by Paul Finch
“The lantern, I said!”
“Major … it’s the scientific discovery of the age.”
“Give me your bloody lantern, and that’s an order!”
Munro handed the lantern over. “And just how do you propose we find our way out of here without light?”
“There’ll be light enough. Like you said, this whole ship is a tinder-box.”
The major turned and hurled the lantern past as far along the Carpenter’s Walk as he could. On landing, it exploded and spurted its burning payload for yards down the passage. A rush of heat engulfed them.
“Get his feet,” he barked, grabbing Palmer’s tunic and hauling him along.
“I hope you know where you’re going!” Munro retorted.
Craddock thought that he did, but, as they commenced their frantic retreat, he was trusting as much to directional instinct as to his memory of how he’d worked his way down here. At least darkness didn’t pose a problem; no matter how fast they climbed, a searing red glow rose behind them, casting wild and frantic shadows.
At least – they thought they were shadows.
It soon became apparent that this wasn’t entirely the case.
As they wound their way through convoluted passages, clambering one narrow stair after another, things came out of the murk: grizzled faces, worn to the bone and twisted with expressions of bitter accusation; skeletal hands fumbled at them; there were screams of outrage, cries of despair. They blundered through it all, bouncing from bulkhead to bulkhead, refusing to look, closing their ears to the dirge, until an apparition blocked their path that they simply could not ignore. They were at the foot of a central companionway, which would lead up to the quarter-deck. But time was short: the timber panels were drying beneath their feet; on all sides tendrils of smoke spiralled upwards. And now this – a phantom that stood rigid as it barred their way. It leaned slightly to one side, and was blackened all over. The clothes it wore were charred rags. Its hair and side-whiskers had been fried to stubble, but the eyes in its scorched face were alive and livid.
They regarded it with awe, too shaken by the things they had witnessed to make sense of this new nightmare. Only then did Munro sight curved steel – a cavalry sabre – clutched in one of its sooty, muscle-knotted fists.
“Good God,” he breathed, “Kenton.”
The wounded hussar said nothing, but gazed at them with hatred so intense it practically smouldered. Then he struck, sweeping the sword at their heads. Craddock, who was the closest, ducked, and in doing so, stumbled and fell to his knees. The blade knocked a huge chunk out of the woodwork behind him.
The major glared up. “What the devil …”
“He’s with Burnwood!” Munro shouted, releasing Palmer and going for the firearm in his pocket.
Kenton came forwards, intending to cut at Munro. Craddock responded first, throwing himself against the hussar’s legs, trying to pull him down. But even burned and blistered, the burly trooper was solid as a rock. He smashed the pommel of his sabre several times on Craddock’s head and shoulders, dropping him to the floor. Munro had now drawn his revolver, but Kenton slashed at it with the sword, catching it by its barrel and sending it flying. Munro threw a punch, and then attempted to grapple with the hussar, but he was a lightweight in comparison. Kenton head-butted his face, then took him by the throat, swung him around and forced him up against the bulkhead. Munro gasped for breath. He kicked, but it made no impression. He clawed at the hand that held him, to no avail. Kenton responded with a rattling croak of a laugh, then made to thrust with his sabre, a blow that would surely have skewered the officer to the wall.
And then there was a crash, which rang and rang in that broiling, airless passage.
Kenton hurtled sideways, struck a pillar, and slid down it like a pat of half-melted butter, though the slimy trail he left behind was ruby-red instead of golden-yellow.
Palmer lay flat, but though bloody and bleary-eyed, he was now conscious and had the revolver in his hand. Its barrel still smoked.
“Did … did I get the right one?” he mumbled.
Munro hurried to help him. “Can you stand?”
“Du … dunno …”
At first Palmer couldn’t, but when flames burst into life at the far end of the passage, he made a remarkable recovery; in fact he was back on his feet with minimal assistance. Now it was Major Craddock in a semi-helpless state. His white hair was clotted with gore, and he groaned as his underlings hauled him along – but only for a few moments.
