I bent down to take a look at him and, to be honest, I couldn’t see that much was wrong. Or rather I couldn’t see that his head was any more damaged than it had been before. ‘What happened?’ I asked him.

  ‘I don’t rightly know,’ Mr Steadman said. ‘We, Mr Neeson and Mr Harris… Where…’

  ‘Over here, Mr Steadman,’ another voice said from way over the other side of the room, underneath a window. Mr Caldwell went running over to the two men there.

  I sat with Mr Steadman for a while, waiting for him to come back to himself as it were. From what he, Mr Neeson and Mr Harris had to say, it seemed that Mr Rolls and his men had jumped them, even though Mr Steadman had been in possession of the only gun in the place, as far as I knew. But I had my doubts. It had taken me quite a while to get to Mr Steadman and his compatriots after I’d left Milly. If none of them were badly hurt, which they weren’t, why had they lain around for so long? Why had they, as I saw it, waited for me to come and find them?

  ‘Someone should go after Mr Rolls and his men,’ I said after a while.

  Mr Steadman smiled weakly. ‘Yes, but out into the—’ He stopped, his eyes apparently, caught by something out in the triforium. ‘Something moved!’

  I looked over my shoulder but I didn’t see anything. I thought he was making it up for some reason. I was getting the impression that Mr Steadman was not everything he wanted me to think that he was. I was both right and wrong about that, and about what he had just seen as well.

  ‘When I saw the cathedral door open and Mr Rolls go out, I got the impression that the fires outside had died down a bit,’ Mr Caldwell said. ‘We could go out and try to follow them.’

  ‘We could.’

  But no one moved. I looked around the space between the packing crates at the groggy men on the floor and I made up my own mind. I stood up. ‘Well, I’m going to have a butchers outside anyway,’ I said. I then added, forcefully, ‘Rolls shouldn’t get away, Mr Steadman. He killed George and he tried to kill a lot of other people too, including a young girl. It isn’t right that he should be able to walk away from that!’

  Mr Steadman lowered his head. I thought he might try to stop me, but he let me go. I had it in mind that because all of these men were Masons they exercised some sort of protection over each other. Again, I was both right and wrong about this.

  I walked out of the storeroom and made a brief detour back on to the balcony once again. If I were to go gallivanting about looking for Rolls and company I’d have to at the very least tell Milly what I was doing.

  As I walked out on to the balcony I saw a large group of men walk on to the Whispering Gallery. Smoke-smutted and, in some cases, soaked in water, they had to have just come down from the rooftops above. Clearly exhausted, they nevertheless looked cheerful, even from a distance. As they sat down and lit fags for each other, some of them even smiled. I heard the word ‘control’ from someone which I hoped meant that the fires might be being beaten back from the cathedral at long last. But any good humour that I might have been put into was soon to end as I looked into the chamber where I’d been not so many minutes before and found that it was empty. Milly was nowhere to be seen.

  Very few things in this life are clear-cut. I’m a grown man, and I know that there are shades of right and wrong. That said, I like to know who my enemy is. I like to feel some sort of certainty about how many people I might be up against in any situation. In the First Lot it was everyone except my own mates. But here… Here there were killers on all sides, none of whom I came close to even partly understanding.

  ‘Mr Hancock?’ Mr Steadman had come on to the balcony and was standing beside me.

  I turned to him and said, ‘Milly’s gone.’

  ‘Has she?’

  ‘Bloody kid! She must have climbed down all on her own!’

  ‘How enterprising of her!’

  He was so calm and I was so bloody agitated. God knows I’d come to at least respect the girl, but the fact remained that she had killed Mr Webb up on the Golden Gallery. She had done that and I had seen her do it.

  ‘Perhaps it is for the best,’ Mr Steadman said quietly. ‘Maybe the fact that Rolls has gone is for the best too!’

  I looked at him and then down at the body of poor young George the chorister which lay at the far end of the balcony, dripping blood on to the marble floor below.

  ‘For the best?’ I said. ‘How can the fact that someone who’s murdered others being loose on the streets be for the best?’

