Ashes to Ashes (23 page)

‘Why is that?’

‘Because in this madness he can’t have got far and there’s money in the safe at the office. He’ll run now, he’ll have to, but he’ll need that money and I don’t think he’ll want to go to his bank. It may even no longer exist.’

And then he took a very familiar-looking pistol out of his pocket.

‘I thought that Rolls took that away from you,’ I said. ‘You told me he had.’

‘I lied,’ he answered.

I looked into his eyes and said, ‘I should just go in there and tell the coppers the truth as I see it now, shouldn’t I?’

‘You can.’

‘Mr Rolls will still be arrested, everyone will know what a bastard Mr Webb was, and no one will ever trust anyone who’s in the Masons again.’

Mr Steadman stood aside in order to let me pass. I had just pulled the Great West door a little further open when Mr Steadman said, ‘Just remember that we run this country. Consider this in the light of the fact that you are a wog, Mr Hancock.’

When I was a child there were no grades of truth that I knew of. You were either telling the truth or you were lying, and if it was the latter, then, as often as not, your dad would at some point give you a clip round the ear hole. To the extent that we’re supposed to guard our tongues in public places and with people that we don’t know intimately, everyone these days conceals some things – that’s war for you. But what I’d become involved with was something both sacrilegious, to established faiths, and also at the same time something very firmly at the centre of power. Whether Mr Churchill himself is a Mason, I don’t know but at least some of those around him have to be. And as Mr Steadman had known as soon as he took me outside the cathedral to talk to me, getting a wog to shut up and toe the line doesn’t take too much effort and no courage at all. I think I ended up hating Steadman almost as much as Rolls in the end.

I wanted to go home and I could have very easily done just that. The Duchess and the girls had to be worried about me, not to mention poor old Annie whose place I’d left to go out into the incendiary fires. They’d all be wondering what had become of me. But I’d made up my mind to go with Mr Steadman. Mr Neeson and Mr Harris had finished their long shift in the cathedral now and were leaving with us. We all set off for Holborn together in silence. The offices of Phillips, Steadman and Rolls were opposite Holborn underground station. It was where, many years before George Chivers, Milly’s father had come to work. There was no one involved in this, I realised as I trudged over crumbling heaps of bricks, who was not connected with the others in some way. Only the watchmen and the firemen who had actually saved the cathedral, the Dean and myself were outside this ‘charmed’ circle of connections. In spite of the fires still burning all around us, it was cold that morning and so I pulled my jacket hard around my body and wondered where on earth young Milly might be. I’d briefly given her my jacket when she was cold up in that chamber in the cathedral roof. I promised myself that as soon as I could, whether the kid was ever brought to justice for what she’d done or not, I’d go and see her and tell her what I thought. I’d also try to help her, if I could. After all, what her father and Webb had done to her wasn’t her fault.

I don’t know exactly how long that resentful trudge over rubble to Holborn took. We had to divert a lot; sometimes because of still-burning fires, sometimes because there was water from a burst main gushing out into the streets, and sometimes we were just told not to go a certain way by policemen or wardens. Buildings not actually collapsed would need just the very smallest nudge or vibration to make them do so. Even now that the raid was over and many of the fires out, the City was still a very dangerous place to be. None of us were youngsters either. Messrs Steadman, Neeson, Harris and myself were all of an age. We all laboured to get to Holborn and by the time we got there, we were all sweating.

The offices of Phillips, Steadman and Rolls were a bit rough around the edges with rubble piled up against some of the windows and the walls, but they were still standing. Mr Steadman and the other blokes set about looking round the outside of the place while I reassured a copper who came across the road towards us that we had a right to go into the building. Looters come in all shapes and sizes, including that of middle-aged men. After a brief chat with Mr Steadman and a butchers at his office keys, the copper left.

Mr Steadman put his key in the front door lock and let us all inside. There had not been, I noticed, any rubble piled up against the front entrance door.

