Execution Dock

by Anne Perry

  He looked at her with what for him was an extraordinary sense of confusion. Emotions conflicted with intellect: loneliness, dismay, perhaps guilt, breaking apart his usual sanctuary of reason.

  “I'll do what I can,” he said quietly. “I have no idea if it will be of use.”

  She did not argue. “Thank you,” she said simply. Then she smiled at him. “I thought you would.”

  He blushed, and looked down at the papers on his desk, overwhelmed with relief when the clerk knocked on the door.

  She considered returning home to change from her most flattering dress, which naturally she had worn to see Rathbone, before going to Portpool Lane, but decided that it was a waste of the fare. She always kept clean working clothes at the clinic in case of accidents, which happened quite often.

  She found the clinic busy with its regular affairs, tending to the few who were sick enough to require days in bed, and the walking patients with knife or razor wounds who needed stitching, bandaging, general comfort, and a little respite from the streets, perhaps a decent meal. The regular chores of cleaning, laundry, and cooking never stopped.

  She offered words of approval and encouragement, a minor criticism here and there, then went to find Squeaky Robinson in his office. He had taken his bookkeeping duties very seriously this last year or so. She had not recently heard him complain about having been cheated out of the building, which, when it was his, had been the most successful brothel in the area. His new vision of himself, more or less on the right side of the law, seemed to please him.

  “Good morning, Squeaky,” she said as she closed the door, giving them privacy in the cluttered room with its shelves of ledgers. The desk was scattered with sheets of paper, pencils, two inkwells, one red, one blue, and a tray of sand for blotting. This last was seldom used; he just liked the look of it.

  “Mornin’, Miss ‘Ester,” he replied, searching her face with concern. He did not ask her how she was; he would make the judgment himself.

  She sat down in the chair opposite him. “This whole business is becoming extremely ugly,” she said frankly. “There are whispers of accusation that Mr. Durban was procuring boys for Jericho Phillips, and the River Police in general are being dirtied with that accusation. There seem to be several incidents where he found boys stealing and deliberately did not charge them. There may be other explanations as to why that happened, but the worst is being assumed.”

  He nodded. “Looks bad,” he agreed, sucking air in through his teeth. “In't nobody ‘oo int tempted by summink, whether it's money or power or pleasure, or just ‘avin’ people owe ‘em. I've seen some where it's just feelin’ superior as does it. Specially women. Seen some awful superior women. Beggin’ yer pardon.”

  She smiled. “So have I, and I wanted to slap them, until I realized that's probably all they had. A friend of mine used to say that there are none as virtuous as those who have never been asked.”

  “I like that,” he said with profound appreciation. He mulled it over, like a good wine. “Yeah, I do.”

  “Squeaky, I need to know how Phillips gets his boys.”

  There was a tap on the door, and as soon as Hester answered, Claudine came in. “Good morning,” she said cheerfully. “Would you like a cup of tea?”

  Both Hester and Squeaky knew that she had come because she could not bear to be left out of the detection. She desperately wanted to help, but she had not yet let down her barriers of dignity enough to say so outright.

  “Thank you,” Hester declined quickly. “But I need to go out, and I think I need Squeaky with me. He knows people that I don't.”

  Claudine looked crestfallen. She tried to hide it, but the feeling was too deep to conceal it from her eyes.

  “In't summink you would know about,” Squeaky said brusquely. “Don't s'pose you even know why girls take ter sellin’ theirselves on the streets, let alone kids.”

  “Of course I know,” she snapped. “Do you think I can't hear what they're saying? Or that I don't listen to them?”

  Squeaky relented a fraction. “Boys,” he explained. “We don't get no little boys in ‘ere. If they get beat no one knows, ‘ceptin’ ‘ooever's keepin’ ‘em, like Jericho Phillips.”

  Claudine snorted. “And what is going to be so different about why they take to the streets?” she asked. “Cold, hunger, fear, nowhere else to go. Lonely, someone offers to take them in, easy money, at first.”

