Acceptable Loss

CHAPTER 2

It was early morning, and Corney Reach was deserted. The heavy mist lent the river an eerie quality, as if the smooth, sullen face of it could have stretched to the horizon. It touched the skin and filled the nose with its clinging odor.

Here on this southern bank, the trees overhung the water, sometimes dipping so low they all but touched its surface. Within fifty yards they were shrouded, indistinct; a hundred yards, and they were no more than vague shapes, suggestions of outlines against the haze. The silence consumed everything except for the occasional whisper of the incoming tide over the stones, or through the tangled weeds close under the bank.

The corpse was motionless, facedown. Its coat and hair floated, wide, making it look bigger than it was. But even partly submerged, the blow to the back of the skull was visible. The current bumped the body gently against Monk’s legs. He moved his weight slightly to avoid sinking in the mud.

“Want me to turn ’im over, sir?” Constable Coburn asked helpfully.

Monk shivered. The cold was inside him, not in the damp early autumn air. He hated looking at dead faces, even though this man might have been the victim of an accident. If it was an accident, he would resent having been called all the way up here, beyond the western outskirts of the city. It would have been a waste of his time, and that of Orme, his sergeant, who was standing five or six yards away, also up to his knees in the river.

“Yes, please,” Monk answered.

“Right, sir.” Constable Coburn obediently leaned forward, ignoring the water soaking his uniform sleeves, and hauled the corpse over until it was floating on its back.

“Thank you,” Monk acknowledged.

Orme moved closer, stirring up mud. He looked at Monk, then down at the body.

Monk studied the dead man’s face. He seemed to be in his early thirties. He could not have been in the river long, because his features were barely distorted. There was just a slight bloating in the softer flesh, no damage from fish or other scavengers. His nose was sharp, a little bony, his mouth thin-lipped and wide, and his eyebrows pale. There seemed little color in his hair, but it would be easier to tell when it was dry.

Monk put out his hand and lifted one eyelid. The iris was blue, and the white was speckled with blood. He let it close again. “Any idea who he is?” he asked.

“Yes, sir.” Coburn’s face was shadowed with distaste. “ ’E’s Mickey Parfitt, sir, small-time piece o’ dirt around ’ere. Inter fencin’, pimpin’, generally makin’ a profit out of other folks’ misery.”

“You’re certain?”

“No mistake, sir. See ’is right arm?”

Monk noticed nothing, but the jacket covered the man’s right arm to the base of his fingers. Then he glanced at the left arm, and realized the right was at least three inches shorter. Monk gripped the arm and felt the wasted muscle. The left one was thin, but hard. In life it would have been strong, perhaps making up for the withered one.

“Who found him?” he asked.

“ ’Orrie Jones, but ’e’s only ’alf there,” Coburn replied, tipping his head. “It were Tosh as called us. ’E worked fer Parfitt ’ere an’ there. As much as ’e worked at all, that is. Nasty piece o’ work, Tosh.”

“Not a tosher?” Monk asked curiously, referring to the men who worked stretches of the sewers, fishing for valuables that had been washed down. They found all sorts of things, jewelry in particular. Given the right area, there were rich pickings to be had.

“Was, once, so ’e says,” Coburn replied. “Got tired of it. Or maybe ’e lost ’is patch.”

“What was ’Orrie Jones doing down by the riverbank so early?”

“That’s a good question.” Coburn pulled his mouth tight in an expression of disgust. “ ’E says as ’e were takin’ a breath of air before startin’ ’is day’s work.”

“Do you think he killed Parfitt?” Monk said doubtfully.

“No. ’E’s daft, but ’e’s ’armless. But I reckon as ’e could a bin lookin’ fer ’im.”

“Any idea why? And why would he expect to find Parfitt down by the riverbank at five or six in the morning?”

Coburn bit his lip. “Good question, sir. ’Orrie did odd jobs fer Mickey, rowed ’im about, like, fetched an’ carried fer ’im, ran errands. ’E must ’ave ’ad a good idea ’e was ’ere.”

