Ashes to Ashes (22 page)

I sat down on the stone floor of the gallery and I watched some old office building or such-like on Ludgate Hill burn to the ground. Although the firestorm had been somehow brought under control by the firemen some hours before, this building still burned with a speed and ferocity that was terrifying. The roof had gone long before, but as I sat there I watched its guts disappear into red and yellow and listened as floors and ceilings, furniture and fittings collapsed in on themselves and became charcoal and liquid and dust. Finally the walls buckled and with a horrifying screaming sound, like a woman in pain, the outer walls first cracked and then separated. Then with a sigh, the whole thing crashed to the ground and I cried inside for yet another part of my present that had disappeared for ever. I’d never known that office building, I’d barely known Mr Andrews, Mr Webb, Mr Smith, George and Mr Ronson, but I mourned their passing just as surely as I’d mourned that of my old mates who’d died on the Somme. Directly or indirectly war had killed every one of them.

Chapter Sixteen

T
he crypt had almost emptied of visitors by the time I got there. The first-aid ladies were still making tea, but Mrs Andrews was not with them. She was sitting on her own over by Lord Nelson’s tomb. When she saw me, she smiled. It made me wonder if she knew about her husband or whether in fact all of the past ten or so hours had just been an illusion. If they had, then in so many ways it would have been a relief. Everyone would still be alive, although I would be completely confirmed as a total madman. But I am not and have only ever briefly been a
total
madman. Mrs Andrews called me over.

‘Sit down, Mr Hancock,’ she said as she patted a wooden chair beside her. She smiled.

‘Mrs Andrews—’

‘It’s all right, Mr Hancock,’ she said. ‘I know.’

I said nothing.

‘My husband is dead,’ she continued. Her eyes didn’t so much as moisten. She changed the subject immediately. ‘I’m sorry that the little girl you were seeking finally eluded you. But she survived and that is the main thing, Mr Hancock. They did not manage to—’

‘Why did they think that killing a little girl would save this place?’ I said. ‘It’s bonkers!’

‘Human sacrifice is as old as time,’ Mrs Andrews said. She then fixed me with a hard gaze. ‘It is very powerful. Men of the Enlightenment, however, men like Sir Christopher Wren, did not hold with it; they considered it barbarous.’

‘It is!’ I looked around now to see who if anyone, was listening to this strange conversation.

‘Is it?’ She smiled again. ‘Tell me, Mr Hancock, if you could only save that which you hold dearest by sacrificing the life of an unknown child, would you do it?’

Of course I went to say ‘no’, but then I stopped.

‘Masonic history, like the history of this country, is littered with violent and uncivilised acts,’ Mrs Andrews said. ‘We must oppose them. But we must also understand them too. These are desperate times, Mr Hancock. What the men who killed my husband did they did with the welfare of the greatest symbol this city has firmly in their minds.’

‘Mrs Andrews,’ I said, ‘they killed Mr Ronson, too, and George the chorister.’

She put one of her thin, wrinkled hands up to my cheek. ‘Mr Steadman, it would seem, knows the whole story,’ she said. ‘Go and speak to him.’

I stood up and, as I did so, I told Mrs Andrews that I was sorry for her loss.

‘My husband knew as soon as he went against those people that he would die,’ she said. ‘He also knew that by opposing them he would be putting the cathedral in danger.’

‘You mean that he believed that the sacrifice would actually save the cathedral?’

‘Oh, yes,’ she said. ‘Yes, he did.’

I was stunned and she could see it.

‘Mr Hancock, there are some things in life that are very wicked that can produce great good.’

‘But . . .’

She raised a finger up to me and said, ‘Which is precisely why those things must never be done. To give in defiles both oneself and that thing one is seeking to protect. You, Mr Hancock, whatever questions you may now have in your mind, would never kill a child to save even your own family. My husband knew that, he saw that immediately in you.’

I didn’t say anything about what I knew had been Mr Andrews’s main reason for talking to me about this sacrifice business, that I was a Catholic. And now I came to think about it not only was I a Catholic, but I was a complete outsider too. I couldn’t possibly have been connected to what he suspected was about to happen in the cathedral. According to Mr Andrews, he and Mr Ronson had somehow known what some of their brothers had planned to do to save the cathedral. But how had they known it was going to be this particular night? Had they known that when the night started, or had that only become apparent to Mr Andrews after Mr Ronson’s death?

