Final Toll

by Roger Ormerod

  For a moment she thought he had blinded her. She was in a rage and a terror, and lashed out at him with her foot. She caught him on a kneecap and he howled and cursed, hopping about, so that she had a chance to get away. She scrambled to her feet and somehow got into the bedroom and locked the door, then wedged a chair under the door knob. Then he could hammer and shout himself hoarse as far as she was concerned.

  She touched her cheek. At the sight of the blood on her fingers her temper flared. “And you can clear out of this house!” she screamed. “I’m going to get the police here.”

  He must have moved away. “You hear?” she shouted, thumping the door.

  His voice startled her. He was speaking close to the panel. “Hear you, Laura. Oh yeah, I hear you. But don’t do anythin’ rash, or you’ll regret it.” He paused. She was holding her breath, and couldn’t reply. “Where d’you think I’ve been all day?” he breathed. “Not all day to get this gun, sweetheart. I’ve been fixing things with some of me mates, and they phoned me. They’ve got Harry, Laura. Snatched him. So —watch your step.”

  “I don’t believe you,” she whispered, telling herself that she didn’t, but he heard.

  “Please yourself,” he said calmly, then she heard him walking away from the door, and she stood with her back to it, both hands pressed to her lips.

  She was still there when she heard the pick-up start again. When its engine note faded she threw herself on the bed.

  Her bedroom window faced directly over the valley. She was lying in the dark, wide awake and exhausted, when she noticed the rise and fall of the red light reflected on the rear wall. She got up, and could see the fire clearly.

  “Now what’s he done?” she asked herself emptily, and hoped he’d been arrested. Then she realised what this could mean to her. “I don’t believe him,” she whispered.

  Fifteen

  Marson’s caravan was a smouldering wreck, with the red shape of a fire wagon sitting behind it. Men were wandering around and poking about. The rain had suddenly become as heavy as before and dampened down the few plumes of smoke which rose here and there. Marson himself was ranting at Grey.

  “What’s going on?” he shouted. “This was deliberate, whatever you say. I’d only just left it. Someone came in here and turned the gas on. That makes two: first the ratchet, now this.”

  Grey shrugged his shoulders. It was one thing to have explained his thinking to the doctor. Marson was a different proposition altogether. “Somebody doesn’t like what you’re doing,” he muttered unhelpfully.

  The useless mixture of curtness and ambiguity enraged Marson. He turned to the shadows. “Nothing but opposition. Everywhere.” He swivelled back to Grey. “Next you’ll be telling me that you’ve got a nice little place down in the valley.”

  “You can’t bulldoze your way through the law, Marson.”

  Marson sunk his head. He knew there was no point in rising to Grey’s challenge here and now. Grey seemed to want delay. He seemed not to care whether Johnny lived or died, as long as he stayed out there. There was only one way to get back at Grey: Marson would have to rescue Johnny.

  He turned to look for Jeff, just as Jeff approached him. “Jeff. The fire destroyed all the predictions we’d made, and anyway the rain’s much heavier now. I want you to go back to your caravan and draw up some new graphs. Until the cables are tightened and those slings are in place, we’re going to need all the information we can get our hands on.”

  Jeff nodded solemnly. “That’s what I wanted to talk to you about.”

  “How’s the concrete? Is it ready?”

  Jeff hesitated. “I’d like to leave it a little longer—”

  “You’d like to?”

  “We might have to.”

  “Couldn’t we just try the cables? The concrete should be able to take them by now. Surely?”

  Jeff paused to consider. The operation had been planned in several stages. To begin with, they had constructed four concrete beds, two at the top of each cliff, set well back from the cracks. On the east side, girders had been welded to the ends of the cables and buried in the concrete. The slings had been fastened over the cables and under the bridge, and the Kato had then taken the other ends over to the west side where they were weighed down, waiting slackly. When the concrete was ready, they would take up the slack with the winches and gradually support the weight of the bridge, the wagon, the lot. The cables themselves were two-inch steel-stranded. Though their weight was little compared to the tension which the concrete beds would eventually take, it was essential that all four beds set properly before the ends were threaded through the diesel winches, themselves fixed in the concrete on the other side.