“A good idea that he was dead?” Monk suggested.

“Mebbe.”

“And who killed him?”

Coburn shook his head. “Mebbe that too, but ’e wouldn’t tell us.”

“Then, we’d better find Mickey’s friends, and enemies,” Monk responded. “I suppose there’s no hope it could be an accident?”

“ ’Ope all you like, sir, but we don’t often get so lucky that a piece o’ vermin like Mickey ’as accidents.”

Monk glanced up at Orme.

Orme frowned. He was a quiet, solid man, used to the river and to those who preyed on its business and its pleasures. “Wonder if the blow killed him, or if he drowned,” he said thoughtfully. “An’ what was he doing down here anyway? Was he alone? How far upstream did he go into the water?”

Monk was thinking of the blood in the dead man’s eyes. The eyes did not look like those of someone who had drowned. He bent down and lifted one eyelid again, then the other. It was the same-stained with small hemorrhages. Carefully, using both hands, he pulled the jacket open and the collar of the wet shirt, exposing the thin neck.

Orme let out a sigh between his teeth.

“Oh, Gawd!” Coburn said hoarsely.

The throat was horribly swollen, but the thin line of a ligature was still unmistakable, biting deep into the flesh. Irregularly, every few inches, there were spreading bruises, as if whatever it was had knots in it that had further lacerated the flesh.

“There’s no way that happened by accident,” Monk said grimly. “I’m afraid we very definitely have a murder. Let’s get him out of the water and ask the police surgeon to tell us what he can. And we’ll speak to Mr. ’Orrie Jones, who so fortuitously found him. And Tosh. What’s the rest of his name?” He looked at Coburn.

“Never heard it,” Coburn said apologetically.

They waded ashore, Orme and Coburn dragging the body. Then the three of them lifted it awkwardly onto the bank, scrambling to keep a footing as the mud gave way beneath their feet. The last thing Monk wanted was to land spread-eagled in the water, soaked to the skin. It was bad enough that his shoes were sodden and his trouser legs were flapping coldly around his ankles.

They laid the body in the cart that Coburn had sent for, and then followed behind it in a grim troop across the fields to the roadway. Then they climbed up into it for the rest of the journey.

Monk was only slowly getting used to the tidal waters of the Thames, even this far upstream. Initially he had assumed that the body would have been carried down toward the sea, but just in time he prevented himself from saying so.

“How far do you think he was carried?” he asked Coburn. Ignorance of the local tide was acceptable. There were several factors involved: speed, currents, obstacles, as well as time.

“Depends where ’e went in,” Coburn said, chewing his lip. He guided the horse to the right, down toward Chiswick. “Could a bin carried both ways, if nothing on the shore stopped ’im. ’Ard to tell.”

“Many barges this far up?” Monk asked. He had seen only two all the time they had been there, and it was now midmorning.

“Not many,” Coburn replied. “An’ they usually stay as far out as they can. Nobody wants to get caught up on sandbanks, fallen logs, rubbish. Easier to find out what ’e were doin’ in the water at all than try to reckon where ’e went in by where we found ’im.”

The town was barely a mile away, and they arrived in clear sunshine. The streets were full of carts, drays, wagons of one sort or another, and the pavements were crowded with people. Several barges lay moored at the docks, loading and unloading.

The police surgeon had come from the city and took charge of what was left of Mickey Parfitt, promising a report in good time. He seemed to be waiting for a challenge, a demand for haste, but he did not get one. Monk already knew that Parfitt had been strangled and had taken a hard blow to the head first-there was no sense in hitting a man after he was dead. The weapon that had struck him could have been almost anything. What had strangled him was more interesting, but the shape of the bruises told him that. The surgeon would have to cut the ligature off to find out more.

“I want to see this Tosh,” Monk said to Coburn as they left the morgue.

“Yes, sir. Thought yer would. Got ’im at the station. Unusually ’elpful, ’e is.” Again the look of distaste twisted his mouth.