“Alright, alright!” he grunted, shaking free. “What are you two idiots playing at? We should’ve been out of here ten minutes ago!”
He led them up two more flights of stairs, before they broke out onto the quarter-deck. By this time smoke was belching past them, and the roar of the blaze rose at their backs. After the heat and fumes below, the night air was ice-cold. For seconds they were zombified in its grip, then Craddock came to himself fully and gestured his men to the gunwales, where the scaling-nets hung overboard.
They glanced around once before descending. The black ship had come to angry life. The inferno inside it drove raging light through every aperture. Flames licked their way up the main mast. When they stood by the breastwork and peered down the netting, fire could be seen flickering out around the edges of the closed-off gun-ports, threatening their escape route.
“Lord help us,” Palmer moaned.
“You first, Palmer,” Craddock said. “Don’t be frightened to drop if you have to. That sand’s softer than it looks.”
The young constable gave the major a dubious glance, then stripped his cape off before going over the side. Craddock made to follow, but Munro stopped him. “What are we going to tell them?” he asked.
Craddock looked bemused. “I don’t understand.”
“With all respect, sir, you do. I mean about Burnwood?”
“There was a gun-battle. He and his confederates died.”
“But what about the things he said? The thing he showed us?”
“Nothing, Munro. I’m going to say nothing about that.”
“We can’t just say nothing.”
Craddock stared at his subordinate. “If you sincerely believe that, then you’re madder even than Burnwood was.”
“But that’s just the point, isn’t it? He was mad. They all were. In fact, they all are. Certainly on the evidence of what we’ve just seen.”
“So?”
“So … we must take action.” An appeal had crept into Munro’s voice. “That’s why he lured you here, sir. Because he felt that you were a man who’d understand.”
“Then he misread me, Munro. Very badly indeed.” And with that, Major Craddock clambered away down the rigging.
In keeping with the courage – or lack of it – that they’d shown earlier, Captain Ryland’s hussars hung well back from the Catherine-Maria now that she was on fire. Even the unexpected silhouettes of Major Craddock and two of his men appearing over the gunwales and swinging ape-like down the netting, while titanic plumes of flame and smoke rose higher and higher behind them, failed to entice the militia forwards.
The three bedraggled figures had reached the ground and hobbled some fifty yards over the fire-lit sand before they met the first bunch of dismounted troops. Captain Ryland was with them. He acknowledged Craddock with a curt nod, but seemed more interested in the conflagration engulfing the ship. A fresh cheroot hung from his mouth.
“Once we heard the shooting, we gave you up,” he said, almost as an aside.
Craddock, sweating and gray-faced, loosened his scarf. “Very rational of you.”
Ryland looked round. The tunic still hung open beneath his cloak; his breath smelled not just of tobacco but of recently-consumed ale. It seemed likely he’d taken another sojourn in the tavern while the policemen had been engaged aboard the hulk.
“We could’ve gone in at that moment, of course, but if you were already dead, what would’ve been the point? There’d have been no-one for u
s to help?”
Craddock mused: “Well, I suppose it’s good to know that the men who might’ve rescued you are being philosophical about why they didn’t.”
Ryland chose to ignore the stinging remark. It made Craddock wonder if stinging remarks were something this particular officer of militia was well used-to.
“I take it Burnwood and the other chap, Nethercot, are dead?” Ryland asked.
The major nodded.
“And Corporal Kenton?”
“He didn’t make it either, I’m afraid.”
Captain Ryland took the tragic news manfully, or unconcernedly depending on one’s view of him. “So, all in all, a remarkable night’s work.” He glanced back at the burning wreck. “No doubt that vessel is still in someone’s ownership. I dare say that, somewhere down the line, there’ll be a bill to pay.”
