Execution Dock (14 page)

Hester considered telling him very thoroughly to speak with more respect, and decided against it. This was almost a form of affection, and that was beyond price. She poured the tea carefully, his first. “It will be hard,” she agreed. “But you'll manage it. Now let us get started.”

The choice of whom to see first was not difficult, nor was it hard to find him and know what to say. Hester was happy to do it alone. Squeaky would be more usefully employed in seeking out his dubious friends.

Sutton was a rat catcher by trade, and proud of being called upon for his services by some of the best households in London. He numbered duchesses among his clients. He was also not too proud to attend to the needs of more humble establishments, and had rid the Portpool Lane clinic of rats at one of the most desperate times in Hester's life. They had been friends in terrible adversity, and indeed Sutton and his terrier, Snoot, had almost perished in the sewers with Monk only a matter of months ago.

Hester always dressed very plainly to go to the clinic, so she did not have any difficulty passing almost unnoticed along the narrow streets to Sutton's house, where she learned from his housekeeper the address where he had gone for the day's business. She found him at his frequent lunchtime haunt, a public house by the name of “The Grinning Rat.” It was much like any other, except for the sign that creaked slightly in the wind as it swung outside. The rat in the picture had a look of devilish glee on its painted face. It was dressed in green, and it stood upright on its hind legs, smiling with all its teeth bared.

Hester could not help smiling back before she went inside, trying to look as if she belonged there. She was immediately enveloped in sound. Men were laughing and chattering, there was a clink of glass and pewter, and the scuffle of feet on the sawdust-covered floor, and somewhere in the cellars, barrels being rolled. A dog barked excitedly. There was no point in asking for Sutton; she must simply look.

It took her several minutes to push her way through unyielding bodies of men intent on slaking thirst and enjoying the latest piece of news. She forced her way between two very corpulent bakers, flour still on their sleeves and aprons, and nearly fell into the lap of a neat, slender man sitting by himself eating a cheese and pickle sandwich. There was a tankard of cider in front of him, and a small brown-and-white dog at his feet.

“Mr. Sutton,” she said breathlessly, straightening herself and attempting to look respectable. Her hair had fallen out of its pins, as it frequently did, and she had simply poked it behind her ears. “I'm very relieved to have found you.”

He stood up politely, partly because there was no second chair for her to be seated. She could see immediately from his expression that he knew Phillips had been acquitted. It made it easier that she did not have to tell him, but she would have preferred that the news not be so very widespread. Perhaps everyone in London knew by now.

“Can I get something fer yer, Miss Hester?” he said dubiously.

“No, thank you, I have already eaten,” she answered. It was not strictly true, but she knew he had no time to waste in the middle of his working day. She had enough favors to ask without using them up unnecessarily now.

He remained standing, sandwich in his hand. Snoot stared at it hopefully, but was ignored.

“Please continue,” Hester invited him. “I would be most uncomfortable if I spoiled your lunch. All the same, I need to ask your help… please?”

He nodded grimly, as if a foreseen disaster were about to break over him, and continued standing. “You're goin’ to go after that slimy bastard Phillips again, aren't you.” It was a conclusion, not a question. “Don't, Miss Hester,” he pleaded anxiously. “He's a bad one, an’ he's got friends all over the place, people yer or me wouldn't even think of knowing the likes of ‘im. Wait. ‘E'll make a mistake one day, an’ some-body'll have ‘im. ‘E was born for the gallows, that one.”

“I don't mind if they hang him, or simply lock him up in the Cold bath Fields and throw away the key,” she replied. “What I care about is that they do it soon, in fact, very soon. Before he has the chance to kill any more children, or anyone else, for that matter.”

He looked at her carefully for several moments before speaking. She began to feel uncomfortable. His eyes were blue and very clear, as if nothing whatever could impede his vision. It gave her a peculiarly vulnerable feeling. She had to force herself not to try to explain to him even further.

“You want ter go over all the evidence again?” he asked slowly, his expression tense and troubled. “You're sure o’ that?”