Monk made no reply but followed Coburn across the roadway and into the police station, where Tosh was sitting in the interview room, sipping a mug of tea and eating a large, sugary bun. He looked suitably sober, as befitted a man who had reported finding a corpse. However, Monk detected a certain sheen of satisfaction in his long face as he rose to his feet slowly, careful not to spill his tea.

“Morning, gentlemen,” Tosh said in a remarkably well-modulated voice. He was a tall man, narrow-shouldered, with rather a long nose and decidedly frizzy hair, which stood out all over his head. “Sad business.” He turned to Monk, recognizing authority immediately. “Tosh Wilkin. What can I do to ’elp you?”

Monk introduced himself.

“ ’Ow do yer do, Mr. Monk?” Tosh said soberly. “All the way up from Wapping, eh? You must take it all very serious.”

“Murder is always serious, Mr. Wilkin.”

“Murder, is it?” Tosh affected mild surprise. “ ’Ere was I ’oping ’e were just unfortunate, an’ fell in by ’imself.”

“Really? You didn’t notice the ligature around his neck?”

Tosh affected innocence. “The what?”

“The knotted rope around his neck,” Monk elaborated. He watched Tosh’s eyes, his face, the long, scrupulously clean hands at his sides. Nothing gave him away.

“Can’t say as I did,” Tosh replied. “But, then, I didn’t look more ’n to make sure ’Orrie wasn’t ’avin’ visions, like. Police business, either way. Don’t do for ordinary folk to meddle. ‘Don’t touch’ is my watchword. Just called Constable Coburn ’ere.”

He hesitated, as if undecided about exactly how to go on. He looked only at Monk, avoiding the eyes of the other two. “Actually, Mr. Monk, to tell the truth, ’Orrie came to me early, about ’alf past six in the morning. I could ’ave brained ’im for waking me up. But ’e said ’e took Mickey out to ’is boat, about eleven o’clock or so, last night. Mickey told ’im to go back for ’im in about an hour. Well, when ’Orrie went, there were nobody there. No Mickey, no anyone. ’E said ’e ’ung around for a while, calling out, looking, but then ’e reckoned ’e must ’ave got it wrong, an’ ’e went ’ome. But when Mickey wasn’t there this morning, ’Orrie was scared something ’ad ’appened.”

“At half past six?” Monk said with disbelief.

“That’s it,” Tosh agreed. “You see, I didn’t believe ’im. I told ’im to get out an’ leave me alone. Go back to bed like civilized folk, and don’t be so stupid. An’ off ’e went.”

Monk waited impatiently.

“Then I got to worrying meself,” Tosh continued, looking at Monk gravely. “So instead o’ going back to sleep, I lay there for a while, then I got up and dressed, an’ I was on me way down the path, just to check up, so to speak, when I saw ’Orrie come up at a run, all red-faced an’ out o’ breath.”

Monk looked from Tosh to Constable Coburn, and back again. “Where is this boat that ’Orrie took Mickey to last night?” he asked.

“Moves around,” Coburn answered.

“Moored up between ’ere an’ Barnes,” Tosh said, and gestured upriver. “Which don’t mean to say poor Mickey went into the river there. Tides can play funny games wi’ things-floaters in particular.”

“So ’Orrie took Parfitt to his boat shortly after eleven o’clock last night, and went to collect him an hour or so later, and he wasn’t there?”

Tosh nodded his fuzzy head. “Yer got it. Given, o’ course, that ’Orrie isn’t always that exact with time.”

“Is ’Orrie short for Horace?”

Tosh half hid a smile. “ ’Orrible. When you’ve met ’im, you’ll see why. ’E’s not …” He tapped his forehead, and left the rest to Monk’s imagination.

Monk remembered the corpse’s withered arm. “I assume Mr. Parfitt was not able to row himself? Was this usually Mr. Jones’s job?”

“Yes. ’E obeys well enough, but not much use for anything else.”

“I see. And do you know for yourself that what he says is true, or do you just believe him?”