  Mr Steadman didn’t answer me and for probably the best part of ten minutes, we stood together silently side by side on that balcony. From the Whispering Gallery the sounds of relief and even a little bit of joy, increased as we stood there. I hardly even registered the moment when Mr Steadman finally left.

  ‘The Dean’s just come down,’ I remember him saying later. ‘I’d better go and tell him something.’

  Tell him what? I thought afterwards. Tell him what?

  But he told him something, because when a group of coppers turned up later, Revd Matthews, amongst others, spoke to them. That was quite a bit later, however, and when I finally came down from the roof.

  When I found out that Milly had gone and I’d had that short and to me frightening little conversation with Mr Steadman, I took off. I never thought that I would willingly go up into those high galleries of the cathedral again, but I did. Slowly this time, I climbed the stairs first to the Whispering Gallery and then up the even narrower flight to the Stone Gallery. I could have gone further and perhaps been even more private than I was, but the voices of the blokes from the LFB who were still filming up there were somehow comforting. I didn’t go near them and they didn’t go near me, but together we watched the fires burn and we watched the fires recede. Even before the first pale wash of daylight began to push its way almost painfully through the smoke, it was obvious that the fires were slowly coming under control. We were safe. But at what a cost. I walked around that gallery as many as half a dozen times; I looked and I listened to what people said and I felt nothing but desolation.

  At first sight, what was out there was unrecognisable. Like a bonfire with bits of wood and old crates and half-burnt Guys sticking out of it. But then as dawn crept slowly up, I swear even the light was frightened to move too quickly that morning, for what had happened became horribly revealed. Someone in the film crew gasped. I heard someone else say, ‘Christ, look at St Bride’s!’ He pointed to something still burning with a frightening ferocity. And yet in spite of the fact that the nave was indeed on fire, the spire was still standing. I later learned that St Bride’s spire was the tallest that Wren ever built. That it stands still is testimony to the resilience of this city. Not that I felt that at the time. Up on the Stone Gallery watching dawn break, all I could see or feel were the skeletons that surrounded me. Skeletons of the Guildhall, London Bridge Station, Ludgate Hill, Paternoster Row, Fleet Street. I also felt the press of ghosts upon me, too, even out in the smoke-soaked air as I was then. Mr Andrews, Mr Ronson, young George, Mr Smith – even the horrible Mr Webb. I’d have had every one of them back, however awful. But they were gone and they weren’t coming back, and at the time I didn’t have any sort of idea what justice their families might be able to expect. Mr Steadman was organising some sort of cover up. I knew it. He’d let Rolls and his men go, just like that! Well, he was a Mason, too, even if he did disagree with Mr Rolls and his followers. There was, I was sure, some sort of rule in Masonry that meant you couldn’t tell on another brother Mason. If I spoke, alone, who would listen? And what about Mr Phillips, the real Mr Phillips, what had happened to him?

  I sat down on the stone floor of the gallery and I watched some old office building or such-like on Ludgate Hill burn to the ground. Although the firestorm had been somehow brought under control by the firemen some hours before, this building still burned with a speed and ferocity that was terrifying. The roof had gone long before, but as I sat there I watched its guts disappear into red and yellow and listened as floors and ceilings, furniture and fittings collapsed in on themselves and became charcoal and liquid and dust. Finally the walls buckled and with a horrifying screaming sound, like a woman in pain, the outer walls first cracked and then separated. Then with a sigh, the whole thing crashed to the ground and I cried inside for yet another part of my present that had disappeared for ever. I’d never known that office building, I’d barely known Mr Andrews, Mr Webb, Mr Smith, George and Mr Ronson, but I mourned their passing just as surely as I’d mourned that of my old mates who’d died on the Somme. Directly or indirectly war had killed every one of them.

  Chapter Sixteen

  The crypt had almost emptied of visitors by the time I got there. The first-aid ladies were still making tea, but Mrs Andrews was not with them. She was sitting on her own over by Lord Nelson’s tomb. When she saw me, she smiled. It made me wonder if she knew about her husband or whether in fact all of the past ten or so hours had just been an illusion. If they had, then in so many ways it would have been a relief. Everyone would still be alive, although I would be completely confirmed as a total madman. But I am not and have only ever briefly been a total madman. Mrs Andrews called me over.

