Peter Ackroyd - Hawksmoor

Nothing more than that. (He is silent fora moment) What time are you letting me out? (Pause) I've had enough of this. (Silence) I'm that tired. hawksmoor. (Suddenly) What does he look like? tramp. Oh I don't know. (Pause) All that hair. It's wicked, isn't it?

Hair like tobacco. And then he draws. Draws the life out of you. I never saw such drawings. (Silence) Can I go out now? (Silence) Well then I'll go.

He gets up to leave, looks at Hawksmoor, and then walks out of the door as Walter comes in. hawksmoor. (Excitedly) It was the same man. Doesn't it seem to you to be the same man?

He read the brief jottings which Walter had made in his notebook during the interview and a small fly, attracted by its brightness under the neon, settled on the left-hand page. Hawksmoor noticed its legs waving like filaments bending in a sudden heat, and the shape of its wings cast a shadow upon the whiteness of the paper. Then as he turned the page he killed the insect, and its body smeared across the ink became an emblem of this moment when Hawksmoor had a vision of the tramp dancing around a fire, with the smoke clinging to his clothing and then wrapping him in mist.

'It is the same man,' he said again, 'It must be him.'

Walter anticipated his thoughts now: 'And we must be seen to be taking some action. At last'.

And so they walked to the Incident Room from where a carefully worded press statement was released, suggesting that the police were anxious to interview a certain vagrant in connection with the murders and giving a description of the man in question. And Hawksmoor called out to the various members of the investigating teams, 'I want the hostels checked, and the parks, and the derelict houses. Even the churches…' A young uniformed officer, who had a large birth mark splayed across his cheek, came up to him: 'One of the problems, sir, is obviously going to be the fact that there may be a few like him, a few who look like him'. Hawksmoor avoided looking at the scarlet brand: 'I know that, but that's the way it is And once again his voice trailed off for he knew that, just as he would recognise the murderer, so also would the murderer recognise him.

It was dusk now as he walked down Brick Lane to Christ Church, Spitalfields, passing Monmouth Street and turning down Eagle Street where the east wall of the old church rose among the ruined houses.

As he walked forward the street lamps flckered alight, and the shape of the church itself altered in their sudden illumination. Hawksmoor reached the gate through which he could see the abandoned tunnel, now boarded up, and in the neon's reflected light the grass and trees beside the church seemed to glow. He opened the gate, and as he walked down the path he was momentarily startled by a white moth which flew around his shoulders: he lengthened his stride to escape it but it stayed with him until he had turned the corner of the church and saw the main road and the market in front of him. In the gathering darkness he moved towards the small pyramid, placed his hands upon it as if to warm them, but in that instant he felt a wave of disorder -and, with it, the sensation that someone was staring fixedly at him.

He turned around quickly but in the sudden movement his glasses fell to the ground; he stepped forward, without thinking, and broke them. 'Now,' he said out loud, 'Now I won't be able to see him.' And, curiously enough, his feeling was one of relief.

Joyfully he turned down Commercial Road towards Whitechapel; there was a fight in a side alley, and one man was kicking another who had already fallen; a blind woman was standing by the side of the road, waiting to be helped across; a young girl was murmuring the words of a popular song. And then he saw on the other side of the street, going in the opposite direction and towards the church, a tall but indistinct figure who seemed to be drawn to the protection of the shop-fronts and the dark walls of brick. The man's clothes were torn and old; his hair was matted into a slab, like tobacco. Hawksmoor crossed the road rapidly and walked a few yards behind the tramp, but in his nervousness he coughed: the tall figure turned and seemed to smile before quickening his pace. Hawksmoor cried out in alarm, 'Wait! Wait for me!' and then ran in pursuit. Both of them were in sight of the church and the still indistinct figure ran across the grass by its side; Hawksmoor followed but as he ran past the pyramid he collided with a small boy who had been standing in its shadow. And as the boy looked up at him Hawksmoor noticed how pale his face seemed. In that instant of inattention the tall figure had run around the corner of the church and, by the time Hawksmoor had turned it, had already disappeared. He ran back to ask the child if he had seen anything of the fleeing man, but the small park was now empty: the grass and trees had ceased to glow and, in the darkness, they seemed to be crumbling back into the earth. If he did not act now the atmosphere of the church-yard would overpower him and he would be lost: he started walking in the direction of Limehouse for, if there was one place a vagrant might think to hide from a pursuer, it was in the abandoned sites and derelict houses near St Anne's.

He hailed a taxi and took it as far as the Limehouse church; as he stepped out the cold wind caught him in the face and for a moment he sought shelter behind an advertisement hoarding on which could be seen a number of computers floating above the city. Eventually he went towards St Anne's, but then veered to the right and crossed a patch of waste land beside it: the wind blew even more strongly here, since it came directly from the river, and it brought to him the scattered shouts and calls of the meths-drinkers who were a few hundred yards away from him. As he walked forward he noticed the sparks rising above a fire, and when he came closer he could see the dark shapes which were apparently dancing around it. They are happy, he thought, for they do not remember; and then he began running towards them. 'You!' he cried, 'You! What are you doing and what do you want here?' But they did not stop their dancing when he came up to them: it seemed that he was being grabbed, as if to enter the ring, but with a shout he pulled himself free. Then they became still and gazed at him when he questioned them. 'Have any of you seen the one called the Architect? He's one of you. Have you seen him?' They were all old ones, dishevelled and weary now that the spell of the dance had passed. They said nothing but stared into the flames and one of them began to moan. Hawksmoor noticed that the head of a toy bear had been thrust onto a pole, and was lying upon the charred ground. He shouted at them impatiently: 'I am a police officer! Put out that fire now!' None of them moved and so Hawksmoor himself walked into the fire and stamped upon it ferociously until there were only ashes and burned sticks remaining.

'Where is he?' he shouted at them again as they began to retreat from him, 'Do any of you know where he is?' But still they made no noise and Hawksmoor, disgusted at himself for behaving in a manner which he had not foreseen, turned away. As he walked back he called out into the air, 'I don't want to see any more fire, do you understand me? No more fire!'

He found the road which leads down to the river and, wrapping his dark coat closely around himself so that he might withstand the wind, he passed an old tramp who was squatting by the roadside and with his fingers digging into the damp earth. Hawksmoor looked at him closely, but he was not the man he sought. The tramp stared back at him as he passed, and continued staring as he walked into the distance: Hawksmoor heard him shouting out something but the sounds of the river were closer to him and he could not distinguish the words. The muddy water raced beneath his feet and the lights of the city had changed the sky to a transient purple, but he was thinking only of the figure fleeing before him in Spitalfields and of the pale face of the boy as it had looked up at him in the shadow of the church.