  “You're right,” Hester agreed, surprised that Claudine had apparently listened so closely to what was voiced, including the words themselves, which were often shallow and repetitive, sometimes full of excuses or self-pity, more often with a bitter humor and an endless variety of bad jokes. “But I need to prove that it wasn't Commander Durban procuring them, so it has to be specific.”

  “Commander Durban?” Claudine was clearly horrified. “I never heard anything so wicked. Don't worry I'll look after everything here. You find out all you can, but be careful!” She glared at Squeaky. “You look after her, or I shall hold you accountable. Believe me, you will be sorry you were born.” And with that she turned around, whisking her very plain gray skirt as if it had been crimson silk, and marched out.

  Squeaky smiled. Then he saw Hester and assumed instant gravity. “We'll be goin’, then,” he said flatly. “I'll put on me oldest boots.”

  “Thank you,” she accepted. “I will wait for you by the door.”

  They spent a miserable afternoon well into the early evening moving from one to another of Squeaky's contacts in his previous life as a brothel owner.

  They continued the next day, going deeper into the network of alleys in Limehouse, Shadwell, and the Isle of Dogs on the north bank of the river, and Rotherhithe and Deptford on the south. Hester felt as if she had walked as far as from London to York circling the same narrow byways crowded with doss-houses, taverns, pawnshops, brothels, and all the multitudinous traders associated with the river.

  Squeaky was very careful, even secretive about their search, but his whole manner changed when it was time to bargain. The casual, rather inconspicuous air vanished, and he became subtly menacing. There was a stillness about him, a gentleness to his voice that contrasted with the noise and bustle around him.

  “I think yer know better than that, Mr. Kelp,” he said in almost a whisper. They were standing in what was ostensibly a tobacconist's shop, darkly wood paneled, one small window, its glass ringed like the base of a bottle. The lamps were lit or they would not have been able to see the wares laid out, although the pungent aroma was powerful enough to drift out into the alley and tempt people, even above the stench of rotting wood and human waste.

  Kelp opened his mouth to deny it, and reconsidered. There was something about Squeaky's motionless figure in its faded, striped trousers and ancient frock coat, his stringy hair and lantern face that frightened him. It was as if Squeaky somehow knew himself to be invulnerable, in spite of not apparently having any weapon, and no one with him but one rather slightly built woman. It was inexplicable, and anything he could not understand alarmed Mr. Kelp.

  He swallowed. “Well …” he prevaricated. “I heard things, o’ course, if that's wot you want, like?”

  Squeaky nodded slowly. “That's wot I want, Mr. Kelp, things you've ‘eard, accurate things, things you believe yerself An’ yer would be very wise indeed not ter tell anybody else that I ‘ave asked, an’ that yer ‘ave been good enough ter ‘elp me. There are those with long an’ careful ears who would not be pleased. Let us leave them in their ignorance, shall we?”

  Kelp shuddered. “Oh, yes, Mr. Robinson, sir. Very definitely.” He did not even glance at Hester standing a little behind Squeaky. She was watching with growing surprise. This was a side of Squeaky she had not imagined, and her own blindness to its possibility was disturbing. She had grown accustomed to his compliance in the clinic, and forgotten the man he used to be. In fact, she had never really known more than the superficial fact that he had owned the brothel that had occupied the Portpo
ol Lane houses.

  Squeaky was approximately in his fifties, but she had thought of him as old, because he sat in a bent, hunched position, and his hair was long and gray, hanging thinly down to his collar. He had complained vociferously about being cheated and abused, as if he were a man of peaceful habits wrongfully treated. The man she saw here in the tobacconists’ was nothing like that. Kelp was afraid of him. She could see it in his face, even smell it in the air. She felt a shiver of doubt at her own foolhardiness, and forced it from her mind with some difficulty.

  Kelp swallowed what appeared to be a lump in his throat, and proceeded to tell Squeaky everything he knew about the procuring of boys for men like Jericho Phillips. It was sad and very ugly, full of human failure and the opportunism of the greedy who preyed on the weak.

  It also included Durban catching boys, some no more than five or six years old, stealing food and small articles to sell. He had seldom charged them, and the assumption was that he had bought them from their parents in order to sell them to Phillips, or others like him. There was no proof, one way or the other, but too many of them had not been seen again in the usual places, nor was anyone saying where they had gone, or with whom.

