Candleland

by Martyn Waites

  “And I’m in Candleland, I take it?”

  “You are.”

  “How long have I been here? How long have I been out?”

  “Couple of days now. You were unconscious when they brought you in. You’ve been that way until now. Any longer and we’d have been worried, put you in hospital.”

  “Why didn’t you?”

  “Because we thought we could cope with you here. And we didn’t want to involve the police, of course.”

  “Where was I?” asked Larkin. “How did I get there? How did I get here?”

  “You were in Bermondsey. There was a car crash and it looks like you threw yourself clear. The other guy wasn’t so lucky.”

  At that, the memory unfolded. Larkin fighting with Ringo in the car, diving out. He remembered lying on the ground, litter strewn around him, in pain, too spent to move. There was something else. Someone else.

  “Ralph Sickert!” gasped Larkin. “I saw Ralph Sickert!”

  Mickey Falco nodded, expressionless. Larkin tried to think, couldn’t come to any conclusions.

  “I don’t understand,” Larkin said. He felt tired again. But there was something he had to do.

  “Charlie Rook,” he said sitting up. The immediate jolt of pain forced him down again. The quickness of the movement had left him feeling suddenly exhausted. “We’ve got to …”

  “All in good time,” said Mickey Falco. “We’ve got to get you well again first. Then we’ll deal with him.”

  There was a knock at the door.

  “Ah, here comes Darren with the tea.” said Mickey Falco. “Good, I’m parched.”

  Mickey Falco stood up to open the door. By the time he had returned to the bedside with a cup of tea, Larkin was asleep. When Larkin next came round, some hours later, he was much clearer headed. He called for Mickey Falco. Asked him to explain.

  “My name’s down as Diana’s next of kin,” Mickey Falco said. “She’s got nobody else. So when the ambulance arrived and she was taken in to hospital, they contacted me.”

  “How is she?” asked Larkin.

  “She’s … a fighter.” Mickey Falco gave a smile edged with sadness. Larkin didn’t press the issue. Instead he asked another question.

  “So how did you come to be following me?”

  “We weren’t,” said Mickey Falco. “When we saw the state Diana was in, we thought Charlie Rook must have had something to do with it. So we sent someone to check out his place in Savage Gardens. Ralph volunteered to go. He saw you being hauled out of there and followed. And a good job for you that he did.”

  “So Ralph Sickert … what? Saved my life?” asked Larkin, incredulously.

  “Looks that way,” said Mickey Falco with a grim smile. “Life’s never black and white, is it?”

  “But Mickey …” It was too much. Larkin’s head was beginning to hurt again. Mickey Falco’s words had confused him. “How do you know Charlie Rook? Why was Ralph Sickert following him? What’s going on, Mickey?”

  Mickey Falco smiled. “Like I said, get yourself well again and we’ll talk. Till then …” He shrugged, gave a small smile. “Well, you’re older than the ones we usually get, but you’re welcome to stay here. Get yourself mended. In fact, I think this might be the safest place for you.”

  “Does anybody know I’m here, Mickey? Have you told anyone?”

  “No. But your mate Andy came round the day after you’d been brought in. We told him Diana had given you another lead to follow and that you’d gone.”

  “Why?”

  “In case Charlie Rook was following him. So he couldn’t find you.”

  “What’s going on, Mickey?” asked Larkin again.

  “I checked you out, by the way,” said Mickey from the door. “Word I got was you was OK. One of the good guys.”

  “Mickey …” said Larkin.

  “Just get yourself well,” Mickey Falco said, and closed the door on the way out.

  Two days later Larkin was sitting up. The pain in his ribs had subsided to a dullish ache and he was able to move his left shoulder, even flex his hand. He hadn’t chanced standing on his foot yet.

  Larkin’s initial concerns about his situation were beginning to slip away. He wasn’t happy about being kept in the dark, but Mickey Falco seemed on the level; he had a feeling things would eventually become clear. His body also needed to heal and they were doing their best to look after him. So, since he didn’t appear to be in any danger, he decided to trust his instinct and go with the flow.

