fresh packet of cigarettes and passed it around as he quickly briefed them. ‘My guess is that Burton went in one of these empty houses after Gauld. The flooring’s rotten, the stair treads and banisters are broken, so he could have fallen and hurt himself. But that doesn’t explain his radio.’ He held it up and showed it to them. ‘We found it on the pavement, there, and it frightens the shit out of me. Anyway, sod the speculation until we find him. Take a house each and be careful . . . they’re bloody death traps.’
He took the middle property himself, the one nearest to where they had found the smashed radio. It reeked of damp and decay. His torch beam blinked feebly into the blackness, picking out rotting floorboards and slimy rubbish. A door to his right was closed. Warily he turned the handle and pushed. A groaning creak as it swung back on to an empty, dead, urine-smelling room. He moved on, things rustling and scurrying in front of him. To his left, stairs with broken jagged banisters lurching outwards. Another door in front of him. He kicked it open. The kitchen, piled high with rubbish and smelling of bad drains and cats and rotting food.
Back to the hall and up the stairs, testing each tread carefully before putting his weight on it. Half-way up he stopped and held his breath as he listened. A creaking. There was someone up there. There it was again. The soft creak of a floorboard. ‘Burton?’ He waited. Silence. No! A rustling, then another floorboard creaked. His torch kept flickering. The beam shuddered and died. He gave the casing a welt with the flat of his hand which frightened it into brief life again before it died finally a second time.
He waited to let his eyes adjust to the darkness and took another step. Then he froze. Something. He stopped dead, ears sharply focused for the slightest sound. Silence. Silence that screamed in the blackness. But there was something . . . someone up there. ‘Burton?’ If it was Burton, why the hell didn’t he answer?
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?’