The torch had fallen nearly to the full length of the hoses, the bottles only three feet. They hung, clanking together. The torch was swinging, twisting, spurting out flame and level with Cropper’s face.
Chris could only stare. Every muscle in his body seemed to be locked.
The loudhailer came in with inhuman lack of emotion. “The gas bottles, Chris! Turn off the gas.”
He saw then what Jeff meant. There were valves on the bottles as well as those on the torch. But he couldn’t reach them. One armpit was hard over the protective rail, his other fingers reaching for the hoses. He risked a glance beyond the bottles. The tip of the flame brushed Cropper’s shoulder, and passed on in its swing. His donkey jacket puffed with flame and smoke for a second. Then he realised he couldn’t draw up the hoses, or the torch would fall across Cropper’s face.
Chris got up on his knees, suddenly furious, and hammered at the guard rail with the heel of his hand. It came free, and he tossed it away. Now, flat on his chest, his stretched fingers just touched the bottle, then found a valve. He didn’t dare look at Cropper. He’d caught a whiff of scorched flesh.
He reached. Pain jolted his shoulder. He gripped the valve feebly between two fingers. It moved. He was screaming to himself: his eyes! He turned the valve a little more. The flame hissed past Cropper’s ear.
“You got it,” called the loudhailer. “Now the other one. The red one, Chris.”
He stared down dazedly. The flame had become weak and flabby, like a played water hose, but was longer than before, and yellow. His brain didn’t seem to be operating.
“The other one, Chris. You must.”
They couldn’t lift Cropper past the flame. He groaned, and reached again. The red, the red, he whispered. Smoke was swirling from the flame, blinding him. He touched the cylinder and worked his fingers round it, touched the valve, and eased himself farther forward with his chest and shoulders well over, and found the valve. Frantically he turned it, and at last the flame faltered, and died. He lay panting.
“Good man. We’ll pull him up,” the loudhailer said flatly, like a bored station announcement.
Cropper came up slowly towards him. It was impossible for Chris to lift him onto the surface of the chair. They brought him up close, so that Chris could steady his shoulders. Cropper’s face was black from the smoke. He’d lost his eyebrows and a lot of his hair.
They were winched in. Many hands reached for Cropper. “Gently,” Chris croaked, and somebody helped him onto the cliff. The gas bottles clanked on the rock.
They made a carpet of donkey jackets and laid Cropper on them. “Let me see,” Chris demanded, and crouched over him. Cropper was unconscious, his breath rasping. Chris looked up at Jeff whose face was sallow.
“His ribs...and burns...” Chris tried to explain.
There was a crowd round them. Jeff was abruptly very cold and precise, turning on them, police alike, waving his arms and shouting violently. They fell back.
Chris continued to mumble: “The bar...the bar’s out of the way now. Mend the chairlift...I’ve got to go back. Let me go back...”
“Don’t be a fool,” said Jeff.
“Johnny...I didn’t even get a look. I’ve got to go back.”
Chris could feel the crowd closing in on Cropper, their gruesome fascination excited by his suffering. He felt disgust choking him. As he turned to face the bridge, it became disgust with himself. Not once had he done enough. Not once had he tried everything possible. He looked out at the creaking bulk of his enemy and accepted that fear had beaten him to the very end. He hated the bridge, and feared it. He began to weep. He wept because he could not get down to it again before he had time to contemplate and reflect on this final failure, and feel it undermine him and any shred of confidence he might have had left.
It was only slowly that he came to the realisation that everything had gone quiet. Jeff and one or two of his men had piled Cropper into a van and taken him as far in the direction of the hospital as the floods would allow. Wearied by the excitement, and persuaded by the men’s departure that the action was now taking place elsewhere, most of the public had retired from the scene, followed by many of the policemen. Chris sat on the wet rock, and failed to make himself think. A shadow moved. Laura approached him. She sat beside him and cried.
