The Candle Man (39 page)

The man quickly determined that Argyll was in one of the private booths and he stepped slowly forward, the soles of his shoes lightly tapping the tiles. The man hesitated a couple of yards from
Argyll’s door, clearly, by the anxious way he was tugging on his lip, undecided as to what to do next. To check the booths? Or not?

A small nod of his head – a decision made – and he stepped forward and tried the door of the booth to the right. Argyll heard the handle rattle and through the wall, a disgruntled
complaint.

‘Ahhh . . . I do apologise, sir!’

Argyll saw an old man in a top hat step past him, glaring, crimson-faced at the intrusion on his privacy. Too embarrassed or too infuriated, he didn’t bother to stop and wash his
hands.

Alone again. The man rapped his knuckles on another door. ‘Anyone in there?’ Then a moment later, a little further away, another rap of the knuckles. ‘Anyone in
there?’

Argyll’s hand fumbled absently into the pocket inside his coat as he listened to the tap and scrape of the man’s feet and the rap of his knuckles again on another door, this time
closer.

Yes. That’s quite right
, the voice chimed approvingly.
Be ready
. Argyll looked down at his hand and realised he was holding the very same knife that he’d been clasping
beneath the kitchen table earlier this afternoon. A knife for cutting bread.

All of a sudden, through the hairline crack of the door, he noticed the cloakroom was now blotted out by the dark outline of a shifting form. Argyll pulled back quickly to avoid getting bumped
by the door as the brass handle dipped. With a sharp tug on the handle, Argyll wrenched the door inwards.

The man, taken by surprise, his hand yanked by the handle, staggered off-balance and took a corrective step forwards into the cubicle. Enough. Argyll’s free hand grabbed a fistful of his
jacket collar and pulled him head-first into the cubicle.

The man’s head cracked heavily against the rim of the toilet basin and blood smeared and spattered against the white porcelain as he collapsed on his back in the narrow space between the
bowl and the booth’s tiled wall. Blood was streaming from a cut in his hairline, down his forehead and into his clenched shut eyes as he fumbled, blindly, with his gun, cocking it, ready to
fire.

Don’t let him use it!

Argyll prised the gun out of his hand before he could squeeze the trigger and quickly tucked it into his side pocket. He then held the tip of his knife in front of the policeman’s
face.

The man wiped blood out of his eyes, smearing a streak across his cheeks. He finally dared to open his eyes wide at the sight of the knife, the tip of it almost tickling the end of his nose.

‘Jesus!’

‘Why?’

The man looked nonplussed, his gaze comically cross-eyed at the blade.

‘Why are you people so damned persistently stupid!’ hissed Argyll, surprised at the sudden surge of anger. ‘I’ve assured your people, quite clearly I believe, that I have
no damned interest in gossiping about your affairs!’

The man shook his head, his jowls quivering. ‘I . . . I’m just . . . P-please! Don’t kill me!’

Questions. Questions . . . Go on! You should ask him. Make the most of him!

Argyll nodded. He squatted down in front of the man. ‘How many of you? How many here at the station?’

Blood was trickling down from his hairline, soaking his brows and trickling into his eyes again. He clenched them shut. ‘Just . . . just three of us . . . and that tart!’

That was all Argyll had managed to spot, but there might just be more of them.

‘Tell me the truth or I’ll take your left eye out!’

Yesssss! That’s the spirit, ‘John’.

‘Honest! Just us! It’s just us!’

‘That’s not many.’

The policeman, his eyes still clenched shut, sneered humourlessly. ‘Well . . . you fu-fuckin’ well already c-carved up two of us. What do you fu-fuckin’ expect?’

I like him. He’s funny. Pity.

‘You people don’t learn, though.’ Argyll prodded his cheek with the tip of his blade. ‘Do you?’

‘I . . . I just work f-for ’em, right? Do . . . do what the L-Lodge asks of me.’

Far away, he heard the muted sound of a whistle blowing again. There was a train to catch. And Mary was out there on her own. He had to hurry up.