Tosh’s eyes opened very wide with exaggerated surprise, sending a row of wrinkles up his forehead. “I believe ’im ’cos it makes sense, and ’e ’asn’t the wit to lie. One of the benefits of employing idiots-they’re not imaginative enough to tell a decent lie. And ’aven’t the brains to remember it if they did.”

Monk forbore from responding to that. “So after he had appealed to you, at about six-thirty in the morning,” he continued, “you told him to go back to bed, but in fact ’Orrie actually continued to search for Mr. Parfitt along the riverbank?”

“Yes, that’s right,” Tosh confirmed.

“Remarkable that in so short a time he actually found him, don’t you think?” Monk asked. “It’s a big river, lots of weeds and obstructions, tides in and out, and traffic.”

Tosh blinked. “ ’Adn’t thought of it like that, but o’ course you’re right. Remarkable it is, sir.”

“I think this would be a good time to meet this Mr. ’Orrible Jones,” Monk observed.

“Oh, yes, sir.” Tosh blinked and smiled, showing very white and curiously pointed teeth.

They found ’Orrie Jones sweeping the sawdust on the floor of a pub just off one of the alleys leading down to the riverfront. Coburn pointed him out, although there was no need. He was stout and of less than average height. He was an unusually ugly man. His brown hair grew at all angles from his head, rather like the spines of a hedgehog. His nose was broad, but it was his eyes that were his most unnerving feature.

“Mornin’ ’Orrie,” Coburn said cheerfully, stopping in front of him.

’Orrie grasped the broom handle, his knuckles white. One large, dark eye was fixed balefully on the constable; the other wandered toward the far corner. Monk had no idea whether ’Orrie could see him or not.

“Yer found ’oo done that ter Mickey?” ’Orrie demanded.

“Done what?” Monk inquired, wanting to know if ’Orrie was aware of the strangulation, before Coburn mentioned it.

“Pushed ’im in the water.” ’Orrie shifted his gaze, or at least half of it.

“Could he swim?” Monk asked.

“Not with ’is ’ead stove in,” ’Orrie replied. His face was so vacant, Monk was not sure if he felt anger, pity, or even disinterest. It set Monk at an unexpected disadvantage.

“It doesn’t surprise you that he is dead?” Monk asked.

’Orrie’s gaze wandered round the room. “Don’t surprise me when nobody’s dead,” he replied.

Monk found himself irritated. It was a perfectly reasonable answer, and yet it sidestepped the real question. Was that intentional?

“How long did you look for him last night when you went back to the boat and discovered he had gone?” he persisted.

“Till I couldn’t find ’im,” ’Orrie said patiently. “Dunno ’ow long it were. In’t no use looking after that.”

Monk thought he saw ’Orrie smile, but decided to pretend he hadn’t. “Were you late going back for him?” he said sharply.

This time it was ’Orrie who looked uncomfortable, shifting his weight awkwardly. “Yeah. I got ’eld up. Some fool wouldn’t pay, an’ we ’ad ter ask ’im a bit ’arder. Crumble’ll tell yer.”

Monk looked at Coburn.

“Crumble is one of Parfitt’s pimps,” Coburn replied.

’Orrie looked at him with disapproval. “Yer shouldn’t say things like that, Mr. Coburn. Crumble just looks after things.”

Coburn shrugged.

Monk did not pursue it. ’Orrie was probably telling the truth, and it was quite possible that none of them had a very clear idea of time. Monk would have to look further into the various sources of money to see whether ’Orrible Jones had any apparent motive either to kill Parfitt himself or to shield anyone else who had.

They questioned ’Orrie further, but he had nothing to add to the simple fact that he had rowed Mickey Parfitt out to his boat, which was moored upstream from the local island, Chiswick Eyot, shortly after eleven o’clock. He had waited until midnight to go back for him, and then had been delayed by trouble in one of the taverns, where a customer had refused to pay for several drinks. Monk had no doubt it was actually a brothel, but for the purpose of accounting for ’Orrie’s time, it came to the same thing. When ’Orrie had rowed back just before one, Mickey Parfitt was nowhere to be seen. He said he had looked for him until he believed it was pointless, and then he had gone back home and gone to bed.

