Execution Dock

chapter Four
Sitting in the courtroom Monk was stunned. Beside him Hester was rigid. He could feel it as if he were touching her, although actually there were several inches between them. Then he heard her move and knew she had turned to look at him. What could he say to her? He had been so certain of the verdict that he had not even suggested that the prosecution charge Phillips with the attempted murder of the ferryman. Now, as if he had dissolved into the air, Phillips had escaped.

They walked out of the courtroom and through the crowds in silence, then instead of looking for a bus, as if by unspoken agreement, they went along Ludgate Hill and left down to Blackfriars Bridge. The river was bright in the low, late-afternoon sun. Pleasure boats had bright flags up and streamers rippling in the wind. The sound of a barrel organ drifted from the bank, somewhere just out of sight.

They were less than a mile upstream from the Southwark Bridge. They walked over slowly, watching the bright wake of boats below them, and caught a bus on the farther bank. They sat still without speaking until they alighted a quarter of a mile from Paradise Place, and walked uphill, a longer way around than they needed, for the pleasure of the air.

The park was quiet, a faint breeze moving the leaves, like someone breathing softly in their sleep.

Half a dozen times, Monk had wanted to speak, but each time the words he had been going to say seemed clumsy, like an attempt at self-justification. What did she think of him? Rathbone had called him as a witness. He must have counted on Monk saying and doing exactly what he had.

"Did he know I was going to do that?" he said at last as they passed under one of the towering trees, the shade deep beneath the boughs. "Am I so predictable, or did he manipulate me into it?"

She thought before she answered. "Both, I think," she said finally. "That's his skill, to ask the question in such a way that you can really give only one answer. He painted a picture of Durban as overemotional, and then asked if you cared just as much. You could hardly say that you didn't." She was frowning. "I understand the principle that the law must be based on evidence, not love or hate. That's hard, but it's true. You can't condemn him because you don't like him. But I don't understand why he chose this case to demonstrate it. I could have sworn that he would find Phillips as repulsive as the rest of us do. It seems..." she searched for the right word. "Perverse."

It solidified Monk's thoughts. "Yes, it does. And that is not the man he used to be... is it?"

They crossed the road and walked side by side up towards Paradise Place.

"No," she said at last as they reached their own door and he took out the key to let them in. It smelled closed up in the warmth of the day, but the faint aroma of lavender and beeswax was pleasing, as was the cleanness of freshly laundered linen hanging on the airing rail in the kitchen. There was a maid who came twice a week for the heavy work, and she had obviously been there today.

"Do you think he's changed as much as it seems?" Hester stopped and turned to face him.

He did not know how to answer. He realized only now how much he had liked Rathbone, in spite of the difference between them. If Rathbone no longer held the beliefs he used to, then Monk had also lost something. "I don't know," he said honestly.

She nodded, lips closed tightly, eyes suddenly sad. She walked through to the kitchen and he followed, sitting on one of the hard-backed chairs as she picked up the kettle and filled it before setting it on the stove. He knew the change in Rathbone would hurt her also, even more than it would him. People did change when they married, sometimes only a little, but it could be a great deal. He was different since marrying Hester, although he believed that was entirely for the good. He did not like to admit it, but looking back, he had formerly been harder to please, quicker to lose his temper and to see the ugly or the weak in anyone. Happiness had made him kinder. That was something to be grateful for, though not proud of; he should have managed it anyway. Pride might have been justified if he had been gentler, without his own inner peace or safety from the wounds of loneliness.

If this change in Rathbone were to do with Margaret then it would be an even deeper loss to Hester, because Margaret had been her friend also. They had worked hard together, shared pain and fear, and more than a little of each other's dreams.

He watched Hester now as she worked quietly at preparing supper. It was simple, but then in the warmth of summer, cold food was not only easier, it was pleasanter. It was supremely comfortable looking at her as she turned from one bench to another, finding what she wanted, chopping, slicing, carrying. Her hands were slender and quick, and she moved with grace. Some men might not have thought her beautiful; in fact, he had not himself when they first knew each other. She was too thin. Far richer curves were fashionable, and a face with less passion or strength and with more demureness and an inclination to obedience.

But he knew her in all her moods, and the play of laughter and sorrow in her features, the flare of anger or the quick pain of contrition, and the stab of pity were all familiar to him. He knew how powerfully they worked in her. Now the shallower emotions of bland, pretty women seemed empty, leaving him starving for reality.

What did Margaret Rathbone offer, compared with Hester? What did she want that had made Rathbone defend Jericho Phillips so brilliantly? And Monk would be dishonest were he to say that it was less than brilliant. Rathbone had turned an untenable situation into one of dignity, even some kind of honor, at least on the surface.

But what about afterwards? What was underneath the momentary victory in the courtroom, the amazement of the crowd, the admiration for his skills? What about the question why? Who had paid him to do this? If it were a favor, then to whom? Who could ask something, or offer something, that could be wanted by a man such as Rathbone used to be? In the past, Hester, Monk, and he had fought great battles that had taxed every ounce of their courage, imagination, and intelligence, because they believed in the causes.

If Rathbone were honest, what did he believe of this? Phillips was an evil man. Even Rathbone had not said that he was innocent, only that they had failed to prove him guilty beyond a reasonable doubt. The defense was based on a legality, not a weighing of the facts, and certainly not a moral judgment. If Rathbone really loved the law above all else, then Monk had misjudged him the entire time they had known each other, and that was not only an ugly thought, but a sad one.

Surely Rathbone's motivation had to be something better than money. Monk refused to believe it was as simple and as grubby as that.

The food was ready and they sat down to eat it in silence. It was not uncompanionable; they were each lost in their own thoughts, but they concerned the same subject. He looked at her eyes momentarily, and knew that, as she knew it of him. Neither of them was ready yet to find the words.