‘I want you to go and tell them others—’

No, ‘John’. No! There is no ‘go and tell’. You finish him!

Argyll shook his head. ‘It’s . . . I . . . don’t need to—’

Finish him!

The policeman cracked open one eye, blinking the blood out of it. ‘Wh-what?’

FINISH HIM!

Argyll gripped the knife hard; he wanted to hurl it far away, but he couldn’t. That little bastard inside his head was stamping around like an angry boar in a china shop.

KILL HIM!!!

Argyll winced at the screaming, shrill voice. ‘I’m . . . sorry . . .’ he finally muttered.

‘What?’ The man’s eyes shot wide open. ‘No, please!’ He struggled and kicked on the floor, suddenly realising what ‘sorry’ meant for him.

Argyll punched the blade of his knife into the man’s chest, up to the hilt. A relatively quick kill, as it skewered the left ventricle of his heart, sending the organ into a shuddering
paroxysm. Less messy, too. There were no jets of blood to dot Argyll’s shirt; the trauma was all on the inside of the man. A dark bloom of crimson spread across his pinstriped shirt and his
wide, blood-caked eyes rolled slowly to one side as his feet kicked and scraped the tiled floor pointlessly. Then he was still.

‘I’m sorry,’ whispered Argyll again.

Warrington cursed under his breath. No, he hadn’t wanted that idiot Hain to follow the man into the cloakrooms; he’d just wanted him to keep a discreet watch on the
doorway. The last thing he could afford to have happen was for the slippery bastard to catch wind that they were watching him. All he had was two men, just two. If Babbitt took flight, they’d
lose him for sure.

If he didn’t have to keep an eye on this tart, there’d be three of them. He glanced sideways at her. The woman was plainly here because she wanted to help; as far as she was
concerned, they were the police. He decided he could take a risk and let her go.

He pulled a leather wallet out of his morning coat. ‘Here,’ he said, digging some coins out. ‘Thank you for assisting us and pointing them out. This could get very nasty.
Probably best you get yourself safely back home. You can take a cab.’

She took the money off him quickly.

‘A cab, all right? Not a bloody bottle of cheap gin.’

She nodded. ‘What about Mary?’

‘She’s going to be fine. We’re not going to let this man disappear with her. I’ll make quite sure of that.’

Liz turned to go and then stopped. ‘And what about the reward?’

Warrington flicked an impatient smile at her. ‘Yes, yes, of course. We have your address. I’ll make sure one of our boys comes by your lodgings later. Best remain there tonight. Now,
go on. Off you trot.’

M
ary was beginning to get a bit concerned. The departure platform had opened and the congregation of passengers and porters peppered with islands
of baggage in the middle of the Great Hall had begun to migrate towards the gate. An officious-looking LNWR clerk, with a walrus-like face full of grey whiskers, was carefully examining every
ticket and ushering the passengers through.

Where is he?

She glanced at the big clock; it showed eight minutes to nine. No need to panic just yet; there was still enough time before the train was due to depart, but she wondered if there were going to
be enough seats aboard the train for everyone. And if they were the last ones through the gate, might there be none left for them?

She stood anxiously on tiptoes and cursed under her breath as three gentlemen in top hats blocked her view of the cloakroom doors.

Robson shook his head.
The poor young girl looks frantic.

Hopping around out there from one foot to the other. She looked like a rabbit in a wheat field, perched up on its hind legs, ready to scarper at the first sight of a farmer’s dog. She
looked so young; barely more than a child.

What the hell is she doing going on the run with this man, anyway?

Robson had a niece her age, or thereabouts. Rebecca. Between him and his brother still serving in the army, they were managing to pay for her to stay at a small finishing school. It was costing
them a king’s ransom, but with no children of his own, Robson was happy that money he might otherwise have thrown away on a card table was buying his niece a much better chance in life than
this poor lost child stuck out there in the middle of the Great Hall.

He vaguely recalled a nursery rhyme, or was it a story? About a butterfly attracted to a candle flame. A butterfly who flew too close and burnt to death. Quite a horrible story, really. He was
about to ponder on the grim, unforgiving morality of tales that lurked beneath the surface of many a bedtime story when he felt the lightest tickling at the back of his neck. He reached to scratch
it.

