Hawksmoor

by Peter Ackroyd

  Walter sensed him at his shoulder: 'I don't know how you managed without them, sir,' he said without turning around, 'In the past, I mean.' After a noise which was as faint and yet to Hawksmoor as disquieting as a human pulse, certain letters and digits moved across the small screen. Walter now looked up at him in his eagerness: 'Do you see how it's all been organised? It's all so simple!'

  'I seem to have heard that somewhere before,' Hawksmoor replied as he bent forward to look at the names and addresses of those convicted or suspected of similar crimes; and of those who had used a similar modus operandi -manual strangulation, with the murderer sitting or kneeling on the body of the victim.

  'But it's much more efficient, sir. Think of all the agony it saves us!'

  He now entered a different command, although his hands barely seemed to move across the keyboard. And yet despite his excitement it seemed to Walter that the computer itself only partly reflected the order and lucidity to which he aspired -that the composition of these little green digits, glowing slightly even in the morning light, barely hinted at the infinite calculability of the world outside. And how bright that world now seemed to him, as a face formed in an 'identikit' composition, flickering upon the screen with green shading in place of shadow so that it resembled a child's drawing. 'Ah,' Hawksmoor said, 'the green man did it.'

  And when he grew bored with all this information, he decided that it was time to return to St Mary Woolnoth and resume the investigation there. It was almost midday when they reached it, and the autumn sun had changed the structure of the church so that once more it seemed quite strange to him. He and Walter were walking around to the side facing King William Street, when for the first time he noticed that there was a gap between the back of the church and the next building -an open patch of ground, part of which was covered with transparent sheeting. Hawksmoor looked down at the exposed soil and then drew back. 'I suppose,' he said, 'these are the excavations?'

  'It looks like a rubbish tip to me.' Walter surveyed the deep furrows, the small pits with planks laid across them, the yellow clay, the pieces of brick and stone apparently thrown haphazardly to the edges of the site.

  'Yes, but where did it come from? You know, Walter, from dust to dust…'

  And his voice trailed off when he realised that they were being watched. A woman, wearing rubber boots and a bright red sweater, was standing in the far corner of the excavations. 'Hello love!' Walter shouted to her, 'We're police officers. What are you up to?' His voice had no echo as it passed over the freshly dug earth.

  'Come on down and see!' she called back. 'But there's nothing here!

  Nothing's been touched overnight!' In confirmation of this, she kicked a piece of plastic sheeting which remained firmly in place. 'Come on, I'll show you!'

  Hawksmoor seemed to hesitate, but at this moment a group of children turned the corner into King William Street and he suddenly descended into the site by means of a metal ladder. Tentatively he crossed around the edge of the open pits, smelling the dankness of the earth as he did so. It was quieter here beneath the level of the pavement, and he lowered his voice when he reached the archaeologist: 'What have you found here?'

  'Oh, flint blocks, some bits of masonry. That's a foundation trench there, you see.' As she talked she was scraping the skin off the palm of her hand. 'But what have you found?'

  Hawksmoor chose to ignore the question. 'And how far down have you reached?' he asked her, peering into a dark pit at his feet.

  'Well it's all very complicated, but at this point we've got down to the sixth century. It really is a treasure trove. As far as I'm concerned we could keep on digging for ever'. And as Hawksmoor looked down at what he thought was freshly opened earth, he saw his own image staring back up at him from the plastic sheeting.

  'Do you mean this is the sixth century here?' he asked, pointing at his reflection.

  'Yes, that's right. But it's not very surprising, you know. There's always been a church here. Always. And there's a lot more to find.'

  She was certain of this because she saw time as a rock face, which in her dreams she sometimes descended.

  Hawksmoor knelt down by the side of the pit; as he took a piece of earth and rubbed it between his fingers, he imagined himself tumbling through the centuries to become dust or clay. 'Isn't it dangerous,' he said at last, 'To dig so close to the church?'

  'Dangerous?'

  'Well, might it fall?'

  'On us? No, that won't happen, not now.'

  Walter, who had been examining the wooden supports which held up the church, had joined them: 'Not now?' he asked her.

  'Well, we did find a skeleton recently. Not something you would be interested in, of course.'

  But Walter was interested. 'Where did you find it?'

  'It was there, next to the church, where the pipes are being laid.

  They were pretty new, too.' Hawksmoor glanced in the direction to which she pointed, and he could see soil which was the colour of rust.

  He looked away.

  'And how new is new?' Walter was asking her.

  'Two or three hundred years, but we haven't completed our tests yet. It may have been a workman who was killed when the church was rebuilt.'

  'Well,' said Hawksmoor. 'It's a theory, and a theory can do no harm.' Then he suggested to Walter that they might leave, since time was pressing, and they ascended into the street where once more they heard the noises of traffic. He looked up at an office-building on the other side, and saw the people moving around in small lighted rooms.