I had a lot of questions, far too many for a grieving widow to provide answers for. I went up into the cathedral which was where I saw Mr Steadman, the Dean and a load of other watchmen talking to the coppers.

I had thought I might just move closer to the group and try to listen in to what they were saying. But Mr Steadman saw me and he came over immediately.

He smiled. ‘I’ve finished telling the sergeant and his men what happened here,’ he said. ‘Those people sheltering in the crypt aren’t required to talk to them. They, and you, saw nothing and so there’s nothing for you to tell.’

I went from being half dead with tiredness to being incensed with anger in less than a second. ‘But I
was
there!’ I said, ‘I—’

Mr Steadman grabbed my arm in a claw-like grip and began to frog-march me towards the Great West door. ‘Let’s go and have a smoke, shall we?’

He was covering it all up! I went with him, I didn’t have a great deal of choice, but I was fuming. Crimes had been committed, men had been killed, I had almost met my maker myself! And now, just because they were all Masons together, it was being covered over. Mr Steadman pulled me towards the Great West door, opened it, and then pushed me outside. He followed directly after me, but I didn’t notice that at the time. As soon as I was outside, everything except the scene that I was looking at temporarily disappeared from my mind. It wasn’t dawn any more, it was daylight. With the exception of the smoke that still lay thick across the ground and sometimes in the air, everything could be seen clearly now. I looked down where Ludgate Hill had once been and I didn’t recognise anything. There were shapes, no buildings. Where the sewers had ruptured there was a smell the like of which I knew from down our way, but for which familiarity did not bring any ease. Mixed with it there was also a sweetish odour which could have come from the stocks of incense in all the burnt-out City churches. It could also have been the smell of human bodies singeing and then cooking in the terrible heat. From where I stood it was as if only St Paul’s had survived, only St Paul’s existed.

‘We took some casualties last night,’ Mr Steadman said after I’d had a little bit of time to take in the scene around me. ‘But then we were bound to, given the ferocity of last night’s raid.’

As I looked into the street, small figures, people, scrambled up and down great piles of smoking rubble. They, like the scene in front of me, were uniformly grey in colour.

‘Mr Ronson’s accident was unfortunate, Mr Andrews and young George—’

‘Were murdered,’ I cut in. ‘As well you know!’

Mr Steadman offered me a fag, which I refused in favour of one of my own cigarettes. I wanted nothing from him except words.

‘Mr Hancock,’ he said slowly, ‘anyone who has been murdered will be avenged. Anyone who has been executed, however—’

I didn’t know one from the other and I said, ‘You call what happened to Mr Andrews an execution?’

‘Mr Andrews unfortunately perished alongside the young chorister and a rather brave local man called Webb,’ Mr Steadman said. ‘They were fighting the fires outside the cathedral. Against the Dean’s advice they went outside, you see.’

I was struck dumb. Mr Steadman had fought against Rolls and Smith and the others, but now he was protecting them! How powerful those Masonic brotherhoods had to be!

‘All but Webb’s body, so far, have been retrieved. Very badly burnt they are of course.’

‘What have you . . . What are you doing?’ I raised my hands to take hold of Mr Steadman by his collar and to shake some sense into him. But he caught my hands mid flight and thrust his face into mine.

‘We can’t tell people what happened here last night!’ he hissed. ‘The Dean’s distraught about the casualties as it is! Do you think—’

‘The Dean didn’t know?’

‘Of course not!’ He pulled me even closer towards him, so close I could smell his rank, exhausted breath. ‘Mr Andrews, Mr Ronson and myself knew. Neeson and Harris I had to draft in last night because if I hadn’t we’d have all had it!’

‘But the girl . . .’

‘Rolls began talking about blood sacrifice back in September when all this bloody bombing began,’ Mr Steadman said as he loosened his grasp upon me a little. ‘He’s always been a bit odd, mixed with some unsavoury types. Rolls and Phillips and their little cabal, they talked about protecting all treasured buildings in this way, as if it were a sort of practical method like boarding a structure up. Nobody else listened! Some even laughed! That isn’t, after all Masonry, that is pure, pagan superstition.’

‘But—’

‘But I attend the same Lodge as Phillips and Rolls and so I kept an eye out. Not that I knew it was going to take place last night. I didn’t even know that a child was going to be involved!’