‘I’d suggest you remain perfectly still,’ a voice whispered in his ear.

Robson turned his head and the tickling became, very quickly, a sharp jabbing pain.

‘Be still! Yes, that’s the tip of a knife you’re feeling,’ the deep voice murmured next to his ear. ‘I think you’re one of the chaps who’ve already
witnessed what I can do with a knife. Hmmm?’

He nodded. ‘Yeah, I was . . . I was there at the warehouse.’ He glanced quickly up to the gallery, hoping Warrington was looking this way and had already spotted that he was in
trouble. ‘You got the jump on us pretty well,’ he added.

Warrington wasn’t watching; he was saying something to that tart he’d brought along.

A hand lightly grasped the crook of his arm and guided Robson a step backwards into the walkway behind the columns. The glow of light from the ornate chandeliers high above was wasted here in
the shadows beneath the gallery floor.

‘Now, if you’ll just come along with me . . .’

Robson stood rigid. The knife dug into his skin. His mouth was suddenly as dry as parchment. ‘G-go easy there, ch-chap . . . I . . . I . . .’

‘Ahhh. In here will do perfectly.’ He heard the click of a door opening behind him, felt a gentle insistent tug on the crook of his arm and that jabbing, tickling, of the knife at
the base of his skull. He obediently shuffled backwards into a dark room and the door closed in front of him, pitching them into complete blackness. Robson was vaguely aware that he’d begun
to piss himself.

A single bulb in a wire cage snapped on. He saw shelves stacked with soaps and cloakroom hand towels, large metal mop buckets on the floor, mops and brushes lined up against one wall. The room
reeked of polish and turpentine.

‘I do apologise. I’m going to have to be very quick with you. I have a train to catch.’

‘Please, mate . . . Th-there’s no . . . n-need . . .’

Robson felt a hand probe the pockets of his coat, locate the heavy lump of his gun and then remove it. The tickle of the blade at the base of his neck stopped.

‘Yes, you can turn round now, if you want.’

He turned his head to look at the man. His first proper, close look at him. Beneath the glare of the bulb, his eyes were lost in the pooling darkness below a prominent brow. The angular geometry
of his face left spills of shadow running vertically from the recessed orbits of his eyes, down gaunt cheeks to a thin-lipped mouth.

‘L-look . . . there’s really no . . . n-need to—’

‘Oh, I don’t intend to
kill
you. Just
incapacitate
you. Now, why don’t you sit down?’

The man pulled a wooden chair from the corner of the small storeroom and placed it on the floor beside Robson. ‘Sit.’

Robson did as he was told, his eyes still on the knife but feeling a surge of relief. Until, that is, he thought he saw a smear of blood on its tip.

‘Whose blood is that?’

‘Your colleague’s.’ The man pouted a lip with mock sympathy. ‘Oh, he’s quite dead.’

‘J-Jesus Christ!’

The man rummaged along one of the shelves with his spare hand. ‘You see any rope here? Some twine, perhaps?’

Robson twisted in his seat at the mention of rope, a little more hopeful that he was going to get out of this room alive. ‘There!’ He pointed. ‘There! See? S-second shelf
d-down!’

‘Ahh! Thank you.’

Argyll unravelled a couple of yards from the ball of green twine and cut it with his knife. He turned round and looked down at the thick-set man sitting on the chair; it creaked and rattled
under his weight as he trembled uncontrollably.

‘Have you noticed how rude people are to each other? Hmmm?’

The man stared up at him, bewildered. ‘I . . . I . . . no . . .’

Oh yes, of course . . .
the voice rasped.
He’s the polite one, if I recall correctly.

‘It’s the small gestures, I think,’ said Argyll absently.

Small things . . . yes. You recall? In the busy street? This one bent down, picked up a child’s toy, gave it to the chattering woman with the pram. Such a small thing. A kindness. Hmmm.
You can let him live, if you must.