by M. P. Wright
I watched as Paxton’s jaw set, his right eye twitching slightly. He pointed his finger out in front of him directly towards my face then spat on the ground before speaking.
“You carryin’ a piece?”
I remained silent but nodded my head.
“OK, reach in real careful and toss it at my feet.”
I lifted the front of my jacket, lifted the .38 from my trouser band and did as I was told. Paxton picked up my gun and put it into his jacket pocket.
“Good . . . Never saw the use of a nigger owning a gun. Now, where’s my cargo?”
I took a step backwards. “In my car. I got it parked back on the other side of the woods. What I’ve brought you is safe in the trunk.”
“The trunk? Boy, you better not have damaged any part of my belongings.”
“Oh, she’s perfectly safe.” I saw Paxton’s eyes charge with adrenaline when I said the word “she”. I didn’t give the American time to react further and pushed on with the deal. “Where’s my money?”
Paxton smiled, tapped the side of his pocket and then slowly reached inside, drew out a wad of bound bank notes and shook them at me.
“Throw those car keys on the ground. We’re gonna take ourselves a little walk, make sure you’re on the level.”
I did as he said, reached slowly into my jacket pocket then slung the keys at my feet. Paxton gestured to one of his men to pick them up.
“Which way we heading, boy?”
I turned around and pointed my hand out straight ahead of me, towards the thick undergrowth of Leigh Woods.
Paxton turned to one of his men. “Get down there, spread out an’ make sure we ain’t gonna have any surprises. I wanna make sure the coon here ain’t ’bout to pull the rug from under our feet. You see anything suspicious out there, put a fuckin’ bullet in it.”
I watched as the four men walked out in front of Paxton and me and spread themselves out as they headed into the woods. Paxton came up behind me and jabbed a finger into the centre of my back. “Get walkin’.”
I began to move forwards, aware that Paxton was no more than a foot behind me.
“How long’s my cargo been in that goddamn car trunk, Ellington?”
“No more than ten minutes, I didn’t want her to be bawlin’ the place down while we talked bidness. She’s gonna be fine.”
“Oh, it better be more than fine by the time we reach that motor o’ yours.”
Paxton’s men had continued to spread themselves out further into the undergrowth. In the low evening light, I was struggling to get a fix on them. I kept walking through the bracken and after a few hundred yards looked back up again. The four men were now out of sight. Paxton pushed at my back with the flat of his hand. “Let’s pick up the pace, boy.”
I began to speed up my pace through the wood. I saw a clear pathway to my left and crossed over onto it. Paxton followed close on my back, and our bodies were suddenly through the waist-high vegetation. I kept moving forward and looked out across the thick undergrowth and the trees to the front and either side of me. The light was fading now, the air thick with river mist and the smell of rotting moss and leaves. A warm breeze blew up in front of us, and that was when the first gunshot rang out.
I heard Paxton pull his gun from his belt. He kicked me behind the back of the knee, dropping me swiftly to the floor. “Don’t you move, nigger.”
Paxton came around to my side and looked down at me, his gun held firmly at my temple. I lifted my eyes up towards him and could just make out his face, which was slick with sweat. I could smell the rancid stench of body odour coming off his sweaty hide. A second gunshot ran out, its report cracking out in front of us. Paxton raised his gun in front of him, both his hands gripped around the pearl handle of the revolver. He darted his head to the left and right then bellowed out to his men. “What the fuckin’ hell is going on out there?”
When the American got no reply, he took a step forward and I dropped my right hand down towards the bottom of my trouser leg. Paxton released one of his hands from the butt of his pistol and grabbed at the top of my hair with his long fingers. He yanked me closer towards him, and as he did, I grasped for the knife in my sock. I gripped at the tiny handle and held on to it as tight as I could then let my arm quickly drop to my side. In front of us the woods had begun to light up in a barrage of heavy gunfire.