Chapter Seventeen

I
t’s my belief that when Hitler is defeated and peace finally comes, London will change tremendously. The way the centre is laid out is still the way a medieval city would have been arranged. A lot of the buildings are either ancient or, like the offices of Phillips, Steadman and Rolls, Victorian. It was a tall, thin building, with five storeys including the basement. Where we came in on the ground floor there was really quite a neat office with a new-looking desk and typewriter as well as a fireplace that had the look of something fashionable too. The typist, who to everyone’s relief hadn’t turned up for work, sat here. But as we mounted the dark and creaking staircase up to the architects’ offices and the storerooms, things became older, more worn-looking and haphazard. Great big drawing boards, some with plans actually perched on them, sometimes several boards to one room, stood where they would most easily catch the light. The windows, though dirty and now criss-crossed with tape, were large and must once have provided good views down into what used to be a lively street. I took a brief look out now and saw the half-wrecked underground station with ghostly-looking figures skirting carefully around it. The copper who had spoken to me earlier was on the other side of the road again, but he was looking up at the architects’ office. At least there was someone to shout to should the worst, whatever that might be, happen. As it was the silence that had come upon all of us as we entered the offices was bearing heavily down on me at least. When we mounted the stairs up to the top floor, I was almost glad when Mr Steadman turned around and said, ‘Phillips’s office is up here.’

That Phillips’s body might also be present in it was of concern to me, of course it was, but I didn’t fear it as I think Mr Neeson and Mr Harris might have. Harris went very pale at the mere mention of Mr Phillips. We followed on after Mr Steadman and stood behind him when he stopped in the open doorway into Mr Phillips’s office. For a second or two we all caught our breath and then Mr Steadman said, irritably, as if he were talking about an unwelcome guest, ‘He’s here.’

‘Mr . . .’

Steadman stood to one side so that we could see into the room. Mr Harris almost immediately looked away. On the floor was the figure of a tallish man, laying face down in a large smudge of drying blood. How he’d died, I couldn’t see but I assumed that violence of some sort had been involved.

Mr Steadman took his tin hat off and then wiped a hand across his brow. ‘We’d best report this to the police,’ he said. ‘Poor Harold.’

Mr Neeson began, ‘Mr Steadman, shouldn’t we er, someone, I think, has cleared a path into the building. Shouldn’t we look for—’

‘Yes, you’re right, I think someone else has been here, too. We should look for Rolls,’ Mr Steadman said. ‘Let me check the safe.’

He’d said that Rolls would need to come back for cash. He walked around Mr Phillips’s body and towards a door at the rear of the office. He opened it to reveal a very small room with a large safe at the back of it. The door of the safe was wide open. Neeson and Harris followed Steadman and I heard him say to them that they should go up on the roof. There was apparently, some sort of platform or balcony up there. I bent down to look at the dead body in front of me as the three other men walked back towards the staircase once again. Even pressed against the lino on the floor, I could see that Mr Phillips’s face was a poor, savaged thing. Without his mask he was almost unbearable to look upon. But I knew his type well, I knew and know men without faces. I know how bitter they are and the reasons for that bitterness that go far beyond just the way that they look. But the blokes I know are working class – poor and forgotten. How had a middle-class man like this, with a good wage, a profession and the best ‘face’ that money could buy, got mixed up with even the idea of human sacrifice? To be an architect he had to have been educated. How could he have given even the slightest heed to such nonsense? Blood is just blood as I know only too well; there’s nothing special or magical about it. Gallons were ‘sacrificed’ during the Great War, gallons are spilt to this day, but nothing gets any better, no one is any more secure because of blood.

Although I did want to know how Mr Phillips had died, I didn’t try to move him. That was for the police to do. I stood up and decided I’d go up on to the roof with the others. I doubted whether Mr Rolls was still in or around the building. As I went up the short staircase to the roof, I heard voices above me and they sounded very normal and conversational.

‘Eric . . .’ I heard Mr Steadman say. I felt my whole body go very cold. My head was just below the top of the stairs, which came directly out on to the roof as stairs on a ship do, and I could see the sky bearing down in shades of smoky grey on a scene I could not yet observe.

There was some sobbing which, to me, sounded like a girl.

Mr Rolls spoke next. ‘If you hadn’t come along when you did, Violet here would have been fine. She wasn’t going upstairs. You would have found Phillips first, Gordon, Anyway, I thought you and I came to an agreement back in the cathedral. You put that gun down as I recall, Gordon, and let us go.’

