The Candle Man (3 page)

A hospital ward.

That’s what this was. That’s exactly what this looked like. He wondered which hospital he was in and prepared to recite the list of hospitals in the proximity of where he lived when
. . . he realised he couldn’t actually recall where that was. He frowned. He couldn’t recall his actual address nor, for that matter, could he even recall the city he lived in.

A small stab of panic made him shift in his bed.

Not even which
country
was his home.

Ignoring the waves of throbbing pain, he lifted his head off the pillow and looked around the ward. He saw a sign painted on a board screwed to the ward door:
Remember! Clean hands means
clean beds!

So, he was somewhere English-speaking.

But where . . . where exactly am I?

He began to feel lightheaded and dizzy. His head collapsed back against the pillow and a single tear rolled out from beneath a clenched eyelid, down his cheek, into the bristles of his sideburns
. . . as his foggy mind processed another deeply unsettling thought.

I don’t even remember what my name is.

‘You don’t recognise me, do you?’

He stirred at the sound of the voice and opened his eyes to see a doctor standing beside his bed. A young man with a sandy-coloured beard and spectacles.

He shook his head. ‘No . . . I’m afraid not. Have we met?’

‘We spoke for a short while earlier this morning. I saw you at the start of my rounds.’ The doctor pulled up a wooden chair beside the bed and sat down. ‘My name is Doctor
Hart.’

‘I’m sorry . . . but I can’t actually tell you my name . . .’

Dr Hart smiled. ‘I know. This is what we ascertained when we spoke. Apparently you have no memory of your name, or where you come from. But by the sound of your accent, I have a suspicion
you might have spent some time in America? Does that sound right to you?’

‘I . . . I really don’t know. I don’t even know where my home is.’

‘Well, we shan’t worry too much about that right now. These things will, I’m sure, come back to you in due course. They often do in these kinds of cases.’ Dr Hart pulled
out a metal cigarette case. ‘Care for a smoke?’

He laughed feebly. ‘I . . . uh . . . I’m not sure if I am a smoker or not.’

‘Well, there’s only one way to find out, isn’t there?’ He passed him a cigarette and then flipped a lighter. They sat in silence for a while, Dr Hart watching his patient
draw on his cigarette.

‘Well? Does that bring to mind any memories?’

He made a face at the taste of tobacco on his tongue. ‘I don’t think I particularly care for it.’

Dr Hart smiled. ‘So there we are. Now we know you
aren’t
a smoker. There’s a little progress for you, eh?’

‘Doctor, could you tell me . . . how did I end up in here?’

Dr Hart shrugged. ‘You were brought in a couple of days ago by the driver of a hansom cab. I believe the gentleman in question found you down some backstreet. You suffered several quite
nasty injuries. Several shallow cuts from a knife around your midriff, but the worst injury was the blow to your skull. The cranium was fractured and there was some haemorrhaging that needed to be
bled off. I fully expected you to die, actually.’ He smiled. ‘But you seem to be made of sturdy stuff. I suspect you were probably robbed. That’s most likely what happened. Robbed
and left for dead by your assailant.’

‘What hospital is this?’ He looked around the quiet ward. ‘I don’t even know what city I’m in.’

Dr Hart studied him silently. ‘Which city do you
think
you are in?’

He closed his eyes and willed his befuddled mind to produce a name. To produce
anything
. ‘England?’

Dr Hart looked concerned. ‘Now, you understand England is a country, not a city?’

Yes . . . goddammit, he knew that. ‘I don’t know why I said . . .’ He shook his head, confused and frustrated with himself.

‘Don’t be so hard on yourself. Right now your mind is damaged and trying to mend itself. Things will be very confusing for a while. To answer my question, you’re in London and
this is Saint Bartholomew’s hospital.’

He settled back against the pillow, feeling dizzy and nauseous from the cigarette smoke he’d just sucked in. ‘Do I . . . did I have any possessions on me? Anything that might help me
remember . . . ?’

