The Candle Man (27 page)

God help us if that’s the truth.

Warrington glanced out into the dark. His five men were out there, hidden in the corners of the warehouse. Out of sight but able to see him standing in a pool of moonlight in the middle of the
wide, empty floor. Faint spears of pallid light angled down through the grimy skylight in the roof, through panels missing their glass. He could hear the soft cooing of pigeons in the iron spars
directly above him and the patter of dripping water somewhere inside the abandoned and empty building, echoing between the ground and the low roof.

He’d had quite enough of this game-playing. ‘Hello?!’

His voice rang through the warehouse, stirring the flutter of wings from above and causing a dusting of fluffy feathers to fall down into the beams of moonlight. He hated that too-obvious
tremble in his voice. He tried again, this time doing his best to infuse his voice with a tone of irritable impatience.

‘Hello? Are you there, or not?’

‘Oh . . . I’m here.’
The voice was no more than a finely judged whisper. There was no need to shout in this place; every little noise seemed to carry.
‘I’ve been here for a while.’

Warrington’s heart skipped. How long? Long enough to watch them arrive? To hear him give instructions to the others to find hiding places?
Shit.

He heard the soft tap and scrape of footsteps approaching him. Slow and deliberate. Not a man in a hurry to do the deal. Not a man unsettled or nervous. Perhaps the suppositions were all his?
Perhaps the Candle Man had no idea at all that Warrington intended him not to leave this place alive.

Just remain calm, George. Make sure the job’s done
. Warrington adjusted his waistcoat, cleared his throat. ‘Come on out, then, where I can see you.’

Presently his eyes picked out a tall, dark shape standing cautiously just outside of the undulating pool of moonlight.

‘A bit of a melodramatic place you’ve chosen for us to meet,’ said Warrington.

‘It suits our business, George.’
He took a step closer into the edge of pallid light. Beneath the brim of a billycock, his face remained a dark, formless shadow.

‘It’s, uh . . . it’s rather funny you picked that name for me by chance.’ Warrington smiled. ‘That is my first name. A lucky guess?’

‘As I said . . . you look like a George.’

Warrington’s perfunctory laugh sounded giddy and childish. He hated it. ‘So . . . I have the other half of your fee. Do you have . . . ?’

‘Yes, I have the locket Tolly found.’

‘And the . . . uh . . .’ He didn’t want to attract too much attention to what was inside. ‘And the contents of the locket?’ he continued, his voice as casual as he
could manage.

He heard a soft, breathy laugh.
‘Oh, yes . . . I have that too.’

‘Good. And Tolly involved no one else?’

‘Correct.’

Warrington bent down and picked up the small parcel at his feet. ‘Then, on behalf of my colleagues, I’d like to thank you.’ He held out the parcel to the Candle Man. A gloved
hand stretched out through the moon beams and took it from him. Even though this man was going to be dead inside of five minutes Warrington decided that the parcel should contain real money, just
in case he chose to inspect it there and then. In fact, that might be a useful distraction. As he counted his money, Warrington could touch his hat – that was the signal.

‘Do you not wish to count it?’

No answer. He heard the jingle of a bag buckle, the slap of a leather flap and the parcel rustle as it was tucked away somewhere.

Warrington quickly touched the peak of his top hat. The sign for his men to close in. ‘We’re very pleased with how this turned out. But . . . you have caused us some difficulties
with the last one. Why did you—?’

‘Make it look Masonic?’

‘Indeed.’

A long pause. Warrington listened intently for the approaching footfalls of his men. They were no light-footed assassins. Two of them, Smith and Warren, were detective inspectors from Scotland
Yard. The other three were all veterans from that nasty little war in Afghanistan: Hain, Orman and Robson. Mercenaries now. Those three had seen enough barbarity in those far-off mountains to cope
with a little shiv-work for the Lodge. Most importantly, all five of them were Masons. Junior brothers, yes, but still bound by the code of silence.

‘I suspect you have made plans for me, hmm?’

Warrington did his best to look utterly bemused. ‘I . . . I’m sorry?’

‘A foolish prince?’
The Candle Man took another step towards him and Warrington found himself nervously taking a half-step back.

‘I really . . . I don’t know—’

‘Yes . . . but you see I do know. I know now.’

‘Know what?’

‘I wasn’t sure. That’s why I had to come. But now I know for certain.’

‘For Christ’s sake, what the devil are you talking about?!’

‘That you, George, have plans to cross me.’

Warrington saw the blur of something large and pale flicker through the slither of moonlight, then bounce heavily and skitter across the floor, leaving an ink-black smear behind it. It took a
moment for him to understand what he was looking at: the balding pate and the dark beard, a protruding tongue, thick like a cricket ball, and two eyes, glazed and strangely wistful. Detective
Inspector Orville Warren.

Warrington’s voice was a child’s scream. ‘NOW!!! KILL HIM NOW!!!’

Babbitt suspected that there were probably more of them out there. This balding, bearded one he’d almost tripped over. Too good an opportunity not to take advantage of. A
hand over the hapless man’s mouth and a quick slice; the patter of gushing blood had sounded like nothing more than a dripping tap.

He’d hoped to have some more time to talk to George. He’d hoped the head resting on the floor between them, a silent witness to their softly spoken discussions, might just have
focused George’s jittery mind a little. Caused him to wave his clumsy bloodhounds back into their corners and listen for a moment. But instead, his woman-like shriek had triggered the others.
He could feel their thundering feet vibrate on the rotten planks of the wooden floor, racing towards them.

No time to talk, then.

Time to run.

He darted out of the pool of moonlight, away from the sound of rasping breath; heavyset men, from the noises they were making, and no knowing for sure how many of them exactly. He ran far more
lightly than them, making much less noise. Behind him, George was barking useless orders for his men to spread out and find him, stupidly covering up the receding patter of his footsteps.