  “No.” Jeff shook his head. “Not yet. Maybe in an hour or so. Look, if we put too much strain on the concrete before it’s ready, it could ruin our chances altogether. You know that as well as I do. And this rain—”

  “The heavier the rain, the less time we have. We need to buy some time.”

  Jeff rubbed his chin demonstratively. “I’ve been thinking. The Kato’s not doing anything right now, and Tony’s restless. We could send it round the other side and use it to give the trailer a little support. We wouldn’t even try to lift it, just take some of the strain off the bridge.” He looked hopeful.

  “You think it will help?” asked Marson, unconvinced.

  “It can’t hurt to try,” said Jeff, keen to be proved right.

  Marson nodded, but without conviction. He knew the measure would probably make little difference, and he had serious reservations. Every alteration to so delicately balanced a situation was bound to have unforeseeable repercussions. There was no such thing as an action which couldn’t hurt. But the cliffs were slipping. The Kato was now idle, and it would be at least an hour before they could move on to the next stage of the plan.

  “You’d need to get some kind of cable under the trailer,” reasoned Marson.

  “We could do that,” Jeff replied. “Me and Tony. It wouldn’t be a problem.”

  “Okay. If you know what you’re doing, you go ahead.”

  Jeff smiled briefly, apparently with relief. He, too, hated having to do nothing. But this, he realised, was the first moment that Marson had trusted him, had trusted any of them. And to Jeff, it made success suddenly feel within their reach. He headed straight for Tony, who was now loitering beside the Kato. Marson watched as the change in Tony’s stance spoke as clearly as any number of words. He began to turn towards Grey, to see how much of the conversation with Jeff he had understood; to see if the superintendent had noticed the more subtle changes in mood, the growing hope. And then, from nowhere, a boy was shouting in his ear:

  “You’re wanted, Mr Marson. Ray Foster. He says it’s urgent.”

  Marson grunted an acknowledgement and pushed Grey to one side. He recognised the young lad as one of his team, an apprentice, but the name escaped him. He ran after him to the radio shack. Ray Foster was talking earnestly into the microphone, as if comforting a child:

  “It’s okay, Marty. It’s all right.” He looked up and nodded a greeting to Marson. “Not a word of sense.”

  Marson took the mike. Marty was cursing his head off. Marson had difficulty in slowing him down. Then at last he was coherent.

  “Got to the end,” he said, “the end of the footings, and there was a roadblock. Police cars, they were. Said I couldn’t go onto the road. Mr Marson, you just give me the word—”

  “Calm down, Marty. Calm down.” Marson managed to keep his voice under control, but all he could think of was Grey. An old policeman with a hidden agenda, answerable to no one. “Wait with the Jones, and do nothing.”

  “Gimme the word,” raved Marty, oblivious to Marson’s efforts, “and I’ll plough through that lot—”

  “I’ll be along, Marty. Believe me, It’s damned important for you just to wait.”

  “For Christ’s sake!”

  “Marty! Are you listening to me? You have to wait.”

  A p
ause. “How long?”

  “An hour. Maybe two.”

  “Maybe two! I’m still ten miles away! If I wait two hours, I won’t get to the bridge for at least another four.”

  “Just wait and rest. For this job you’ll need to be fresh. I’m warning you. It’s bad here.”

  Marty was quiet. As Marson had hoped, he was more responsive to requests which were expressed in terms of his value. “Just wait, you say?”

  “Just wait. Wait for me.”

  “But what about the police?”

  “They won’t try to touch you unless you leave the footings. They have no right.”

  “And you’ll be along in an hour?”

  “That’s right, Marty. I’ll be along. I promise.”

  There was no sound from Marty. Marson handed the mike back to Foster.

  “What’s going on, Colin?” Foster asked. Marson tried to be brief. “Sievewright’s withholding the Jones, and Grey seems only too happy to help.”