  And it was while Walter lingered with the policemen who were still methodically searching the immediate area of the murder that Hawksmoor noticed the tramp kneeling by the corner of Pope's Head Alley, opposite the north wall of St Mary Woolnoth. He seemed at first to be praying to the church but then Hawksmoor realised that, although the pavement was still damp after the morning rain, he was finishing a sketch in white chalk. He crossed the road slowly and stood by the side of the kneeling man: for a moment he looked with horror at his hair, which was thickly matted into slabs like tobacco.

  The tramp had drawn the figure of a man who had put a circular object up to his right eye and was peering through it as if it were a spy glass, although it might equally have been a piece of plastic or a communion wafer. He paid no attention to Hawksmoor, but then he looked up and they stared at each other; Hawksmoor was about to say something when Walter called out and beckoned him towards their car. 'We ought to go back,' he was saying when Hawksmoor came up to him.

  'They've found someone. Someone's confessed.'

  Hawksmoor drew his hand three times across his face. 'Oh no,' he muttered, 'Oh no. Not yet.'

  The young man sat, with bowed head, in a small waiting room; as soon as Hawksmoor saw his hands, small with the nails bitten down to the flesh, he knew that this was not the one. 'My name is Hawksmoor,' he said, 'and I am involved with this enquiry. Can you go in?'

  He opened the door to the interview room. Tn you go. Sit down over there. How do you do? Have they treated you well, Mr Wilson?' There was a muttered reply which Hawksmoor did not care to hear: the man sat down on a small wooden chair and started rocking slightly, as if he were trying to comfort himself. At this point Hawksmoor did not want to go on; he did not want to enter this chamber of tortures and look around within it. 'I'm going to interview you,' he said very quietly, 'with regard to the murder of Matthew Hayes, whose body was found at the church of St Mary Woolnoth at about 5.30 a.m. on Saturday, October 24. The boy was last seen alive on Friday, October 23. You have given yourself up. What do you know about his death?' Walter came in with a note-book, as the two men stared at each other across the table.

  'What do you want me to say? I've already told them.'

  'Well, tell me. Take your time. We have plenty of time.'

  'It doesn't take any time. I killed him.'

  'Who did you kill?'

  'The boy. Don't ask me why.' And once more he bowed his head; but he looked up at
Hawksmoor in the silence which followed, as if pleading with him to make him go on, to make him say more. He was hunched forward, rubbing his hands against his knees, and in that instant Hawksmoor saw the man's thoughts as a swarm of small flies trapped in a bare room, swerving to one side and then another in an effort to break free.

  'Well I am asking you why,' he said gently, 'I have to know why, Brian.'

  He did not register the fact that Hawksmoor knew his name. 'What else can I do, if that's the way it is? I can't help it. That's the way it is.'

  Hawksmoor examined him: he saw that his fingers, now clenched, were stained with nicotine; he saw that his clothes were too small; he saw the carotid artery pulsing on the side of his neck, and he restrained an impulse to touch it. Then without a trace of eagerness he enquired, 'And how do you go about killing, when you get the chance?'

  'I just get hold of them and I do it. They need to be killed.'

  They need to be killed? That's a bit strong, isn't it?'

  'I don't see why it is. You should know -' And he was about to say something when, for the first time, he noticed that Walter was standing behind him, and he stopped short.

  'Go on. Would you like a glass of water, Brian?' With a sudden gesture Hawksmoor motioned Walter out of the room. 'Go on, I'm listening. It's just you and me.'

  But the moment had gone. 'Well it's up to you to do something then, isn't it?' The young man concentrated upon a small crack in the floor. 'I can't be held responsible once I've told you.'

  'You haven't told me anything I didn't know.'

  Then you know everything.'

  He was clearly not the murderer whom Hawksmoor was seeking, but it was generally the innocent who confessed: in the course of many enquiries, Hawksmoor had come across those who accused themselves of crimes which they had not committed and who demanded to be taken away before they could do more harm. He was acquainted with such people and recognised them at once -although they were noticeable, perhaps, only for a slight twitch in the eye or the awkward gait with which they moved through the world. And they inhabited small rooms to which Hawksmoor would sometimes be called: rooms with a bed and a chair but nothing besides, rooms where they shut the door and began talking out loud, rooms where they sat all evening and waited for the night, rooms where they experienced blind panic and then rage as they stared at their lives. And sometimes when he saw such people Hawksmoor thought, this is what I will become, I will be like them because I deserve to be like them, and only the smallest accident separates me from them now. He noticed a rapid nervous movement in the young man's cheek, and it reminded him of a coal which dims and then brightens when it is blown upon. 'But you haven't told me anything,' he heard himself saying, 'I want you to tell me what happened.'

