Ashes to Ashes (18 page)

Milly got to her feet before I did and flashed her small torch around to illuminate the place. As well as going up, the staircase also went down for a few steps. These led to a door which Milly tried to open and when she failed, she said, ‘Locked.’

‘Shine your torch up,’ I said to the girl. Milly did as I asked and we saw, not right at the top of the tower, but a fair way up where the staircase ended, another, much larger door. Painfully, I got to my feet. ‘We’d better see where that goes.’

‘But where are we?’ Milly asked.

‘I think we’re in one of the towers,’ I said.

‘So we don’t know where that door leads to, do we?’

‘No.’ I began to walk slowly upwards. Not that these stairs were anything like as difficult as those leading up to the galleries. Shallow and smooth, these were a doddle.

Milly behind me said, ‘Mr Hancock, these stairs could lead us in to trouble!’

I stopped, turned and looked down at her. She was so bloody tiny, no wonder it was so easy to believe she was only ten years old. ‘Milly,’ I said because now I had to say something, ‘you have just, I think, killed a bloke. We’re in trouble whatever way we look at it!’

I could see her face go red, even in the semi-darkness. ‘That were self defence, that!’ Milly said. ‘They was gonna kill me!’

‘I know that Mr Webb was coming towards you, but,’ I replied as calmly as I could. If I hadn’t been so sure that the men up in the Golden Gallery were set on killing Milly and probably me too, I would have handed the girl over to someone. She hadn’t shown a shred of pity or remorse since she’d stabbed Webb, not one. ‘But you didn’t need to actually kill . . .’

‘They was gonna throw me over the side!’ Milly said as she stepped up on to the same stair as me and looked hard into my eyes. ‘You know that? Some fucking ceremony that included them cutting my throat and then throwing me into the fires in the street! Webb would’ve watched! Call that doing
nothing
, do you? What was I supposed to do?’

‘Milly, you’re not in the least bit upset, as far as I can tell,’ I said.

‘Your face hurt, does it?’ If she thought that changing the subject like this was going to make me blind to how she was behaving, then Milly Chivers was very much mistaken!

‘We’re not talking about my face,’ I said. ‘Now . . .’

‘Cause I bet that it ain’t,’ Milly said. ‘You’ve had your nose busted right up and a cheek bone, by the looks of it, too, but I don’t s’ppose you can feel a thing.’

I made myself ready to protest, to say that what she was talking about was quite untrue. But it wasn’t.

I sighed. ‘No,’ I said. ‘No, I can’t feel anything. In situations like this, in danger, your body doesn’t let you feel too much. There isn’t time.’

I knew men in the trenches who managed to stagger about on broken legs, they were that pumped up with fear and trembling. It’s a well-known thing.

‘But—’

‘Well, it’s the same with me,’ Milly said. ‘I’m in danger, so I can’t feel.’ And then I saw, or thought that I saw, just the tiniest bit of dampness in the corner of one of Milly’s eyes. ‘Can’t afford to feel.’

‘Milly . . .’

She shoved me with her tiny fingers just below my chest. ‘Come on,’ she said, ‘we need to find out where these stairs go to.’

I turned and we trudged on upwards. As we got closer to the door, the well in the centre of the staircase became darker and more menacing. Just before we got to the top, we heard the sound of voices down below as, I imagined, our pursuers tried the door we’d bolted once again.

The door at the top of the staircase was actually a double one surrounded by a huge and ornate wooden frame. Curved like the wall they were set into, these doors were panelled and made of the same heavy, dark wood as their frame. I took hold of the handle on the left-hand side, but neither it nor the door moved. I looked down at Milly who was now chewing nervously on her bottom lip. There were definitely people down below trying to get in to wherever it was we were. Both Milly and myself knew it. We also knew that neither of us had a clue as to where this new door was going to lead. I pushed on the right-hand door with my shoulder, not knowing whether I’d find people or fire or even the outside of the cathedral beyond it. It gave underneath my weight and Milly smiled. I put my head around the door and for a moment I saw absolutely nothing. I could hear voices, a way away admittedly, but I couldn’t see anything. For a moment I thought about just shutting the door and not even bothering to move forward, but then I looked down at Milly’s hopeful face and I said, ‘I don’t know where this is, I can’t see anything.’

