Acceptable Loss: A William Monk Novel Read online

  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 mind, the one he did not want ever to look at. But Orme’s own honesty was too all-inclusive for Monk to say anything less now without it being a deliberate evasion. It cost Monk an effort. He had never worked with others before whom he trusted. He had commanded, but not led. He was only lately beginning to appreciate the difference. “Or his backer needing to silence him?”

  “Could be,” Orme replied quietly. “Don’t know how we’ll find that out, let alone get evidence.”

  “No,” Monk agreed. “Neither do I, yet.”

  ———

  WHEN MONK FINALLY REACHED home, it had long been dark. The glare of the city lights was reflected back from a low overcast sky, making the blackness of the river look like a tunnel through the sparks and gleams and the glittering smear of brightness all around.

  He walked up the hill from the ferry landing at Princes Stairs, turned right on Union Road, then left into Paradise Place. He could hear the wind in the leaves of the trees over on Southwark Park, and somewhere a dog was barking.

  He let himself in with his own key. Too often he was home long after Hester needed to be asleep, although she almost always waited up for him. This time she was sitting in the big chair in the front room, the gas lamp still burning. Her sewing had slipped from her hands and was in a heap on the floor. She was sound asleep.

  He smiled and walked quietly over to her. How could he avoid startling her? He went back and closed the door with a loud snap of the latch.

  She woke sharply, pulling herself upright. Then she saw him and smiled.

  “I’m sorry,” she apologized. “I must have drifted off.” She was still blinking sleepily, but trying through the remnant of dreams to study his face.

  “I’ll get us a cup of tea,” he said gently. This was home: comfortable, familiar, where he had been happier than he had thought possible. Here he was freer than anywhere else in the world, and yet also more bound, because it mattered so much; to lose it would be unbearable. It would have been easier to care less, to believe there was something else that could nourish his heart, if need be. But there wasn’t, and he knew it.

  “How’s Scuff?” he asked over his shoulder.

  “Fine,” Hester answered, bending to pick up the fallen sewing and put it away. “I didn’t tell him you found another boat. If he has to know, I’ll tell him later.” She came up behind him. “Are you hungry?”

  “Yes.” Suddenly he realized that he was. “Bread will do.”

  “Cold game pie?” she offered.

  “Ah! Yes.”

  It was not until he was sitting down with pie and vegetables and a cup of tea that he realized she intended to draw from him all that he had learned so far.

  “Not as much as the pie is worth,” he said.

  “What isn’t?” She tried to look as if she did not know what he meant, but ended with a brief laugh at herself. “Is it another one like Phillips’s?” she said softly.

  “Yes. I’m sorry.”

  Between mouthfuls Monk told her what he knew so far, keeping
his voice so low that he would hear any creak of Scuff’s footsteps on the stairs.

  She was very grave. “Could it be Arthur Ballinger?” she asked when he came to a stop. She knew of Sullivan’s charge.

  “Yes,” he answered. “Not to have killed him, of course, but he could be the one backing the enterprise financially, and taking a share of the profits.”

  “Could you prove it?”

  “Perhaps. I’ll put Orme on to the accounts tomorrow, and see if he can trace the ownership of the boat back to someone. Although I’ll be surprised if it’s that easy.”

  She was sitting upright, her back stiff. The lamplight made her hair look fairer than it was, almost like a halo. “So why would Ballinger kill him, or have him killed? Do you think Phillips’s death scared him and he was afraid you would pursue the issue until you found who was behind it?”

  Monk considered the idea for several moments. Would he have taken Sullivan’s word, unverified as it was, and continued to hunt for whoever had conceived the original idea, found the rich men ripe for the danger and the titillation of child pornography? Perhaps the threat of the double disgrace of child abuse and homosexuality was part of the excitement. These men had not considered the possibility that the very hand that tempted them, and then fed them, would in the end also administer the wounds that would bleed them dry. For that Monk had a shard of pity.

  What he did not forgive was that they had not considered the wretched children who paid for men’s entertainment with humiliation and pain, sometimes with their lives.

  Yes, he knew now, here in the place of his own precious safety, that he did not want to catch whoever had killed Mickey Parfitt. The law would not recognize self-defense, because this murder had obviously not been done in hot blood. The knotted rope embedded in Parfitt’s throat alone proved that. But morally that is what it was: getting rid of a predator who destroyed the young and the weak.

  “William?” Hester prompted.

  He looked up. “Yes, I suppose Ballinger might have been frightened by Phillips’s death. Sooner or later I would have gone after whoever was behind Phillips. But if Parfitt hadn’t been murdered, it might have been later.”

  The shadow of a smile touched her mouth. “How much later? A month? Two?”

  He shrugged slightly.

  She was very serious now. “Do you suppose Parfitt knew that, and got greedy, put on a little pressure, took advantage of what he thought was a vulnerability?”

  It was possible. If Parfitt were the opportunist he seemed, then he might well have seized the chance to try to take over a far larger part of the business. It was something Monk could not evade, wherever it led him.

  As if reading his thoughts, Hester asked the question he did not want to answer. “Could Sullivan have been telling the truth?”

  “I don’t know,” he admitted, looking up and meeting her eyes. “I’d give a lot for it not to be, for Margaret’s sake, and even more for Rathbone’s.”

  “And Scuff?”

  He frowned. “Is it better for him to let it all go, hoping he’ll forget it, or to drag it out into the open and get rid of it, if we can? That means exposing it like a great new wound, for him to see and feel all over again.”

  “And all the other boys?” Her voice was measured.

  “We can’t heal the world,” he replied. “There will always be those we can’t do anything about. What we can touch is so small as to be almost invisible, compared with what we can’t.”