In the morning, when ’Orrie had called on Mickey and found he was still not around, he had been sufficiently concerned to go and waken Tosh. Tosh had told him to go back to bed, but instead ’Orrie had begun to search for Mickey. In little more than an hour, he had found the body.

Monk excused ’Orrie, for the time being, and went to find Crumble, who appeared to have no other name. He was in the cellar of the pub, moving kegs around with more ease than Monk would have expected from a man so small. He was less than five feet, with round eyes, and features so indistinct that they seemed about to blur into one another. His eyebrows were ragged, his nose shapeless-perhaps the bone had been broken too many times. He spoke with a soft, curiously high-pitched voice.

“Needed a little ’elp,” he explained when they asked him about ’Orrie’s delay in returning for Parfitt the previous night. “Weren’t thinkin’ o’ the time. Can’t let people get away without payin’, or word’ll get about, an’ everyone’ll be tryin’ it. Mr. Parfitt’s money.”

Monk made a mental note to find out whose money it would be now, and perhaps also roughly how much of it there was. Constable Coburn would be well qualified to do that.

He went through the pattern of the evening once again, then thanked Crumble and left.

It was after six by the time Monk and Orme finally found themselves upstream toward Mortlake. They had borrowed a police boat and now rowed across from the north bank to the south. Finally they were approaching the large vessel moored close to the trees in a quiet, easily overlooked place, sheltered from the wake of passing barges and unseen from the road.

The north bank opposite was marshy and completely deserted-a place no one would be likely to wander. There were no paths in it, no place to tie a boat and no reason to.

They rowed across the bright water. The early evening sun was low on the western horizon, already filling the sky with color. It was not yet a year since Monk had taken this job, but even in that time the strength of his arms and chest had increased enormously. He hardly felt the pull of the oars, and he was so accustomed to working with Orme that they fell into rhythm without a word.

He knew that Parfitt had been murdered, most probably on this boat that lay motionless on the silent river ahead of them. Still, the movement, the creak of the oarlocks, the whisper of water passing, the faint drip from the oars, had a kind of timeless calm that eased the knots inside him. He found he was smiling.

They pulled up alongside the boat and shipped their oars. Orme stood and caught the rope ladder that lay over the surprisingly high side. They tied their own ropes to it, and then climbed up.

The boat was larger than it had looked from the shore. It was a good fifty feet long, and about twenty wide at its broadest point. Given the height of it, there would be two decks above the waterline, and perhaps another below, then the bilges. What did Mickey Parfitt use something this size for, moored away up here beyond the docks? Certainly not cargo. There were no masts for sails, and no towpaths on the shore.

Monk glanced at Orme.

Orme’s face was turned away, but Monk saw the hard lines of his jaw, the muscles knotted, his shoulders tight.

“We’d better go below,” Monk said quietly. They had brought crowbars in case it proved necessary to break open the hatches.

He wondered what had happened on this boat. Had someone crept aboard in the dark, rowing out just as they had, climbing on board silently, creeping soundlessly across the wooden planking and taking Mickey Parfitt by surprise? Or was it someone he had expected, someone he had assumed to be a friend, and then he had suddenly, horribly, found that he was wrong?

Orme was bending over the hatch.

“We’ll have to break it,” he said, frowning. “He must’ve been killed on deck.”

“Or he never got this far,” Monk replied.

Orme looked up at him. “You mean it could have nothing to do with this? Why would ’Orrie tell that story about bringing him here if he didn’t? If he’s got the guts to lie at all, surely he’d say he knew nothing about it?”

Monk took one of the crowbars and levered it into the lock in the hatch. “Maybe other people know he took Parfitt out. He might have been seen on the dockside.”

“At eleven at night?” Orme said skeptically. He slid his own crowbar into place and leaned hard on it, but the heavy metal hasp of the lock did not budge.

