Monk picked up the paper and saw written in an untidy but obviously educated script:
Excellent new opportunity for business. Meet you on the boat, midnight. Be there, or I’ll give it to Jackie.
And underneath was a further note scrawled in a completely different hand:
Meet me at the dock, 11 o’clock. Don’t be late. Mickey.
Monk looked at the paper a few moments longer, feeling the texture of it between his fingers. It was good paper, pale blue and smooth, torn from a larger sheet.
He turned it over and saw on the other side what had apparently been part of a longer letter, or a list. This one was written in ink, but the words were harder to decipher, as if it were another language, perhaps Latin, although, with only half of some of the words, it was hard to tell. The letters were well formed, the script disciplined. He wondered where it came from.
“Thank you, ’Orrie,” Monk said in a whisper, letting his breath out slowly. “That is just about perfect.”
CHAPTER 8
The charges had been withdrawn against Rupert Cardew, and he was released from custody.
Once again the case was open.
Monk stood in the station at Wapping with the note ’Orrie had given him in his hand. It was strong evidence, but against whom? The pencil had smudged until it was only just legible, and the dirt and finger marks on that paper made it impossible to place. It could have been written by anyone.
Monk was not even certain if it was the man behind the blackmail, except who else would Parfitt have turned out for at that time of night? Anyone else he would simply have told to come at a more convenient hour. Who else but someone he knew, and trusted, would he have met alone, at night on the boat?
“Has to be,” Orme agreed. “But we aren’t going to tie it to anyone, with the note in that state. All it proves is that someone baited him to go there. And we know it was premeditated anyway, and with Cardew’s cravat.” Orme picked up the paper, turning it over in his hands. “Any idea where it came from?” he asked, squinting a little as he tried to read it, then looking up slightly at Monk.
“No,” Monk said honestly.
“Ballinger?” Orme said.
“Could be. Parfitt knew who it was from, or he wouldn’t have gone. Obviously he knew him well enough that no signature was necessary.”
Orme’s face was grim in the yellow glare of the lamplight. Outside, the wind was rising, and it was beginning to rain. It was going to be a choppy crossing on the ferry.
“Has to be the man behind the blackmail,” Orme said quietly. “We have to get it right this time.”
Monk felt a faint heat in his face, a remembrance of shame. Orme had never referred to it, but Monk had let them both down with his carelessness in the Jericho Phillips case. He had underestimated Rathbone’s skill and his dedication to the processes of the law. After all his years dealing with crime, he had still been naive because his emotions had been so intensely involved. He must not ever make that mistake again. Rathbone was his friend, and he would feel a desperate pity for him if Ballinger were guilty, but Monk must not for an instant forget that if that were so, then Rathbone would be the enemy, and would fight with every art and skill he had to defend Arthur. He would for any client-that was his duty. But for Margaret’s father, he would go to the very edge of the abyss. Perhaps even further. Wouldn’t Monk himself, for Hester?
Orme shook his head. “We’ve got nothing except coincidence,” he said warningly. “Lot of possibles that won’t carry any weight with a jury. Maybe wouldn’t even get us to court.”
“I know,” Monk told him.
“Ballinger’s a highly respectable man,” Orme went on. “One of their own, so to speak. A solicitor. His wife and daughters’ll be in the gallery, all looking sweet and supportive, and like they believe every word he says. What we’ve got are out of the gutter, and look like it. ’Orrible Jones, with his eyes all over the place, like a horse that’s been spooked. Crumble, all quiet and sneaky. Tosh Wilkin, who’s a villain if ever I saw one. Hattie Benson, who’s a prostitute, an’ scared stiff. Looks like she’s lying, even when she isn’t.”
“All right!” Monk said sharply. “I know! We haven’t got enough.”
“We’ve got the ferryman, Stanley Willington, but he just bears out what Ballinger says himself. Picked him up at Chiswick, took him over the river, and brought him back again. And of course he has Mr. Harkness swearing to his being in Mortlake all the time between. It’s all very tidy, and hard to shake. He had time to row down as far as the boat, then back again, and catch a hansom to where Willington picked him up. And we know from Harkness that he was a strong rower, but will Harkness say that on the stand, when he understands what that means?”
“Probably not,” Monk conceded. He took the piece of paper from where Orme had left it on the desk. “We need to make enough sense of this, for certain. The man who killed Mickey Parfitt wrote this to lure him to his death. God knows, no man better deserved it.”
“I know.” Orme gave him a tight smile, understanding in his eyes, and a surprising gentleness. “We’ve still got to find him.”
Monk went back to Chiswick to learn more about the boat and its patrons. It was late October, more than a month since Mickey Parfitt’s body had been found floating at Corney Reach. The air was much colder. The last echoes of summer were completely gone, and the leaves were falling. It had stopped raining, but there was a smell of damp in the air, and occasionally a drift of wood smoke from bonfires. The late flowers were richly bronze and purple, heavier, darker than the blue and gold of spring. The few stubble fields he passed were brazen, almost barbaric in their beauty, vividly and unmistakably waning.
It had always been Monk’s favorite season. He had flashes of memory sometimes of the great barren hills of Northumberland, where he knew he’d been born, so different from the lush easiness of the south. The earth there seemed to be all bones, no flesh, the skies unending. He would go back one day soon and see if it was still as beautiful, or if it was only the familiarity then that had made it seem so.
Now he had to follow the dirt and violence of Mickey Parfitt’s life and all the people he had known, used, cheated, and betrayed.
It was time to face the details of what had happened on the boat. Monk had been putting it off, perhaps as much for himself as for them, but he must speak to the boys himself, gently, persistently, ruthlessly. He must have the hospital matron there as a witness, so nothing rested on him alone, but this time he could not allow her to intervene. He realized how deeply he had been dreading it, why he had sent Orme instead of going himself, telling himself that Orme had children and would be better at it.
It took him two days of gentle, endlessly repeated questions, and it hurt more profoundly than he had imagined. The matron looked at him as if he had been a criminal himself, but she did not stop him more than two or three times. His assumption about Crumble had been correct: cook, companion, laundryman, gang master for cleaning chores, and jailer. Sometimes, here and there, abuser as well. The boys’ pale, blurred, and frightened faces reflected more misery than anger. They were too young to understand that it could all have been wildly and beautifully different. They might well have known hunger, cold, and exhaustion, but without the added horror. They could have had safety in sleep, been touched only in tenderness, or in the occasional, well-earned chastening. They could have been spared all their lives from the obscenity of degraded human appetite, from the sight of men who despised others because they despised themselves.
Now, having questioned the boys, it was Monk who had dreams he could not bear. He woke in the night, his body aching and drenched in a sweat, tears on his face. He lay in the dark, staring up at the faint shadow patterns on the ceiling as the wind moved in the trees outside. He wanted to waken Hester, even if he did not tell her why, just so he would not be alone with what was in his mind. Even if he just touched her, felt the warmth of her …
But she would hurt for him. She would need him to explain it, at least a little, and how could he do that? If he gave it words, it would re-create the reality in his mind-the white faces, the frightened eyes, the small bodies shivering with memory, self-loathing, and the terror of new pain.
And she would think of Scuff. She would wonder about all the other children, and that was a burden, selfish of him to share just to lighten it a fraction for himself.
Could he tell her without weeping? Perhaps not. She could not heal his sense of horror for him. He would
