by Anne Perry
Sullivan stood frozen.
Monk, Rathbone, and Sutton clambered over the gunwale. Hester picked Snoot up and passed him into Sutton's hands, then gripped Monk's outstretched arm. The next moment she was on the deck herself, leaving only one man to keep the boat.
Silently they moved over to the hatch. She saw the faint gleam of light on the barrel of a gun in Orme's hand, and realized from the way Monk held his right arm that he had one also. This could end in blood and death.
Orme bent and opened the hatch. Light flooded up, and the noise of jerky, nervous laughter with a slight edge of hysteria sharp and veering out of control, prickly with excitement. There was an odor of whisky, cigar smoke, and sweat. Hester gulped. Fear shot through her, like pain, not for herself but for Monk as he went inside and down.
He was followed immediately by Orme, then Sullivan, Rathbone, and two of the police. Two more remained on deck to impersonate the unconscious men who were now bound and gagged. Hester followed through the hatch and into a surprisingly clean and comfortable cabin. It was small, only a couple of yards across, clearly an anteroom to the main saloon, and whatever rooms were beyond that for more private entertainment. She was familiar with the geographic layout of brothels, although few were as extensive as the property at Portpool Lane.
The salon was filled with half a dozen guests, well-dressed men of varying ages. At a glance they had little in common but a fever in the eyes and a sheen of sweat on the skin. Jericho Phillips stood at the far end, next to a small rise in the floor, like a stage, on which were two boys, both naked, One was about six or seven years old, bending over on his hands and knees like an animal; the other was older, just entering puberty. The act they were performing was obvious, as was the coercion of a lit cigar smoldering in Phillips's hand, and unhealed burn marks on the older boy's back and thighs.
“Come ter join us at last, ‘ave yer, Mr. Monk?” Phillips asked with a curl of his lip that showed his teeth. “Knew yer would, one day. Must say though, I thought it'd take yer longer.” His eyes flickered to Sullivan, and then to Rathbone, and he wet his lips with his tongue. His voice was brittle and half an octave too high.
Fear was acrid in the air, like stale sweat. Some men shifted from one foot to the other, tense, on the edge of some kind of violence. They were robbed of the release for which they had come, uncertain what was happening, or who the enemy was, like animals on the edge of a stampede.
Hester was rigid, heart pounding. Did Monk know how close they were to mindless violence? This was nothing like the army in the moments before battle: tight with discipline, ready to charge into what could be death, or worse—hideous mutilation. This was guilty and tainted men afraid of exposure and its shame. This was animals unexpectedly and at the last moment robbed of their prey, the feeding of their primal hungers.
She glanced at the other police, at Phillips's guards in the room, then caught Rathbone's eye. She saw the desperate revulsion in him and something more: a deep and tearing pain. Beside him Sullivan was shaking, his eyes darting one way, then the other. His hands clenched, then unclenched as if his fingers sought something to grip.
It was Sutton who sensed the danger. “Get on with it!” he hissed at Monk.
“I don't want to join you exactly,” Monk answered Phillips. “I'd like some of your guests to join us, just to clear the way a bit.”
Phillips shook his head slowly, the smile still fixed on his lips, his eyes dead as stone. “I don't think any of ‘em would care to go with yer. An’ as yer can see, they're gentlemen as yer can't push around like they was nob'dy.” He was motionless, not moving his hands, or his gaze from Monk's face, but several of the men seemed to be waiting for some signal from him. Did his men have knives? Easier to use in this enclosed space, less likely to injure your own.
“Yer already made a fool o’ yerself once,” Phillips continued. “Yer can't do that again an’ ‘ope ter keep yer job, Mr. Monk. Not as I minds if yer don't! Ye're too stupid ter be a real bother ter me, but I wouldn't care if yer went. ‘Oo'ever comes after yer won't be no better neither, just like Durban wasn't.” His voice was softer, and still he did not move his hands. “The river'll go on, an’ men wi’ ‘ungers they can't feed wi'out me, or someone like me. We're like the tide, Mr. Monk; only a fool stands in our way. Get yerself drownded.” He relished the word on his tongue. The tension was slipping out of him now. The years of self-discipline were winning. He was in control again; the moment of fear had passed.
Monk had to balance Phillips's likely impulses either to panic and bolt for freedom, or to marshal his returning confidence and attack the police. Neither would help find Scuff. The one advantage he had was that Phillips did not want violence either; it would be bad for business. His clients wanted imaginary danger, not the reality. They sought sexual release, bloodshed, but not their own.
He made his decision. “Jericho Phillips, I am arresting you for the murder of the boy known as Scuff.” He held the gun so that it was clearly visible now, pointed at Phillips's chest. “And Mr. Orme is going to arrest Sir John Wilberforce there.” He named the only other guest whose face he recognized.
Wilberforce burst into protest, his cheeks scarlet, streaming with sweat. Orme, his back to the bulkhead, raised his gun. The light gleamed on the barrel, and Wilberforce abruptly fell silent.
It was Phillips who spoke, shaking his head slowly from side to side. “Makin’ a fool o’ yerself again, Mr. Monk. I dunno where your boy is, an’ I dint kill no one. We been through all o’ that, as ‘is Lordship Sullivan'll ‘ere tell yer, an’ Sir Oliver an’ all. