All Through the Night

by M. P. Wright

  I watched as she pulled at the sleeve of her top, gripped at the cuff then wiped away the last of the tears that had fallen down her cheeks. The kid was proving to be braver than I was.

  “Forever? I don’t understand, Truth. What do you mean they went away forever? Do you mean that those children died?”

  “No, silly . . . Theo said they went across the sea.”

  “Across the sea, to where?” Truth had me baffled by what she was telling me.

  “He didn’t say. He just said the children from Walter Wilkins went across the sea with those bad men and that they never came back.”

  “Well, there ain’t anybody takin’ you across no sea, no smugglers, and no bad men. You hear me? I promise you that.”

  In the flickering candlelight I saw Truth break out into the briefest of smiles. It was the first time since I’d taken her out from underneath the makeshift hidey-hole that Dr Fowler had kept her in that she had properly opened up to me. I still didn’t have a clue what was going on and why Paxton and his goons wanted the child so badly, but at least I felt like I was becoming less of a bogeyman to the poor child.

  Truth stood up and slowly took a couple of paces towards me. I reached across to her and drew the blanket back around her shoulders, then got to my feet and took Truth’s hand again. “Come on, let’s get you outta here, get you warmed up, shall we?”

  I felt Truth’s dainty fingers tighten around my palm as we headed across the darkening cellar and back to the foot of the stone steps. I looked up to see Lazarus staring down at us from the hatch door; he smiled then reached down to help the little girl up. Truth eagerly climbed on ahead of me. I clasped onto her fingers and followed. It felt like I was being guided by a heavenly messenger, away from a wretched inky netherworld and led to shelter, drawn back into the safety of the light.

  *

  The sky had gone black at sunset and I could feel a storm brewing itself up into a frenzy way off in the distance, behind the Mendip Hills. The air outside had turned cool, and the first light rain had slowly begun to fall; the branches of the ash trees that were dotted around the car park blew to and fro as the wind began to pick up. I was stood in the bar, leaning against the wall inside one of the bay windows, watching as Paxton and his men sat patiently in their motors outside.

  I looked at my wristwatch: it was a few minutes after eight thirty and the encroaching darkness of night-time was beginning to drape its unwelcome mantle, heightening my already grave sense of disquiet.

  “You be standin’ there fo’ much longer, brother, you’re gonna start puttin’ down roots.” Benny marched up past me, grabbed hold of the edges of the thick velvet curtains and drew them across the large window. He then walked across to the two other bays either side of me and closed up the drapes, leaving the room in semi darkness. Benny stuck his hand into his back pocket and pulled out a handful of wax candles and a box of matches, and began to light each one in different parts of the room then walked quietly back across to the pub. We both remained silent until we were joined a few moments later by Lazarus, who came in from behind the bar carrying a World War II olive-green army-issue metal ammo box in one hand and a large black canvas holdall in the other.

  “Right, gentleman, let’s have a look at what goodies I’ve got in here, shall we?” Lazarus sat both the ammo box and the holdall on the bar then unzipped the huge bag and began to pull out an array of handguns of various shapes and sizes, along with a number of attachable suppressors and silencers. He laid the pistols out on the circular brass-topped table behind him then reached back into the bag and took out a Sterling submachine gun and a handful of magazines.

  “This is for you, Benjamin old son.” Lazarus handed over the black-blued SMG and two curved magazines to Benny. Benny looked at the gun, weighing it up in his hands for a short while, then swiftly unfolded the shoulder stock on the machine gun, fed one of the magazines into the receiver and raised it in front of him to check the sighting.

  “You’ll have no trouble with that, mate,” said Lazarus. “Been well looked after, that beauty has.” He pointed at the SMG in Benny’s hands. “Joseph, with the suppressor fitted on that thing like it is, the only thing you’re gonna hear when it’s being fired is the bolt reciprocating. It’s that quiet. All the guns you see here have silencers. When the mayhem starts later we won’t be the ones making the noise, that’s for sure.”

  I looked down at the guns laid out across the table and swallowed hard before speaking. “Neither will Paxton and his men, cos I’m pretty sure they used those damn pistol mufflers when they shot at me and old Doc Fowler.”

  Benny laughed to himself and looked at me coldly. “That right? Then, Joseph old son, it looks like we’re ’bout to have the quietest firefight in history.”