‘But Mr Andrews did,’ I said, ‘or rather I think that he suspected it. At first he thought that Mr Ronson was the sacrifice. I know that. But he mentioned a child, or rather the tradition of using a child. The last thing he said to me was something about finding and taking care of Milly.’

I was stumbling over my thoughts and rambling. Mr Steadman sighed and then let go of me completely. He pushed his tin hat back slowly from his bruised and battered face which was almost indescribably sad. ‘Gerald Andrews never trusted me,’ he said. ‘It was I who first told him about Rolls and Phillips, but because I was in business partnership with them, Gerald was suspicious of me. Sidney Ronson told him about them independently of myself. I told Gerald more because I felt that what Rolls was going on about was unsavoury. Poor Sidney, of course, understood far better than I the earnestness of his intentions.’

‘You all went to the same Masonic Lodge.’

‘Everyone, except Gerald Andrews, but including young George Watkins’s late father. Poor George desperately wanted to follow his father.’

‘And Mr Rolls . . . ?’

‘Mr Rolls is the Grand Master of our Lodge,’ Mr Steadman said.

I felt a shiver run down my spine. Had Mr Steadman let Rolls go because he was, effectively, his Masonic boss?

‘No watchman worth his salt just falls off the Whispering Gallery,’ Mr Steadman said. ‘I knew Sid Ronson was watching Rolls and Phillips and so when he fell I knew it could have been them. But I still couldn’t quite believe it. I’d never taken what Rolls and Phillips said as seriously as Gerald and Sidney had. Eric Rolls was, is, our Grand Master; I thought that he was just playing around with ancient ideas. Intellectual discourse. I never thought they’d actually do it.’

But
they
hadn’t. As far as I was aware Mr Rolls had only masqueraded as Mr Phillips because he wasn’t a real watchman. He’d become Phillips to get inside the cathedral. But why, when Phillips could so easily have done that himself had Rolls dressed up for the part?

A bus pulled in to a place that had once had a bus stop and people actually got out. There were no cars on Ludgate Hill that morning, no driver – myself included – would have even attempted it. But this one London bus just drove up, let some passengers off and moved on again as if nothing had happened.

‘I have to go back to my office soon,’ Mr Steadman said. ‘Before our typist arrives, if she arrives.’

I was shocked by this sudden jump into something as ordinary as this bloke’s job. ‘What?’ I said. ‘What are you—’

‘I have to get to my office, if it still exists, and cover up Phillips’s body before our typist gets the fright of her life,’ Mr Steadman said. Then, seeing the confusion on my face, he continued, ‘I think that Rolls killed Phillips because I don’t believe that Harold Phillips would or could actually go through with such a thing. Harold, I think, loved the cathedral too much to actually sully it if push came to shove. He was a most dedicated watchman.’

‘Dedicated enough to disobey his boss?’ I said.

‘I believe so, yes,’ Mr Steadman said. ‘Harold’s interest in ancient ritual was academic rather than practical.’

Mr Andrews had said as much to me many hours before. He had even become indignant at the idea of Harold Phillips being involved in such a thing.

‘If they’d done it together, then Phillips would have smuggled Rolls in somehow, probably with the help of George Watkins. It’s my belief,’ Mr Steadman said, ‘that Harold is lying dead on his office floor. He always used to stay at the office when he was on Watch duty, which he should have been on last night. I need to get over there.’

I caught hold of the sleeve of his jacket as he moved. ‘So you can get rid of Mr Phillips?’ I said. ‘Cover up for your Grand Master yet again?’

Mr Steadman put his fag out on the ground in front of him and said, ‘No, Mr Hancock, so that I can tell the police and make sure that Eric Rolls hangs.’

‘But he’s your Grand Master!’ I said, being all bitterly theatrical as I did so. ‘You let him and his mates go only a few hours ago!’

‘I did that for the sake of the Dean and the cathedral,’ Mr Steadman said. ‘That such filthy outrages should take place here . . . No one needs to know that! I let him get away for all the reasons I have said and yes, also for Masonry, too. Masons are not like Rolls, Rolls is aberrant.’ He looked as if he was about to cry for a moment and then he gathered himself. ‘Neeson and Harris are coming with me,’ he said. ‘You can come too if you want, if you don’t believe me. But I warn you, Mr Hancock, Rolls could very well be there before us.’