He was heading for the rear of the warehouse, the delivery entrance, double doors that rolled aside on rusty castors. The delivery entrance opened onto a small courtyard, the courtyard’s
gates opened onto a backstreet, the backstreet split into a three-way junction, any one way as good as the others for escape. He’d discovered this place, an abandoned print works, several
days ago, and made sure to walk through the warehouse and know its layout thoroughly.

Heading for the delivery doors in the pitch black, he collided with something that grunted on impact. The next moment, he was sprawled on the wooden floor, tangled up in someone else’s
fleshy arms and legs.

‘Fuck!’ he heard a man growl. ‘Over ’ere! Fucker’s over ’ere!’

He felt fat fingers scrabbling at his face, finding and grabbing the lapel of his coat. He could feel the man’s body tense and lurch with exertion as something swung though the air, aimed
at his head. It knocked his hat off.

Babbitt’s response was instinctive, silent and deadly, although the lumbering oaf on top of him wasn’t going to appreciate that for at least another half a minute. For now he’d
think it was a limp-wristed punch at his belly. But it wasn’t; it was nine inches of slender blade embedded to the hilt, and the odd upward tugging sensation this man felt directly after was
the serrated edge being yanked savagely upwards, slicing into his liver and opening his stomach, so that any attempt to get up would result in his feet tangling, and most likely tripping, in the
loops of intestine that spilled out.

‘Shit, ’old fuckin’ still!’ grunted the man, still seemingly unaware that the front of him was now open.

Babbitt was getting ready to stick him again with his knife when he felt the man’s body tense and lurch again.

This time, Babbitt felt the world explode.

A shower of brilliant white sparks suddenly erupted in front, no, behind his eyes; his ears full of a shrill ringing that completely blocked out the noises of everything else. He felt the scrape
of rough splinters across his left cheek and realised he was sliding across the floor.

His feet seemed to be the only part of him that could function, while the rest of him flopped rag-doll-like.

Run, fool! Run!

His feet got him off the floor as he cradled his spinning head. His legs carried him in dizzy zigzags towards a softly glowing slither of moonlight: the gap between the open delivery doors. He
slammed against them, producing a rattle of chains and counterweights, rusty wheels and loose planks. Enough to broadcast to everyone inside the building exactly where he was. He heard none of
that, though. His ears were still playing a deafening white noise.

He was staggering across the courtyard now, the light of the moon almost blinding like daylight by comparison to the darkness of the print works. His shoulder crashed heavily against the loose
railing gate and spilled him out into the backstreet. He tripped and rolled across uneven paving slabs. Up again, his feet, his legs, undeniably the only part of him doing anything useful. And he
wobbled uncertainly, his eyes now no longer showing fireworks, instead offering him a spinning kaleidoscope facsimile of the back-street.

He picked a direction and ran; more like a drunkard’s staggering waltz than a run.

His mind was still reeling from the blow, but now it was closing down. The blow had done damage to his head. A hammer, perhaps a crowbar, that’s what that man had used. Losing the capacity
to think straight, to do anything, he was vaguely aware that his hands were now empty, that he’d dropped his beloved knife at some point, somewhere. He was vaguely aware that the side of his
head and his face were wet, streaming; that his mouth tasted of copper coins. Finally, as if it was the very next moment, although it couldn’t possibly be, he was foggily aware of being
slumped in the gutter of a much wider street that now glowed faint amber from a street lamp, instead of the ink-blue of moonlight. And the last thing his closing-down, dying mind managed to be
aware of was a pair of small feminine hands tugging and probing the folds of his coat.

‘I
t has been what? Two weeks?’

‘Nearly three, actually, Oscar.’

Warrington looked at the other four men of ‘The Steering Committee’ in the room with him, the same room as last time, the log fire crackling as if it had never been out.

‘Three weeks then,’ continued Crosbourne. The man had the faintest hint of a European accent. Like their queen, a thin trace of Germanic heredity ran through his veins and his
vowels. ‘He is probably dead. You said, did you not, George, that the man’s head was smashed in with an . . . an ice pick?’

‘A claw hammer. It was a claw hammer.’

Warrington recalled the poor man, Detective Inspector Smith, on his knees and holding his guts in, making his shaky report. Telling him he’d landed a mortal blow on the man’s head;
that he’d actually had to jerk the thing out of his skull to try for another swipe.

‘A claw hammer, then. It strikes me that this “Candlestick” chap,’ said Oscar, with wry amusement at the theatricality of the man’s professional name, ‘most
probably died of his wounds that night.’

‘Candle Man,’ corrected Warrington.

Henry Rawlinson nodded slowly, thoughtfully. ‘That’s the most likely thing.’

‘Would someone not have found his body? Reported it to the police?’

Rawlinson set his teacup down in its saucer. ‘There are a dozen bodies found every morning in London. Most of them remain unidentified, don’t they, George?’

Warrington nodded.

‘There, then,’ said Oscar. ‘He could have died during the night, he might have died of his injury the next day, or the day after. The point is, gentlemen, if he lived, surely
we would have heard from him by now?’

That’s what had been keeping Warrington awake at night these last few weeks, jumping in bed at the sound of every creaking timber in his grand townhouse, the rustling of foxes in his
walled garden, the thought of a midnight visit from the Candle Man.

‘The point is, we risk attracting attention from the Lodge if we keep using their footmen as you have been, George, to try and locate this . . . this
ghost
.’

The three men who’d survived their brush with him – Robson, Hain and Orman – were reliable Masons. Their confidentiality was assured. But they were just that: Masons, not
members of this particular committee.