  22

  The first signs of the storm rolled in with the darkening early evening sky at around nine. Lightning crackled out over the far reaches of the Mendip Hills followed by the dull bass rumblings of thunder. The wind had started to pick up and was pelting a steady torrent of rain against the glass of the pub’s windows. In the candlelit bar I anxiously sat and listened while Lazarus and Benny went over their meticulous and savage battle plan one more time. They played out their intended defence to protect Truth and the Hunters Lodge inn with military precision, which I found both comforting and disturbing in equal measure. Benny stared across at me, the vicious-looking submachine gun resting on his lap.

  “When Paxton an’ his goons make their play, they’re gonna come in here hard: we gotta be just as nasty when they do. You git yo’self the chance to take any one of ’em out at the neck, you do it, you understand me?”

  Reluctantly, I slowly nodded my head back at Benny, agreeing with him. Benny wasn’t convinced by my silent accord and decided to ram home his point.

  “Joseph, these fuckers, they ain’t gonna be foolin’ ’bout when they hit us. They mean bidness. They want Trute, but they ain’t gittin’ her. It’s as simple as that. They come at me, I ain’t showing one o’ those bastards any quarter. Git it in your head and heart that you gonna do the same when the time comes.”

  The two men had already taken themselves around the building, making it as secure as they could, bolting and barricading each of the doors in the old inn. The few windows upstairs all had their curtains drawn and were blocked up with heavy blankets and old boxes weighed down with thick brasses and other ironwork from the kitchen and cellar. The larger bedroom furniture had been dragged across to the windows to provide further makeshift protection. It was ramshackle for sure and I knew that the make-do fortifications would not withstand a serious assault from Paxton and his men. Benny looked over towards the drawn blinds of the bay windows, thinking to himself, then pointed at the closed drapes with his stubby finger.

  “They’ll take them windows out first, I’d put money on it. Put us under some real heavy fire fo’ sure. Keep us busy an’ pinned down while a couple of ’em try an’ git in through that back gate door in the kitchen.” Benny pointed towards the hallway with his SMG. “Joseph, we’ll need you to dig in by the back door, try an’ keep ’em at bay while Lazarus and me do the same out front here. I’ll tell ya, it ain’t gonna be pleasant, brother.”

  Lazarus nodded his head in agreement and chuckled to himself. “All this mayhem for one little kid. She better be worth it.” The publican winked at me then turned his attention back to Benny. “It’ll be like the OK Corral in here, it’s a bloody good job this place needed redecorating.”

  The two men roared with laughter but both fell silent when they saw I was not sharing their blackly humoured joke. Lazarus stared across at me, weighing me up. I tried to my stifle my unease by forcing a meagre smile back at him.

  “Joseph, there ain’t no shame in being scared. I know I am, be a fool if I wasn’t.” Lazarus leant forward in his seat and rested the palms of his hands on his lap. “You’ve been asking yourself why Benny and me are so willing to help you out like we are, yes?”

  I nodded
my head.

  “Look, you were a policeman back home, you must have stood by your mates when the shit hit the fan, yeah?”

  “My mates on the force were few and far between, Lazarus.”

  “OK, but you had to have some men around you that you trusted, men you’d stick your neck out for if things got bad?”

  “Maybe. When it got bad there weren’t too many I coulda counted on in a scrap, that’s fo’ sure.”

  Lazarus smiled to himself. “Well, that ain’t the case for me and Benny here. We made promises to each other a long time ago. Made those promises when we was fighting up to our waists in blood and shit in the Kuala Langat swamps. Ain’t that right, Benny?”

  Benny nodded his head in agreement.

  “Hell yes!” Lazarus went on. “For blokes like Benny and me, back then all we had was the army. It taught us to stick together, made us like family. We looked out for each other, cos for most of us that’s all we had, one another. War brings out the worst in men, Joseph, but it can bring out the best too. In Malaya, Benny and me, we made a promise to look out for each other, and we always did. No matter how hairy it got, through thick and thin we never broke our word. Let’s just say we’re keeping our word to one another tonight, for old times’ sake. Now, what I need to know is if you’re a man that can keep his word too.”

  “My word, whaddya mean my word?”