She felt a chill, even in this hot, close room. What was he trying to warn her from?

“Can you think of a better way?” she countered. “We made a mistake, several in fact, but they were errors in connecting people, not in the basic fact that Jericho Phillips is a child pornographer and murderer.”

“You made a mistake in ‘ow long ‘is arm is,” Sutton corrected her, biting into the sandwich at last. “You'll ‘ave to be a lot more careful to catch a canny sod like ‘im. An’ ‘e'll be watching for you this time.” His eyes creased in concern.

She felt a shiver of fear. “You think he'll come after me? Wouldn't that just prove we're right? Wouldn't he be safer to let us wear ourselves out, and prove nothing?”

“Safer, yes,” Sutton agreed. “But he might get annoyed and come after you anyway, if you get close enough to ‘im to scare off some of ‘is custom. And that in't all. There's the other thing to think about, an’ I can't protect you from that, ‘cause no one can.”

“What thing?” she asked immediately. She trusted Sutton; he had proved both his friendship and his courage. If he feared something, then it was dangerous.

“The way I heard it, it wasn't just you and Mr. Monk who proved a bit sloppy,” he said reluctantly. “It was Mr. Durban as well. You trusted in what ‘e'd done, so you didn't take care to prove everything so not even a clever beggar like Mr. Rathbone could undo it. But what about Mr. Durban, eh? Why'd he slip up?”

“Because…” She had been about to say that he could not have realized how clever Rathbone would be, but that wouldn't do. He should have been prepared for anyone. “He was emotional about it too,” she said instead.

Sutton shook his head. “That in't good enough, Miss Hester, an’ you know that. He stopped an’ started all over the place, way I heard it. You sure you want to know why?” His voice was gentle. “What do you know about him, for sure?”

She did not answer. There was no point in being defensive and saying that she knew he was good. She did not know it, she believed it, and she did that only because Monk did.

Sutton sighed. “Sure you want to?” This time he was not arguing, just waiting to allow her space to retreat, if she needed to.

But there was no point; Monk would go ahead regardless of whether she went with him or not. He could not leave it alone now. Something of his belief in himself, in his value as a friend, depended upon Durban being essentially the man he supposed him to be. And if he were to be disillusioned, he would need Hester's strength all the more. Standing apart would leave him bitterly alone.

“Better to know,” she replied.

Sutton sighed and finished the last of his sandwich, still standing, then drained his glass. “Then we'd better go,” he said with resignation. “C'mon, Snoot.”

“What about your rats?” she asked.

“There's rats… an’ rats,” he replied enigmatically. “I'll take you to see Nellie. What she don't know in't worth the bother. Just follow me, and keep your ears open an’ your mouth shut. It in't nice places we're goin’. By rights I'd rather not even take you, but I know you'll insist, and I ‘aven't got time for an argument I in't goin’ to win.”

She smiled bleakly and followed after him along the narrow street, the dog between them. She did not ask what Nellie's occupation might be, and he did not offer any further information.

They took a bus eastwards into Limehouse. After walking with him another further half mile on foot through tangled lanes and cobbles, with awkward roofs almost meeting above them, she had lost her sense of direction entirely. She could not even smell the incoming tide of the river above the other odors of dense, swarming city life: the drains, the stale smoke, the horse manure, the sickly sweetness of a nearby brewery.

They found Nellie in a dim back room behind a public house. She was a small, tidy woman dressed in black that had long ago faded to a variety of grays. She wore a widow's lace cap on hair that sat in absurd little-girl ringlets down the sides of her creased face. Her eyes were small, narrow against the light, and-when Hester met them almost accidentally-as sharp as gimlets. She could probably see a pin on the floor at twenty paces.

Sutton did not introduce them, he merely told Nellie that Hester was all right, that she knew when to speak and when not to.

Nellie grunted. “That's as may be,” she said curtly. “What d'yer want?” The last was addressed to Sutton; Hester was already dismissed.

“Like to know a bit more about some o’ the river police,” Sutton replied.

“Wot for?” Nellie regarded him suspiciously. “They in't never gonna cross your path.”

