld. We’ve got you. Come on down.'

  The wind fielded Gauld’s defiant reply and hurled it away

  ‘He’s coming down,’ exclaimed Jordan.

  ‘He’s not,’ said Frost. ‘He’s going higher.’

  Necks craned, they watched until he was swallowed by blackness. ‘Let’s have some lights,’ Frost ordered.

  With much difficulty an area car zigzagged, bumped and slid its way towards the crane, and then a powerful spotlight sliced upwards, cutting a steamy white swathe in the night sky and picking out the doll-man as he climbed up and up.

  Gauld was nearly at the top of the ladder and could see the platform of the driver’s cab just above his head. He gripped the rungs tightly with hands that the wind was trying to tear loose. Above him the jib groaned and whined and shuddered. He heaved himself up on to the small platform outside the cab. The protective metal handrail seemed flimsy and inadequate and he kept well back as he looked down, eyes squinting against the blinding spotlight beam. The police were still staring up at him, the one in the dirty mac yelling something which any fool should realize couldn’t be heard at this height. One of the uniformed men was running from a car with something in his hand. A loud-hailer.

  ‘Be sensible, Gauld. You can’t go anywhere. Come on down.’

  Pointless shouting. They wouldn’t hear him. But the cop was right. He couldn’t go anywhere. They had him trapped. God, how had it all gone wrong?

  ‘Come on down, Gauld.’

  The fool was yelling again. Come on down? He ventured another look over the edge. Just looking made him dizzy and he pressed back against the cab, his hands scrabbling for something to hold on to. If they wanted him, they’d have to bring him down.

  Above him the jib gave another tortured scream of pain, then another sound pierced the nigh
t. A two-tone siren.

  The fire engine halted outside the gate and a bearded fireman made his way across to the inspector. He looked angry. ‘You called a vet for that dog? It’s still alive, you know.’

  ‘He’s on his way,’ snapped Frost, annoyed with himself for not attending to it. He signalled to Jordan who moved out of earshot and radioed through to Control. Frost pointed to the crane platform. ‘We want to get up there. Would your turntable ladder reach?’

  The fireman squinted up, then shook his head. ‘You’d need a bleeding helicopter to get up there.’ He moved to the ladder lashed to the scaffolding and gave it a shake. It didn’t seem very firm ‘That’s the only way up.’

  ‘Sod that for a lark,’ said Frost. ‘Take me up on your turntable ladder as far as it goes. I’ll see if I can’t sweet-talk the bastard down.’

  The turntable platform gave a jerk, then the ground suddenly hurtled down and Frost had to grab the rail to steady himself as the ladder zoomed upwards. Briefly he chanced a look down, then quickly pulled his eyes away and concentrated on staring straight ahead at the bolts and nuts and rusted metal of the scaffolding as they zipped past.

  After what seemed ages, the ladder slowed and juddered to a halt and the fire officer tugged Frost’s sleeve. ‘As far as we go.’

  Frost looked down. Toy cars, tiny people, miles and miles away. He looked up. Lots more scaffolding roaring up to the sky and the white blob of Gauld’s face staring down at him. ‘There’s nowhere to run,’ shouted Frost. ‘Chuck your knife and we’ll bring you down.’

  Gauld yelled something, but the wind snatched and tore the words to shreds. Then the blob of his face withdrew and they couldn’t see him any more.

  ‘Now what?’ asked the fire officer.

  Frost’s neck was aching from craning upwards. He lowered his head. In front of him was the flimsy metal ladder which Gauld had climbed. It didn’t look very safe and was rattling in the wind. He shivered. ‘If we both went up, we could overpower him.’

  ‘Not our job to overpower nutters with knives,’ said the fire officer, firmly. ‘Disarm him and you can have as many of my men as you like. Until then, you’re on your own.’

  Sod it, thought Frost. Let’s pack it in and starve the bastard into submission. But he’d come this far. He wanted to get it over and done with. Fumbling at the buckle, he released the safety belt. ‘Help me across to the other ladder.’

  The fireman looked doubtful. ‘Are you sure you know what you’re doing?’

  ‘I never know what I’m bleeding doing,’ said Frost.

  The gap between the platform and the scaffold ladder grew markedly wider as he looked at it. Before common sense made his nerve fail he ducked quickly under the rail, holding it tight with one hand, and plunged forward in the blind hope his other hand would find something to hang on to. He managed to find one of the ladder rungs and squeezed it to death as he released his grip on the guard rail and grabbed at the same rung. He was now hanging over the gap, feet on the platform, hands on the ladder rungs and definitely at the point of no return.

  ‘You’re doing fine,’ called the fireman unconvincingly. ‘Now hold tight and swing your feet forward.’

  He didn’t need to be told to hold tight. The skin over his knuckles was paper thin and the bones threatened to burst through. He swung forward, his feet kicking about as they tried to find the rungs. They found only space… pulling, plunging space. He was hanging by sweat-slippery hands, kicking wildly and he was terrified. Then he felt hands grabbing his ankles and placing his feet on a narrow rung. He managed to croak a word of thanks to the fireman and froze to the ladder, heart hammering, his face pressed against the cold metal, not wanting to look up or down or left or right, just wanting to be back on the ground, looking up at some silly sod doing what he was doing and telling everyone what a prat the man was.

  ‘Anything wrong?’ The fireman sounded anxious.

  ‘No,’ lied Frost. ‘Just catching my breath.’ He forced one hand to release its grip and move further up the rail. Then the other. One leg lifted and found the next rung. This was easy. As long as he didn’t look down, this was easy. It was just like climbing a ladder a couple of feet off the ground. But confidence cloaked near-disaster and he almost screamed when his foot slipped from the rung and he had to hug the ladder, shaking, feeling the ladder rattle like chattering teeth against the scaffolding. He forced himself to press on, rung by rung, his body stiff and rigid, leg muscles aching with the effort. ‘I’ll be fit for sod all when I get up there,’ he kept telling himself, trying to erase the mental picture of himself sprawled on the gantry, gasping for breath, while Gauld slowly hacked away at his windpipe. But even that prospect was currently preferable to going down, which meant moving backwards, descending the ladder in reverse. God, he was never going to get down again.

  ‘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 f
ight, 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?’