  “It’s simple, Joseph. I know about the conversation you and Benny had earlier, about what’s gonna happen to Truth and where she’s gonna go after all this mess is over with. I think my man here’s been talking sense. I think, deep down, you do too. That little girl upstairs has had no life as far as I can tell, it sounds to me like it’s been a pretty miserable existence for her in that orphanage. You can change all that, change it in a heartbeat, and I want your word on it that you will.”

  I began to speak, but Lazarus interrupted me. “Benny and me, we’re gonna get you outta this mess tonight or we’re gonna die trying. What I want from you is your word that you’ll keep her out of the hands of those animals outside and get young Truth back to Estelle, give the child a chance to find herself a small measure of peace. Perhaps if you do, you’ll find yourself a little peace too.”

  I closed my eyes, dropping my head as I did, my chin resting on my chest. Not knowing what to do for the best, I rubbed agitatedly at my face with the palm of my hand and pinched at the bridge my nose with my thumb and forefinger as I felt a rapid pulse of the blood rushing through the veins in my temples. I ran Lazarus’ words around and around in my head, searching for the right answer within me.

  The publican spoke again, breaking my troubled train of thought. “We don’t have a lot of time here, Joseph, the clock’s ticking. Do the right thing by the girl, please. I want your hand and your word on it, old son.”

  I swallowed hard and opened my eyes to see Lazarus’ and Benny’s outstretched arms in front of me. I looked down at their open palms and hesitated for a moment before slowly reaching out my own hand, shaking both of them in turn. As I did, I felt as if I was selling my soul to the devil himself.

  Lazarus got up and fetched three fresh glasses and a bottle of Johnnie Walker Red Label scotch from behind the bar. He poured a nip in each, handed the tumblers of whisky to Benny and me, then raised his own glass to toast us. “May you be in a heaven an hour before the devil knows you’re dead.” The three of us knocked back the scotch and Lazarus promptly refilled the glasses and sat down again.

  “Now, it’s like I was saying to Benny here, earlier. Truth’s gonna have to go back down into that priest’s hole soon.”

  I glared over at Lazarus, about to object; Benny leant across and softly placed the flat of his hand on my chest to calm me down. “Hear the man out first, Joseph.”

  “Trust me, we know she’s not going to be happy about it, but it’s the safest place for her to be. If Paxton and his men get the better of Benny and me, you have to haul your arse up to my room pronto, get yourself into that priest’s hole and get Truth and yourself away into Hunter’s Hole. At the furthest end of the cellar behind the stack of beer casks you’ll find a door that’ll lead you down into the cave. It’s stone steps for the first thirty feet, then you’ll have to clamber down the ridge to the cave floor. That bit’s a doddle, but the rest ain’t gonna be a barrel of laughs. Just follow the dry riverbed north. It’s gonna get tight and uncomfortable and you’ll have yourself some hard caving on your hands. You ever been down into a cave system before?”

  “What? Gimme a break, will you, Lazarus. Do I look like the kinda fool that’s been down a cave recently?”

  Benny slapped the table with the palm of his huge mitt, laughing out loud. Lazarus went on. “Well, if things go belly up here, you ain’t gonna have a lot of choice. You either stick it out to the end with us and Paxton and his cronies get their hands on Truth, or you get on your belly and crawl your way out to Suncliff Wood with the child.”

  “Suncliff Wood, how far is that?”

  “Just over two miles.”

  “Two miles, crawling on our bellies to get out? You gotta be kidding.”

  Lazarus slowly shook his head at me. “Keep your nerve and you’ll be fine.” The thin words of encouragement fell off Lazarus’ tongue with ease. The bleak look in his eyes told me a very different story.

  Earlier in the evening Lazarus had run a bath for Truth and then made her supper while she bathed. He’d taken a huge sausage sandwich and a bottle of lemonade with two yellow straws sticking out of the top up to her room, along with a box full of coloured pencils and some paper for her to draw on while we were talking downstairs. I left Benny and Lazarus to drink a little more Johnnie Walker and went back to my room and found Truth stretched out on the rug colouring in a picture of a ship that she had drawn on a large piece of paper. I quietly walked across the room and sat on the end of the bed for a moment, watching as the little girl etched away with a blue crayon at the edges of the rolling blue sea.

  “That’s how I came to Britain, on a ship just like that one,” I said.