  'But how can I confess if you won't believe me?'

  'But I do believe you. Go on. Go on with it. Don't stop now.'

  1 followed him until I was sure I had him alone. It was down by that street, the one in the paper. He knew I was after him but he didn't say much. He just looked at me. Who said he could live? I wouldn't mind being dead if someone could do it like that. Do you know what I'm saying?'

  'Yes, I know what you mean. How many have you killed, Brian?'

  And the man smiled as Walter entered the room with a glass of water. 'More than you know. Many more. I could do it in my sleep.'

  'But what about the churches? Do you know about those?'

  'What churches? There are no churches. Not in my sleep.'

  Hawksmoor grew angry with him now. 'That doesn't make any sense,' he said, That doesn't make any sense at all. Does it make any sense to you?' The man turned towards Walter, his arm outstretched for the glass of water, and as he did so Hawksmoor noticed some livid welts on his neck where he had been mutilating himself. 'You can go now,' he told him.

  'You mean you don't want me to stay here with you? You don't want to lock me up?'

  'No, Mr Wilson, that won't be necessary.' He could not look into the man's eyes, and so he got up to leave the room; Walter followed him, smiling. 'Send him home,' Hawksmoor said to the constable outside, 'Or charge him with wasting police time. Do what you want with him.

  He's no use to me.'

  He was still angry when he entered the incident room and approached one of the officers: 'Have you got anything for me?'

  'We have some sightings, sir.'

  'Do you mean we have witnesses?'

  'Well, let's put it this way, sir '

  'Let's not, if you don't mind.'

  'I mean, we have statements, which we're checking now.'

  'So let me see them now.'

  A sheaf of photocopies was given to him, and Hawksmoor looked over each one rapidly: 'It was about midnight when the witness saw a tall man with white hair walking down Lombard Street… at three a. m. the witness said she heard an argument, one low voice and one high voice, coming from the direction of the church. One of the men sounded as if he were drunk… Then about thirty minutes later he saw a short, plump man walking hurriedly away in the direction of Gracechurch Street… She heard a young boy singing in Cheapside at about eleven p. m… He saw a man of average height dressed in a dark coat trying the gates of St Mary Woolnoth… then she heard the words, We are going home. The witness did not know the time'. None of these apparent sightings interested Hawksmoor, since it was quite usual for members of the public to come forward with such accounts and to describe unreal figures who took on the adventitious shape already suggested by newspaper accounts. There were even occasions when a number of people would report sightings of the same person, as if a group of hallucinations might create their own object which then seemed to hover for a while in the streets of London. And Hawksmoor knew that if he held a reconstruction of the crime by the church, yet more people would come forward with their own versions of time and event; the actual killing then became blurred and even inconsequential, a flat field against which others painted their own fantasies of murderer and victim.

  The officer, hesitating slightly now, came up to him: 'We've got the usual mail, sir. Do you want to look at that as well?' Hawksmoor nodded, gave back the sheaf of witnesses' statements and then leaned over the new bundle of papers. There were more confessions, and letters from people explaining in great detail what they would like to do with the murderer once he had been caught (some of them coincidentally borrowing effects from the murderer's own repertoire).

  Hawksmoor was accustomed to such messages and even enjoyed reading them; there was, after all, some amusement to be derived from the posturing imaginations of others. But there were other, more impersonal, letters which still enraged him: one correspondent requested more information, for example, and another proffered advice. Did the police know, he now read, that children often murder other children and might it not be a good idea for you to interview the poor boy's schoolfellows? Question them severely, since children were such liars! Another correspondent asked if there had been any mutilation of the body and, if so, what form did it take? He put the paper down and stared at the wall in front of him, biting his thumb nail as he did so. When he looked at the desk again, another letter caught his attention. The phrase DON'T FORGET was printed across its top, suggesting that the lined paper had been torn from a standard memorandum pad. Four crosses had been drawn upon it, three of them in a triangular relation to each other and with the fourth slightly apart, so that the whole device resembled an arrow: The shape was familiar to Hawksmoor; and suddenly it occurred to him that, if each cross was the conventional sign for a church, then here in outline was the area of the murders -Spitalfields at the apex of the triangle, St George's-in-the-East and St Anne's at the ends of the base line, and St Mary Woolnoth to the west. Underneath had been scrawled, in pencil, This is to let you know that I will be spoken about'. And there followed another line, so faint that Hawksmoor could hardly read it, 'O misery, if they will die'. Then he turned the page and he trembled when he saw the sketch of a man kneeling with a white disc placed against his right ey
e: this had been the drawing which he had seen issuing from the hand of the tramp beside St Mary Woolnoth. Beneath it was printed in capitals, THE UNIVERSAL ARCHITECT'. And he wondered at this as, surreptitiously, he placed the letter in his pocket.