They had not obtained justice. No matter what Rathbone had claimed, the use of the law had enabled a deeply guilty man to go free, and to repeat his offenses as often as he chose. The message to the people was that skill wins, not honor. And Monk himself was as much to blame as Rathbone for that. If he had done his job more completely, if he had been as clever as Rathbone, then Phillips would be on his way to the gallows. In taking it for granted that because he was right he had some kind of invulnerability against defeat, he had been careless, and he had let down Orme, who had worked so hard, and who had trusted him. And he had let down Durban as well. This was to have been an act of gratitude, the one thing he could give him, even beyond the grave-to do his job honorably.

And by bringing Phillips to face trial, and then be acquitted, he had freed him from ever being charged with that crime again, which was worse than not having caught him. All the River Police were betrayed in that.

The confidence, the inner peace that he had won so hard and treasured so dearly, was slipping out of his grasp like water through his fingers. One day it was there, and then he looked, and it was draining away while he was helpless to stop it. It was the cold truth; he was not the man he had begun to hope and believe he was. He had failed. Jericho Phillips was guilty at the very least of child abuse and pornography, and-Monk had no doubt-also of murder. It was Monk's carelessness, his incompetence to make sure of every single detail, to check and check again, to prove everything, that had allowed Rathbone to paint him as driven more by emotion than reason, so Phillips slipped through the blurring of doubts, and escaped.

He looked up at Hester. "I can't leave it like this," he said aloud. "I can't for myself, I can't for the River Police."

She put her spoon down and looked at him steadily, almost unblinking. "What can you do? You can't try him again."

He drew his breath in sharply to respond, then saw the honesty and gentleness in her eyes. "I know that. And we were so certain of convicting him for Figgis's murder we didn't even charge him with assaulting the ferryman. If we try that now it'll look as if we're only doing it because we failed. He'll say he slipped, it was an accident, he was fighting for his life. It'll make us look even more... incompetent."

She bit her lip. "Then this time we need to know what it is we are trying to do-exactly. Seeing the truth is not enough-is it?" That was a challenge, an invitation to face something far beyond the bitterness of the day. How practical she was. But then to nurse she had to be. The treatment of the illnesses of the body was, above all, practical. There was no time, no room for mistakes or excuses. It demanded a very immediate kind of courage, a faith in the value of trying no matter what the result. Fail this time, you must still give everything you have next time, and the time after, and after that.

She had stopped eating her plum pie, waiting for an answer.

"If I learn enough about him I shall prove him guilty of something," he replied. "Even if it doesn't hang him, a good stretch in the Coldbath Fields would save a score of boys from abuse, maybe a hundred. By the time he gets out a lot of things could be different. Maybe he would even die in there. People do."

She smiled. "Then we'll start again, from the beginning." She ate her last mouthful and rose to her feet. "But a cup of tea first. If we're going to sit up all night, we'll need it."

He felt a sudden wave of gratitude choke him too much to answer her. He bent and concentrated on finishing his own pie.

Afterwards he fetched Durban 's notes again, and side by side they spread them all over the table, the seats, and the floor of the parlor, and read every one of them again. For the first time Monk realized just how patchy they were. Some were full of description, seemingly no detail omitted. Others were so brief as to be little more than words jotted down as reminders of whole trains of thought never completed. In some the writing was done in such haste that it was barely legible, and from the jagged forms of the letters and the heaviness of the strokes, it had been in the heat of great emotion.

"Do you know what this means?" Hester asked him, holding up a torn piece of paper with the words Was it money? What else? written across it with a different pen.

"I don't know," he admitted. He had found other notes, scribbled sentences, unanswered questions that he had assumed referred to Phillips, but perhaps did not. He had reread the notes on all other cases at the time, both of Durban 's and those kept in the station by anyone else. He had checked all the prosecutions recorded in the station archives too.

Hester was still watching him. He thought he knew what she was going to say, if not with this piece of paper then with the next, or the one after.

"It could be something to do with his own life," he said to her at last. "Personal. I hadn't realized how little I really know about him." He remembered back to those few, hectic days together searching for the crew of the Maude Idris, believing they were ashore somewhere in the teeming docks, and knowing they were infected and dying. He and Durban had worked until they were so exhausted they slept where they collapsed. They woke again after an hour or two, and staggered on. He had never had a more desperate or terrible case, and yet there had been a feeling of companionship whose memory still made him smile. Durban had liked him, and he did not know anyone else who had done so with instant and unquestioning honesty.

If he had had any other friend like that, it had been in that huge part of the past he could no longer remember. He had sudden moments of light on the shadow, so brief as to give him only an image, never a story Judging from what he had heard and deduced of who he was, the intelligence and the ruthlessness, the relentless energy that drove him, even Durban would not have liked him then. Certainly Runcorn had not, and neither Hester nor Oliver Rathbone had known him. Hester might have tamed him, but without that searing vulnerability of his confusion and the fear of his own guilt in Joscelyn Gray's death, why would she have bothered? He had little humanity to offer until he was forced to look within himself and examine the worst.

He was glad Durban had known only the man he had become, and not the original.

What lay in the spaces around his mental construction of Durban that Monk did not know? Was the compulsion to catch Jericho Phillips going to force him to intrude into the areas of Durban 's life that Durban had chosen to keep private, perhaps because there was pain there, failure, old wounds he needed to forget?

"I can remember his voice," he said aloud, meeting her steady eyes. "His face, the way he walked, what made him laugh, what he liked to eat. He loved to see dawn on the river and watch the early ferries start out across the water. He used to walk alone and watch the play of light and shadow, the mist evaporating like silk gauze. He liked to see the forest of spars when we had a lot of tall ships in the Pool. He liked the sound and smells of the wharves, especially when the spice ships were unloading. He liked to listen to the cry of gulls, and men talking all the different foreign languages, as if the whole earth with its wealth and variety had come here to London. He never said so, but I think he was proud to be a Londoner."

He stopped, his emotion too strong for the moment. Then he drew in a deep breath.

"I didn't want to talk about my past, and I didn't care about his. For any of us, it's who you are today that matters."

