The Candle Man (30 page)

A
rgyll stared at it. The worn brown leather bag and the bundles of notes inside. The bag made some sense to him. He recognised it. He could produce
half a dozen memories that in some way featured this satchel: him pulling things out of it, putting things into it.

Suddenly he’s a young man. He’s in the middle of some battle. The air’s thick with the smell of cordite. He’s kneeling in the middle of a field of thickets and weeds
and the twisted and mangled bodies of men wearing grey, butternut brown and dark blue uniforms. The hands of the dying, clawing at his boots, desperate for water. He’s drinking water from a
flask. So thirsty. It’s all the smoke, drifting across the battlefield. He’s drinking water and hearing a dozen of the nearest dying men screaming at him for just one sip of his water.
But he calmly screws the cap back on and puts the flask back in his bag.

Another disembodied memory.

He’s older now. From the satchel, he’s pulling out a long, thin-bladed knife in a dimly-lit room. Is it a loft? No, not a loft . . . a cellar, not unlike this one. And
there’s a man tied to a wooden chair in the middle of it. A man in very fine clothes indeed. He looks like he was attending a ball or perhaps the theatre tonight. But now he’s
struggling and squirming and screaming and crying. The leather seat of the chair is wet between his thighs and he’s saying ‘I didn’t mean to do it! Tell them! Tell them I’ll
never do it again . . . I swear!’

And another, although this one feels more recent.

A woman in a dark street, gurgling blood onto rain-wet paving stones. He’s reaching into this same bag and he pulls out a small candle and he’s talking to her. Telling her some
nonsense about how there’s no kindness left in this soulless world.

Argyll touched the leather satchel. A familiar rasp of coarse leather on the tips of his fingers, like old friends reacquainted; the bag, he was sure, was a distinct part of who he was. He
sensed that; knew that for a certainty. But the money . . . The money inside this bag made no sense to him whatsoever.

It’s your money. Do you see?

Argyll shook his head. No it wasn’t. He didn’t want it to be his money. ‘No, no . . .’

It’s yours. You earned it!

No, please, no. He didn’t want it to be his because if it was his money then it meant . . . it meant . . .

Yes. It means she stole it from you.

‘No . . . she didn’t; she wouldn’t!’

She’s been caring for a mindless fool because of all his money.

‘Dammit! Will you shut up!’ he snarled out loud. ‘We were . . .’ His voice quickly trailed to nothing. He was going to say that before the injury, they’d been
together, man and wife in all but name. But then in all the quiet moments of reflection he’d had in this home of theirs, he’d begun to ponder the many small things that had begun to not
make sense to him. Why so little of either of them seemed to exist in this home. So few possessions. No childhood mementos, no keepsakes, no family photographic portraits; nothing that marked the
passing of their time living together as lovers, or their lives before then.

He was beginning to wonder how much of Mary’s account of their shared life before his injury was entirely reliable. Genuine, even.

Or maybe it’s ALL a pack of lies. Hmmm?

Argyll felt the bottom of his small, womb-like world begin to fall away beneath his feet. He slumped down and sat on the travel chest, feeling light-headed. Sick.

An opportunist. That’s what she is. A woman who found a man with an empty head and a bag full of money.

He struggled for a moment to find a response to counter that. She could have taken his money and left him at any time. Instead, Mary had stayed, spent this money – his money, if the
stunted pig tormenting him was to be believed – on caring for him, feeding him.

Use your brain, ‘John’. If you have this money, perhaps elsewhere you have much more?

‘Damn you! She’s here because . . . because we love each other!’

A snorting laugh filled his head.
She wants more than a satchel of money. She imagines you’re a businessman or a plantation owner over there, somewhere in America; that it’s all
waiting for her. That’s what she wants.

A deep whine came out of Argyll’s throat. He hated the voice. If he could have dug it out from his mind with the tip of a blunt knife, he would have.

You’re her meal ticket.

‘Shut up!’

You’re her pet.

‘Please!’ He buried his face in his hands.

She even named you . . . just like you name a puppy dog. She named you!

Argyll drew down his hands and looked up. In the darkest corner of the cellar, he thought he could see his demon standing there. A twinkle in two narrow eyes, a wet pig’s snout twitching
with excitement, so eager to tell him a story.

‘John . . . Argyll,’ he whispered. ‘That’s my name. That’s who I am.’

No.
That pitiless snigger again.
She came up with a name for you. I wonder: is it the name of a real lover she once had? Or a childhood friend? Or an acquaintance? Or even someone she
once hated? Or is it a name made up at random? A shop sign? A letterhead?

‘I’m John Argyll, goddammit!!’

No. You’re me.

Argyll felt a solitary tear roll down his cheek. ‘I hate you.’

How can you hate what you are? Hmmm?

‘L
iz? What is it?’

Cath could see her friend’s face had blanched. ‘What’s it say?’

Liz looked up from the pages of foolscap she was holding. ‘Oh, god ’elp us!’

‘What’s it say?’ Cath repeated.

Liz put the pages down beside her, got up off the end of the bed and stepped towards the writing desk, with a look of growing dread on her face.

‘Liz, tell me! What’s the letter say? What’s the matter?’

‘I need to see . . .’ she said, reaching for the jam jar.

‘You need to see what?’ Cath frowned, confused. ‘Why d’ya need to look in there, Liz?’