“For a friend of mine,” Sutton said.

“If your ‘friend’ is in trouble, better ter deal wi’ the reg'lar cops,” she told him unequivocally. “River Police is right bastards. Not many of ‘em, an’ not much way round ‘em.”

“Straight?” He raised his eyebrows.

“Mostly,” she conceded.

“Monk?”

“Used ter be reg'lar p'lice, so I ‘eard. Mean bastard, an’ clever. ‘Ang on ter a case like a bleedin’ bulldog.” She glanced at Snoot sitting at Sutton's feet. “Bulldog,” she repeated.

“But straight?” Sutter insisted.

“Yeah. Leave ‘im alone. Best ‘e never ‘eard of yer.”

“Orme?”

“Straight as a stair rod,” she replied with a sniff.

“ Durban?”

“Don't matter. ‘E's dead. Blew ‘isself up on a ship.”

“But was he straight?”

She tilted her head to one side and twisted her mouth until it looked like she had tasted a bad egg. “If yer after Jericho Phillips again, ye're a fool. ‘E ‘ad summink on Durban, same as Durban ‘ad on ‘im. Dunno wot it were, an’ reckon I'm best ter keep it that way. Although I like ter know things. Never say when it might come in useful. But someone ‘ad the bite on Durban. Dunno if it were Phillips ‘isself or just that ‘e knew about it. But I do know that Mr. Durban weren't nothin’ like wot ‘is precious river police thought ‘e were. Got secrets, that one, an’ I never found out wot they were, so it in't no use askin’ me, Mr. Sutton, no matter wot yer thinks I owe yer.”

Sutton had to be content with that, at least from her.

Even when they were outside again, he said nothing to Hester, except to ask her if she wished to continue.

“Certainly,” she replied, although the misery was knotting up inside her. The word of one woman who might be a fence of stolen goods, a brothel keeper, or worse, should not tarnish the reputation of a good man. It was not Nellie's word that disturbed her, it was her own fear as to why Durban had pursued Phillips so relentlessly, then suddenly stopped. Then why had he taken it up again, when nothing they knew of had changed? Rathbone, with his skill, had revealed weaknesses in her reasoning, questions and doubts that she needed to have answered. She was ashamed of it, but that did not still the voices in her mind.

And she was afraid for Monk, because she knew how much of the peace within him that he had finally gained had come because a man like Durban, honest, wise, and possessed of his own inner strength, had bequeathed him the task he himself could no longer perform. Durban had trusted Monk to lead his men, and leading men was something Monk had never done successfully. He was brave, intelligent, imaginative, sometimes ruthless, but never before likable. He had never before inspired loyalty or the ultimate trust of others.

Over the years since the accident, flashes of memory had lit up individual scenes for him, and deduction had filled in many of the surrounding blanks. The picture that emerged was of a man he did not always like. It was too vividly easy to see why others had not.

He had tried hard to change. Durban was the one man who had seen the best in him and placed his trust in it. Now that Oliver Rathbone had suddenly become a stranger, a man they no longer understood, Durban was even more a key to trust.

Hester was afraid of what Monk was going to learn about him, and how deeply it would hurt. Therefore she needed to be the first to know, so she could protect him-or, if that were not possible, at least walk beside him through whatever lay ahead.

She followed Sutton along the dark alley towards the next person he would question on her behalf.

Monk left home and walked down towards the ferry landing. He was also weighed down with anxiety, and even more with guilt. The view across the river was bright and busy. Heavily laden barges passed in both directions, dark against the sun on the water. All he could think of was that Phillips was free, not only from prison and execution, but from ever being charged again with the murder of Fig. No matter what proof Monk might find now, it could not be used against him. How could failure be more complete?

He crossed Rotherhithe Street and went down the narrow alley to Princes Stairs. The smells of salt and mud were heavy in the air. It was not yet nine in the morning, but at this time of the year the sun had been up for hours, and it was already hot. There was barely any wind to lift the heaviness, and he could hear the shouts of lightermen and stevedores from two hundred yards away. It was high tide; the water was slack and oily-looking. There was not enough current to move the ships at anchor, and the tangles of masts and rigging were motionless against the sky.