Hester smiled, looked away, then back again at him. " Durban was a real person, William," she said gently. "Good and bad, wise and stupid. Picking out bits to like isn't really liking at all. It isn't friendship, it's comfort for you. You're better than that, whether he was or not. Are your dreams, or Durban 's memory, worth more than the lives of other boys like Fig?" She bit her lip. "Or Scuff?"

He winced. He had been lulled into forgetting how honest she could be, even if her words were harsh.

"I know it's intrusive to examine the whole man," she said. "Even indecent, when he's dead and cannot defend himself, or explain, or even repent. But the alternative is to let it go, and isn't that worse?"

It was a bitter choice, but if Durban had been careless, or even dishonest, that had to be faced. "Yes," he conceded. "Pass me the papers. We'll sort them into those we understand, those we don't, and those I expect we never will. I'll get that bastard Phillips, however long or hard the trail. I made the mistake, and I'll undo it."

"We did," she corrected him, her face pinched a little. "I let Oliver paint me as an overemotional woman whose childlessness led her to hysterical and ill-thought-out judgments."

He saw the pain in her face, the self-mockery, and for that he would not forgive Rathbone until he had paid the last ounce, and maybe not even then. That was something else she had lost, the real and precious friendship with Rathbone. Like Monk, she had no close, loving family left. She had lost a brother in the Crimea, her father to suicide, and her mother to a broken heart. Her one surviving brother was a stiff and distant man, not really a friend. One day, when he had time, Monk must go and visit the sister he barely remembered. He did not think they had been close, even when his memory had been whole, and that was probably his fault.

He put the papers down and leaned over, touching Hester gently, then drawing her closer to him and kissing her, then closer again. "There's tomorrow," he whispered. "Let it be-for now."

Monk rose early and went to buy the newspapers. He considered not taking them home so Hester would not see how bad they were, and then discarded the idea. She did not need his protection, and probably would not wish for it. It would not mean tenderness to her as much as exclusion. And after both the honesty and the passion of the previous night, she deserved better from him. He thought, with a smile, that perhaps he was beginning to understand women, or at least one woman.

There was nothing else to smile at. When he sat at the breakfast table opposite her, each with their newspapers propped open in front of them, the full ugliness of the situation was extremely clear. Durban was drawn as incompetent, a man whose death saved him from the indignity of having been removed from office for at best a personal vengeance against a particularly grubby criminal on the river, at worst a seriously questionable professional ethic.

Monk himself was painted as little better, an amateur drafted in over the heads of more experienced men. He was out of his depth and beyond his skill. He had been trying too hard to pay a debt that he imagined he owed a friend, but whom in truth he barely knew.

Hester came off more lightly, at first glance. She was portrayed as overemotional, driven by loyalty to her husband and a foolish attachment to a class of child her thwarted maternal instincts had fastened on, and caused her to reach out and cherish, quite inappropriately. But from a woman denied her natural role in society by a misguided devotion to charitable causes, and a certain belligerence that made her unattractive to decent men of her own station, what else could one expect? It should be a lesson to all young ladies of good breeding to remain in the paths that nature and society had set for them. Only then might they expect fulfillment in life. It was immeasurably condescending.

When Hester read it she used some language about the writer and his antecedents that she had learned in her Army days. After several minutes she looked nervously at Monk, and apologized, concerned in case she had shocked him.

He grinned at her, possibly a little bleakly, because the remarks about her had stung him perhaps even more than they had hurt her.

"You'll have to tell me what that means," he responded. "I think I may have use for some of those expressions myself."

She colored deeply, and looked away, but the tension eased out of her body, and her hands unknotted in her lap.

The worst thing in the papers actually was a single line suggesting, almost as an afterthought, that possibly the River Police had outlived their usefulness. Perhaps the time had come for them to relinquish any separate identity, and simply come under the command of whatever local force was nearest. They had so badly mishandled the case that Jericho Phillips, were he guilty, had escaped the noose forever, at least for the murder of Walter Figgis. He was now free to continue his trade unmolested. It made a mockery of the law, and that could not be permitted, no matter which well-intentioned but incompetent officer had to be dismissed.

A hot, tight resolution settled in Hester to prove them wrong, but immeasurably more important than that was to prove Monk right. But she was realistic enough to know that that was not necessarily possible. She had no doubt at all that Phillips was capable of murder, or even that he had committed it, if not of Fig, then of others. But the truth was that, in their outrage and their certainty, they had been careless, and they had forgotten the precision of the law, when used by someone like Oliver Rathbone.

And that was another, different kind of pain. It was less urgent: a wide, blind ache that intruded into all sorts of other areas of life, darkening and hurting. The only way to begin again was with her own investigation, which meant at the clinic. And of course that also meant seeing Margaret. Hester had liked Margaret from the first time they had met, when Margaret had been shy and wounded from the repeated humiliation of her mother constantly trying to marry her off to someone suitable-according to her own assessment, not Margaret's, of course. To Margaret's mortification, when they had encountered Rathbone, at some ball or other, Mrs. Ballinger had praised Margaret's virtue to him, in front of Margaret herself, with the all-too-obvious intent of engaging Rathbone's matrimonial interest.

Hester understood with sharp compassion. She would never forget her own family's similar attempts on her behalf. It had made her feel like jetsam, to be cast overboard at the first opportunity. Her acute understanding of Margaret's situation had forged a bond between them. Margaret had found purpose and freedom working in the clinic, and even a sense of her own worth, which no one else had given her, or could now take away.

Then Rathbone had realized that he really did love her. Kindness had nothing to do with it. He was not rescuing her at all. It was his privilege to earn her love in return.

Now, with the acquittal of Jericho Phillips, Hester's closeness with the Rathbones was gone too, tarnished and made uncomfortable.

