Read Online Ashes to Ashes by Barbara Nadel - Free Book Online

she’d even been there in the first place. But then although I see things that aren’t there probably more than anyone else I know, even I only tend to see certain things. Like the phantom voices in my head, the pictures are sinister. Blood and screaming men’s faces and mud are what generally push themselves unbidden in front of my eyes. Bits of body turn up, too, from time to time, but little girls especially with long golden hair are unheard of. I don’t and never have had any thoughts about little girls. Milly, or whatever her name was, had been there and she’d been as coarse as the shelterers in the crypt had said she was. What she was doing now and where she’d gone to, I didn’t know. I was cross at myself at the time for not managing to grab a hold of her and take her to safety. Loose in the cathedral at night, even without all the bombing, she was liable to have an accident or get into mischief of some sort.
    My feet wobbled on the uneven floor as I went further on towards the high altar. It was only then that I thought, suddenly, how strange it was of Mr Andrews to think that Mr Ronson had been murdered. For Mr Ronson to have an accident was very possible, but murder . . . to my way of thinking murder under circumstances such as we were experiencing was very unlikely indeed. By his own admission, Mr Andrews had seen nothing, if he was in fact telling the truth. Also why, suddenly, did he want me to find the little girl? Not that I – stupid beggar – had managed to hang on to Milly. She’d gone somewhere and, apart from the gunfire up above, I was in an area of the cathedral that was very, very quiet. Maybe she had just been inside my head? Maybe just the wanting to find her had made her happen?
    ‘You mustn’t tell anyone, about the damage.’ It was young George who now, it seemed, had finished arguing with Mr Andrews and had a new torch in his hand which he shone up into his face so that I could see him. He said, ‘It happened before Christmas. A bomb landed on the high altar. It didn’t go off, thank God. But no one outside the cathedral is supposed to know. Mr Andrews shouldn’t have sent you up here.’
    ‘He said I could go wherever I wanted. He sent me to find the little girl who’s missing,’ I said. ‘And, and . . . George, I saw her!’
    He frowned. ‘Here?’
    ‘A m-minute ago, at the m-most.’
    George looked around, flashing his torch into corners that I could now see were splintered and damaged. Bad for morale, are scenes like that, which was why I supposed I wasn’t meant to tell anyone about what I’d seen.
    ‘Mr Hancock,’ George said, ‘the guns you can hear outside are not the Germans, they’re our RAF boys taking on the Luftwaffe over the city.’ His eyes filled with tears. ‘We’re fighting for our lives! Tonight it could all be over, unless . . . Mr Hancock, we are in the hands of the Divine and we must trust that power to protect us. But we must also, all of us, do what we can for each other. You were right to go looking for this poor child. We have a duty to her, to everyone in the care of the cathedral tonight.’
    ‘S-she’s g-gone.’
    ‘You don’t know where?’
    I shook my head. Outside, something, probably some previously untouched building close by, burst into flames which then roared up the side of the cathedral, the brightness of it even shining through the huge blackout curtains at the stained-glass windows.
    I watched George sigh and then he said something that reminded me of that strange little conversation I’d had with Mr Andrews’s wife. ‘Sir Christopher’s building cannot fall, Mr Hancock,’ he said. ‘If it did, that would send the wrong message.’
    Even through the gloom he could make out the confused look on my face.
    ‘To Hitler,’ George said. ‘Sir Christopher was a master. Hitler is nothing. Hitler must be shown his place.’ And then I saw him smile. ‘But maybe our RAF boys are doing that for us now. Let’s go