  Darren had left a stack of magazines for him by the side of the bed. All lifestyle issues and movie trivia, things Larkin found less than enthralling, but the man had tried and Larkin was grateful. He had also left his mobile phone for him to use, as Larkin had told him he needed to make a phone call.

  He keyed in the number, listened to the ringing tone. Faye answered.

  He hesitated, then spoke.

  “Stephen! Thank God you’re alright! We’ve been worried sick about you. We were ready to go to the police –”

  “Don’t do that.”

  Faye’s voice became grave. “Are you in trouble, Stephen?”

  Larkin sighed. “No Faye, I’m not. I was injured, though –” Faye gasped. Larkin carried on. “– but I’m OK now. I can’t tell you where I am, though.”

  “Why not?”

  “Just trust me, Faye. I’ve got to stay low for a little while. I haven’t found Karen yet, but tell Henry I’m still looking. I might be on to something, but I can’t say for definite. But don’t worry, I’m OK.”

  “When you didn’t come back the other night … well, Andy told me what had happened. Who you’d met. That must have been awful, meeting the man who …” Her words trailed off.

  “It’s not as simple as that,” he said.

  “What d’you mean?” Faye asked.

  “I’ll tell you when I see you.”

  “OK, right.” Faye didn’t push it. Her voice dropped when she spoke next. She obviously wasn’t alone. Larkin could guess who else was there. “I thought at first you were staying away because of … you know.”

  “Yeah,” replied Larkin, his voice deliberately blank.

  Faye paused, as if expecting more. Larkin didn’t speak. All there was between them was digital static.

  “But then,” Faye continued, voice conspiratorially low, “Andy went to check out the place you’d gone to and found –” Her voice began to rise. The concern in it no less heartfelt but much less personal. “– it had been ransacked! The woman who lived there was in hospital fighting for her life, the police were quizzing everyone in the street. Andy didn’t hang around.”

  “I’ll bet,” replied Larkin.

  “He went to that refuge place –”

  “I know. Tell him to stay away from there. They can’t help him.”

  “Alright,” said Faye, sounding slightly confused.

  “Look, don’t worry,” he said. “I’m OK.”

  Faye’s voice dropped again. “Really?” So much was loaded into that one word.

  Larkin sighed. He was nowhere near together enough to give the answer she wanted to hear. One way or another.

  “Yeah,” was all he could manage. “Look, I’ll be in touch when I can. But it might not be immediately. Tell Henry not to worry.”

  They made their goodbyes, cut the connection.

  Over the next few days, Larkin managed to put himself back together, both physically and mentally.

  One of the refuge’s local volunteer doctors popped in every couple of days to see how his physical injuries were doing. His shoulder was back in place and holding well, his ankle could have pressure applied to it and his ribs were mending nicely. Larkin felt tender and, as the doctor was always reminding him, lucky.

  On one occasion the doctor, a young, cheerful Asian man, asked him about the scar in the centre of his right palm.

  Larkin smiled wryly. “That was from where I went poking my nose into something else I was told didn’t concern me.�
��

  The doctor smiled. “Do you make a habit of doing this?”

  Larkin gave a sardonic laugh. “I’ve made a career of it,” he said.

  Mentally, the scars were taking longer to heal.

  Once his strength had returned, he tried to get up and move about but found he had no clothes beyond the pyjamas Candleland had supplied him with. Darren was summoned.

  “Where’s my clothes?” Larkin asked him.

  “We had to destroy them,” Darren replied.

  Larkin opened his mouth to complain, but Darren got there first.

  “If you will jump out of moving cars and go rolling around in rubbish heaps,” he said, “what d’you expect? They were wrecked. You couldn’t have worn them again.”

  “What?” Larkin replied aghast. “Even my leather jacket?”

  “Oh come on,” said Darren, getting camper by the minute, “it was falling apart anyway. You just gave it that final push.”

  “But I’ve had that jacket for years!”

  “You could tell.”

  “And what about the rest?”

  “You mean check shirts and old Levis? Darling, that’s so grunge, so 1992.”