Impatient with me, she put her torch in my hand and said, ‘Use this!’

I put the torch on and saw what looked like another corridor with various doors leading out from it. To our left, on what had to be the western end of the cathedral, was something large, a window, covered over completely with blackout curtains. So dark and funereal was it that for a moment it quite put me in mind of my shop back home in West Ham. Maybe it was this familiarity that made me move forward and pull Milly after me into wherever it was we were.

Public buildings, like hospitals, town halls and churches, always have hidden areas that the public do not ever actually see. Places like store cupboards, cellars and dumb waiters are kept out of view. For someone in my job, however, that isn’t always the case. In fact, more often than not, the hidden places are areas with which we have a lot of contact. After all, when a person goes and sees his doctor at the hospital, the last thing he wants to be confronted with is said physician’s dead body being stretchered down the main staircase towards him. No. While a kindly nurse tells the patient that Dr So and So isn’t on duty today and so he’s seeing Dr Such and Such instead, I’m carrying So and So down some hidden back stairs, past a laundry chute and into the cellar. This place, wherever Milly and I were now, was just one of those areas.

‘What’s this all used for?’ Milly said as she followed where I was shining the torch with her eyes.

‘I don’t know.’

The corridor we were on continued down some steps in front of us and then up another small flight. To my right, on the same wall as the entrance door, was another small door which could, I reckoned, possibly lead up to whatever was in the top of the tower; bells or a clock. Also to my right, but on the opposite wall, was a doorway almost exactly the same in appearance as the one we’d just come through. The corridor between the two large doorways led off to the right into some shadowy place that my little torch could only very barely make out.

Almost before I’d noticed, Milly ran down the steps in front of me and then up the other little flight opposite. I could hear thumping noises from the stairwell behind me. They sounded ominously like Mr Rolls and his mates trying to get in to find us. I followed Milly without speaking, first down and then up the few stairs that led to where she was standing. Looking right as I got to the top of the steps I saw first blackness then, as my eyes adjusted to the conditions in the cathedral, I saw the little splash of red light from the lamp directly underneath the dome.

‘Blimey!’

We were on a balcony at the far western end of the cathedral directly, as far as I could tell, over the Great West Door. I felt a bit sick at the thought of where we were until I found the wrought-iron fence in front of us and put both my hands on it. Milly, watching the blokes moving around on the Whispering Gallery way, way in front, if not that far above us, stood in silence. I was I admit, impressed myself. But then I began to hear other noises, from directly down beneath where I was standing. Familiar voices.

‘Get it open!’ I heard Mr Rolls says angrily.

‘It’s bolted from the inside!’ I think it was Mr Smith who replied.

I leaned very carefully and quietly over the fence and made out, if not actual features, the movement of bodies down near to where we’d entered the tower. I thought I was at least very hard to see, but I’d not taken into account the fact that Mr Rolls and all his blokes had torches too. Suddenly a light was shining right into my face and there was a shout of what sounded like triumph from below.

‘What’s up?’ It was one of the blokes up in the Whispering Gallery.

From down below, Mr Smith answered his question. ‘Murderer!’ he yelled. ‘Up in the Triforium! A murderous girl and a madman!’

From the Whispering Gallery came, ‘Murder?’

‘Yes!’ The voice of Rolls was loud, clear and very distinctive. ‘Gentlemen, we have traitors in our midst!’ he said. ‘It’s Phillips here. A madman and a girl who seek to destroy our beloved cathedral are trying to get away. One poor man has already met his maker because of them and in front of my eyes, too! Stabbed!’

‘Oi!’ I put a hand over Milly’s mouth and then whispered for her to be quiet. Yes, they knew where we were, but I wanted to hear what else they were saying. I also wanted to know when they were coming.

It was then that, unwittingly, Mr Smith said something to the men in the Whispering Gallery that gave me some hope. ‘And they killed Mr Ronson!’ he said. ‘Pushed him to his death on the cathedral floor!’