  ‘Sit down, Mr Hancock,’ she said as she patted a wooden chair beside her. She smiled.

  ‘Mrs Andrews—’

  ‘It’s all right, Mr Hancock,’ she said. ‘I know.’

  I said nothing.

  ‘My husband is dead,’ she continued. Her eyes didn’t so much as moisten. She changed the subject immediately. ‘I’m sorry that the little girl you were seeking finally eluded you. But she survived and that is the main thing, Mr Hancock. They did not manage to—’

  ‘Why did they think that killing a little girl would save this place?’ I said. ‘It’s bonkers!’

  ‘Human sacrifice is as old as time,’ Mrs Andrews said. She then fixed me with a hard gaze. ‘It is very powerful. Men of the Enlightenment, however, men like Sir Christopher Wren, did not hold with it; they considered it barbarous.’

  ‘It is!’ I looked around now to see who if anyone, was listening to this strange conversation.

  ‘Is it?’ She smiled again. ‘Tell me, Mr Hancock, if you could only save that which you hold dearest by sacrificing the life of an unknown child, would you do it?’

  Of course I went to say ‘no’, but then I stopped.

  ‘Masonic history, like the history of this country, is littered with violent and uncivilised acts,’ Mrs Andrews said. ‘We must oppose them. But we must also understand them too. These are desperate times, Mr Hancock. What the men who killed my husband did they did with the welfare of the greatest symbol this city has firmly in their minds.’

  ‘Mrs Andrews,’ I said, ‘they killed Mr Ronson, too, and George the chorister.’

  She put one of her thin, wrinkled hands up to my cheek. ‘Mr Steadman, it would seem, knows the whole story,’ she said. ‘Go and speak to him.’

  I stood up and, as I did so, I told Mrs Andrews that I was sorry for her loss.

  ‘My husband knew as soon as he went against those people that he would die,’ she said. ‘He also knew that by opposing them he would be putting the cathedral in danger.’

  ‘You mean that he believed that the sacrifice would actually save the cathedral?’

  ‘Oh, yes,’ she said. ‘Yes, he did.’

  I was stunned and she could see it.

  ‘Mr Hancock, there are some things in life that are very wicked that can produce great good.’

  ‘But…’

  She raised a finger up to me and said, ‘Which is precisely why those things must never be done. To give in defiles both oneself and that thing one is seeking to protect. You, Mr Hancock, whatever questions you may now have in your mind, would never kill a child to save even your own family. My husband knew that, he saw that immediately in you.’

  I didn’t say anything about what I knew had been Mr Andrews’s main reason for talking to me about this sacrifice business, that I was a Catholic. And now I came to think about it not only was I a Catholic, but I was a complete outsider too. I couldn’t possibly have been connected to what he suspected was about to happen in the cathedral. According to Mr Andrews, he and Mr Ronson had somehow known what some of their brothers had planned to do to save the cathedral. But how had they known it was going to be this particular night? Had they known that when the night started, or had that only become apparent to Mr Andrews after Mr Ronson’s death?

  I had a lot of questions, far too many for a grieving widow to provide answers for. I went up into the cathedral which was where I saw Mr Steadman, the Dean and a load of other watchmen talking to the coppers.

  I had thought I might just move closer to the group and try to listen in to what they were saying. But Mr Steadman saw me and he came over immediately.

  He smiled. ‘I’ve finished telling the sergeant and his men what happened here,’ he said. ‘Those people sheltering in the crypt aren’t required to talk to them. They, and you, saw nothing and so there’s nothing for you to tell.’

  I went from being half dead with tiredness to being incensed with anger in less than a second. ‘But I was there!’ I said, ‘I—’

  Mr Steadman grabbed my arm in a claw-like grip and began to frog-march me towards the Great West door. ‘Let’s go and have a smoke, shall we?’