Craddock followed his gaze. “And I dare say that, for the disposal of George Burnwood, the Home Office will consider it a bill worth paying. Especially when there was no other choice … a position which I’m sure your witness testimony will endorse.” He gazed at the captain. “Put it this way, if it doesn’t, my witness testimony will declare that the fire wouldn’t have started at all without the unashamed cowardice of Her Majesty’s Territorial forces.”
Ryland regarded Craddock with wry amusement. “You needn’t make threats, old man. I’m sure you had your reasons …”
Craddock jabbed a finger into his chest. “Don’t say anything else, Ryland. Just write your affidavit. And be sure to let me check it before you sign and seal it.” And without waiting for an answer, he turned and strode away.
He was headed towards the tavern when Munro caught up with him.
“Sir, I’ve known you deliberately leave antecedents reports out of prosecution-files so that ‘put-upon wretches’ as you called them, wouldn’t get too severe a hammering when sentenced.”
Craddock shrugged. “Exceptional cases, where individuals were the victims of unfortunate circumstance.”
“So you admit it … you can be flexible?”
“Inflexible policing is ineffective policing. I’ve always been a firm advocate of that, as you know. But even I have a limit.”
“Well, if you don’t mind my saying, sir, you’ve chosen a very peculiar place to draw it. I mean, this … this just can’t be right.”
“What can’t exactly?”
“What we’re doing. Or rather, not doing. About Burnwood. About everything that happened back there.”
“You’re an idealist, Inspector Munro. I’ve warned you about that.”
“No. It’s just that I took an oath … ‘to serve and protect’. And so did you, in case you’d forgotten.”
The major strode on. “That’s exactly what we’re doing now.”
“To serve and protect everyone, sir. Everyone.”
“Including the really serious wrongdoers, I imagine you mean?”
“If necessary, yes.”
Craddock pondered this. “And as such, what would you have me do in this case?”
“We must tell someone, take the evidence to the authorities.”
The major stopped and looked back towards the ship. “There is no evidence now. If there ever was.”
“But you saw it.”
Craddock walked on. “I don’t know what I saw.”
“Oh come now …”
The major stopped again, this time angrily. “And you don’t know either! An unidentified sea-animal in a night-black hold? A madman raving with a gun? … what does that leave us with, Jack?”
“With all respect, sir, you know perfectly well.”
“All I know is that granting a wholesale pardon to criminals, and removing them to some kind of hospital environment rather than prison, would be the greatest folly mankind has ever inflicted on himself.”
“Better the greatest folly than the greatest injustice …”
“Who says it’s an injustice? George Burnwood – a demented killer, just to remind you – had a theory. And that’s all it was, a theory. And now consider that theory: that a man’s evil nature is the result of a chemical imbalance inside him? An imbalance we discovered because some disgusting abhorrence that no-one will ever believe existed, found it appetizing?”
“It all added up, major. You know it added up. That’s why you shot him – you were eliminating a witness.”
“For God’s sake man, think what you’re saying! Think what kind of message you’d be sending out! You’d be legitimising criminals. Making it alright that they do the atrocious things they do. Good Lord, you’d be giving them permission to get on with it!”
“But if it isn’t their fault …”
“It doesn’t matter whose fault it is!” Craddock was suddenly wide-eyed. “At the end of the day, it’s never mattered about that! Crime happens. Constantly, everywhere – whatever the reasons for it. And it threatens the common good. And it hurts and damages the innocent. And it costs the tax-payer money. And it causes fear and fury and frustration. And, as such, it must be dealt with!”
He paused, sweat gleaming on his sooty, bloodied face. “And, unpalatable as that may be, Jack, as police officers, that’s all you and I really need concern ourselves with.”
He set off walking again.
Munro followed, doggedly. “So that’s it? We know the truth, but we’re going to bury it, because it isn’t within our remit to ask questions?”
“It’s hardly a matter of the truth. More a matter of opinion.”
“And yours is the correct one? Are you so sure of that?”