  Larkin sighed. It felt like he’d just lost a part of himself. His leather jacket was his favourite item of clothing. His body armour. Now it was gone.

  “Don’t worry,” said Darren, sensing Larkin’s unhappiness. “Give me your sizes and some money and I’ll get you some new stuff.”

  “Can I trust you?” asked Larkin, warily.

  Darren gave him a look. “What, you think I’ll come back with leather chaps and a biker’s cap? Credit me with some taste.”

  Darren was as good as his word. The next day, Larkin was out of bed, showered, shaved and dressed. The clothes wouldn’t have been his first choice but they fitted and suited him well. He had a mixture of cargo trousers, boots, trainers, sweatshirts, T-shirts and a couple of fleeces. Simple, utilitarian, yet stylish.

  “There,” said Darren. “I wouldn’t be ashamed to be seen out with you now.”

  Larkin looked at him, eyebrows raised.

  “Don’t worry,” replied Darren, “I wasn’t making a pass at you.”

  “Did I say anything?”

  “You didn’t have to. Honestly, you breeders. Always flattering yourselves.”

  Larkin smiled. Darren had a point. He did look good.

  Larkin’s movements were confined to certain areas of the refuge and bound by certain times. He kept himself separate from the day-to-day activities in the rest of Candleland and took no part in what was going on beneath him. Mickey Falco wanted it that way and Larkin respected that. After all, he didn’t want to be seen and they had work to do downstairs. Larkin also imposed restraints on himself. Sickert was somewhere in the building. And, whether he’d saved his life or not, a concept Larkin still couldn’t get his head round, he didn’t want to see him. The last thing he wanted, and trusted himself in, was a confrontation.

  Even though he was able to move his body quite well now, Larkin spent hours in his room, lying on the bed. He was trying to clarify and quantify all the recent events, put them into perspective.

  It was night. He lay on the bed, fully clothed, thinking. Apart from the glow of his bedside lamp, the room was in darkness. He was looking around the room, trying to measure the effect of the light. It glinted off and shone on some surfaces, cast dark, impenetrable shadows in other places, was absorbed and not returned in others. There was no black and no white. Just various shades of grey.

  The refuge had a steady silence, almost a hum. Although it operated twenty-four hours a day, it usually became quieter in the evening. Larkin preferred to move around the place at night. It had a warm, cocoon-like feel to it. A real safe house. A house that felt safe to be in.

  And, Larkin had discovered, Sickert wasn’t there at nights.

  It was a strange, unsettling feeling to be in the same house, at the same time, as the murderer of your wife and child, and then to be powerless to do anything about it. Sickert had a siren pull on Larkin and he became conscious of all his actions while he knew Sickert was in the place.

  Some nights, after a couple of belts from the whisky bottle, part of Larkin wanted to go down, see him, talk, but when he was sober the thought gave him butterflies. It was like having the long-lost love of his life from an unresolved and perhaps unfinished relationship living separately under the same roof. A lover he desperately wanted to see again, just to reassess, find out if there was still a spark to keep things going or whether to just end things for good and move on.

  But he didn’t. He stayed in his room and, thanks to Darren, read about Bruce Willis or the latest form and function Soho coffee bar. He was a virtual prisoner upstairs while Sickert was free to move around downstairs. Larkin wasn’t blind to the irony.

  He thought of other things. Sometimes he would sit and replay the car ride with Ringo. The pain, the rage … all the pieces of that night had come back to him now.

  He had been responsible for Ringo’s death. How did that make him feel? If he was honest, nothing. He had searched and searched but he could find no guilt, no remorse. The man had been a stone-eyed professional sadist and killer. And Larkin would have joined his list of victims at some point. Perhaps Ringo had had a side that Larkin didn’t see, perhaps he had been kind to animals or generous to children’s charities. But Larkin doubted it. Ringo had been a remorseless killer. Irredeemable and not worth crying over. But, Larkin had to admit, he hadn’t been born like that, he had been created. The time for tears, for help, should have been then. It was too late now.

  As Larkin lay there watching the shadows, imbibing the whisky, drawing from the stillness of the place, there was a knock at the door.