  “I'm sorry,” Squeaky said as towards evening they walked along the path close to the river on the Isle of Dogs. They were making for All Saints Stairs to catch a ferry across to the pier on the south side, and then a bus to Rotherhithe Street, from which it was a short walk to Paradise Place. Squeaky had insisted on seeing her home, even though she frequently rode the bus or a cab by herself. “Looks as if yer Durban could ‘a been bent as a pig's tail,” he added.

  She found it difficult to speak. What was she going to tell Monk? She needed to know before he did, so that she could do something to soften the blow. But what? If this were true, it was worse than she had imagined. “I know,” she said huskily.

  “D'yer want ter keep on?” he asked.

  “Yes, of course I do!”

  “That's wot I thought, but I gotter ask.” He glanced at her, then away again. “It could get worse.”

  “I know that too.”

  “Even good men ‘ave got their weaknesses,” he said. “An’ women too, I s'pose. I reckon yers is believin’ people. It's not a bad one ter ‘ave, mind.”

  “Am I supposed to be grateful for that?”

  “No. I reckon it ‘urts yer. But if yer knew everythin’ yer'd be too cocky ter be nice.”

  “Not much chance of that,” she replied, but she did smile, faintly, even though he could not see it in the fitful street lighting.

  They made their way down towards the top of the All Saints Stairs. Just before they reached them, a figure stepped out of the shadows of a crane, and the light from the street lamp showed his face like a yellow mask, wide, thin mouth leering. Jericho Phillips. He looked at Hester, ignoring Squeaky.

  “I know you've been looking for Reilly, Miss. Yer don't want ter do that.”

  Squeaky was taken aback, but he hid it quickly. “You threatenin’ ‘er, Mr. Phillips?” he asked with exaggerated politeness.

  “Spot of advice,” Phillips replied. “Friendly, as it were. Reckon I owe ‘er a lot.” He smiled, showing his teeth. “Might be swingin’ on a gibbet by me neck, if it weren't for ‘er evidence at me trial.” He laughed softly, his eyes dead as stones. “Yer would find out a lot o’ things yer'd be ‘appier not knowin’, seein’ as you admired Mr. Durban so much. Yer find Reilly, poor boy, an’ you'll like as not find out what ‘appened to ‘im. An’ believe me, Miss, yer won't like that at all.”

  There was a ferry making its way across the oily black surface of the water, oars dipping in and out rhythmically.

  “Brave boy, Reilly,” Phillips added. “Foolish, mind. Trusted those ‘e shouldn't ‘ave, like River Police. Found out more'n it's good fer a boy like ‘im ter know.”

  “So you killed him, just as you killed Fig,” Hester said bitterly.

  “No reason to, Miss,” Phillips told her. “It weren't me Reilly were goin’ ter tell on. I treat my boys very well. Stupid not to. Ask ‘em! You won't find one as'll speak against me. I don't beat ‘em, don't forget me-self an’ ‘oller and scream at ‘em. I know me business, an’ I look after it proper.”

  She looked at him with total loathing, but she could find no answer with which to retaliate.

  “Think about it, Miss,” Phillips went on. “Yer been askin’ a lot o’ questions about Durban. Wot did yer find out, eh? Liar, weren't ‘e? Lied about everythin’, even where ‘e came from. Lost ‘is temper something rotten, beat the tar out o’ some folks. Covered up crime in some, lied about it in others. Now me, I might do that, but then yer'd expect it o’ me.” He smiled utterly without humor. “Durban's different. Nobody trusts me, but they trusted ‘im. That makes it somethin’ else, a kind o’ betrayal, right? Fer ‘im ter break the law is bad, very bad. Believe me, Miss, yer don't want ter know all about Mr. Durban, yer really don't. Neither does your good man. Saved my life twice over, ‘e did. Once in the river … oh?” He raised his eyebrows. “Din't ‘e tell you that?”

  She stared at him with hatred.