  “But—”

  “It’s okay, I’m sorting it.”

  “You’re sorting it? How?”

  “There’s no time to explain.”

  Marson dashed out of the shack as quickly as he had entered. He had to find Allison.

  Sixteen

  Marson hadn’t fully visualised what Jeff had had in mind. It was easy enough to say that they could take some of the load off the trailer by using the Kato, with a cable under the back of the wagon’s load. But that cable would have to be under the trailer itself, not under the bridge; and at the same time it would have to avoid contact not only with the main support cables — which were yet to be brought into play — but also with Prescott’s chains, which were still taking their share of the weight. As Marson continued to scour the area for Allison, Jeff was busy trying his plan the only way there was.

  It had taken Tony a quarter of an hour to take the Kato round to the other side of the river and position it in the cutting, just before the rocky outcrop. Jeff meanwhile had seated himself on the chairlift and was now hanging halfway across the river, with a long pole in his hands. Cropper was hovering a little higher up on the other side of the wagon, one foot in the Kato’s hook, dangling a loop of cable. Jeff was reaching under the trailer for the loop, nearly overbalancing every time he extended the pole. Backwards and forwards, the loop swinging, the chairlift pitching. The rain was heavy enough to make the pole slippery, and to disturb Jeff’s concentration. He was struggling to see what he was doing, and Cropper found a new level of patience with every swing.

  From the roadway, Chris was watching breathlessly. The fear he had felt while he was out on the chairlift had in no way hardened him to the thought of being suspended between those cliffs. He had no idea what they were trying to achieve, but seeing those two men playing peekaboo on either side of the lorry made his insides churn. Chris had set his alarm for half-past ten, half an hour before the time when Johnny’s drip needed replacing. After precious little sleep he had forced himself to crawl out of bed. Pausing only to curse the cat, he had climbed into his car with his eyes barely open. He had driven all the way from the safety of his home back up to the bridge, precisely so that he too could be left hanging out there, with a job to do and only a hundred feet of wind and rain between him and a raging river.

  “Chris!”

  He turned away from the action to see Marson stomping towards him. “What’s going on out there?” asked Chris. “Shouldn’t you be supervising that?” He threw his arm back towards the bridge.

  Marson followed his gesture just in time to see Jeff catch hold of the loop. They had spent nearly ten full minutes swinging and snatching and missing, but now that Jeff was securing the cable under the trailer it seemed like they had taken no time at all. “They know what they’re doing,” Marson replied quietly. “And I know what I have to do. I’ve been looking for you.”

  “I thought you’d forget,” said Chris.

  “Forget what?” Marson moved back a step.

  “About the drip. It’s time for me to go out there again.”

  “No, no,” said Marson quickly. “There might not be any need. I want you to tell me where Allison is.”

  “What do you mean ‘need’? His drip has run out. I have to fix him a new one, or at least get a look at him. Once you’ve got those slings working, the bridge will move, won’t it? Then the chairlift will be too low, and he’ll have to wait even longer for treatment. I have to go out there before then. And anyway, what the hell’s it got to do with Frank?”

  It had not yet occurred to Marson that an adjustment would need to be made to the chairlift. For a moment, he was grateful to the doctor. But only for a moment. He had no time for this. He had to get the Jones moving again. He didn’t trust Marty to do as he was told. And the sooner the Jones arrived, the sooner it would all be over — the sooner Johnny would be safe. “Just tell me where he is. I’ll explain everything.”

  Chris stopped to think. “I...I saw the light on in his office,” he started, “a little while ago now—”

  “Number?”

  “What?”

  “His phone number, man!” Marson shouted. “Allison’s office. Give me his number.”

  As Chris reached into his pocket for his diary, Marson’s eyes followed him, unaware that Jeff and Cropper were already back alongside the Kato, talking to Tony. All three were nodding. Tony’s reach from the west side of the river would be reasonably short to the trailer — approximately forty feet. At that radius he could manage a lift of thirty tons before he ran on to overload. Tony climbed into the cab, the engine already running steadily. The loop of half-inch cable hung from the hook, swaying irregularly in the wind. Jeff was looking to him questioningly. Tony replied by sticking up his thumb.