He had had the chance to kill Phillips, and it was his own arrogance that had made him so certain he had already won that he had let it go in order to vindicate Durban. And how badly he had wanted to be the one to do this so that all his men would know, and respect him for it. They would see that he had paid his debt to Durban, and earned some kind of right to take his place, instead of merely being given it.

Except, of course, that he had not. Instead he had guaranteed that Phillips was free from paying the price, not just now but forever. Free to go back to his boat with its children, who would be more than ever imprisoned in their wretched lives.

A ferry bumped against the steps and the ferryman called up, breaking Monk's train of thought.

Monk brought himself to attention and went down. He did not need to give directions; he made this journey every day, and most of the men knew him. A nod good morning was all he needed to give. Probably half the river knew the result of the trial. They might pity him for it, but they would despise him too. Phillips had made a fool of him. Or Rathbone had. Or more honestly, he had made a fool of himself. If he had been lucky, he would have gotten away with it, but it would not have altered the fact that he had taken too much on trust, allowed his emotions to cloud his intellect, and as a result made careless mistakes. There was nothing for him to say to the ferryman. There was not really anything to say to anyone, until he could rescue at least something from the ashes.

He paid his fare, got out at the other side at Wapping New Stairs, and climbed up the short way to the top.

There was a boy standing waiting. He was thin and wiry, his face keen. He had a cap jammed on his head, hiding most of his hair. His shirt was ragged and missing several buttons, and his trouser legs were uneven, which complemented his boots, one brown and one black. He appeared to be about ten or eleven. He was the mudlark Scuff, one of the boys who salvaged small items of value from the river to sell. He had helped Monk before, and chose to continue to help him with his knowledge of the dockside and its ways.

“Sorry sight you are,” he said to Monk disparagingly. “Got a face like a burst boot. S'pose you got a right. Made a pig's ear of it, an’ all.” The boy fell into step behind him as Monk turned to walk along the dockside towards the police station. The boy sniffed. “But yer gonna do summink, in't yer?” There was a note of anxiety in his voice that was close to real fear.

Monk stopped. The ferryman was not worth the effort of pretense, but Scuff deserved both honesty and the courage not to disappoint him. He looked at the boy and saw the vulnerability bright in his eyes.

“Yes, of course I'm going to do something,” he said firmly. “I just need to think very hard before I do it, so that I get it right-this time.”

Scuff shook his head, drawing his breath in through his teeth, but some of the fear in him eased. “Yer gotta be careful, Mr. Monk. Yer may ‘ave been the cat's whiskers wi’ villains on shore, but yer in't much use wi’ river folk. Though come ter think on it, that lawyer's sharp, all right. Pretty as new paint, ‘e is, all striped trousers and shiny shoes.” For a moment his face was full of sympathy. “For all that ‘e's bent as a dog's ‘ ind leg.” He kept pace with Monk across the stones.

“He's not bent,” Monk corrected him. “It's his job to get people off a charge, if he can. It's my fault that I made it possible for him.”

Scuff was skeptical. “Someone twistin’ ‘is arm ter do it, then?”

“Possibly. It might just be that he felt that the principle of the law required that even the worst of us deserve a fair hearing.”

Scuff pulled his face into an expression of deep disgust. “The worst of us deserves ter dance on the end of a rope, an’ if yer don't know that, then yer in't fit ter be out o’ the ‘ouse by yerself.”

“It doesn't make any difference, Scuff,” Monk told him miserably. “Phillips is free, and it's up to me to clear up the mess and nail him for something else.”

“I'll ‘elp yer,” Scuff said immediately. “Yer need me.”

“I'd like your help, but I don't need it,” Monk said as gently as he could. “I have no very clear idea yet where to begin, except by going over what I already know and seeing where the holes are, then pursuing it until I can at least nail him on pornography or extortion. It's dangerous, and I don't want to risk you getting hurt.”