“He’ll die now, won’t he?” she wept.
“Don’t cry,” he said thoughtlessly, crying himself. “He’ll be okay.” The words rang hollow, most of all to Chris himself. His words would all ring hollow, and nothing he could say would comfort her. He reached to put his arm round her, and she flinched. She couldn’t prevent herself from crying out.
“What is it?” he demanded sharply. “You’re hurt, aren’t you?”
“It’s just my shoulder.”
“Let me see.”
“No, please...”
She moved her hand weakly, but he had pushed her jacket and her clothing to one side and was looking at the bruising on her shoulder. It was purple and green and swollen.
“I fell against an old plough,” she explained. “What’s going on? There’s something you’re not telling me.”
“You? What should I tell you? Why should I tell you? Because you’re a doctor? And what good would a doctor do? You can’t even look after your own patient. How do you think you’d be able to stop him?”
She knew she had said too much. Her face crumpled and her tears coursed down the runnels this produced.
“Stop who?” he said, pushing his sympathy to one side. “Stop who?”
Laura said nothing.
“You know him, don’t you? There is only one him. One man who’s done this to you, who’s tried to sabotage the rescue. You know him! Who is he? Why’s he doing this? You knew him all the while. You know where he is this very minute.”
She remained silent, but it was too late for silence.
“He’s tried to kill me, and you know who he is! You knew it was him who burnt the caravan,” he ranted. “Shot at me and tried to wreck the chairlift. All the time you’ve known he was trying to kill me.”
She shook her head stubbornly.
“Then what?” he demanded angrily, nearly rising to his feet.
“It was Johnny he was aiming for. Always Johnny. He only got at you because you were his doctor.” She sounded like she was making excuses.
“Oh, that’s all right then,” he burst out. “Nothing personal. You sound like that policeman. He’s looking for him, you know. For murder. I know all about him. I’m going to find Grey now, tell him I know his man’s identity—”
“No!” she cut in violently.
“Tell me why not.” He was losing his patience, and his head was throbbing as he tried to control himself. “And tell me why you haven’t handed him in.”
“I’ve told you.”
“You haven’t told me anything.”
“I have. I’ve told you what matters to me. My son. Only Den knows where Harry is. Den and Johnny. And Johnny...”
Chris refused to accept her reasoning. “He’s insane. A murderer.”
“He’s my son.”
She meant Harry. Chris knew that she must have meant Harry. But the way she said it was enough to confuse him. He became distracted slightly by sounds of a new, larger crowd reappearing at the cliff. They had regrouped after the accident. They had taken time to speak to each other, to share the bits of knowledge and the fears they had accumulated since the slings were employed. They had felt the rock shudder; they knew their homes were in danger. Now, with the police cordon weakened, they were pressing forward. He heard some shouts, several manic voices, threatening to cut the bridge.
Chris was still trying to make sense of what was going on — of Laura’s words and Cropper’s eyes and the revived intentions of the mob — when he felt the first blow to the back of his head. It did not knock him unconscious. His eyes were still open. Laura was staring beyond him with sudden startled horror, and with recognition. The second blow followed so qu
ickly that her look had not changed at all when his head seemed to split open. Then he felt nothing more.
Twenty
Den had been at the bridge for a while. As soon as he had woken, he had climbed back into the Mini and driven most of the way there. He had parked inconspicuously by the side of the road, and walked the remaining distance unseen, gun in hand.
The so-called rescue attempt appeared to him little more than a farce. The man in charge had disappeared, and those he left behind scarcely seemed capable of opening a tin of sweetcorn without getting something wrong. He heard the almighty crack, and knew that it could only bode well for him. He had seen the doctor go out with that moron, and was ready to shoot at them, but soon realised he wouldn’t have to. They tried to cut through a hanger bar as though it was nothing more than an elastic band — and of course, it snapped. The rest was pure comedy. It made Den wish that he was the sort of person who could make that sort of thing up. The fat one was dangling like a tired old conker, and the doctor clambering like an idiot chimpanzee. When the torch had cut one of the ropes, that was priceless. And then when it slid off and hung beside that man, setting his hair alight and burning his eyes...Den knew that this would be his best chance.
