“So, what did Mickey Parfitt sell to them?” Monk asked him.
’Orrie looked totally blank, as if he had not understood.
“ ’Orrible, what did Mickey Parfitt sell to these men with money?” Monk repeated carefully. “He made a very good living, or he couldn’t have afforded a boat at all, never mind one with fittings like those in his boat.”
“I dunno,” ’Orrie said helplessly. “Yer suppose ’e told the likes o’ me?”
“No, ’Orrie, I suppose you had enough sense to see for yourself!”
’Orrie shook his head. “Not me. I never bin on the boat. I took folk out an’ I brung ’em back. I dunno wot they done. Gamblin’, mebbe?” He looked hopeful.
Monk stared at him. With his swiveling eye it was impossible to tell if he was frightened, half-witted, or simply physically disadvantaged. Monk considered asking him what the boys were for, but perhaps it would be better to keep that question for later. Let ’Orrie wonder for a while where they had gone to. Or perhaps he really didn’t know. It might have been Crumble, or even Tosh, who’d looked after them.
’Orrie smiled. “Ask Tosh. ’E’ll know,” he offered.
Monk thanked him and went in search of Tosh. It took him nearly an hour, and a great deal of questioning, but at last he found him in a cramped but surprisingly tidy office. There was a woodstove burning in one corner, in spite of the comparative warmth of the day. Instantly Monk knew what had happened, and cursed himself for his stupidity. He should have left someone following Tosh, and probably Crumble as well. Then they would have found the papers in time to save them. Tosh and Crumble might deny it, but Mickey was bound to have had certain things noted down: debts and IOUs, if nothing else.
Tosh looked up at Monk, his face calm, even affecting interest. “Found anything yet as ter ’oo killed poor Mickey?” he inquired politely. Today he had a yellow vest on, and he flicked a piece of ash off it carefully.
Monk stood still in the middle of the floor, three feet from Tosh and the stove, controlling his anger with difficulty. “Business rival or a dissatisfied customer,” he replied. “Or one who couldn’t take being blackmailed anymore. Like the poor sod who shot himself on the river last year.”
Tosh’s face tightened almost imperceptibly. “Dunno why ’e did that,” he said smoothly. “Could a bin anything. Mebbe ’is wife ran orff. It ’appens.”
“Rubbish!” Monk snapped at him. “Upper-class women with rich husbands don’t run off with other men and create a scandal. They stay at home and take lovers on the side. They do it very discreetly, and everybody else pretends not to know. Leaves the husbands the latitude to do the same, should they wish to.”
“Looks like you know ’em better ’n I do,” Tosh replied with a slight sneer. “But, then, I s’pose you would, bein’ police an’ all. So you’d be best placed to guess why ’at poor bastard shot ’isself. Don’t see as ’ow it ’as anything ter do wiv ’oo croaked Mickey. In fact, ’e’s fer sure one ’o them ’oo didn’t, seein’ as e’s dead ’isself.”
Monk ignored the jibe. “Revenge?” he suggested. “One of the dead man’s family coming after Mickey, maybe?”
“Only makes sense if Mickey’d killed ’im.” Tosh was watching him very carefully now. “Which ’e didn’t.”
Monk smiled. “I thought you’d know about it.”
A flicker of anger crossed Tosh’s face. “I dunno nothing about it!”
“What did Mickey sell to his customers, Tosh? And don’t tell me again that you don’t know. You’ve just destroyed all the papers, except those that prove his ownership of the boat, so that you can keep it for yourself.”
There was an ugly stain of color in Tosh’s face now, but he didn’t attempt to deny it. “Jus’ burned a few private things. A man’s a right ter that. In’t you got no respect for the dead? Mickey were the victim of a murder! In’t it your job ter be on ’is side?” He looked up, his eyes gleaming with bright, malicious innocence.