The major said nothing else. They’d now reached the tavern. Hussars were clustered outside it, wielding tankards, watching as the distant shape of the Catherine-Maria blazed into the night. Irritably, Craddock thrust his way through them and vanished inside.
It was several minutes before he reappeared, but he only did so then because a wild shouting had arisen on the beach. Cries had gone up that people were still alive on the ship. Craddock hurried down the path, where he rejoined Munro, who, like the rest of them, was dumbfounded by what he was seeing.
Human figures were walking on the burning decks of the Catherine-Maria.
They were stick-like from this distance, but they seemed to be in no distress. Indeed, they didn’t just stroll about the decks, they strolled below as well – in places where the hull had fallen away, revealing white-hot inner chambers that were virtual crematoria. There was horror and disbelief among the watching crowd. Then, slowly, it struck them what they were actually seeing, and the shock subsided to a dull sense of wonderment.
“I won’t be able to forget what I saw and heard here tonight, major,” Munro said.
“You will,” Craddock replied. “In time.”
Munro’s eyes were locked on the spectral forms. “I doubt they will allow me to. That’s the truth of it, isn’t it? They allowed us in, gave us their permission. That’s why our explorations went unhampered, it’s why Burnwood was allowed to make his den there...because the living had to discover what the dead already knew.”
Slowly, section by section, the old hulk began to collapse, its entire structure gradually disintegrating into a heaped mass of blazing, broken timber. As one, the ghostly forms were swallowed.
Craddock’s expression gave nothing away when he eventually he replied: “The dead can please themselves, Munro. They don’t have to live with the consequences.”
THE WEEPING IN THE WITCH HOURS
Kemp made his way down the path, trying his best to stay out of the dead bull-rushes on either side, and the dark, gurgling menace they concealed. Mugden’s burly outline was visible in the fog just ahead. For some reason, he was standing by the water’s edge.
“’Arry!” Kemp shouted. “’Arry, what the bollocks you playing at? You’re needed …”
But it wasn’t Mugden.
Kemp just had time to stop before the bald-headed figure in the gray sackcloth shroud turned and looked at him. That face would remain printed on
Kemp’s psyche for the rest of his life, short though that allotted time-span would actually be. As the thing came towards him, its white, elongated claws extended, he was able to give one hysterical shriek, then he blundered backwards from the path and found himself in the quagmire, where he sank very swiftly. The oozing morass sucked him down with almost human greed. There was nothing to hang onto, and no means by which he could re-surface.
It was over for Kemp.
Yet, even as the black bog closed over his head, his eyes remained fixed on the footpath. And on the indescribable thing that stood there, watching him.
Major Craddock didn’t much like the look of the man sitting opposite. They’d shared the stagecoach all the way from Norwich, and there hadn’t been a single word between them. Craddock wasn’t the most sociable chap, but, even given the foul February weather, his fellow passenger’s aspect was positively icy. He sat ramrod straight in his shabby greatcoat, and stared directly ahead with small green eyes that were more like chips of broken glass. His pallor was ashen, his face broad and heavily boned like an ape’s. An unsightly scar, linked the left corner of his mouth to his left ear. He wore no facial whiskers, but hanks of greasy red hair hung from under his bowler. To Craddock’s practiced police eye, everything about the fellow spoke ‘brute’, ‘villain’, ‘cad’. Of course, looking the part was not in itself a criminal offence, so Craddock had no option but to ignore the chap and concentrate on his own purpose, which was curious to say the least.
He drew the drapes aside and glanced out. Dusk was falling, but the same bleak vista greeted him: the broad, marshy plains of the East Anglian fen-country. Here and there, a reed-fringed river meandered past, or a lake sparkled orange in the setting winter sun. Scenic yes, but, when you’d seen nothing else for several hours, tiresome as well.
Craddock recalled the odd conversation he’d had with Chief Justice Reginald Bowery, at the close of the Lord Lieutenant of Lancashire’s annual Christmas ball:
“You don’t fancy a working holiday, old chap?” the great man asked over brandy and cigars.