Scuff thought about it for a moment or two. He was trying to keep up with Monk, but his legs were not long enough, and every third or fourth stride he had to put in an extra little skip.

“I in't afraid,” he said at length. “Leastways not enough ter stop me.”

Monk halted and Scuff halted half a step later.

“I don't doubt your courage,” Monk said clearly, meeting Scuffs eyes. “In fact, if you had a trifle less you might be safer.”

“Yer want me ter be scaredy-cat?” Scuff asked incredulously.

Monk made a quick decision. “If it will keep you out of the hands of men like Phillips, yes I do.”

Scuff stood still on the spot, the stubbornness in his face slowly revealing the hurt. “Yer think I in't no use, don't yer?” he asked, sniffing very slightly.

Monk was furious with himself for having put them both into such a position. Now he was caught between denying the fact that he cared about the boy, which would be a wounding lie whose damage he might never undo, or admitting that his decision was based on emotion rather than reason. Or the alternative, perhaps crueler still, was to suggest that he really did think Scuff was no use. That one he could not even consider.

He started to walk again.

“I think you're a lot of use,” he said quietly, falling back a bit to keep step with the boy, rather than letting him skip to keep up. “For knowledge and brains, not for fighting, and this could become very unpleasant. If I have to get out very quickly, I don't want to have to stop to make sure you are all right. Have you ever heard the expression, ‘hostage to fortune’?”

“No, I in't,” Scuff said dubiously, but there was a spark of hope in his eyes.

“It means caring enough about something that you can't afford to lose it, so people can make you do what they want,” Monk explained. “Because you think it's worth a lot, or it's bad that it should be destroyed,” he added, in case Scuff should be embarrassed.

Scuff turned the idea over in his mind, examining it. “Oh,” he said at last. “So you wouldn't want Phillips ter drown me, take a fr'instance, or cut me throat, like? So you might leave ‘im alone. But if it don't bother yer, yer'd tell ‘im ter get on with it, an’ yer'd nab ‘im?”

“Something like that,” Monk agreed, thinking that he had made his point rather well.

“I see.” Scuff nodded very slightly. “Well, if we get someone as is daft enough ter get caught, we'll ‘ave ter make sure it's someone we don't care about… not too much. I s'pose Mrs. Monk is one o’ them ‘ostages, in't she? Yer'd let pretty well the devil ‘isself go ter save ‘er, wouldn't yer?”

There was no way out of the conclusion. “Yes,” he admitted. “That's why she's staying away from Phillips, and the bad places on the river. I'm going there, and-before you argue anymore-you aren't.”

“Yer can mebbe tell ‘er wot ter do, ‘cause she's a woman,” Scuff observed, stopping, and standing very stiffly, feet slightly apart. “I in't.” He took a deep breath. “An’ you in't me pa. But I'll look after yer, anyway. Where are yer gonna start? I know-wi’ fishin Fig's body out o’ the river. We better get on wi’ it. Don just stand there like yer grow-in’ out o’ the ground.” And without waiting for a reply, he started to walk nonchalantly towards the edge of the embankment and the nearest steps where they might catch a ferry. He did not look back over his shoulder to see if Monk was following him.

Monk was irritated at being outmaneuvered, and yet underneath the surface, aware that Scuff was also trying to stay with him, without sacrificing his own dignity. He wanted desperately to belong, and he thought his only way was to be of use. What was the risk, really, compared with those he ran every day living on the river edge, cadging his food and shelter by picking up bits of coal or dropped brass screws from the mud when the tide went down?

He caught up with Scuff. “All right,” he said, mock grudgingly. “You might help me find the lighterman. You're right; that's where I was going to start.”

“‘Course,” Scuff said casually, as if he did not really care, but he shrugged his shoulders and then walked a little taller, avoiding Monk's eyes. He did not wish to be read, at this particular moment; he was too vulnerable. “We can get a ferry down a bit,” he added. “Find the lightermen ‘avin’ a cup o’ tea, like as not, at this hour.”

Monk was uncertain whether to thank him. He decided against it; it might sound a little patronizing. “Hope so,” he said instead. “I could do with one too.”