Monk looked back, equally blankly, wondering where the blackmailing photographs were. He glanced around the small room. There were cupboards and drawers on every wall, as if for an office of detailed business dealings. Here there would be just a record of debts and payments, dates, names, amounts. The pictures would have been far more carefully hidden, as Jericho Phillips’s had been. Perhaps even Tosh didn’t know that.
The thought of Phillips’s pictures still made Monk’s stomach lurch with rage and disgust so violent that he was nauseous with it, but he forced a smile. “Looking for the pictures, were you?”
Tosh was staring at him, studying his face. He must have considered lying, and decided against it. “Just wanted to find out ’oo owed ’im still. An’ o’ course ’oo ’e owed. Got ter pay the bills.” He gave a tight, ugly smile.
“Of course,” Monk agreed. “I imagine his partners will be after their share of the takings-present and future. Will you be keeping the business on, Tosh?”
This time Tosh was caught. “ ’Ow do I know?” he answered irritably. “I jus’ worked for ’im. In’t none of it mine.”
“No, of course not,” Monk agreed, and saw the anger harden in Tosh’s face. He would have liked it to have been his. He would be waiting now for the silent partner, whoever it was who had put in the money in the first place, to turn up and take the lion’s share. Someone had backed Mickey Parfitt, just as someone had backed Jericho Phillips.
Sullivan had said that it was Ballinger who’ been behind Phillips. Was that true, or the lie of a desperate man seeking a last revenge? But to what end if Ballinger was not actually involved? Because Ballinger had seen his weakness, and in some way used it?
And could Ballinger be behind both of them? Or was Monk only entertaining the idea because he was so desperate to believe he could end this hideous trade, at least here on the river he had taken for his own? And it was even more urgent to him to give Scuff the illusion of safety that would stop the nightmares and make him believe there really was someone who could protect him from the worst fears and atrocities of life.
And did Monk need, for himself, to be the one who saved Scuff? If so, that was his own weakness, and to pursue Ballinger for it was worse than unjust; it was vicious and irrational, the kind of obsession he most despised in others.
“Tell me about the night Mickey was killed,” he said abruptly.
Tosh was startled, but after the initial surprise, his confidence returned, as if now Monk had moved away from the area of danger.
“I told yer already …” He repeated the detailed account of his movements exactly as he had said before, almost reciting it. Of course Monk would check, but-looking at Tosh’s face-he was certain he would find it all well proved, perhaps as well as if Tosh had known he would need it to withstand investigation. A faint satisfaction gleamed behind his anger now.
“What do you think?” Monk said to Orme as they sat in the hansom on the way back toward Wapping. It was dusk, and they had done all they could for the day. Monk was tired; not his feet-he was used to walking-but in his mind. He felt as if Jericho Phillips were back and he, Monk, were retracing the pain of the old failure.
Did he secretly want Parfitt’s murderer to escape, because he would like to kill all men like that himself? Especially if Parfitt had, like Phillips, been prepared to murder the boys who became troublesome as they grew too mature to satisfy the tastes of their abusers? Could it even be one of them, escaped, returned, and now strong enough, who had killed Parfitt in revenge?
If it was, then Monk had no desire to catch him. Perhaps he would deliberately fail to, even at the cost of his own so fiercely nurtured reputation.
He looked across at Orme beside him, trying to read his face in the flashes of lamplight from passing hansoms going the other way. It told him nothing, except that Orme was troubled also, which Monk already knew.
“Who put up the money for the boat in the first place?” Monk asked.
Orme pursed his lips. “And why’d he kill Parfitt? Getting above himself, d’you suppose? Stealing the profits?”
“Perhaps,” Monk replied. “What did Crumble have to say?”
“Just what you’d expect,” Orme said. “Lots of men coming and going, mostly well-dressed but keeping very quiet. Always after dark, and trying to look like they were just taking a ferry, or something like that.” Orme’s mouth was drawn tight, his lips a thin line in the reflected lamplight. “It’s Phillips all over again. Just this time somebody else got to him before we did.”
“One of his clients? Victims of blackmail? One of his boys?” Monk tried to frame the ugliest thought in his
