Durban was not at the police station. The sergeant informed Monk that he was already out on the water, probably south, but he didn’t know.
Monk thanked him and went out immediately. There was nothing to do but find a boat and go to look for him. He could not afford to wait.
A few minutes later he was down by the water again, scanning the river urgently for a ferry willing to take him on a search. At first he barely noticed the voice calling him, and only when his sleeve was plucked did he turn.
“Y’all right, then?” Scuff said in an elaborately casual manner, but his eyes were screwed up and there was an edge of anxiety to his tone.
Monk forced himself to be gentler than he felt. “Yes. The man with the ivory was very happy.”
“Paid yer?” Scuff asked for the true measure of success.
“Oh, yes.”
“Then why d’yer look like ’e din’t?” Now there was real concern in his face.
“It’s not money. Someone who might be sick. Do you know Mr. Durban of the River Police?” Monk asked.
“ ’im wi’ the gray ’air, walks like a sailor? Course I do. Why?”
“I need to speak to him, urgently.”
“I’ll find ’im for yer.” Scuff put two fingers in his mouth and let out a piercing whistle, then walked over to the edge and repeated it. Within two minutes there was a boat at the steps. After a hurried conversation Scuff scrambled in and beckoned for Monk to follow.
Monk did not want the child with him. What he had to do was going to be awkward and unpleasant, possibly even dangerous. And he certainly could not afford to have Scuff learn the truth.
“C’mon then!” Scuff said sharply, his face wrinkled in puzzlement. “Y’in’t gonner find ’im standin’ there!”
Monk dropped down into the boat. “Thank you,” he said politely, but his voice was rough, as if he were trembling. “I don’t need you to come. Go back to your own work.” He was uncertain whether to offer him money or not; he might see it as an insult to friendship.
Scuff pulled a face. “If yer ’aven’t noticed, the tide’s up. Like I said, yer shouldn’t be out by yerself, yer in’t fit!” He sat down in the stern, a self-appointed guardian for someone he obviously felt to be in need of one.
“Word is ’e’s gorn down Debtford Creek way,” the boatman said pleasantly. “Bin a bit o’ trouble that way yesterday. Yer wanna go or not?”
Monk accepted. If he put Scuff ashore against his will he would lose the boatman’s respect, possibly even his cooperation. “Yes. As quick as you can, please.”
They pulled out onto the main stream of traffic and went south along Limehouse Reach, weaving in and out of strings of barges, moored ships waiting to unload their cargoes, and a few still seeking anchorage.
It took them nearly three quarters of an hour, but finally Monk recognized Durban’s figure on the quayside above a flight of steps near Debtford Creek. Then he saw the police boat on the water just below, with two men at the oars and Orme standing in the stern.
“Over there!” Monk told his own boatman. The raw edge to his voice gave it all the urgency he needed. “How much?”
“A shilling,” the boatman replied instantly.
Monk fished a shilling and threepence out of his pocket, and as soon as they pulled in to the steps he passed it over and stood up. Scuff stood up also. “No!” Monk swung around, all but losing his balance. “I’ll be all right now.”
“Yer might need me!” Scuff argued. “I can do things.”
There was no time to explain, or be gentle. “I know. I’ll find you when I have something for you to do. For now, keep out of the rozzers’ way!”
Scuff sank back reluctantly and Monk leapt for the step and went on up without looking back.
Durban turned around just as Monk reached the top. He was about to speak when he saw Monk’s face. Instead, he looked at the other man, a sullen, weary creature with one shoulder higher than the other. “Do it again an’ I’ll have you. Now get gone.”
The man obeyed with alacrity, leaving Monk and Durban alone at the top of the steps in the wind.
“What is it?” Durban asked. “You look like you’ve seen hell.”
“Not yet, but that could be truer than you think,” Monk said with bitter humor. How could he laugh at anything now? Except, insane as it seemed, perhaps it was the only sanity left. “I need to talk to you alone, and it’s more important than anything else at all.”
Durban drew in his breath, possibly to tell him not to exaggerate, and then let it out again. “What is it? If you’re going to tell me you were lying about the ivory, and that Gould’s innocent of the murder of Hodge, I already know the first, and I might believe the second, with proof. Do you have any?”
Maybe telling the truth was going to be less difficult than Monk had thought, and facing Durban’s contempt was going to be more. Already, guilt was eating him inside. “It might be proof, but that isn’t what matters,” he replied. “It’s not quick, or easy to tell.”
Durban stood motionless, waiting, his hands in his pockets. He did not ask or prompt. Somehow that made it harder. “There were fourteen tusks originally,” Monk began. “I found all of them on Jacob’s Island, and hid one as proof.”
“An’ gave the rest to Louvain, which I presume is what you were hired for.” Durban nodded.
Monk had no time to indulge in excuses. He was conscious of the other police in the boat a few yards away, and that any moment Orme might come up to see what was the matter.
“I saw Hodge’s body when Louvain first told me about the robbery,” Monk answered. “It was my condition for doing the job that I found whoever killed him and handed them to you. I only looked at the back of his head, nothing else.”
Durban’s eyebrows rose, questioning what any of this mattered. There was no open contempt in his face, but it lay only just beneath the surface. “Does this matter, Mr. Monk? His head was beaten in. What did you see that proves Gould’s innocence, or anyone else’s?”
Monk was losing control of the story. Orme was out of the boat and on the steps, and any patience Durban might have had was slipping away. For the first time since he had resigned from the police in fury, he felt grubby for treating crime as a way of earning a living rather than a matter of the law. That was unfair; he solved the crimes other law officers did not, and he wanted to show Durban that, but there was no time, and no reason except pride.
“My wife nursed in the Crimea,” he said roughly. “Now she runs a clinic for sick and injured prostitutes in Portpool Lane.” He saw Durban’s contempt deepening. It was difficult not to reach out a hand and physically hold him from turning away. “A few days ago Clement Louvain brought a woman to her who was very ill. It looked like pneumonia. Yesterday afternoon she died.”
Durban was watching him closely now, but his face was still full of skepticism. He did not interrupt.
“When Hester came to wash her body for the undertaker”-Monk found his breath rasping in his throat; please, God, Orme stay out of earshot-“she found what she had really died of.” He swallowed hard and nearly choked. Would Durban realize the shattering enormity of what he said? Would he understand?
Durban was waiting, his brows puckered. He lifted a hand in a gesture to stop Orme, who was halfway up the steps.
It was senseless to prevaricate. If Monk was not doing this the right way, it was too late to do it better now. “Plague,” he whispered, even though the wind was carrying his words to Durban, not to Orme. “I mean bubonic plague-the Black Death.”
Durban started to speak and then changed his mind. He stood perfectly motionless, even though the wind was now cutting them both like ice on the skin. The air was still bright around them. The gulls circled above, the strings of barges moved slowly past on the tide going up to the Pool.
“Plague?” His voice was hoarse.
Monk nodded. “The rat catcher Sutton told me last night, late. He came to my house, and he’ll tell Margaret Ballinger, who works at the clinic too, but no one else. If he did there’d be panic. People might even try to burn them out.”
Durban ran his hand over his face. Suddenly he was so pale his skin looked almost gray. “We can’t let them