The long bus ride came to an end and Hester walked the short distance along Portpool Lane, under the huge shadow of the brewery. She went through the door of the rambling tenement houses that were now connected inside to form one large clinic where the sick and injured would be treated, lodged, and nursed if necessary. They were even operated on there if emergency required it and the procedure was comparatively slight, such as the amputation of a finger or toe, the setting of bones, or the stitching of knife wounds. Once or twice there had been the removal of bullets, and once the amputation of a gangrenous foot. The extraction of splinters of various kinds, the repair of dislocations, the occasional difficult birth, and the nursing of bronchitis, fever, pneumonia, and consumption were usual in their daily work. More than one woman had died of a bungled abortion, beyond repair even after their most exhaustive and desperate efforts to save her. There was too much shared triumph and loss to let go of friendship easily.

But as Hester went in through the front door and Bessie greeted her, she felt none of her usual anticipation of warmth. She responded, and then asked Bessie about the previous two days' happenings, when she had been occupied in court, and could not be there. Of course Bessie knew why she had been absent, as they all did; and telling them the outcome was not something she was looking forward to. Like drinking castor oil, it was better done swiftly.

"We lost," she said, before Bessie could ask. "Phillips got away with it."

Bessie was a large woman who wore her hair screwed back fiercely and gripped by pins so tightly Hester had wondered how she could bear it. Bessie looked even angrier than usual, but her eyes were oddly gentle. "I know that," she said tartly. "That lawyer twisted everything to make it look like yer fault. I 'eard already."

That was a complication Hester had not even thought of, divided loyalties in the clinic. More bitter medicine to take. Her chest hurt with the tightness of her breath. "That was Sir Oliver's job, Bessie. We should have got our evidence tight enough so that he couldn't. We weren't sufficiently careful."

"Yer just gonna let it go, then?" Bessie challenged her, disbelief, pity, and hurt crowding her face all at once.

Hester swallowed. "No. I'm going to go back to the beginning and start again."

Bessie flashed a brilliant smile, then it disappeared so rapidly it could have been an illusion. "Good. Then yer'll be needin' me an' the rest of us ter keep comin' 'ere."

"Yes, please. I would appreciate that very much."

Bessie grunted. "Lady Rathbone is in the kitchen, givin' orders, I 'spect," she added. "An' Squeaky's in the office countin' money." She was watching Hester carefully, judging her reaction.

"Thank you," Hester replied with a face as devoid of expression as she could manage, and went to get the encounter done with as soon as possible. Besides, she needed to speak to Squeaky Robinson privately, and at some length.

She swallowed hard and walked along the uneven passage with its twists and its steps up and down until she reached the kitchen. It was a large room, originally intended to serve a family, and it had been added to when the two houses had been turned into one.

She smiled with bitter humor when she remembered how Rathbone had exercised legal skill and some considerable guile in maneuvering Squeaky into yielding his ownership of the brothels, and then taking on the bookkeeping of his own premises as a shelter for the very people he had once owned. Rathbone had left Squeaky no acceptable choice. It had been wildly daring, and from Rathbone's point of view, totally against the spirit of the establishment he had spent his adult life serving. It had also brought him acute moral and emotional pleasure.

But then Hester had also allowed Squeaky little choice in his decision, or as little as she could manage.

Now she was at the kitchen door. Her quick, light step on the wooden boards had alerted Margaret to her coming. Margaret turned with a vegetable knife in her hand. At home she had servants for everything; here she could put her hand to any task that required attention. There was no one else in the room. Hester was not sure if it would have been easier or harder had there been.

"Good morning," Margaret said quietly. She stood motionless, her shoulders square, chin a little high, eyes direct. In that one look Hester knew that she was not going to apologize or offer even the suggestion, however tacit, that the verdict of the trial had been unjust. She was prepared to defend Rathbone to the hilt. Had she any idea why he had chosen to champion Jericho Phillips? From the angle of her head, the unwavering stare, and the slight rigidity of her smile, Hester guessed that she did not.

"Good morning," she replied politely. "How are our stores? Do we need flour, or oatmeal?"

"Not for three or four days," Margaret said. "If the woman with the knife wound in her arm goes home tomorrow, we might last longer. Unless, of course, we get anyone else in. Bessie brought some ham bones this morning, and Claudine brought a string of onions and the bones from a saddle of mutton. We are doing well. I think we should use what money we have for lye, carbolic, vinegar, and a few more bandages. But see what you think yourself."

There was no need for Hester to check; that would have made the most delicate of implications that she did not believe Margaret capable. Before the Phillips affair neither of them would have thought such conspicuous courtesy necessary.

They discussed the medical supplies, simple as they were: alcohol for cleaning wounds and instruments, cotton pads, thread, bandages, salve, laudanum, quinine for fevers, fortified wines to strengthen and warm. The cautious politeness was in the air like a bereavement.

Hester was relieved to escape to the room where Squeaky Robinson, the short-tempered, much-aggrieved ex-brothel-keeper was doing the accounts and guarding every farthing from frivolous and unnecessary expenditure. One would have thought he had labored for it personally rather than received it, through Margaret, from the charitable of the city.

He looked up from his table as she closed the door behind her. His sharp, slightly lopsided face under its long, moth-eaten-looking hair was full of sympathy.

"Made a mess of it," he observed, without specifying whom he meant. "Pity that. Bastard should've 'ad 'is neck stretched, an' no mistake. The fact we got a lot o' money in't much comfort, is it! Not today, any'ow. Mebbe termorrer it'll feel good. Yer can 'ave five pounds ter get more sheets, if yer like." That was an extraordinarily generous offer from a man who begrudged a penny, and regarded sheets for street women as being about as necessary as pearl necklaces in the farmyard. It was his oblique way of trying to comfort her.

She smiled at him, and he looked away, embarrassed. He was slightly ashamed of himself for being generous; he was letting his standards slip.

She sat down in the chair opposite him. "I shall do that. Then we can launder them more often, and keep infection down."

"That'll cost more soap, and more water!" he protested, horrified at the extravagance he had apparently let himself in for. "An' more time to dry 'em."

"And fewer people infected so they'll leave quicker," she elaborated. "But what I really want is your help. That's why I came."