Scuff grimaced. Monk knew he had great hopes of being given one himself, if he were lucky; possibly even a sandwich. It was unlikely that he had eaten today.

They took the ferry downstream, as suggested, and asked specifically after the lighterman they wanted. It took them more than an hour to find him, because he was already at work, first loading and then getting his lighter out into the traffic. They made some of their inquiries of a group of men standing around a brazier with boiling water, and Monk purchased a mug of tea and a thick slice of bread. He offered the same to Scuff, who thought about it as long as he dared, then said with practiced indifference that he didn't mind if he did. All the while he watched Monk out of the corner of his eye to make sure he did not miss his chance.

Monk affected not to notice.

“I already told yer,” the lighterman said wearily. “Yer let the bastard orff! There in't no more I can say!”

They were sitting on the canvas bales as the flat-bottomed craft made its slow, heavy way downstream towards Greenwich.

“I know what you said,” Monk assured him. “And all the evidence bears it out. But we didn't ask you what Mr. Durban said, or if he asked you anything that you didn't mention before.”

The lighterman screwed up his face in thought, moving his eyes as if looking at the hard, glittering reflections off the water. “‘E were upset,” he replied slowly. “All bent over ‘isself like someone'd ‘it ‘im in the belly. Tell yer the truth, I liked ‘im better fer it.”

So did Monk, but it was not the answer he needed. He had already asked Orme these questions, but Orme was so defensive of Durban that his answers were no longer useful; they had become simply a repetition that Durban had done the right thing. Monk was hoping the lighterman would remember some other information that Durban had let slip, some word, or even omission, that might lead in a new direction. He was fumbling, and he knew it. The lighterman's face showed his disappointment. He had expected more, and he had not received it. He had endangered himself to testify, and Monk had let him down.

“Are you afraid of Phillips?” Monk asked suddenly.

The lighterman was caught off guard. “No!” he said indignantly. “Why should I be? I never said he done nothin’. In't got no cause ter come after me.”

“And if he had cause, would he?” Monk asked, trying to keep all expression out of his voice.

The lighterman stared at him. “Wot's the matter with yer? Yer simple, or summink? ‘E'd bloody carve out me guts an’ ‘ang ‘ em on Execution Dock ter dry in the wind!”

Monk continued to look skeptical.

Scuff looked from Monk to the lighterman and back again, waiting, his eyes wide.

“An’ yer won't catch ‘im fer it neither,” the lighterman added. “Not that you bleedin’ lot could catch a cold soppin’ wet in winter. Mr. Durban knew wot ‘e were about. Reckon if ‘e'd ‘a lived, ‘e'd a swung the bastard by ‘is neck, all right.”

Monk felt the words land like a blow, the harder because it was the one case Durban had not solved, and he did not want to admit it. But there was a thread in what the lighterman had said that was worth following. “So he was still working on it?” he asked.

The lighterman looked at him witheringly.

“‘Course ‘e were. I reckon ‘e'd never ‘ave given up.” He squinted a little in the hard light, and leaned very slightly on his long oar to steer a few degrees to port.

“What is there to follow?” Monk found the words hard to say, placing himself so vulnerably, as if he were asking a bargee how to do his own job.

The lighterman shrugged. “
Ow
the ‘ell do I know? ‘E said sum-mink about money, an’ making them fat bastards pay for their pleasures twice over. But I dunno wot ‘e meant.”

“Extortion,” Monk replied.

“Yeah? Well, you in't gonna get any o’ them exactly ter complain, now are yer?” the lighterman sneered.

Monk kept his voice level and his face as expressionless as he could. “Unlikely,” he agreed. “At least not to me.”

The lighterman turned slowly from his position holding the oar. He was a lean, angular man, but the movement was unconsciously graceful. For a moment surprise caught him off guard. “Yer not so daft, are yer! Gawd ‘elp yer if ‘e catches yer is all I can say.”

Monk could wrest no more out of him, and twenty minutes later he and Scuff were back on the dockside.