He watched them think of nothing but the injured fool. He watched the crowd disperse — taking the pigs with them — and the men cart their colleague off to the middle of nowhere. And just as he had guessed, no one looked twice at the cutting equipment.
True enough: that doctor sat right beside the torch and the bottles. Sat like a wreck, probably incapable of even smoking a fag. And then...that was Laura! What better; a chance to kill two birds with one stone. He had watched them talk for a while. He wouldn’t have bothered, but he knew that they were talking about him, and that made him laugh. But after a few minutes he had got bored of being amused and crept up behind the doctor.
Bang! He brought the butt of the gun down onto the back of his head. He paused a moment to smile at Laura, maybe even wink at her. He was keen to show her that she was next. And bang, the doctor was unconscious. Dead, even. Who could say? A doctor, perhaps? Was there a doctor in the house? Well, a conscious one, anyway.
He gave Laura a tap on the head as well. Not as hard, but then it didn’t need to be. He could hear the crowd growing again. He guessed that they were coming to cut the bridge. He always liked to think that others could benefit from actions that served his own ends. He would save them the hassle of having to argue with these nobodies, and save them the effort of having to force their way through.
He went over to Cropper’s cutting gear. The doctor had managed to turn the gas off after all, so Den had to dig out a light. He turned the valve and the gas caught at once, spitting out an imprecise orange flame. He turned the other valve and the cone roared blue. Den grinned like a lunatic in the heat, knowing that his work was almost done. He squatted down to Prescott’s chains, and the flame dug in.
The chains put up no little resistance. The huge iron links had stood proud for 150 years, and were not about to bow down for the whim of a coarse murderer without some kind of struggle. Den’s hands grew hot, and his thoughts turned to the gloves which Cropper must have been wearing on the chairlift. He looked around him, but could see nothing. Cropper must still have been wearing them. He pulled his sleeves down over his hands, losing a little grip, but making the pain more bearable. As the metal began to give way, it spat small splinters of molten steel at Den’s face. He had to turn away. This made it harder to concentrate, made it feel like his cutting was less focused, less accurate; but there was no other option. He had thought it would be easy, had imagined a hot knife going through a packet of butter, but it had begun to annoy him now. As he looked away, he willed the bridge to fall. He began to picture Johnny in the truck; the bridge falling, and with it the truck, and with the truck Johnny; the whole mass of metal and concrete and whisky and bone and flesh plummeting into the swollen river; and that made him feel a lot better. As he turned back to his work and saw that most of the foot of metal of his chosen link was reaching its breaking point, he began to feel liberated. It was a freedom he had never felt before. A freedom from the last few years; a licence no longer to have to look over his shoulder; to drink whisky with a smile on his face. Freedom from Laura and the chains which bound him to her; from some son of hers he knew nothing about; from Johnny Parfitt and his mind-numbing stupidity; from Superintendent Grey and his dead son who had deserved everything he got for following blindly in his honest father’s honest footsteps, and for driving too fast behind a heavy goods vehicle.
Like Chris, Den had no idea what hit him. Like Chris, the first blow failed to render him unconscious. Den fell onto his back, dropping the torch away from his body. He looked up. A thickset silhouette provided him some brief shelter from the rain. He recognised his assailant. Grey was lifting the gun high above his head, his eyes wild, intent on bringing the butt down onto Den’s forehead with as much force as possible. He had no thought in his mind. He wielded the shotgun like an axe, and felt through its muzzle nothing but the potential to end a life. To save his own by ending the life of this animal.