He looked at her carefully. "You seen Mrs... Lady Rathbone?" His face was carefully expressionless.

"Yes I have, and dealt with the kitchen accounts," she replied, wondering how much all of them knew about the trial and the verdict. It seemed to be quite a lot.

"Wot can I do? The swine is free!" He said the words with a sudden savagery, and she realized with new pain how much she and Monk had let them all down. They had used every avenue they knew and given Hester the information, and she had failed to get Phillips hanged.

"I'm sorry," she said quietly. "We were so sure he was guilty we weren't careful enough."

Squeaky shrugged. He had no compunction about hitting a man when he was down. Indeed, it was the safest time to do it! But he could not hit Hester; she was different. He did not want to think how fond he was of her; it was a decidedly serious weakness.

"Oo'd've thought Sir Rathbone'd 'ave done that?" he demanded. "We could see if we got enough money to 'ave someone stick a shiv in 'is gizzard. It'd cost, mind. Get bedsheets for 'alf the 'ores in England."

"Oliver?" She was horrified.

He rolled his eyes. "Gawd, woman! I mean Jericho Phillips! Wouldn't cost nothin' ter do Sir Rathbone. Except yer'd 'ave every cop in London after yer, so I s'pose yer'd dance on a rope in the end. An' that's kind o' costly. But Phillips'd be another thing. Like as not 'e'd get yer first. Right nasty piece o' work, 'e is."

"I know that, Squeaky. I'd rather get him legitimately."

"Yer tried that," he pointed out. He pushed a pile of papers across the desk, further out of his way. "Don't want ter rub it in like, but yer didn't exactly get 'im justice, did yer? 'E's better off now than if yer 'adn't bothered. Free, 'e is, the piece o' turd. Now even if yer could prove it an 'e confessed, yer can't touch the sod."

"I know."

"But mebbe wot you in't thought of, Miss 'Ester," he said very seriously, "is that 'e knows yer after 'im, an' 'e knows 'oo can tell yer wot, an' they're gonna 'ave ter tread very careful from now on. 'E's a nasty piece o' work, is Jericho Phillips. 'E in't gonna forgive them wot spoke out o' turn."

She shivered, chilled in the pit of her stomach. Perhaps that was the most serious failure of all: the danger to others, lives now shadowed with fear of Phillips's revenge, when they had been promised safety. She did not want to meet his eyes, but it was cowardly to look down. "Yes, I know that too. It is going to be even harder to do it again."

"In't no point in doin' it again, Miss 'Ester!" he pointed out. "We can't 'ang the bastard anymore! We know 'e should be 'ung, drawn, and quartered an' 'is guts fed ter the birds! But the law says 'e's as innocent as them kids wot 'e sells! Thanks ter Sir bloody Rathbone! Now none o' them wot spoke agin' 'im in't safe, poor sods."

"I know, Squeaky," she agreed. "And I know we let them down. Not you, Mr. Monk and I. We took too much for granted. We let our anger and pity guide us, instead of our brains. But Phillips still needs dealing with, and we owe it to everybody to do it. We'll have to put him away for something else, that's all."

Squeaky shut his eyes and sighed in exasperation, but for all the alarm, there was a very faint smile on his face as well. "Yer don't learn, do yer! Gawd in 'eaven! Wot der yer want now?"

She took it as if it were agreement, or at least acquiescence. She leaned forward on the table. "He is only acquitted of murdering Fig, specifically. He can still be charged with anything else..."

"Not 'anged," he said grimly. "An' 'e needs 'angin'."

"Twenty years in Coldbath Fields would do for a start," she countered. "Wouldn't it? It would be a much longer, slower death than on the end of a rope."

He gave it several moments' thought. "I grant yer that," he said finally. "But I like certain. The rope is certain. Once it's done, it's done ferever."

"We don't have that choice anymore," she said glumly.

He looked at her, blinking. "Yer wonderin' 'oo paid 'im, or d'yer know?" he asked.

She was startled. "Paid?"

"Sir Rathbone," he replied. "'E din't do it fer nothin'. Wot did 'e do it fer, anyway? Does she know?" He jerked his hand in the general direction of the kitchen.

"I've no idea," Hester replied, but her mind was busy with the question of who had paid Rathbone, and why he had accepted the money. She had never considered the possibility of his owing favors before, not of the sort for which such a payment could be asked. How did one incur such a debt? For what? And who would want such payment? Surely anyone Rathbone would consider a friend would want Phillips convicted as much as Monk did.

Squeaky screwed up his face as if he had bitten into a lemon. "If yer believe 'e done it fer free, there in't much 'ope for yer," he said with disgust. "Phillips's got friends in some very 'igh places. Never reckoned Rathbone was one of 'em. Still don't. But some of 'em 'ave a lot o' power, one way an another." He curled his lip. "Never know where their fingers stretch ter. Lot o' money in dirty pictures, the dirtier, the more money. Got 'em o' little boys, an yer can ask yer own price. First for the pictures, then fer yer silence, like." He tapped the side of his nose and looked at her sourly out of one eye.

She started to say that Rathbone would not have yielded to pressure of any sort, then changed her mind and bit the words off. Who knew what one would do for a friend in deep enough trouble? Someone had paid Rathbone, and he had chosen not to ask why.

Squeaky pursed his lips into an expression of loathing. "Lookin' at the kind o' pictures Phillips sells people can affect yer mind," he said, watching her closely to make sure she understood. "Even people who you wouldn't think. Take 'em out o' them smart trousers an' fancy shirts, an' they think no different from yer beggar or yer thief, when it comes ter queer tastes. Exceptin' some folk 'ave got more ter lose than others, so it leaves 'em open ter a little pressure now an' then."

She stared at him. "Are you saying Jericho Phillips has friends in places high enough to help him before the law, Squeaky?"

He rolled his eyes as if her naivete had injured some secret part of him. "'Course I am. Yer don't think 'e's been safe all these years 'cause nobody knows what 'e's doin', do yer?"