‘Nothing but the clothes you were wearing, I’m afraid. Whoever robbed you took everything you must have had on you.’

He felt sick. ‘Do you have any idea how long this will last?’

‘Before your memory returns?’ Dr Hart shrugged. ‘It is not a cut and dried thing. Sometimes it can all come back within hours. Sometimes the memories never fully return. Your
brain has suffered some damage. It is quite a remarkable thing, the brain, you understand? It can heal itself without the clumsy intrusion of someone like me. There is little that we can do for the
moment. You are now in a stable condition, the knife wounds are clean and healing nicely without any internal injury done as far as I can see. As for the fracture to your skull, the bone will knit
together in time. We just need to protect it a little with dressing.’

‘Will I remain here? In this ward?’

‘Until I am happy your injuries are satisfactorily recovered.’

‘And where will I go, then?’

Dr Hart patted his arm gently. ‘Well, there’s the thing, chap. Whilst you’re in here, mending, I’m certain we shall have someone quite beside themselves with worry
calling round various hospitals asking after you. Somebody will turn up for you, I’m sure.’

Someone?

He hadn’t even begun to consider the notion yet that there might just be a wife, a mother, a brother, a father, out there looking for him. For a moment the thought of that lifted his
spirits. That someone might at any moment come into this ward with a face twisted into a teary smile of relief at the sight of him. Someone who’d greet him with a hug, or smother him with wet
and tender kisses. Someone who was going to use his name. He realised how disconcerting it was, how utterly disconnected he felt having no name, being nothing more than a disembodied
‘I’.

Someone who could at least tell him what his name was, someone to answer the million and one questions he had about who the hell he was.

‘You really should rest,’ said Dr Hart. ‘You have been through quite a tangle.’ He got up from his chair and pinched out the stub of his cigarette. ‘And I must say,
you really are jolly lucky to be alive, old chap. Maybe the Almighty isn’t quite ready for you yet,’ he said, patting him gently on the arm once more. ‘I shall see you later at
the end of my shift. Hopefully you’ll remember me and this conversation.’

‘Yes . . . yes, I shall try, doctor. Try very hard.’

‘That’s the spirit.’

‘S
o, who’s the tart, Bill?’

Bill Tolly pulled the lollipop stick out of his mouth. ‘Shush yer questions now. Yer know how it is: less yer know, less yer can squawk ’bout later, right?’

He led the pair of women along the street. Mid-morning, the market was busy, full and bustling with noisy vendors calling out their prices over cart tables laden with soil-clad vegetables and
fish that still flicked and jiggled, calling to workers’ wives carrying wicker baskets and angling to make a shilling stretch as far as it could go.

‘I thought we was doing this
tonight
?’ hissed Annie. ‘Not the middle of the day!’

Bill shook his head. ‘Just don’t bother thinking, love. You’ll do yerself a mischief.’

Annie chuckled at the insult. Nerves. She and her friend Polly were both giddy with nerves.

Bill checked the scrap of paper in his hands. ‘It’s down here, ladies,’ he said impatiently, leading them away from the market, down a less busy street – Cathcart Street
– which was no less quiet. One side was lined with a row of archways beneath a railway bridge, each archway occupied by a variety of different one-man businesses. All of them, it seemed, in
competition with the others to make the most noise: a cabinet-maker breaking down and recycling old furniture, a saddler beating tacks through coarse leather, a butcher sawing through the carcasses
of pigs.

On the other side of the road was a row of tidy-looking terraced houses that each sported a tiny fenced front garden. The two women hesitated a moment, looked at each other anxiously.

‘Bill, this is all posh,’ said Annie. She turned to him accusingly. ‘You said she was just some street girl.’

He looked around at them both standing still, unwilling to proceed another step further. He winced. One of the traders on the other side of the street was looking up casually from his work.

We don’t want to be seen . . . don’t want to be remembered. Not by anyone.

‘I ain’t pissin’ around out here,’ he snarled. ‘Let’s just get the job done.’