Paxton looked down at me and yelled over the shooting. “Nigger, when this shit is all over I’m gonna make you beg for me to kill you quick, you hear me, boy?” The American yanked me another few inches closer towards him until I could feel the fabric of his jeans touching the side of my cheek. I heard the roar of both barrels of a shotgun being fired, the bursts’ screaming like cannon fire.
Paxton pulled on my hair and lifted my head up hard. He bent down in front of me and shoved the barrel of the gun into my face. “Who the fuck you got out there with you in the dark, nigger?” He pulled back the hammer on his revolver and went to push it underneath my nose. Two further shots of pistol fire pinged over our heads. Paxton swung himself round just as one of his men came running out of the trees. Another gunshot rang out behind the runner; the bullet tore through the middle of the man’s throat. He dropped to the ground in front of us. Thick streams of blood burst out of the corners of his mouth and he fell face down into the dirt.
Another burst of gunfire whizzed out over our heads. Paxton yanked at my hair, pulling me like a dog being brought to heel on a short lead right up close to his body. As he struggled to keep a grip on me I brought my left knee up and found my balance on my foot. Paxton raised his gun out in front of him and began to fire. I counted the shots: when he triggered the fifth I swung myself around, lifted my arm and sank the blade of the knife into the inside of his thigh.
Paxton screamed and immediately let go of my hair, and instinctively reached down towards the knife buried to the hilt just underneath his groin. I bounced up off the ground and sank my fist into the American’s face. He flew backwards and rolled back into the undergrowth. I heard him scream again just as another gunshot sounded out. I ran head first into the scrub but was knocked backwards and slammed to the ground as Paxton stormed out at me like a rampaging bull. He stomped his boot down on my chest then grabbed hold of my jacket and pulled me up towards him and began to rain down a series of heavy blows to my head. I tried to raise my arm and sideswipe him in the guts with my fist, but he was moving way too quickly for me to hit my mark. The American twisted my jacket in his huge fingers and shook me about like a cloth doll. He pulled his arm back and drove his fist into my face then went to repeat the savage blow. I heard further gunshot buzz across our heads and Vic yell after me. Paxton let go of my lapel. I fell backwards and watched the military policeman limp away, back towards the grounds of the Swiss chalet.
Blood ran in a torrent from my nose and mouth. I felt woozy and fought to keep myself conscious. I rolled over onto my belly and hauled myself up onto my ass. My trembling hand reached around to the grip of the .45 at the back of my waistband. I got onto one knee, lifted the Colt up in front of my face and watched through watering eyes as Paxton began to disappear into the night.
I squeezed off a shot through the trees. The .45 recoiled hard against the palm of my hand and a flash sprang off the muzzle like a miniature lightning bolt. Behind me in the distance I heard another series of automatic pistol shots ring out and Vic calling my name again. I got back up on to my feet, briefly stumbling to stay upright as I felt the blood rush to my head. I squeezed my eyes open and shut then raised the Colt out in front of me in both hands and set off after Paxton.
I reached the fence that separated the chalet grounds from the woods and followed it back towards the grassy slopes above Avon Gorge. When I reached the edge of the fence I stepped back a couple of paces and swung myself round onto the path that ran directly along the side of the property. As I began to move forward I saw a flash of bright light out of the corner of my eye and heard the boom of a single shot being fired fro
m a gun. I felt a sharp burning sensation cut into the top of my left arm. My body arched downwards and my gun was kicked from my hand, sending it arcing through the air and into the hedgerow. I raised my head and saw Paxton right in front of me. I watched as, almost in slow motion, he lifted his arm then brought it down towards my brow. He pistol-whipped me across the temple with the barrel of his gun. I felt a burning spike of pain run through my skull then fell backwards onto the ground. I saw the American moving towards me and began to raise myself up onto my elbows. Dazed and overwhelmed with pain, I kicked out my legs and tried to draw myself away from him with my heels digging into the dirt.
Paxton moved in quickly and stood in front of me, blood streaming from the knife wound in his leg, my own .38 pointing directly at my head. He inched forward, spat blood onto the path and bellowed down at me.