‘Arnold and Bolton were just idiots but I was always coming for you once you’d cleared the cathedral, Eric. I knew you’d come here, for money. Leave Violet alone,’ Mr Steadman said, ‘she’s got nothing to do with this.’

‘What is all this about?’ I heard a young woman’s voice say. ‘Mr Steadman! I got into work and I was so proud of myself. I was so happy to see Mr Rolls was here!’

‘I don’t want to hurt Violet,’ Mr Rolls said. ‘But I do need some sort of way out of here.’

‘There is no way out of here,’ Mr Steadman said. ‘Now we’re away from the cathedral I’m going to turn you over to the police.’

‘What for?’

‘You know what for!’ Mr Steadman said angrily. ‘That, that in the—’

‘Mr Phillips stabbed to death in his office?’ Mr Rolls said with almost a laugh in his voice.

‘Mr Phillips?’ I heard the girl gasp. ‘Is he, is he dead?’

‘Eric . . .’

‘Yes, I killed him,’ Mr Rolls said. ‘I’m so sorry about that, Violet, but Mr Phillips annoyed me intensely yesterday evening.’

I heard girlish sobs. I put my head just over the top of the stairs so that I could see. Steadman, Neeson and Harris were standing over on one side of the flat office roof while Mr Rolls, over the other side, was holding a knife up to the throat of a short, plump redhead. Mr Steadman was pointing a gun in the direction of Mr Rolls and, of course, the girl too.

‘I suppose you killed Harold so that you could get into the cathedral?’ Mr Steadman asked.

Rolls became animated now and I saw his face turn red. ‘We planned it weeks ago! I knew that our old colleague George Chivers needed money and I’d heard that he, or rather his neighbour, Webb, put George’s children to work on the streets. Chivers had not a clue about what was going on and, what was more, he didn’t care,’ he said. ‘We had a victim whom no one would ever bother to trace, and we were both going to perform the ceremony up on the Golden Gallery. Then yesterday Harold showed his true colours and said he couldn’t go through with it. All of a sudden he starts saying we should just forget all about it. I blame myself in a way. Harold was, I knew, basically of a tender-hearted type. I of course ordered him onwards, as his Grand Master! I told him to obey! But he wouldn’t!’ He took a deep breath and he shook his head as if he could barely understand this. ‘Harold didn’t think that I was serious! Can you believe he was humouring me? That was what he said, my interest in the occult was desperate and transitory and he was humouring me!’

‘Eric,’ Mr Steadman said, ‘Harold did share some of your views, I know. He, like you, was much more interested in the esoteric side of Masonry than the rest of us. His interest was, however, intellectual. Eric, only madmen like Bolton would hold with all that nonsense put about by Crowley!’

‘Nonsense!’ He pulled the girl closer to him and as a consequence, she squeaked. ‘Were you with him in Sicily? No you were not!’

‘And neither were you, Eric!’ Mr Steadman said. ‘God, Crowley is a lunatic and a drug addict . . .’

‘The Beast who, in his Abbey of Thelema in Sicily, opened up my mind!’

There was a pause then as Steadman looked at Rolls as if he’d just seen him for the first time. I didn’t know what they were talking about at the time – except that Mr Andrews had talked about the Beast to me the night before. I had assumed it or he was the Devil. But was it this person, Crowley? Who was this Crowley, and what did an abbey in Sicily have to do with anything? Mr Harris and Mr Neeson looked about as confused as I must have.

‘Gordon, I have seen what blood can do! It can make men powerful! The blood of a defiled child like Chivers’s little girl could save this city! Good God, man, the Nazis are destroying the Brotherhood over on the continent! If we can save the great symbol of our city, if we can preserve our brother Wren’s great Masonic masterpiece . . .’

‘Eric, this isn’t real!’ Mr Steadman said. ‘Wren never sacrificed anyone! What you tried to do, what you have done, is wicked!’

Again there was silence while Mr Rolls seemed to think about this. In the cathedral he had come across to me as a man obsessed but nevertheless in possession of his wits. Now he was a man breaking down and I honestly think that maybe he would have come quietly in the end, had he not seen me.