  “Yeah?” asked Larkin without moving.

  “S’me. Can I come in?” Mickey Falco.

  Larkin said that was fine and Mickey entered. He was wearing his usual suit and lumberjack shirt combination augmented by an overcoat and a knotted paisley scarf. He was leaning needfully on his stick, as if drawing energy from it.

  “You not gone home yet?” asked Larkin.

  “I think it’s time to talk,” replied Mickey Falco. “Diana. She’s dead.”

  Campfire Tales

  Larkin pulled himself upright. “Aw, no …”

  Mickey Falco’s whole body seemed heavier, as if a great weight was pressing down on him. He fell into a chair at Larkin’s bedside. Without waiting to be asked he took a glass from the bedside cabinet and helped himself to a generous slug from Larkin’s bottle, sighed, shook his head. The weight seemed to increase.

  “Yeah.” His eyes were wet. “We lost her tonight. That’s where I’ve been, the hospital.”

  “What happened?” asked Larkin, as quietly as he could.

  “Her surgery, her medication, the injuries on top of that … It was too much. They said there was some infection, they operated …” He took another swig. “She slipped into a coma, then …” He shrugged, put his head down. Trying to keep it bottled, trying not to cry.

  Larkin said nothing. There was nothing he could say.

  Eventually, Mickey looked up, in control again. Just. “What a life. What a life she had …”

  Larkin again said nothing. Mickey took that as a signal to continue.

  “She started off as a boy, but you knew that. A very pretty boy, apparently. Her family sold her to a brothel when she was about nine or ten. She was vague on the date, said she couldn’t remember.” He smiled sadly. “I keep calling her she. Can’t think of her any other way.” He sighed. “From some village at the arse end of Thailand to a Bangkok brothel. Poor little soul.” He shook his head, shuddered as if the memory were his, then continued. “Eventually she got too old. The brothel owner sold her to another brothel, this time in Germany. Then on to Amsterdam. By this time she’d had enough. They’d confiscated her passport so she couldn’t leave, but she managed to persuade this punter, some Englishman who was there for the weekend, to s
tow her away in the boot of his car on the ferry. That’s how she came to England.”

  “How did you get to meet her?” asked Larkin, genuinely interested.

  “This guy treated her like a slave, made her life hell. She managed to run away, found her way to us.”

  Mickey Falco took another drink, found he had drained his glass, topped it up from the bottle. “She was in a real state. A transvestite by this time, mutilating herself. We referred her to a psychologist, sorted her with somewhere to live, got her started.” He shook his head.

  “That’s the part that gets me, the bit I can’t grasp,” he said. “She had such a will to live, to succeed. She remade herself. Even changed her gender. Remarkable.”

  Larkin thought of her room the first time he’d seen it. He nodded.

  “She was one of Candleland’s biggest success stories, I thought. She kept in touch, helped others find their way here …” Mickey shook his head again. “I know she could be difficult, stroppy even, but that was just a front. A defence mechanism.” He sighed, close to losing control again. “I just can’t believe she’s gone …”

  Larkin nodded and sipped his drink. Hearing about Diana had certainly put his thoughts about Ringo into perspective.

  “Anyway,” said Mickey, “I didn’t mean to burden you. I just thought you might want to know.”

  “Thank you,” said Larkin. “I appreciate it.”

  The two men sat, casting large shadows around the small room, slowly sipping. Eventually Mickey nodded to himself, control re-established. “So,” he said, “how you feeling?”

  Larkin gave a faint smile. “Oh, you know, I’ve got my magazines, my booze, who could ask for anything more?”

  “Yeah, I know it’s boring,” said Mickey, “but it’s for the best. I hear the whole thing, the car crash, has been passed off as an accident. Careless driving, traces of cocaine in the car and the body, an’ all that. But I’ve also heard that Charlie Rook’s asked some of his tame coppers to look into it.”

  “You’ve heard?” asked Larkin. “How have you heard?”

  “Tame coppers of my own,” said Mickey Falco with a small degree of pride. “Anyway, in practical terms, it means stay here as long as you like. They’ll be looking for you everywhere else.”