  Truth stopped colouring and looked up at me. “You did? Where’d you come from?”

  “Place called Barbados.”

  “Is that a long way away from here?”

  “It’s a long way all right, thousands of miles from here.”

  Truth laid the crayon onto the paper and sat up, crossing her legs, staring at me inquisitively. Her long blonde hair was still damp and she had brushed it tight across her scalp then tied it back with a length of red ribbon that Estelle had given to her. She had carefully dressed herself in a pair of light-blue denim jeans, black plimsolls and a white long-sleeved cotton shirt; a tiny patchwork red ladybird had been embroidered in silk onto the edge of the breast pocket. Truth continued to scrutinise me from where she was sat on the floor. I watched as she carefully traced the outline of the ship she had just drawn with the tip of her finger.

  “Who’d you come with?”

  “Nobody, I travelled here on my own.”

  Truth’s nosed scrunched up, her eyebrows rising in disbelief at my answer.

  “On your own? Why, don’t you have any family?”

  “Yeah, I did, once upon a time. They’re gone now though.”

  “Gone where?”

  Caught off guard by the child’s forthright question, a heavy lump rose in my throat as I struggled for a moment to give her an answer. “Well, heaven, I suppose.”

  “Heaven.” Truth looked down at the floor, deep in thought, and then reached down with both hands to the ends of her plimsolls, nervously squeezing at the tips of her toes. She looked back up at me, her face pale and forlorn. When she spoke, her voice was muted and fragile. “Is heaven a real place?”

  “Well, I don’t see why not.” I watched as Truth carefully took in my words.

  “Is that where Theo’s gone, to heaven?”

  I bit at the bottom of my lip as I thought of my own lost family, struggling to reply, choking to utter the words the child needed
to hear. “Yeah . . . Theo’s there, for sure.”

  Truth smiled, nodding her head to herself “That’s good.” The little girl sat thinking a while longer, her need to quiz me not quite over. “So what about you, Joseph, is that where you’ll go one day, to heaven, to be with your family?”

  I wished I could have told her yes, that I was certain that the Promised Land would be my final resting place. But I wasn’t so sure I’d ever reach the islands of the blessed, not after the ungodly deal I’d just made with Benny and Lazarus. Saint Peter himself would surely banish me from the pearly gates for such a sullied act.

  Heavy thunder continued to growl outside, but I barely registered its angry presence, my mind already preoccupied with uneasy thoughts of how I was going to get Truth back down into the priest’s hole. It wasn’t going to be easy and I was dreading telling her what had to be done.

  Lazarus had just gone back down into the underground room and Truth had gone out onto the landing to chat to Benny, who carried with him a lamp, a length of mountaineering rope and a box of candles to hand to his friend down in the priest’s hole.

  Lazarus lit and positioned the candles in different parts of the hideaway then hung the Eccles miner’s lamp from the ceiling, illuminating the place a little more. A few minutes later he climbed back out, dropped the hatch door back down then pointed with his finger over to the chest of drawers by my bed. “I left you a few bits and pieces that may come in handy, did you see ’em?”

  “I did notice, thanks, man.”

  “No problems, just you spend that cash wisely, old son.” Lazarus winked at me mischievously as he walked out. On the chest of drawers Lazarus had left me an old wax Highlander haversack. Sat on top of it was a large Eveready camping flashlight, an ex-army compass and the white envelope containing the eight hundred pounds Beaumont had given me earlier. I took a spare set of Truth’s clothes from her bag, folded them tightly and put them into the waterproof holdall along with the compass and torch then stuffed the money into the inside pocket of my jacket. I reached behind my back and took out my Smith & Wesson .38 from my waistband and broke open the breech, emptying the six cartridges into the palm of my hand while I checked the action and the fixed open iron sights. I returned the shells back into the cylinder then snapped it shut and weighed the pistol in my palm before hooking it back in my waistband out of sight underneath my jacket. I bent down to my case, opened it up and took out the box of Remington .38 rounds I’d brought with me, emptied a couple of handfuls into my back pocket along with my Puma pocket knife then put the box with the remaining cartridges into the haversack just as Benny and Truth came back into the room. Benny gently rested his hand on Truth’s shoulder, his hulking frame dwarfing the little girl as she stood by his side. She looked up at him like a faithful and obedient gun dog.