  His smile widened. “Yeah, could ‘a let me drown, but ‘e saved me. An’ then o'course all that evidence of ‘is in court. Reckon without that I would've ‘anged, fer sure. Not a pretty way ter go, Miss, the rope dance. Not at all. You don't want ter know what ‘appened ter poor Reilly, Miss, nor all about Mary Webber neither. Now here's a ferryboat come ter take yer ‘ome. Yer sleep well, an’ in the mornin’ go tend to yer clinic, an’ all them poor ‘ores wot yer bent on savin.” He turned and stalked away, consumed almost immediately by the shadows.

  Hester stood on the steps shivering with rage, but also fear. She could not refute a single thing Phillips had said. She felt helpless, and so cold in the summer night that she might as well have fallen in the dark, swift-moving water.

  The ferry was now bumping on the steps, the oarsman waiting.

  “Yer want ter leave it, Miss ‘Ester?” Squeaky asked.

  She could not see his face; they had their backs to the light now. How could she read his emotions from his voice? “Can it get any worse?” she asked. “Hasn't anything got to be better than accepting this?”

  “‘Course it can!” he said instantly. “It can get a lot worse. Yer could find out that Durban killed Reilly, an’ Phillips can prove it.”

  “No, he can't,” she said with a sudden burst of logic. “If he could prove that, he would have done so already, and destroyed Durban's evidence without having to hope Rathbone could discredit us. It would have been much safer.”

  “Then if yer want, I'm ‘appy ter go on. Nailin’ that bastard'd be better than a bottle o’ Napoleon Brandy.”

  “Do you like Napoleon Brandy?” she said in surprise.

  “No idea,” he admitted. “But I'd like ter find out!”

  NINE

  ester slept late the next morning, and was far less disturbed than usual to find that Monk had already left. There was a note from him on the kitchen table. Scuff was nowhere to be seen, so she assumed that he had gone with Monk.

  However, she was halfway through her breakfast of tea and toast when the boy appeared in the doorway looking anxious. He was already dressed and had obviously been out. He was holding a newspaper in his hands. He seemed uncertain whether to offer it to her or not. She knew he could not read, but she did not want to embarrass him by referring to the fact.

  “Good morning,” she said casually. “Would you like some breakfast?”

  “I ‘ad some,” he replied, coming a couple of steps into the kitchen.

  “There is no reason not to have some more, if you would like it,” she offered. “It's only toast and jam, but the jam is very good. And tea, of course.”

  “Oh,” he said, eyes following her hand with the toast in it. “Well, I don't mind if I do.”

  “Then come and sit down, and I will make it for you.” She finished her own toast and raspberry jam, holding it in one hand whi
le she cut and toasted more bread with the other.

  They sat at opposite sides of the table and ate in silence for some time. He took apricot jam, twice.

  “May I look at your newspaper please?” she asked at length.

  “‘Course.” He pushed it over towards her. “I got it fer yer. Yer in't gonna like it.” He looked worried. “I ‘eard ‘em talkin’ around the newsboy, that's why I got it. They're sayin’ bad things.”

  She reached for the paper and looked at the headlines, then opened it and read inside. Scuff was right, she did not like it at all. The suggestions were veiled, but they were not so very far from the sort of thing that Phillips had said on the dockside the previous evening. There were questions about the River Police, their record of success suspiciously high. But were the figures honest? How had they come to recruit a man as obsessed with personal vengeance as Durban had been—and apparently not just once, but twice? Was the new man, William Monk, any better? What was known about him? For that matter, what was known about any of them, including Durban?

  It was a dangerous state of affairs for the nation when a body of men such as the River Police had the kind of power they did, and there was no check upon the way they used it, or abused it. If the members of Parliament who represented the constituencies along the river were doing their duty, there would be questions asked in the House.

  She looked up at Scuff. He was watching her, trying to judge what the paper said from her expression.

  “Yes, they are saying bad things,” she told him. “But so far it is just talk. I need to know whether they are true or not, because we can't deal with it until we know.”

  “Wot'll ‘appen to us if it's true?” he asked.

  She heard the fear in his voice, and the inclusion of himself in their fate. She wondered if he had meant her to notice that or not. She would be very careful to reply in the same tones, equally casually.