"Because of a taste for obscene photographs?" she went on, disbelief thick in her voice. "I know many men keep mistresses, or conduct affairs haphazardly, and in some unlikely places. But photographs? What pleasure can there be in seeing them that is so powerful that you would compromise your honor, reputation, everything to deal with a man like Phillips?"

He shrugged his bony shoulders. "Don' ask me ter explain 'uman nature, Miss. I in't responsible fer it. But there's some things you can make children do that no adult'd do without lookin' at yer like yer'd crawled up out o' the garbage. It in't about love, or even decent appetite, it's about makin' other people do wot you want 'em to, an' tastin' the power over an' over like yer can't get enough of it. Sometimes it's about the thrill o' doin' something that'd ruin yer if yer was caught, an' the danger of it makes yer kind o' drunk. An' neither of them in't always no respecters o' persons, if you get my meanin'. Some people need ter be colder an' 'ungrier ter think on wot matters."

She said nothing.

"Goin' with 'ores is one thing," he continued. "Let's face it, it in't all that serious, as Society looks at it. Most married ladies turn the other way an' gets on wi' their own lives. Keep the bedroom door locked, likely, 'cause they don't want ter wake up wi' no nasty disease, but don't make no scandal about it. Pictures o' little girls is indecent, an' it makes a right-thinkin' person disgusted."

He shook his head.

"But little boys is summink else altogether. It in't only indecent, it's illegal. An' that's entirely another thing. If nobody knows about it, most in't goin' ter go lookin'. We all know that things go on we'd sooner not think about, an' most folk mind their own affairs. But if yer forced ter know, then yer forced ter do summink. Friend or no friend, yer out o' yer clubs and yer job, an' society won't never 'ave yer back. So yer pays 'igh, wide, and 'andsome ter keep it good an' quiet, see?"

"Yes, I do see," Hester said a trifle shakily. A whole new world of misery had yawned open in front of her. Not that she had been unaware of homosexuality. She had been an army nurse. But the use of children to exert a power no adult relationship would tolerate, even one purchased with money, or to gratify a hunger for the thrills of danger, was a new thought, and extremely ugly. The idea of children kept and hired out for such a purpose was sickening.

"I need to destroy Mr. Phillips, Squeaky," she said very softly. "I don't think I can do it without your help. We have to find out who else we can ask to assist us. I imagine Mr. Sutton will be one, and possibly Scuff. Who else can you think of?"

A succession of emotions crossed Squeaky's face: first incredulity, then horror and an intense desire to escape, lastly a kind of amazement at flattery, and the beginning of a daring impulse.

She waited him out.

He cleared his throat, giving himself time. "Well." He coughed slightly. "There's a couple I know of, I s'pose. But they in't very..." He fished for the right word, and failed to find it. "... nice," he finished lamely.

"Good." She did not hesitate. "Nice people aren't going to be any help at all. Nice people don't even believe in creatures like Jericho Phillips, let alone have the slightest idea how to catch them. He probably eats nice people for breakfast, skewered on a fork."

He smiled mirthlessly, but not without a certain surprised satisfaction.

There was a knock on the door, and without waiting for an answer, Claudine Burroughs came in with a tray of tea. She set it down on the tabletop, a fraction closer to Hester than to Squeaky. The pot was steaming gently, the fragrance of it inviting.

Claudine was a tall woman, roughly the same height as Squeaky, so he always stood a trifle more stiffly when beside her, to add the extra half-inch. She was narrow-shouldered and broad-hipped, handsome enough in her youth, but years of loneliness in an unsatisfying marriage had drawn many of the lines downward in her face. Only since coming to Portpool Lane, searching for some charitable work to do, had she found a genuine and vital purpose.

"Thank you," Hester said with the sudden realization of how welcome the tea was. She wondered if Claudine had any idea of yesterday's desperate disappointment, or if she was simply aware that Hester was tired, even at this hour of the morning. She was weary inside, confused and beaten, which was an even deeper thing.

Claudine was still standing motionlessly, waiting for something.

Squeaky moved in his chair, impatiently, implying that Claudine had interrupted. Hester turned to look at her, and realized that she was uncomfortably aware of his annoyance. Perhaps she did know about yesterday's conclusion.

"I'd like to help," Claudine said awkwardly, her face pink, her eyes unable to look at them. And yet she would not leave. She waited there in acute embarrassment, determined to be part of whatever they were doing, to give her own contribution, regardless of the cost.

"Yer can't," Squeaky said flatly. "Ye're a lady, ye're not part o' the folks wot we need ter be talking ter. Very kind o' yer, but yer wouldn't be no use. Thank yer fer the tea." He probably meant it kindly, but to drop from being part of the plan to fetching the tea was like a slap across her face.

Claudine stood her ground, but she struggled for words. Her face was so pink Hester felt as if her cheeks must be burning.

"We haven't any plans yet," Hester said quickly "We don't even know where to start. We need to go over everything again, but with more care. And part of the trouble is that the people who testified before are now going to be very afraid. Phillips isn't in prison any longer, and he'll be dangerous."

"Then we will have to be very careful, too," Claudine replied, staring at Hester and ignoring Squeaky. "We will have to question them so they do not realize the importance of what they are saying until they have said it, and cannot retreat. The man Phillips is very terrible, and he must be put away." At last she looked at Squeaky. "I am glad you are going to help. I respect you for it, Mr. Robinson." She turned abruptly and walked to the door, then she looked back at Hester, doubt in her eyes. "I shall be available to do anything I can to help. Please do not forget that." Before either of them could reply, she went out, shutting the latch firmly behind her.

"Yer in't goin' ter use 'er!" Squeaky protested, leaning forward across the desk, his eyes wide. "What can she do? She couldn't find 'er way from one end o' the street ter the other. An' she in't got no right ter respect me. I didn't tell 'er I was goin' ter do anything at all with wot 'e..." He stopped, suddenly uncomfortable.