“Where’s that fuckin’ girl o’ mine?”
I tried to catch my breath, coughing and spluttering red-tinged saliva onto myself as I started to speak. “Like I told you, she’s back in the trunk o’ my motor.”
Paxton kicked at my leg with the toe of his boot. “Bullshit, I want the Truth!”
I felt another wave of pain burn through my arm; my chest tightened and a bitter taste rose up into my mouth. I looked up past Paxton’s cruel, bloodied face and stared up at one of the enormous suspension bridge buttresses that rose up over the tree line. Its shadow hung over my body like Azrael waiting to claim my soul for the afterlife.
I heard Paxton curse under his breath then aim the gun at my legs. He fired a shot into the soil close to my feet and took a step closer towards me. “Did you hear me, you dumb nigger? I said I want the Truth.”
I looked up at Paxton through my clouded vision and rasped out a reply to his embittered enquiry with as much venom as I could muster. “Well, you ain’t never gonna have her.”
I saw him draw the hammer nose back and close one eye. I watched as his finger curled around the trigger. I swallowed hard and tried to wet my dry lips with my tongue. I flailed my legs out in front of me and cursed their inability to distance me from my assailant. I felt my hand buckle at my wrist and I slumped further backwards. I looked down at the ground and I felt a rush of air hit my face.
As I lifted my head I heard the sound of metal hitting stone and saw a .45 pistol skirt past Paxton’s feet. I watched the American hesitate for a moment then saw panic drop across his face as he swung to his left. I watched him fire my service revolver at the same time as the blurred image of Vic’s body collided with tremendous force into Paxton’s side. I saw both men fly up into the air in front over me and then followed their brutal trajectory as they hit the waist-high stone wall that separated the cliff path from the vertical drop into the gorge below. I heard Jack Paxton let out a piercing scream and watched as the two men fell headlong into the endless chasm below.
I crawled to the wall, lifted myself up and looked down into the black abyss, and bawled out my cousin’s name over and over again. I kept calling out in the darkness, hoping that at any moment Vic would pull himself over the rampart and he would again be at my side, but that moment never came.
I felt another wave of intense pain charge through my body. I collapsed onto my back in the dirt, my battered body cold and shivering. I felt the iron-like taste of blood catch on the back of my throat and I looked up at a darkening sky that seemed to be littered with a million cascading stars.
I felt the tears stream down my face and run down my neck, and then felt the wind blow around my dormant frame. My fingers gasped at a loose clump of grass by my side and I closed my eyes. I began to drift out of consciousness, and in my head I heard the whispering, gentle voices of a swathe of lost children as they quietly began to sing me a lullaby to what I believed would be an eternal sleep.
Epilogue
I woke twelve hours later and found myself lying in a bed on a ward in the Bristol Royal Infirmary with a concussion, three broken ribs and a sizable laceration to my left arm where Paxton had shot me. Another eight inches across and he would have blown a hole through my heart the size of an apple. I was escorted from hospital twenty-four hours later, shackled in handcuffs by Detective Inspector William Fletcher and two other police officers. Before finding myself in a cell at Bridewell Police Station, I was taken back to Vic’s garage in Hotwells to retrieve the envelope containing the cassette tape with Ida Stephens’ confession on it. When I unlocked the safe and took out both the recorder and envelope, I noticed that the stash of bank notes I’d seen inside previously had mysteriously disappeared.
I spent four sleepless days and nights at Bridewell being questioned by Fletcher and a whole load of his constable lackeys. Despite being leaned on by Fletcher, I never changed my story once. At one point during my interrogation I was placed in a line-up parade with six other black men. I later found out that Ida Stephens had been stood behind a two-way mirror staring at the seven of us. For reasons known only to herself, Stephens never picked me out of the line-up.
Soon after that, Ida Stephens’ secret little world started to crumble. The social worker Andrew Balfour and the orphanage’s chief administrator Edward Matherson were brought in for questioning and the pieces slowly started to come together, aided by the confession Stephens had given to me, recorded on the cassette tape.