‘It says . . . he took a . . . took a lady’s kidney!’

‘Whatcha talkin’ ’bout?’

‘The letter!’ she replied, jabbing a finger at the pages of writing paper on the end of the bed. ‘That letter! It’s a bloody confession!’

‘A confession? To what?’

‘Them murders! The ones they’re sayin’s been done by the mad man.’

Cath’s eyes widened. ‘You don’t mean the one what got wrote in to the paper the other—?’

‘Yes! Him! Jack the Ripper!’

Liz looked down at the metal lid of the jam jar. She pointed at the pages lying on the bed. ‘He said in that letter that he took a kidney from the last one. The one on Hanbury Street. He
took it for proof he’s who he says he is.’

Cath’s hand raced to her mouth. ‘And . . . and it’s in there?’

‘We need to see, don’t we?’ Liz grasped the lid in one hand and the glass jar in the other, then gave it a gentle twist. It popped softly and hissed with the release of fetid
air. Liz gagged and recoiled at the sudden rush of the smell. The jar slipped from her hand, bounced and rolled on the desk, spilling its pottage of brown broth across the varnished dark wood
surface.

A small bean-shaped nub of wrinkled, dark flesh the size of a walnut rolled out of the jar.

‘Oh, fuck,’ whispered Liz. She threw up on the floor.

Warrington arrived outside the hotel to see his two men standing there: Hain and Orman. Both wheezing and doubled over from the exhaustion of sprinting from the Lodge over on
Great Queen Street. He waved them to follow him inside into The Grantham’s lobby. He was also far too out of breath and unable to gasp anything intelligible just yet. He led both men across
to the reception desk, doing his best to recover his composure.

‘You’re the concierge . . . Mr Davis, isn’t it?’ he said to the man behind the desk.

‘That’s me, sir. I’m the one who telephoned earlier. You’re George Warrington?’

Warrington nodded. ‘You said two women?’ He wheezed. ‘Are they still up there?’

The concierge nodded. ‘Not come down yet, sir. I presume they’re still up in two-hundred and seven: Mr Babbitt’s room.’

Mr Babbitt?
The odd name strangely seemed to fit the man he’d spoken to briefly two months ago.

‘You said the room’s not actually been entered in nearly eight weeks?’

The concierge nodded. ‘Like I said, he’d left strict instructions that no one, not even the chambermaids, were to go in without prior arrangement.’

Warrington turned to look at Hain and Orman. Both men ready to receive instructions.

My god, this could be our man.

‘Could you describe the gentleman in that room?’

‘No, see, I wasn’t on the desk when the gentleman checked in. My colleague, Nigel, was. But I do remember now, he did mention that day an odd, tall American chap. That might just be
who he—’

‘American?’

‘Yes, sir.’

Warrington balled his fist.
That’s him. It’s got to be him.

‘Well, like I said to you earlier,’ continued the concierge, ‘we’ve not heard a whistle from that gentleman in quite some time—’

Warrington raised a gloved hand to silence him. ‘How many keys does a guest get given when they check in? Just the one?’

‘Just the one, sir.’

‘And those two tarts had the key?’

He nodded.

Then he’s not in his room, is he?
A burning chill of realisation prickled across his scalp and made the short hairs on the nape of his neck stand up.
He’s not dead. He’s sent those two women on an errand to collect his things. Which means he’s outside somewhere. Perhaps even watching this very hotel right now.

‘Shouldn’t we go on up, sir?’ asked Hain.

Orman was nodding at his colleague’s suggestion. ‘If there’s evidence up there, sir, they could be disturbing it.’

‘No.’ Both men turned to look at Warrington as if he was insane. ‘No,’ he repeated. The locket could be up there. The portrait of the prince. Those things might well be,
and he’d make it his first order of business to be the only person to go into the room and search it thoroughly. But right now, a much higher priority was on his mind. Warrington suddenly
realised he was trembling at the prospect of once more coming face to face with the Candle Man. The man exuded a terrifyingly believable aura of invincibility. And god, hadn’t he been fast?
He’d exited that warehouse and left them looking like foolish amateurs; one of them beheaded, one gutted and the rest of them looking like a cluster of superstitious old women who thought
they’d glimpsed Ol’ Nick in the eyes of a black cat.

He’s just a man, remember. Don’t mythologise him.

If he was somewhere outside on the Strand, watching this hotel from afar, then at the first sight of Warrington and his men, he would just melt away. But these tarts, they’d have something
he wanted, presumably; something he’d paid them to retrieve.

‘We need to wait for those women to come back down,’ he said quietly. ‘Then we’re going to follow them. Understand?’

Both nodded.

He turned to the concierge. ‘You can point out these women to us?’

‘Yes, sir. Couple of tarts. You won’t miss ’em.’

Warrington looked around the lobby. On the far side of the marble floor were some high-backed leather armchairs gathered near a fireplace and a table stacked with old newspapers. ‘We shall
be over there. You’ll give me the nod in any case, when they go out the door; is that clear?’

‘Yes. Uh, sir? There was some mention of a reward . . . ?’

‘Yes.’ Warrington flicked the question away like a fly. ‘Yes, of course. We’ll arrange the details of that later.’ He nodded at Hain and Orman to go and pick an
armchair each. ‘Oh, and no one, I mean
no one
, is to enter that room until I return; is that absolutely clear?’

He nodded.

‘Good man.’