Peter Ackroyd - Hawksmoor

He walked back to the steps and the pathologist took him aside for a few moments; then he called the other officers over to him. The situation now is this,' he explained quietly as the sun rose above the buildings, That the body can be moved up to the mortuary where the professor will be carrying out the post-mortem. What we want to know now, of course, is what we have learned here which might be of interest to the professor.' He looked across at the corpse as one label was attached to each wrist and ankle. It was placed in a polythene bag which was sealed at both ends and then, wrapped within an opaque transit sheet, it was carried to a stretcher before being taken to a police van parked at the corner of Lombard Street. Some women cried out in grief or alarm as the stretcher was taken through the small crowd which had assembled; and when a young girl tried to touch the side of the plastic sheet, her arm was knocked roughly away by one of the policemen carrying it. Hawksmoor saw all this and smiled, before turning round to face the red-headed woman who had discovered the body.

He watched her now with some interest as she sat by the railings of the old church and, thinking herself unobserved among all this activity, took out a small pocket mirror from her handbag; she was patting her hair into shape, turning slightly to one side and then to the other as she did so. Then she stood up, and he noticed that the damp stone had left a large stain on the back of her dress. Hawksmoor was interested in her because he always studied the reactions of those who came across the corpses of the violently slain -although most of them simply ran from the sight, as if to protect themselves from the agony and corruption which a murdered body represents. It was his belief that even the finder of that body can become an accomplice in its fate and, by completing the process which leads to its dicovery, can also suffer guilt. But this woman had stayed. He walked over to the officer who had been interviewing her: 'Did you get what you could out of her?'

'I got what I could, but it wasn't much. She doesn't have a clue, sir.'

'And I don't have a clue. What about time?'

'She only recalls time insomuch as it was raining, sir.'

Hawksmoor looked at the woman again; now that he was closer to her he noticed a certain slackness around her mouth, and the expression of puzzled intensity as she stared at the twin towers of the church. And he understood why she had not fled, but had stayed watching over the body of the murdered boy until someone else had come. 'She doesn't know the time of day, sir,' the officer added as Hawksmoor walked towards the woman.

He approached her slowly, so as not to alarm her. There now,' he said when he came to her, 'It was raining when you found him?'

'Raining? It was raining and it wasn't raining.' She stared into his face, and he flinched.

'And what was the time?' he asked her softly.

'Time? There was no time, not like that.'

'I see.'

And then she laughed, as if they had been sharing some enormous joke. 'I see you,' she said and gave him a push with her hand.

'Did you see him?'

'He had red hair like me'.

'Yes, you have nice red hair. I like your hair very much. And did he speak to you?'

'He don't say much, not him. I don't know what he said.'

For one instant Hawksmoor wondered if she was talking about the boy. 'And what did he do?'

'He seemed to be moving, do you know what I mean? And then he wasn't moving. What do they call this church?'

He had forgotten and in panic he swung round to look at it; when he turned back she was peering into her handbag. 'Well, Mary,' he said, 'We'll be meeting again soon, I hope?' At this she started crying, and in his embarrassment he walked away from her into Cheapside.

Generally he knew by instinct the likely length of an investigation, but on this occasion he did not: as he fought to get his breath he suddenly saw himself as others must see him, and he was struck by the impossibility of his task. The event of the boy's death was not simple because it was not unique and if he traced it backwards, running the time slowly in the opposite direction (but did it have a direction?), it became no clearer. The chain of causality might extend as far back as the boy's birth, in a particular place and on a particular date, or even further into the darkness beyond that. And what of the murderer, for what sequence of events had drawn him to wander by this old church? All these events were random and yet connected, part of a pattern so large that it remained inexplicable. He might, then, have to invent a past from the evidence available -and, in that case, would not the future also be an invention? It was as if he were staring at one of those puzzle drawings in which foreground and background create entirely different images: you could not look at such a thing for long.

He retraced his steps to the church where, to his annoyance, he found that Walter had been watching him. The red-headed woman was being led away and he spoke loudly so that she might hear. 'What time do you call this, then?'

'I don't know the time, sir. I was told to collect you.' Walter seemed very pale in the early morning light. 'I was told you were going to the Incident Room.'

Thank you for telling me.' And as they drove to Spitalfields Walter turned the radio to the conventional police wavelength, but Hawksmoor leaned forward and shifted the dial. Too many stories,' he said.

'Is it the same man, sir?'

'It's the same MO.' Hawksmoor emphasised the last two letters, and Walter laughed. 'But I don't want to talk about it yet. Give me time.'

The music of a popular song now came from the radio as Hawks-moor gazed out of the window; and he saw a door closing, a boy dropping a coin in the street, a woman turning her head, a man calling. For a moment he wondered why such things were occurring now: could it be that the world sprang up around him only as he invented it second by second and that, like a dream, it faded into the darkness from which it had come as soon as he moved forward? But then he understood that these things were real: they would never cease to occur and they would always be the same, as familiar and as ever-renewed as the tears which he had just seen on the woman's face.

Walter was now preoccupied with another subject: 'Do you believe in ghosts, sir?' he was saying as Hawksmoor stared gloomily out of the window.

'Ghosts?'

'Yes, you know, ghosts, spirits.' After a pause he continued. 'I only ask because of those old churches. They're so, well, old.'

There are no ghosts, Walter.' He leaned forward to turn off the song on the radio and then he added, with a sigh, 'We live in a rational society'.

Walter glanced at him: 'You sound a bit frail, sir, if you don't mind my saying'.

Hawksmoor was surprised, since he did not realise that he sounded like anything. 'I'm just tired,' he said.

By the time they had reached the Incident Room at Spitalfields, from where all the enquiries on these murders were still being so- ordinated, the telephones were ringing constantly and a number of uniformed and plain clothes officers were moving about the room, calling and joking to one another. Their presence unnerved Hawksmoor; he wanted nothing to happen until he understood the reasons for its happening, and he knew that he would quickly have to dominate this investigation before it ran out of control. A video unit was being placed in a corner of the room, and Hawksmoor stood in front of it in order to speak. 'Ladies and gentlemen,' he said very loudly. Their noises ceased and as they looked towards him he felt quite calm. 'Ladies and gentlemen, you will be working in three shifts, with an incident officer in charge of each shift. And there will be a conference each day -' He paused for an instant as the lights flickered.