Roger Jon Ellory - Candlemoth

An Orion paperback

First published in Great Britain in 2003

by Orion

This paperbackedition published in 2004

by Orion Books Ltd,

Orion House, 5 UpperSt Martin's Lane,

London WC2H 9EA

Copyright Roger Jon Ellory 2003

The right of Roger Jon Ellory to beidentified as the author

of this work has been asserted by him in accordancewith

the Copyright,Designs and Patents Act 1988.

All rights reserved. No part of thispublication may be

reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, ortransmitted,

in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical,

photocopying, recording or otherwise, without theprior

permission of the copyright owner.

All the characters in this book arefictitious,

and any resemblance to real persons, living or dead,

is purelycoincidental.

A CIP catalogue record for this book

is available from the British Library.

ISBN 0 75285 914 5

Typeset by Deltatype Ltd, Birkenhead,Merseyside

Printed and bound in Great Britain by

Clays Ltd, St Ives plc

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

This book is dedicated to many people,all of whom contributed in their own way.

To Lucy, for her perpetual sanityand friendship.

To Whitman, Williams, Woodstein, toKelly Joe Phelps, and all those who accompanied my thoughts.

To my mother and grandmother, bothlong since dead, for their guidance and care.

To a father I never knew, and more thanlikely never will.

To Nick Sayers for his time, hispatience, his encouragement.

To Jenny Parrott and Mark Rusher forbelieving enough to find me a home.

To Jon Wood, my editor at Orion - a manof passion and persistence. Without his direction, his input and his couragethis book would never have been published.

To all those who believed I would neveramount to anything.

Finally to my wife Victoria and myson Ryan for all that's been, and all there is yet to come

Table ofContents

Fourtimes I've been betrayed - twice by women, once by a better friend than any manmight wish for, and lastly by a nation. And perhaps, truth be known, I betrayedmyself. So that makes five.

Butdespite everything, all that happened back then, and all that is happening now,it was still a magic time.

Amagic time.

I canrecall it with a clarity and simplicity that surprises even myself. The names,the faces, the sounds, the smells.

Allof them.

Itseems almost unnatural to recall things with such a sharp level of perception,but then that is perhaps attributable to the present circumstances.

Presenta man with the end of his life, place him somewhere such as Death Row, andperhaps God blesses him with some small mercy.

Themercy of remembrance.

As ifthe Almighty says:

Here,son, you done got yourself in one hell of a mess right now

Youain't stayin' long, an' that'd be the truth

Youtake a good look over all that's been an'gone, and you try an' figure out foryourself how you got yourself arrived where you are now

Youtake that time now, son, you take that time and make some sense of it beforeyou have to answer up to me

Maybe.

Maybenot.

Ihave never believed myself to be anything other than a soul. A man is not ananimal, not a physical thing, and where I go now I don't know.

Perhapsit is the last vestige of mercy afforded me, but I am not afraid.

No, Iam not afraid.

Thepeople here, the people around me, they seem more afraid than I. Almost as ifthey know what they are doing, this lawful and sanctioned killing of men, andknow also that they are doing wrong, and they fear the consequences: not forme, but for themselves.

Ifthey could perhaps convince themselves there is no God, or no hereafter, thenthey would be safe.

Butthey know there is a God.

Theyknow there is something beyond.

Thereis a spirit to this place. The spirit of the dead. Men here will tell you thatonce you've killed a man, once you've seen the light fade from his eyes, hewill always walk with you. Your shadow. Perhaps he will never speak again,never move close to feel the warmth from your skin, but he is there. And thosemen walk the same gantries as us, they eat the same food, they watch the lightsgo down and dream the same fractured dreams.

Andthen there are the sounds. Metal against metal, bolts sliding home, keysturning in locks all reminders of the inevitability of eternity. Once you comedown here you never come out. The corridors are wide enough for three abreast,a man in the middle, a warder on each side. These corridors are painted a vagueshade between gray and green, and names and dates and final words are scratchedthrough to the brickwork beneath. Here we're all innocent. Out of Vietnaminto Hell. TellMI love her. Other such things. Desperatethoughts from desperate men.

Andlastly the smell. Never leaves you, no matter how long you've walked the walkand talked the talk. Assaults your nostrils whenever you wake, as if for thevery first time. There is Lysol and cheap detergent, the smell of rotting food,the odors of sweat and shit and semen and, somewhere beneath all of thesethings, the smell of fear. Of futility. Of men giving up and consigningthemselves to the justice of a nation. Crushed inside the hand of fate.

Themen that watch us are cold and removed and distant. They have to be. Figureonce you attach you can't detach. So they say. Who knows what they see when thelights go down, lying there beside their wives, darkness pressing against theireyes and their children sleeping the sleep of innocents. And then the cool halflight of nascent dawn when they wake and remember who they are, and what theydo, and where they will go once breakfast is done and the kids have gone toschool. They kiss their wives, and their wives look back at them, and in theireyes is that numb and indifferent awareness that the bread and cereal and eggsthey ate were paid for by killing men. Guilty men perhaps, but men all thesame. Justice of a nation. Hope they're right. Lord knows, they hope they'reright.

Iwatch Mr. Timmons. I watch him, and sometimes he sweats. He hides it, but Iknow he sweats. I see him watching me through the grille, his weasel eyes, hisnarrow pinched mouth, and I believe his wife comforts him in his guilt bytelling him that really he is doing the work of the Lord. She feeds him sweetapple fritters and a white sauce she makes with a little honey and lemon, andshe comforts him. He brought the fritters once, brought them right here in abrown paper bag, spots of grease creeping out towards its corners. And he letme see them, even let me smell one, but he couldn't let me taste. Told me if Iwas an honest man then I would find all the sweet apple fritters I could eat inHeaven. I smiled and nodded and said Yessir, Mister Timmons, and I feltbad for him. Here was something else he would feel guilty about come dawn.

ButClarence Timmons is not a bad man, not an evil man. He doesn't carry theblackened heart of Mr. West. Mr. West seems to be an emissary of Lucifer. Mr.West is unmarried, this in itself is no surprise, and the bitterness and hatehe carries inside his skin seem enough to burst a man. And yet everything abouthim is tightened up. Don't know how else to word it. Tightened up likeSunday-best shoelaces. His manner, his words, his dress, everything is preciseand detailed. His pants carry a crease that could cut paper. Look down at hisshoes and you look back at yourself. The whiteness of his collar is unearthly,a heavenly white, as if he walks back through town each night and buys a newshirt and, once home, scrubs it until morning with Lysol and baking soda.Perhaps he believes the whiteness of his collar compensates for the blacknessof his heart.