"Are you saying you won't do anything, Squeaky?" Hester asked with a very faint smile.

"Well... well, I in't exactly... no, I in't. All the same..."

"All the same, she led you into saying it and then cut off your retreat," she explained for him.

"Yeah!" He was aggrieved. Then he gave a slow smile, wily and half-amused, perhaps even appreciative. "She did, din't she!" He sniffed. "But I still say she wouldn't be safe in the street."

"She doesn't want to be safe." Hester lost all trace of the smile. "She wants to help, to belong, and you can't belong if you don't take the rough with the smooth. She knows that, Squeaky. We aren't going to shut her out."

He shook his head. "Yer in't got no idea," he said sadly. "That Rathbone's got yer ter rights: all 'eart an' no brains, you are, Gawd 'elp us! Ow the 'ell am I goin' ter look after you an' 'er both-daft old thing she is, an' all?"

Hester considered telling him very thoroughly to speak with more respect, and decided against it. This was almost a form of affection, and that was beyond price. She poured the tea carefully, his first. "It will be hard," she agreed. "But you'll manage it. Now let us get started."

The choice of whom to see first was not difficult, nor was it hard to find him and know what to say. Hester was happy to do it alone. Squeaky would be more usefully employed in seeking out his dubious friends.

Sutton was a rat catcher by trade, and proud of being called upon for his services by some of the best households in London. He numbered duchesses among his clients. He was also not too proud to attend to the needs of more humble establishments, and had rid the Portpool Lane clinic of rats at one of the most desperate times in Hester's life. They had been friends in terrible adversity, and indeed Sutton and his terrier, Snoot, had almost perished in the sewers with Monk only a matter of months ago.

Hester always dressed very plainly to go to the clinic, so she did not have any difficulty passing almost unnoticed along the narrow streets to Sutton's house, where she learned from his housekeeper the address where he had gone for the day's business. She found him at his frequent lunchtime haunt, a public house by the name of "The Grinning Rat." It was much like any other, except for the sign that creaked slightly in the wind as it swung outside. The rat in the picture had a look of devilish glee on its painted face. It was dressed in green, and it stood upright on its hind legs, smiling with all its teeth bared.

Hester could not help smiling back before she went inside, trying to look as if she belonged there. She was immediately enveloped in sound. Men were laughing and chattering, there was a clink of glass and pewter, and the scuffle of feet on the sawdust-covered floor, and somewhere in the cellars, barrels being rolled. A dog barked excitedly. There was no point in asking for Sutton; she must simply look.

It took her several minutes to push her way through unyielding bodies of men intent on slaking thirst and enjoying the latest piece of news. She forced her way between two very corpulent bakers, flour still on their sleeves and aprons, and nearly fell into the lap of a neat, slender man sitting by himself eating a cheese and pickle sandwich. There was a tankard of cider in front of him, and a small brown-and-white dog at his feet.

"Mr. Sutton," she said breathlessly, straightening herself and attempting to look respectable. Her hair had fallen out of its pins, as it frequently did, and she had simply poked it behind her ears. "I'm very relieved to have found you."

He stood up politely, partly because there was no second chair for her to be seated. She could see immediately from his expression that he knew Phillips had been acquitted. It made it easier that she did not have to tell him, but she would have preferred that the news not be so very widespread. Perhaps everyone in London knew by now.

"Can I get something fer yer, Miss Hester?" he said dubiously.

"No, thank you, I have already eaten," she answered. It was not strictly true, but she knew he had no time to waste in the middle of his working day. She had enough favors to ask without using them up unnecessarily now.

He remained standing, sandwich in his hand. Snoot stared at it hopefully, but was ignored.

"Please continue," Hester invited him. "I would be most uncomfortable if I spoiled your lunch. All the same, I need to ask your help... please?"

He nodded grimly, as if a foreseen disaster were about to break over him, and continued standing. "You're goin' to go after that slimy bastard Phillips again, aren't you." It was a conclusion, not a question. "Don't, Miss Hester," he pleaded anxiously. "He's a bad one, an' he's got friends all over the place, people yer or me wouldn't even think of knowing the likes of 'im. Wait. 'E'll make a mistake one day, an' some-body'll have 'im. 'E was born for the gallows, that one."

"I don't mind if they hang him, or simply lock him up in the Cold bath Fields and throw away the key," she replied. "What I care about is that they do it soon, in fact, very soon. Before he has the chance to kill any more children, or anyone else, for that matter."

He looked at her carefully for several moments before speaking. She began to feel uncomfortable. His eyes were blue and very clear, as if nothing whatever could impede his vision. It gave her a peculiarly vulnerable feeling. She had to force herself not to try to explain to him even further.

"You want ter go over all the evidence again?" he asked slowly, his expression tense and troubled. "You're sure o' that?"

She felt a chill, even in this hot, close room. What was he trying to warn her from?

"Can you think of a better way?" she countered. "We made a mistake, several in fact, but they were errors in connecting people, not in the basic fact that Jericho Phillips is a child pornographer and murderer."

"You made a mistake in 'ow long 'is arm is," Sutton corrected her, biting into the sandwich at last. "You'll 'ave to be a lot more careful to catch a canny sod like 'im. An' 'e'll be watching for you this time." His eyes creased in concern.

She felt a shiver of fear. "You think he'll come after me? Wouldn't that just prove we're right? Wouldn't he be safer to let us wear ourselves out, and prove nothing?"

"Safer, yes," Sutton agreed. "But he might get annoyed and come after you anyway, if you get close enough to 'im to scare off some of 'is custom. And that in't all. There's the other thing to think about, an' I can't protect you from that, 'cause no one can."

"What thing?" she asked immediately. She trusted Sutton; he had proved both his friendship and his courage. If he feared something, then it was dangerous.

"The way I heard it, it wasn't just you and Mr. Monk who proved a bit sloppy," he said reluctantly. "It was Mr. Durban as well. You trusted in what 'e'd done, so you didn't take care to prove everything so not even a clever beggar like Mr. Rathbone could undo it. But what about Mr. Durban, eh? Why'd he slip up?"