  “It isn’t how much you do; it’s the question of whether doing anything or nothing is better for him.”

  “Is that what matters? What’s right for Scuff?” he asked.

  “Yes!” She breathed in and out, and looked away from his eyes. “No! Of course that’s not all. But it’s where I start. You didn’t answer me. Which is better for Scuff?”

  “I know he still has nightmares. I hear you get up in the night. I know he’s probably about nine or ten, for all that he says he’s eleven, and has been saying for nearly a year. In some ways he’s far older than that. Fairy tales won’t do for him. The only thing he’ll believe is something close to the truth.” He lowered his voice. “He doesn’t have a very high opinion of my knowledge, or my common sense. He takes great pride in looking after me. But at least he thinks I don’t ever lie to him. It’s the only thing he knows for certain. I can’t break that.”

  “I know.” Hester was still chewing her lip. “You’re right; to try to protect him from it is ridiculous. It’s a sort of denial of his experience, as if we didn’t believe him. That’s the last thing he needs. I don’t know how much he’s a child and how much a man.” She smiled, and he saw the hurt behind it. “And I don’t think I really know very much about children anyway. I think he’s afraid of being touched, in case he loses the independence he needs to keep in order to survive. Maybe one day …”

  “You’ll do it right,” Monk said gently. “You’re good with the difficult ones.”

  He looked at her sitting across the table from him in the lamp-lit kitchen, with its gleaming pans and familiar china on the dresser. Her eyelids were heavy, her hair falling out of its pins from her sleep in the chair, her plain blue dress vaguely reminiscent of her nursing days. But she was ready now to fight anyone and everyone to defend Scuff. With a thrill of surprise, Monk suddenly understood what beauty was really about.

  “I’ll find whoever killed Mickey Parfitt and put an end to the pornography boats, whoever is behind them. No matter who gets hurt by it,” he promised.

  “Even if it’s Oliver?” she asked.

  He hesitated only a moment. “Yes.”

  She smiled, and there was an intense gentleness in her eyes. “The man you used to be could do that, but are you sure you can now? Whoever’s behind this won’t go down easily. He’ll take everyone with him that he can. Think of what he’s already done, and you’ll know that. It could be you, me”—her voice dropped—“Scuff, anyone. Are you prepared for that?”

  This time he was silent for several moments before he answered.

  “This first surrender would only be the beginning,” he said. “If I back off now, I may spend the rest of my life giving in every time I could lose anything.”

  She leaned forward a little and put her hand over his. She nodded, but she did not speak.

  THE FOLLOWING DAY MONK and Orme returned to Chiswick to begin following the money invested in Mickey’s business and the financing of his boat. The only part of it that would be clear was the payment to the previous owner, and probably much of the maintenance costs and the occasional repair and improvement. Mickey must have handled a great deal of money at one time or another. At least some of it would have left traces.

  Whoever had repaired the boat would also know where it had been.

  “Think it’ll help?” Orme said bleakly. They were standing on the bank of the river just above the Hammersmith Creek, the next bend eastward toward the city.

  “Got a better idea?” Monk asked. “We know what ’Orrie, Crumble, and Tosh are going to tell us. Asking again won’t make any difference.”

  The breeze was cool on their faces and smelled of mud and weeds. Orme stared across the water. “Tosh is a bad ’un,” he replied. “But I can’t see why he’d kill Mickey. He hasn’t the skill to take his place, and he’s not stupid enough to think he has. Crumble just does as he’s told. Can’t work out whether ’Orrie’s as daft as he looks or not.”

  “Fear or money …,” Monk said thoughtfully. “Probably money, sooner or later. We have to find whatever records remain, and re-create as much as we can from other people. A lot of money passed through Parfitt’s hands. He will have had to account to the man behind it all.”

  Orme winced. “One of his customers?”

  “I hope so.” Monk was surprised how intensely he meant that.

  THEY SPENT THAT DAY and the following two searching for every trace of money or records that Parfitt might have kept, other than those Tosh had burned. They questioned
ferrymen and bargemen, workers in every boatyard on either side of the river from Brentford to Hammersmith, every supplier of rope, paint, canvas, nails, or any other ships’ goods or tools. They followed the course of the boat’s mornings, its few trips up and down the river. The repairs, mooring fees, quantities of food, and alcohol made the nature of the business obvious. The income must have been very large indeed.

  The pattern of it also showed where the boat had been most of the time, including where clients had been picked up, in Chiswick along the mall, and in such places of pleasure as the infamous Cremorne Gardens.

  By daylight, Cremorne Gardens were a magnificent replacement of what Vauxhall Gardens had once been. There were long, smooth lawns shaded by elegant trees. There were flower beds, walks, colored lamps, grottoes, illuminated temples, conservatories, a platform with a thousand mirrors where an orchestra played. There were ballets performed, a marionette theater, even a circus. On the greater open spaces there were fireworks displays, and the place was famous for its balloon ascents.

  By night it was also notorious for its lewd dancing, its drinking and assignations of all kinds, some consummated on the spot, as the bushes, narrower walks, and grottoes allowed. Other assignations, further outside the law, would happen elsewhere, less publicly.

  “Who took ’em all out and back for their evening’s entertainment from up here?” Orme asked, more of himself than of Monk.

  “Probably ’Orrie or Crumble,” Monk replied as they watched the light fade over the stretch of the river, flies dipping lazily on the water, fish making little rings of ripples as they broke the surface. “But if they say it was gambling, it would be difficult to prove otherwise.”

  “What were the children doing?” Orme said sarcastically. “Serving their brandy? D’you suppose they could tell us anything?” His voice cracked a little. “Some of them are only five or six years old. They don’t even know what happened to them. They think they’re being punished for something they did.”