Arrests were later made at RAF Fairford and at least ten other men were finally charged with offences ranging from perverting the course of justice to kidnap of a minor. The bad apples within the Bristol and Avon Constabulary slowly started to unwillingly float to the top of the barrel as Matherson, Balfour and Stephens started to lose their cool and confess their full involvement in a cruel and very sordid affair. Later investigations uncovered that more than sixty children, their ages ranging from six months to nine years, had been abducted from Walter Wilkins orphanage between the year 1964 and the summer of 1967. Most of the children had been transported out in US Air Force planes, across the Atlantic to new lives in a country over four thousand miles away, their fates not fully known. I believed that the fresh beginnings the children were no doubt promised by Paxton would have quickly degenerated into physical suffering, emotional starvation and perhaps much worse. The thought of the cold absence of love, of the lack of tenderness and care that each of those stolen children would perhaps have to endure was a horrific contemplation that would haunt me to my grave.
I continued to maintain that the orphan I had found myself on the run with, the girl I had later found to be called Truth Mayer, had fallen to her death while we were trying to escape from Paxton and his men on the moors close to Cheddar Gorge. The police searched the area, but no body was ever found. I maintained that Paxton had gone to retrieve Truth’s body and disposed of it, and that the events at Leigh Woods were a cleaning-up exercise to silence me and the knowledge I had of Paxton and his men’s involvement in the kidnapping of minors from a Bristol orphanage.
The charred remains of two American servicemen, along with those of Detective Constable Beaumont and Laszlo Dolan, were found in what was left of the burnt-out Hunters Lodge inn at Priddy. A fifth man, who I knew to be my friend Benjamin Goodman, was never identified by the police. When asked if I had any idea who the fifth man may have been, I told the police that the only two men I knew by name were DC Beaumont and my good friend Lazarus Dolan: the friend I had turned to when I found myself on the run from Paxton and his men. Although it broke my heart to deny the fifth man’s existence, I knew that I needed to keep Benny’s name out of the picture.
Jack Paxton’s battered body was found floating in the tidal harbour at Cumberland Basin. His corpse was collected by the United States Air Force and he was shipped back to his home country. When his coffin arrived stateside, it was not draped with the American flag.
The body of Detective Constable David Martin and three other deceased American servicemen were found lying in various parts of Leigh Woods. All had died after receiving multiple gunshot wounds.
After a week of police searches along
the Avon Gorge and Leigh Woods, and the extensive dredging of large sections of the River Avon, my cousin Vic’s body was still not found. It was presumed that the tidal river had either washed his corpse further downstream or that the muddy waters of the Avon had taken him down into the deep silt and that his remains would perhaps never be found.
The police made much of my cousin’s disappearance and presumed death. Here was a black man with a history of consorting with the city’s nefarious villains and crooks. A man who had connections to racketeering, theft and the handling of stolen goods, of trading on the black market and establishing properties for illicit behaviour, was an easy target for a police force who desperately wanted to pin a face to the crimes committed. Detective Inspector William Fletcher needed a suspect for the deaths of two of his police officers and four other American servicemen. It didn’t take him long to weigh all the evidence towards an obvious culprit: a man with a motive and criminal intent – my cousin, Victor Ellington.
Five days after being arrested I was released pending further police inquiries. Inquiries that subsequently saw me fail to be charged with any offence. To this very day, I don’t know how the hell I got away with it. I’d walked out of Bridewell police station with a nagging sensation deep in my gut, a suspicion inside of me that sensed that DI Fletcher knew I had been lying about the death of Truth. I never got to know why the wily old goat didn’t pursue a further line of inquiry into the matter. Perhaps he’d read between the lines of my partially fabricated story, and after uncovering all the misery caused at the Walter Wilkins orphanage he simply thought better of bringing down a little more heartache on another poor parentless child. At least that’s what I hoped he was thinking.