  He was covering it all up! I went with him, I didn’t have a great deal of choice, but I was fuming. Crimes had been committed, men had been killed, I had almost met my maker myself! And now, just because they were all Masons together, it was being covered over. Mr Steadman pulled me towards the Great West door, opened it, and then pushed me outside. He followed directly after me, but I didn’t notice that at the time. As soon as I was outside, everything except the scene that I was looking at temporarily disappeared from my mind. It wasn’t dawn any more, it was daylight. With the exception of the smoke that still lay thick across the ground and sometimes in the air, everything could be seen clearly now. I looked down where Ludgate Hill had once been and I didn’t recognise anything. There were shapes, no buildings. Where the sewers had ruptured there was a smell the like of which I knew from down our way, but for which familiarity did not bring any ease. Mixed with it there was also a sweetish odour which could have come from the stocks of incense in all the burnt-out City churches. It could also have been the smell of human bodies singeing and then cooking in the terrible heat. From where I stood it was as if only St Paul’s had survived, only St Paul’s existed.

  ‘We took some casualties last night,’ Mr Steadman said after I’d had a little bit of time to take in the scene around me. ‘But then we were bound to, given the ferocity of last night’s raid.’

  As I looked into the street, small figures, people, scrambled up and down great piles of smoking rubble. They, like the scene in front of me, were uniformly grey in colour.

  ‘Mr Ronson’s accident was unfortunate, Mr Andrews and young George—’

  ‘Were murdered,’ I cut in. ‘As well you know!’

  Mr Steadman offered me a fag, which I refused in favour of one of my own cigarettes. I wanted nothing from him except words.

  ‘Mr Hancock,’ he said slowly, ‘anyone who has been murdered will be avenged. Anyone who has been executed, however—’

  I didn’t know one from the other and I said, ‘You call what happened to Mr Andrews an execution?’

  ‘Mr Andrews unfortunately perished alongside the young chorister and a rather brave local man called Webb,’ Mr Steadman said. ‘They were fighting the fires outside the cathedral. Against the Dean’s advice they went outside, you see.’

  I was struck dumb. Mr Steadman had fought against Rolls and Smith and the others, but now he was protecting them! How powerful those Masonic brotherhoods had to be!

  ‘All but Webb’s body, so far, have been retrieved. Very badly burnt they are of course.’

  ‘What have you… What are you doing?’ I raised my hands to take hold of Mr Steadman by his collar and to shake some sense into him. But he caught my hands mid flight and thrust his face into mine.

  ‘We can’t tell people what happened here last night!’ he hissed. ‘The Dean’s distraught about the casualties as it is! Do you think—’

  ‘The Dean didn’t know?’

  ‘Of course not!’ He pulled me even closer towards him, so close I could smell his rank, exhausted breath. ‘Mr Andrews, Mr Ronson and myself knew. Neeson and Harris I had to draft in last night because if I hadn’t we’d have all had it!’

  ‘But the girl…’

  ‘Rolls began talking about blood sacrifice back in September when all this bloody bombing began,’ Mr Steadman said as he loosened his grasp upon me a little. ‘He’s always been a bit odd, mixed with some unsavoury types. Rolls and Phillips and their little cabal, they talked about protecting all treasured buildings in this way, as if it were a sort of practical method like boarding a structure up. Nobody else listened! Some even laughed! That isn’t, after all Masonry, that is pure, pagan superstition.’

  ‘But—’

  ‘But I attend the same Lodge as Phillips and Rolls and so I kept an eye out. Not that I knew it was going to take place last night. I didn’t even know that a child was going to be involved!’

  ‘But Mr Andrews did,’ I said, ‘or rather I think that he suspected it. At first he thought that Mr Ronson was the sacrifice. I know that. But he mentioned a child, or rather the tradition of using a child. The last thing he said to me was something about finding and taking care of Milly.’

  I was stumbling over my thoughts and rambling. Mr Steadman sighed and then let go of me completely. He pushed his tin hat back slowly from his bruised and battered face which was almost indescribably sad. ‘Gerald Andrews never trusted me,’ he said. ‘It was I who first told him about Rolls and Phillips, but because I was in business partnership with them, Gerald was suspicious of me. Sidney Ronson told him about them independently of myself. I told Gerald more because I felt that what Rolls was going on about was unsavoury. Poor Sidney, of course, understood far better than I the earnestness of his intentions.’