There was no reason to connect this killing with the murder of Thomas Hill six months previously, and in fact it might have been safe to assume that Edward Robinson had been a victim of one of the innumerable and often violent quarrels which break out between those inhabitants of the area known to the police as 'transients'.
Exhaustive questioning, however, had revealed no evidence of a fight or quarrel. The absence of prints or saliva upon the dead man had once more baffled the forensic scientist, and it was he who eventually surmised that there was a 'comparability factor' between the two cases. And then on August 12 of this year the body of a small boy, Dan Dee, was discovered in the ground behind St George's-inthe-East, Wapping. It transpired that the victim had left his house in Old Gravel Lane around six the previous evening in order to join his friends in a game of football beside the Tower Hamlets Estate; when he had not returned by eleven, his anxious parents contacted the police but it was not until the following morning that a constable had found the child's corpse lying beside an abandoned shelter in the grounds of the church. He had been strangled, apparently by manual means, but again no prints were found on the neck or body. House-to-house enquiries, a thorough search of the grounds, and exhaustive forensic tests had revealed nothing: an unhappy fact which Hawksmoor now added to the end of his report.
He could not help smiling as he recounted the details of these murders, and by the time he had finished he felt quite calm. 'So you see, Walter,' he said in a lower tone now, 'We live in the shadow of great events'. And then he added: 'If only we knew what they were.'
'He must be a madman, sir, mustn't he?'
Hawksmoor looked down at his hands, placed flat upon the desk: 'Don't assume that.'
'But I can assume he's dirt!'
'But the dirt needs the cleaner and the cleaner needs the dirt.' He drummed the fingers of his right hand on the desk. 'And tell me, Walter, tell me what else you think.'
'You mean, what do I think is the story?'
'We have to assume there is a story, otherwise we won't find him, will we?' His hand was still once more.
'It's difficult to know where to begin, sir.'
'Yes, the beginning is the tricky part. But perhaps there is no beginning, perhaps we can't look that far back.' He got up from his desk and went over to the window, from where he could see a thin pillar of smoke rising into the clouds. 'I never know where anything comes from, Walter.'
'Comes from, sir?'
'Where you come from, where I come from, where all this comes from.' And he gestured at the offices and homes beneath him. He was about to say something else but he stopped, embarrassed; and in any case he was coming to the limits of his understanding. He was not sure if all the movements and changes in the world were part of some coherent development, like the weaving of a quilt which remains one fabric despite its variegated pattern. Or was it a more delicate operation than this -like the enlarging surface of a balloon in the sense that, although each part increased at the same rate of growth as every other part, the entire object grew more fragile as it expanded? And if one element was suddenly to vanish, would the others disappear also -imploding upon each other helplessly as if time itself were unravelling amid a confusion of sights, calls, shrieks and phrases of music which grew smaller and smaller? He thought of a train disappearing into the distance, until eventually only the smoke and the smell of its engine remained.
He turned from the window, and smiled at Walter: 'I'm sorry, I'm just tired'. There was a noise in the corridor outside, and abruptly he walked back to his desk. 'I want new men brought in,' he said, 'add that to the report. The others are getting nowhere, and I don't like their methods -' he could see once again the chaos in the Incident Room, and the detective with the cigarette hanging from his mouth 'And next time, Walter, next time tell them nothing is to be moved, nothing at all!'
Walter rose to go, but Hawksmoor put up his hand to detain him.
'Murderers don't disappear. Murders aren't unsolveable. Imagine the chaos if that happened. Who would feel the need to restrain himself then?' And for a moment Hawksmoor saw his job as that of rubbing away the grease and detritus which obscured the real picture of the world, in the way that a blackened church must be cleaned before the true texture of its stone can be seen.
Walter was impatient to be gone. 'And so what do we do next?'
'We do nothing. Think of it like a story: even if the beginning has not been understood, we have to go on reading it. Just to see what happens next.'
'So it seems that we've lost him, sir.'
'I don't mind losing him for the moment. He'll do it again. They always do it again. Trust me on that.'
'But we have to stop him before then, don't we?'
'All in good time, Walter, all in good time.' Walter glanced at him curiously, and he hesitated. 'Of course I want to stop him. But I may not have to find him -he may find me.' And then he paused. 'What time is it now?'
WHAT A Clock is it, dear Mr Dyer? I have let my Watch run down.
It is almost six o'clock, I replied as I took off my dark Kersey-coat and placed it upon a Pin by the doorway. Mrs Best gasps at this and, looking down on me from the Stair-head as I entered the street Door, puts a Hand up to her Breast. And this Thought ran around in my Head for a Moment: you damn'd confounded pocky Whore.
The time goes so swiftly, says she, I wish I were able to Recover it a little and that, Mr Dyer, in more ways than One.
Time cannot be restored, Mrs Best, unless it be in the Imagination.
Ah the Poets, the Poets, Mr Dyer. Then she looks on me again and says sighingly: I would have no need for the Memory of Things past if that which were Present were more agreeable. She put her hand upon the Rail as she spoke and then cried out: more Dust, and I cleaned here only yesterday!
It was my Desire to make my self pleasing to her at this Point, for in the wide World who was there to trust besides? Are you Sick, I asked her.
I am I know not how, she replies as she comes down the Stairs to me, but I sicken for want of Company: I must entertain my self with my little Dogge and Catte; I am a poor Widow, as you see, Mr Dyer, and in this antient House there are so many Noises to Disturb me. Then she laugh'd giving me a little Push, and I smelt the Liquor upon her Breath.
Well Mrs Best, they say these old Houses have as many ghostly Tenents as a Mossoleum, so you will not starve from want of chitchat.
It is not Words but Deeds I require, she replied, and you know, Mr Dyer, I do not have a bit of Nun's flesh about me.