Monk put his weight behind his crowbar too, working in unison with Orme.

On the fourth attempt the wood splintered. On the fifth it gave, tearing the other end of the lock off and pulling the screws out.

“What the hell has he got in here that’s so valuable?” Orme said in amazement. “Smuggling? Brandy, tobacco? Must be a hell of a lot of it. Unless whoever killed him took it?”

Monk did not reply. He hoped that was what it was. “I think ’Orrie’s afraid of Tosh, don’t you?”

Orme straightened his back, pulling the hatch open. “You mean Tosh told him what to say? That would mean Tosh has a fair idea of what really happened.”

The sky was darkening around them, the light draining out of the air. There was no sound but the faint ripple of the water.

“Or else he’s protecting someone else,” Monk suggested. He moved closer to the black square of the hatch. Only the new wood where the screws were torn out showed pale. “We’d better get down there while we can still see. We’ll need a lantern below anyway.”

They did not look at each other. They both knew what they were afraid of. The same memories crowded both their minds.

Orme struck a match. In the still air he did not have to shelter it; carrying it carefully, he started down the wooden steps into the bowels of the boat.

Monk followed. It was surprisingly easy, and he knew as he went down and his hand found the rail that this deck was designed for passengers, not cargo. A sense of foreboding closed in on him. Even the smell in the air was disturbingly familiar: the richness of cigar smoke, the overripe sweetness of good alcohol, but stale, mixed with the odor of human bodies.

Orme held the lantern high and shed its light onto the smooth painted walls of a wide cabin. It looked something like a floating withdrawing room. There were cupboards at one end, and a bench with a polished mahogany surface, a gleaming brass rail around the edges.

It brought back a memory of Jericho Phillips’s boat so sharply that for an instant Monk felt his gorge rise and was afraid he was going to be sick. He strode across the carpeted floor to the door into the next cabin and jerked it open so hard it crashed against the wall and swung back on him.

Orme followed him with the light. Monk heard his breath expelled in a sigh. This cabin was similar, only larger, and at the far end there was a makeshift stage.

“Oh, Jesus!” Orme said, then apologized instantly. The horror in his voice made his words scarcely a blasphemy, more a cry for help, as if God could change the truth of what the sergeant knew.

Monk needed no explanation; it was his worst imagining come true again. This was another boat, just like Jericho Phillips’s, where pornographic shows of children entertained those with a perverted addiction to such things, and with an addiction to the danger of watching it live. This was what Phillips would have done with Scuff, and Monk and Hester would never have found him. Even if they had, what of his heart and mind would have remained whole, let alone his body?

Were there boys here now, locked behind other doors, too afraid to make a sound?

Orme moved forward, and Monk put a hand on his arm. “Listen,” he ordered. Orme was breathing hard, shaking a little. For all his years on the river, there were still times when the sight of pain tore through his control.

They both stood motionless, ears straining. The boat was well made. Even the joints in the wood did not creak with the faint movement of the water. The tide had turned and was coming in again.

“They must be here.” Monk dropped his voice to a whisper. “They can’t bring them out here for the show every time. Too many other boats-they’d be seen. And too many chances to escape. They’re here somewhere.” He could not even bring himself to say that they might all be dead.

“A mutiny?” Orme suggested with a lift of hope. “Maybe they killed him? One hit him with something, two others strangled him? That could be why the odd marks. Maybe it isn’t a rope at all? Could be boys’ shirts, all tied together.” He turned to face Monk, his features ghostly in the lantern light. “They’d have gone. We’ll never find them.” All the emotion of his unspoken meaning was in his face.

“No point in even looking,” Monk agreed. “Murder by persons unknown.” He took a deep breath. “But we’d better make certain. There’ll be rooms for them below, and a galley of some sort. They have to feed them.”

Orme said nothing.

They found the ladder down and descended to the deck below. Immediately it was different. The heavier, more fetid air closed over them, and the lantern shone on darker walls only a couple of feet away. Monk felt the sweat break out on his skin, and then chill instantly. His heart was knocking in his chest.