As he looked down at Den, supine, awaiting death, he saw before him the face of his son. Still he did not hesitate. But the first blow had not been true enough. Den did not need him to hesitate. He rolled swiftly to his right and reached for the torch. Grey brought the gun down hard into the ground. He felt the cliff quake beneath him, the pain of the reverberation against his hands, and he dropped the gun.
Den turned to face him, brandishing the flame. He felt no pain. He thought he might even enjoy this. Getting rid of Johnny, of Laura, her meddling doctor and Grey all in one go — not a bad night’s work. Grey sidestepped as Den came at him, and gave a wild swing with a fist. As though his fists would do him any good now, Den laughed to himself. He would toy with this policeman, he decided; make him realise just who had been in control all these years. And who, for the last two days, had been in control of everything.
As they stood still, facing each other, knowing that one of them had to die, they heard a huge, slow chugging noise in the background. Den knew better than to turn round, and Grey could see little over his shoulder. The cavalry was arriving. Not on the cliff top, but down below them, in the cutting on the east side. The Jones approached, Marty at the controls, Marson hanging on at the side and howling like a kid playing cowboys. They were oblivious of the tussle going on at the cliff top. The only thing on Marson’s mind was the crane’s hook and the cab of the truck. Just like he had promised all those hours ago, he was going to pick that truck right off that bridge.
Tony, in the Kato on the west side, looked on in amazement. He could sense the new surges in the crowd’s discontentment. He had seen what had happened to Cropper, and had known that there was nothing he could do to help. He had caught sight of the bright flashes of light over by the main support chains on the east side, and though he could not believe it, he knew that someone was trying to cut the bridge. There was no time to disentangle the Kato, so he had given as much line as possible, and had jumped ship. And now, as he looked down to the opposite cutting, he could see the Jones. The Jones, for which they had waited almost two whole days. The Jones, the answer to everything, the culmination of the entire operation. The Jones was here to save the day. And as he watched the manic waves of the torch over on the east cliff top, he knew that it had come too late to save anything. He ran as far from the cliff top as he could, running west for his life.
Den was still fencing with Grey. Grey had no weapon, and he had his back to the cliff, but still Den was reluctant to go for the kill. He even had time for words.
“I hear you’ve been looking for me,” he said.
Grey did not give him the satisfaction of a reply.
“Haven’t you? Four long years, chasing my tail. Well, here I am, Superintendent. You’ve found me. Or rather, I found you. Aren’t you going to get me? Or are you going to die as well? Another useless piece of filth. Ca
n’t do his job without being killed. You know what they say, don’t you? Like father, like—”
Laura ran at him like she had never run at him before. She slammed her fists into his back and kept on running. The torch flew from his hands over the edge of the cliff. The red and black gas bottles followed quickly behind, plunging down into the churning river below. As Laura looked to see what she had done, Grey turned to look with her. Den had disappeared. They stepped closer to the edge, and they heard his shouts.
“Help me! Help me, Laura, please!”
He was holding on to the chain, Prescott’s chain, the very chain he had been trying to cut. The rusty metal bit into his palms and his knuckles were pure white. His legs swung from side to side beneath him as he tried to clamber up and get more of a hold. But he was too heavy. He looked like a monkey.
“Please, Laura! Superintendent! Please!”
“Where’s Harry?” demanded Laura. Her voice was cold. She felt that, for the first time, she saw Den for exactly what he was. A worthless, self-serving, cold-blooded bully, as happy to kill as to cry.
“Harry?” screamed Den. “I’ll tell you, Laura. I’ll tell you if you help me up.”
“I won’t ask you again,” she said. “Where’s Harry?”
Den felt his world collapsing beneath him. “I don’t know,” he called out. One of his hands slipped from the chain. “Honestly. I don’t know.”
“Then what good are you to anyone?” said Laura, turning away.
Den reached up with his free hand, trying to get a hold on the chain again. He succeeded, grasping at it and pulling himself up with all his strength.
Final Toll Page 15