‘Crikey!’ came a voice from the Whispering Gallery, followed by ‘Good Lord!’, ‘What say?’ and ‘Bloody hell!’ Other voices joined in too, all shocked and horrified at what had apparently been done by Milly and myself. They couldn’t all, I reckoned, be putting on a show for Mr Rolls and his mates. If I was right then, unlike poor old Mr Andrews, I reckoned on very few of the actual watchmen being involved in this murderous attempt to save St Paul’s. We could actually be up against a very few, maybe even only five or six men at the most.

I yelled out, ‘That’s not Mr Phillips! That’s a man called Rolls who isn’t even a watchman at all!’

‘Don’t listen to him!’ Mr Smith shouted. ‘Just . . . Anyone who can get down here, please help us get this door open!’

‘They’ll kill again!’ Rolls said.

I didn’t even get a chance to draw breath before the sound of men running to get off the Whispering Gallery thundered in my ears. Below I saw one of the dark shapes by the door break away from the others and move away somewhere I couldn’t see in the darkness. I suspected it was Mr Rolls. I didn’t know whether he’d picked Mr Phillips’s mask up from the Golden Gallery floor and put it back on again or not. But if he hadn’t, then that could explain why, if the figure was Rolls, he was hiding himself away from all the other blokes now. All I could do was tell them, yell out and hope they might believe me. I took a deep breath.

‘Mr Hancock, don’t say a word!’ a familiar voice said to me. ‘Run!’

Chapter Thirteen

‘
G
eorge?’ I thought he’d left the building.

But he was standing behind Milly and myself and, as the girl held her torch up towards his face, I could see that he had been crying.

‘The men won’t believe
you
,’ George said. ‘You’ve got to get away from here! You’ve got to run!’

‘Run? Where?’

‘I don’t know!’ George pulled his fingers through his hair and began to cry. ‘I thought it would be all right! I thought . . . Mr Smith and Mr Bolton said that Mr Andrews was stupid!’

From way down below came the sound of men hammering on the door to the tower.

‘You, George,’ I said, ‘you were part of this . . .’

‘I didn’t think that anyone would die!’ George sobbed. ‘But then there was Mr Ronson and Mr Andrews. Mr Andrews died trying to stop them taking Mr Ronson’s body. He died! I saw! It was terrible! And then, then you almost died, Mr Hancock . . .’

I felt my anger flare up inside me like a bomb blast. ‘And Milly!’ I added. ‘Milly here!’ I tipped my head at her and then I looked at his face.

Nothing.

He was looking at her as I spoke and yet there was nothing at all that spoke to me of any compassion for her on his fresh young face. He was one of those people who thinks that women and girls like Milly are scum. I hated such people.

‘You knew, didn’t you?’ I said as I moved in closer to the boy. ‘You knew that Mr Rolls and his mates were going to kill this little girl!’

‘No! No! Yes!’ he whimpered. I looked down below again at the men still gathering to try and open the thick ancient door. George, still crying, was now bent almost double in front of me.

I looked at him again and said, ‘What happened to Mr Phillips, George? The real Mr Phillips?’

He shook his head as if just by doing that he could sufficiently answer my question.

‘Answer me!’ I said. ‘What happened . . .’

‘Mr Phillips pulled out of this! Mr Rolls took his place tonight!’

‘How do you know all of this, George?’

There was a pause, just a short one. But George stopped crying then. ‘My father was a Mason,’ he said. ‘He died.’ He didn’t say how or when, but then he looked up at me. ‘Mr Rolls was his friend. He said that I could join the Craft and save the cathedral. He said my father would have done so. He said that was what my father had wanted!’

‘And you . . .’

‘Mr Hancock, I have done such terrible things! I watched, I
watched
Mr Andrews die!’ He put his hands up to his mouth and I think he said, ‘How can I atone?’ But it was very quick and as soon as he’d said it he reeled away back to where he’d come from, across the balcony towards the north. I didn’t attempt to follow him. At the time and in spite of his youth, I felt badly disposed towards George. I don’t always have a lot of time for all the Commies we have in the East End; they can to be honest, be a bit much. But people like George make people like me think about class and the way it works in England. George could cry over the death of two middle-class men, but the life of a kid like Milly quite clearly meant nothing to him. People like her mean nothing to far too many people. I hope that if we do ever come through this war and conquer Hitler, things like Class will change.