  “Okay,” said Jeff. “Take her up, but gently. Just take the weight. There’s no point trying to lift the whole thing. If you can get the rear wheels clear of the bridge, that’ll take a few tons off the cliffs. But take it slowly.”

  The diesel settled to a steady throb. The cable started to twitch. Then it went rigid round the trailer’s frame. Jeff watched uneasily as the gap between wheels and wheel arches began to open. Over on the east side, Marson snatched the diary from Chris’s hands and turned sharply away from the cliff. His course was set and his mind closed as he dashed off to the phone box to speak to Allison. He was oblivious to the sounds which made even Chris turn at once to face the river. The bridge gave a groan. The main cables were whining in protest, when they should have been sighing with relief.

  “Steady!” cried Jeff. “Steady now.”

  The overload hooter cut in. Jeff could not understand it. There was no way the Kato could have thirty tons on. He waved his arms at Tony in a frantic gesture. The engine died, the boom eased, the hooter stopped.

  “I don’t believe it,” said Tony. “It doesn’t make sense.” The indicator pointed to thirty-two tons, and the trailer hadn’t lifted an inch. “How can it not have moved? I know what this thing’s capable of...”

  “Me too,” agreed Jeff.

  Even Cropper was nodding. “There must be something else.”

  Jeff looked at the dials. “Maybe there is,” he began slowly. “What if we tried it with the boom further out?”

  “We’d just get even less lift,” Tony came back quickly. “You know that. The further out the boom, the less lift I can get. Try to lift more vertically and we’d get nowhere.”

  “We’re also trying to pull it backwards, aren’t we? To slide it?”

  “If you can’t manage a perpendicular lift, then some of the forces pull horizontally.” Tony was mumbling impatiently. “Of course they do.”

  “But if the driver has locked the wagon’s brakes, then we’re trying to pull against that as well.”

  Tony and Cropper looked on, reluctant to admit that that could be the problem. They had lifted many things in their time, and Tony’s explanation had worked for everything. If a vertical lift is impossible, then you lift at an angle. The
shorter radius means a greater capacity, and this makes the lift possible; that was the way it worked. But neither of them had ever tried to lift a wagon, less still a wagon with its brakes locked.

  Jeff waited for the silence to end. But there was no response. “Try it again,” he said at last, the lack of dissension convincing him of his authority. “Try it with the boom further out. Try a vertical lift. Dead vertical.”

  Tony turned back to the controls. He extended the boom, still saying nothing. When the hook was directly over the cable’s point of contact with the trailer, Jeff gave him a nod and the engine again began to throb. Again the cable tightened. The load began to lift a little sooner this time, but barely more discernibly. They were still unsure whether the wheels had been lifted even a millimetre from the surface when the hooter cut in again. Jeff made a gesture, and Tony eased the throttle until the hooter cut off. The indicator was pointing to nineteen tons.

  “Leave it at that,” said Jeff.

  He had been right about the brakes, but his disappointment was obvious. The fraction of strain they had taken off the cliffs was almost negligible, yet the sound of whining metal which now filled the air convinced them of only one thing: they had added to the uncertainty. Who knew what loads and forces they had disturbed, or what effect these changes would make? And worse still, the Kato was now stuck. Even the slightest movement now seemed too risky. Tony realised before anyone else that his role in the entire operation was effectively at an end. He accepted it bravely.

  “A good try,” he conceded.

  Jeff gave an uncharacteristic snarl and moved away from the Kato. Cropper followed him, but Tony sat still in the Kato, pointlessly. They had achieved nothing. When Jeff and Cropper got back to the base on the east side, Marson was waiting for them outside Jeff’s caravan.

  “The Kato’s stuck,” said Jeff, by way of greeting. “So I see,” said Marson.

  Jeff stood head down, like a schoolboy, owning up to a crime which the headmaster already knew about. “It hasn’t made much difference,” he said, after a while.