He reached for Annie’s arm and dragged her along, making a show of a friendly smile and a mock laugh for the benefit of the mildly curious worker looking across the narrow road at them.
Expecting their momentary sharp exchange to develop into an amusing shouting match, the workman quickly lost interest and returned to his task.

‘She
is
just a street girl,’ hissed Bill into Annie’s ear. ‘And a foreign one at that.’

‘Well ’ow comes she’s livin’ in a bloomin’ nice bloody manor house like one of these?’

Annie’s voice was lost beneath a percussive symphony of hammers, mallets and saws. It didn’t matter anyway; they were here now. Right outside number twenty-six.

He looked at the dark blue painted door, the paint peeling in places. It was one of the grubbier properties down this cul-de-sac. A rented property, neglected by some absentee landlord for some
time by the look of it. But still, compared to the doss houses these two scabrous old tarts were used to, he mused, it probably did look like a proper manor.

He turned to them at the rickety gate, leading on to six feet of weed-strewn garden. ‘Both of you clear on what’s to be done?’

They both nodded sombrely.

‘You can get rid of it proper?’

Annie nodded. ‘Done this before.’

He took a deep breath and realised even he was a-flutter with nerves. Yeah, for sure, ol’ Bill Tolly had killed before in cold blood. Three times before, if truth be told. Although he was
happy for associates to believe it was a great deal more than that, reputation being what it was in this particular line of business. And for sure, there were no doubt others he may have killed or
maimed during his thirty-six years. Bill had been in too many drunken scraps to remember, and he’d be surprised if he wasn’t responsible for one or two more grieving wives or mothers
out there whose stupid sons or husbands had annoyed him over a pint and received the jagged end of his glass in return. But there were only three people he’d ever murdered in cold blood
specifically for a fee.

Three jobs. Three hits. And all three ‘jobs’ had been men.

This time it was a woman and the scrawny little bastard of hers. A woman. Even if she was just some shitty foreign tart, that was still going to be awkward for him. Quite honestly, he
wasn’t sure how he was going to feel until after he’d done the deed.

Annie and Polly both claimed they’d done their part of this job many times before. ‘Just like tapping a rabbit,’ Annie had said last night. ‘Swing it by the legs and
smack its head on a table. All done in two shakes of a lamb’s tail, love.’

Last night, the pair of them had been very matter-of-fact about the whole business. Just a bit
too
casual, a bit too cocky. Perhaps that had been the bottle of malty-flavoured genever
they’d been sharing between them doing the talking. All the same, he knew they’d done the deed for several of the more notorious baby farmers out there.

‘Wouldn’t believe ’ow many
unwanteds
end up being flushed down the sewers, Bill. Me and Poll know what we doin’, love. You can rely on us.’

That was then. Last night, when presumably they’d imagined he’d be taking them to some grimy, stinking, shite-hole lodging house down their neck of the woods. Some cheap little tart,
barely more than a child herself, and her freshly-sprung bastard, still purple-skinned and coated in dried fluids, nestling in a laundry basket full of dirty clothes.

This nice house, with its own front yard, seemed to have thoroughly spooked them.

‘Come on . . . job ain’t gonna do itself,’ he grunted.

He pushed the gate aside, walked up the front garden and pulled the chain on the front door. The noise from across the narrow street was too loud to hear if a bell had actually rung inside and
he was about to try again with a firm knock on the door when it cracked open.

‘Oui?’

He could see a slender face framed by wisps of dark hair that had spilled from a tidy bun. Large, bleary brown eyes blinked sleep away whilst a pair of dark eyebrows arched in a wordless enquiry
about his business. She tucked a tress of hair behind one ear. ‘Yes?’

Bill smiled at her, careful to keep it polite and congenial: the weary but courteous greeting of a tradesman going about his rounds. She looked like she’d just woken up from a snatched
sleep; her cheeks were blotched with fading pink, her eyelids heavy, one dusted with a little dry crust of mucous.