Orme pushed at the first door, but it held fast. He lifted his foot and kicked it with all his weight. It burst in, and there was a cry from behind it. He held the lantern higher and the yellow light showed four small boys, thin, narrow-chested, half-naked, and cowering together in the corner.

Monk wiped his hand over his face, forcing himself to focus.

“It’s all right,” he said quietly. “Nobody’s going to hurt you. Parfitt is dead. We’re going to take you away from here.” He stepped forward.

They all shrank farther back, flinching, though his hand was several feet away from the closest of them.

He stopped. What could he tell them that they could believe? They probably didn’t know anything but this. Where was he going to send them, anyway? Back into the streets? Some orphanage, where they would be looked after? By whom? Perhaps Hester would know.

“I’m not going to hurt you,” he repeated, feeling useless. They wouldn’t believe him; they shouldn’t. Perhaps they shouldn’t believe anyone. “Are there more of you?”

One nodded slowly.

“We’ll get you all, and then take you ashore.” Where to? How many boats would they need? It was night already; what was he going to do with them? A dozen or more small boys: frightened, hungry, possibly ill, certainly hideously abused. Then he thought of Durban, his predecessor, and remembered his work with the Foundling Hospital. “We’ll go where they’ll look after you,” he said more firmly. “Give you warm clothes, food, a clean bed to sleep in.”

They looked at him as if they had no idea what he was saying.

It took Monk and Orme the rest of the night to find all of the fourteen boys and take them ashore, a boatload at a time, persuade them they were safe, and then get them to the nearest hospital that would accept them. Later the hospital would send them on to a proper institution specifically for foundlings. Technically, of course, they were too old for that, but Monk trusted in the charity of the matrons in charge.

Dawn was coming up, pale over the east and lighting the water, clean and chill, soft colors half bleached away, when Monk stood with Orme on the dock outside the Wapping station of the River Police. He was so tired, his bones ached. He realized that in the three weeks since Jericho Phillips’s death he had slowly let go of at least part of the horror of it. Now it was back as though it had been only yesterday. It was the sweat and alcohol in the air, the claustrophobia belowdecks. But sharper and more real than anything else, filling his nose and throat, it was the smell of fear and death.

Mickey Parfitt was another Jericho Phillips, one that catered to an upriver clientele, away from the teeming closeness of the docks. Instead it was the quiet reaches of the river where deserted banks were marshy, mist-laden at morning and evening, and stretches of silver water were tree-lined. But in the night the same twisted brutality was enacted upon children. Probably the same blackmail of men addicted to their appetites, to the danger of illegal indulgence, the adrenaline pumping through their blood at the fear of being caught. It was the same obliviousness to what they were doing to others, perhaps because the others were children of the streets and docksides, already abandoned by circumstance.

Did Monk want to know who had killed Mickey Parfitt? Not really. It was a case in which he would be happier to fail. But could he simply not try? That was a different thing. Then he would be acting as both judge and jury. About Parfitt he was sure, but what about the murderer’s next victim, and the one after that? Could Monk really set himself up to decide whose murder was acceptable and whose deserved trial and probably punishment? He had made too many mistakes in the past for such certainty. Or was that the coward’s fear of responsibility? Leave it to someone else; then it can’t be your fault.

“Where do we begin?” Orme said quietly as the light broadened in the sky.

A string of barges was coming slowly up the river, their wash barely disturbing the surface.

Monk glanced sideways once, seeing the anger and the grief in Orme’s blunt face. They faced a long, slow journey barely begun, and Orme’s trust mattered to Monk intensely.

“Find out more about him,” he replied slowly, searching for the words. “Perhaps his death was justified, perhaps not. It could have been a rival. Who was behind him? Who put in the money-or took it out? Was he blackmailing people too?”

Orme nodded slowly. He looked quickly at Monk, then back again at the river.

“Have some breakfast first, and a little sleep. Get warm,” Monk added with a slight smile.