"Because..." She had been about to say that he could not have realized how clever Rathbone would be, but that wouldn't do. He should have been prepared for anyone. "He was emotional about it too," she said instead.

Sutton shook his head. "That in't good enough, Miss Hester, an' you know that. He stopped an' started all over the place, way I heard it. You sure you want to know why?" His voice was gentle. "What do you know about him, for sure?"

She did not answer. There was no point in being defensive and saying that she knew he was good. She did not know it, she believed it, and she did that only because Monk did.

Sutton sighed. "Sure you want to?" This time he was not arguing, just waiting to allow her space to retreat, if she needed to.

But there was no point; Monk would go ahead regardless of whether she went with him or not. He could not leave it alone now. Something of his belief in himself, in his value as a friend, depended upon Durban being essentially the man he supposed him to be. And if he were to be disillusioned, he would need Hester's strength all the more. Standing apart would leave him bitterly alone.

"Better to know," she replied.

Sutton sighed and finished the last of his sandwich, still standing, then drained his glass. "Then we'd better go," he said with resignation. "C'mon, Snoot."

"What about your rats?" she asked.

"There's rats... an' rats," he replied enigmatically. "I'll take you to see Nellie. What she don't know in't worth the bother. Just follow me, and keep your ears open an' your mouth shut. It in't nice places we're goin'. By rights I'd rather not even take you, but I know you'll insist, and I 'aven't got time for an argument I in't goin' to win."

She smiled bleakly and followed after him along the narrow street, the dog between them. She did not ask what Nellie's occupation might be, and he did not offer any further information.

They took a bus eastwards into Limehouse. After walking with him another further half mile on foot through tangled lanes and cobbles, with awkward roofs almost meeting above them, she had lost her sense of direction entirely. She could not even smell the incoming tide of the river above the other odors of dense, swarming city life: the drains, the stale smoke, the horse manure, the sickly sweetness of a nearby brewery.

They found Nellie in a dim back room behind a public house. She was a small, tidy woman dressed in black that had long ago faded to a variety of grays. She wore a widow's lace cap on hair that sat in absurd little-girl ringlets down the sides of her creased face. Her eyes were small, narrow against the light, and-when Hester met them almost accidentally-as sharp as gimlets. She could probably see a pin on the floor at twenty paces.

Sutton did not introduce them, he merely told Nellie that Hester was all right, that she knew when to speak and when not to.

Nellie grunted. "That's as may be," she said curtly. "What d'yer want?" The last was addressed to Sutton; Hester was already dismissed.

"Like to know a bit more about some o' the river police," Sutton replied.

"Wot for?" Nellie regarded him suspiciously. "They in't never gonna cross your path."

"For a friend of mine," Sutton said.

"If your 'friend' is in trouble, better ter deal wi' the reg'lar cops," she told him unequivocally. "River Police is right bastards. Not many of 'em, an' not much way round 'em."

"Straight?" He raised his eyebrows.

"Mostly," she conceded.

"Monk?"

"Used ter be reg'lar p'lice, so I 'eard. Mean bastard, an' clever. 'Ang on ter a case like a bleedin' bulldog." She glanced at Snoot sitting at Sutton's feet. "Bulldog," she repeated.

"But straight?" Sutter insisted.

"Yeah. Leave 'im alone. Best 'e never 'eard of yer."

"Orme?"

"Straight as a stair rod," she replied with a sniff.

" Durban?"

"Don't matter. 'E's dead. Blew 'isself up on a ship."

"But was he straight?"

She tilted her head to one side and twisted her mouth until it looked like she had tasted a bad egg. "If yer after Jericho Phillips again, ye're a fool. 'E 'ad summink on Durban, same as Durban 'ad on 'im. Dunno wot it were, an' reckon I'm best ter keep it that way. Although I like ter know things. Never say when it might come in useful. But someone 'ad the bite on Durban. Dunno if it were Phillips 'isself or just that 'e knew about it. But I do know that Mr. Durban weren't nothin' like wot 'is precious river police thought 'e were. Got secrets, that one, an' I never found out wot they were, so it in't no use askin' me, Mr. Sutton, no matter wot yer thinks I owe yer."

Sutton had to be content with that, at least from her.

Even when they were outside again, he said nothing to Hester, except to ask her if she wished to continue.

"Certainly," she replied, although the misery was knotting up inside her. The word of one woman who might be a fence of stolen goods, a brothel keeper, or worse, should not tarnish the reputation of a good man. It was not Nellie's word that disturbed her, it was her own fear as to why Durban had pursued Phillips so relentlessly, then suddenly stopped. Then why had he taken it up again, when nothing they knew of had changed? Rathbone, with his skill, had revealed weaknesses in her reasoning, questions and doubts that she needed to have answered. She was ashamed of it, but that did not still the voices in her mind.

And she was afraid for Monk, because she knew how much of the peace within him that he had finally gained had come because a man like Durban, honest, wise, and possessed of his own inner strength, had bequeathed him the task he himself could no longer perform. Durban had trusted Monk to lead his men, and leading men was something Monk had never done successfully. He was brave, intelligent, imaginative, sometimes ruthless, but never before likable. He had never before inspired loyalty or the ultimate trust of others.

Over the years since the accident, flashes of memory had lit up individual scenes for him, and deduction had filled in many of the surrounding blanks. The picture that emerged was of a man he did not always like. It was too vividly easy to see why others had not.

He had tried hard to change. Durban was the one man who had seen the best in him and placed his trust in it. Now that Oliver Rathbone had suddenly become a stranger, a man they no longer understood, Durban was even more a key to trust.

Hester was afraid of what Monk was going to learn about him, and how deeply it would hurt. Therefore she needed to be the first to know, so she could protect him-or, if that were not possible, at least walk beside him through whatever lay ahead.

She followed Sutton along the dark alley towards the next person he would question on her behalf.