went there isn’t going to do anything except embarrass them and make me a social outcast.”
“That’s the price,” Monk replied. “And is their friendship worth that much to you?”
“Don’t be such a damn fool!” Rupert’s voice was high and angry again, touched with fear. “Everyone will despise me for ratting on friends, not just the men concerned, and their families, and their friends.”
Monk felt the resolve harden in him, like a cold, gray stone in his gut. “Then, tell me about the ‘performances.’ ” He accentuated the word. “Where did you meet? Did you all go to Chiswick separately, or together? Shared a hansom, perhaps? You wouldn’t go in your own carriages-they might be recognized-or want your coachman to know, for that matter.”
“Separately, mostly,” Rupert answered grimly. “What has that to do with Ballinger, or anything else?”
Monk ignored the question. “How do you get from the shore to Parfitt’s boat?”
“Someone rowed us. Either that revolting little man with the walleye-”
“ ’Orrible Jones?”
“If you say so. Or the other. Why?”
Monk ignored that question too. “By agreement? How did you know he wasn’t just a ferryman? How did he know who you were, and that you wanted to go to that boat and not just to the other shore? How did he know you were one of Parfitt’s clients? You could even have been police.”
“It’s not illegal,” Rupert said miserably.
“Just immoral?” Monk asked sarcastically. “That’s why you do it up there in Chiswick, miles from home, and at night on the river?”
Rupert glared at him. “I didn’t say I was proud of it, just that it isn’t anything to do with the police.”
“Actually, torturing and imprisoning children is illegal,” Monk told him.
“We didn’t do … that … to anyone!”
“You just watched other people do it!” Monk’s disgust made his voice shake, his throat straining with the force of his emotions. “And homosexuality is illegal too.”
Rupert’s face was scarlet.
“Apart from the question of legality, Mr. Cardew,” Monk went on ruthlessly, “would you like to be forced to have anal intercourse with another man, for the entertainment of a crowd of drunken lechers? Did that happen to you when you were six or seven years old, and you screamed, and bled, and that’s why-”
“Stop it!” Rupert shouted, his voice cracking. “All right! I understand. It was bestial, and I shall pay for it in shame for the rest of my life!”
“And you will also tell me who else was there,” Monk said. “Every man whose face you recognized. I can’t arrest them for it, but I can question them for information. I’m going to hang the creature behind this, and I’m going to use every perverted bastard I can find to do it.”
“You’re going to talk to them?” Rupert whispered, horrified.
“If I have to. And you are going to tell me step by step what happened, every filthy act, every scream, every injury and humiliation, every terrified and weeping child that was tortured for your amusement. I’ll have nightmares too, maybe for the rest of my life, but I’m going to paint such a picture that your friends will never doubt that I know what happened, as well as if I’d been there too.” He drew in his breath. He was shaking, and his body was covered with sweat.
“And the jury will know exactly what those men were paying to hide. Perhaps they’ll wake up terrified as well, and they’ll be as passionate as I am in helping to get rid of at least some of the obscene trade. You’ll help me willingly or unwillingly, Mr. Cardew. I imagine, for your father’s sake, if nothing else, you would prefer to do it here and now, in private, while it is still a voluntary thing, and perhaps partially redeem yourself. Believe me, if you don’t and I have to force you in front of a jury, it will be a lot worse.”
Rupert stared at him, defeat in his eyes and a depth of misery that for an instant almost weakened Monk’s resolve. Then Monk thought of Scuff, the trust that was just beginning between them, and the moment of indecision vanished.
“Now,” he prompted. “Detail by detail. Make me feel as if I am there.”
Rupert began haltingly, still standing motionless in the quiet morning room with its sun-faded carpet and old books. His voice was low and strained. Frequently he stopped, and Monk had to prompt him to go on. He hated doing it; he felt as if he were beating an animal. And he knew he would feel unclean afterward, tarnished with cruelty. But he did not stop until Rupert had told him every detail of the entire hideous business. His face was mottled and stained with tears. Perhaps he would never forget this either, and not ever be the same as he had been before.
“And the man it broke?” Monk persisted. “The one who took his own life, shot himself alone in the small boat.”
“Tadley …” Rupert whispered. “He couldn’t pay.”
“Did Parfitt drive him that far on purpose? An example to others of what happens if you don’t honor your debts?”
“It wasn’t a debt!” Rupert snapped back at him. “It was extortion. I told you … I didn’t know about it until afterward. Not that I could have paid it for him if I had.”
“So, what was it, a misjudgment of Parfitt’s? Is suicide good for business, or bad?”
Rupert shot him a look of utter loathing. It stung Monk more than he would have expected, perhaps because he knew the loathing was fair.
“It is a salutary reminder to pay on time instead of letting the payments mount up,” Rupert replied coldly. “And it is bad for business. But, then, murder is worse.”
“Tell me about Tadley,” Monk instructed.
“He was a family man, but unhappy, lonely, I think. I don’t know that he particularly cared for boys. I had the feeling he wanted to experience some kind of excitement, some danger, a sense of being completely alive. I know that sounds-”
“No,” Monk cut across him. “It sounds like many people whose lives are suffocated by tedium, duty. Trying so hard to live up to what other people have expected of them that they become imprisoned inside it. Without dreams, you die.”
Rupert stared at him. “I’m sorry,” he said quietly. “I misjudged you. I thought-”
“I know.” Monk smiled bleakly. “You thought I had no devils inside, no idea of what they are even. You’re wrong.”
Rupert nodded, almost close to a smile.
Monk bit his lip. “Now tell me the names of the other men who went to the boat.”
Rupert stared at him, but the anger had gone from his face.
“Please,” Monk added.
Rupert gave him a list, and Monk wrote it in his notebook.
“Thank you,” Monk said when it was finished. “I’ll get him this time.” Perhaps it was a dangerous thing to say, almost a promise, but he risked saying it, and committing himself. It felt good.
Monk decided to retrace Ballinger’s footsteps on the night of Parfitt’s death. He should duplicate all the conditions as closely as possible.
The first part of his journey did not really matter. It was the return that counted. Nevertheless he went to the street outside Ballinger’s house, at the time in the evening when Ballinger said he had left.
Of course one thing he could not duplicate was the daylight. In September it would have been dusk later, and the weather would have been milder. But he did not think that would substantially alter the time. If anything, Ballinger would have found it easier, and therefore faster.
Monk caught a hansom without more than a few minutes’ wait, and settled himself for the long journey to Chiswick. It was tedious, and his mind wandered over all he had learned so far, juggling the pieces to try to make a picture that would hold against the assaults of doubt and reason. It was still all too tenuous, too full of other possible explanations.
He reached Chiswick cold and irritable, his legs cramped from sitting still. He paid the cabby and walked down across the street onto the dockside. It was fully dark now, with a gusty wind blowing off the water. This far upriver it did not smell of salt, but rather of weed and mud.
The clouds raced past, and for a few moments the moon showed, about half full, gleaming briefly on the
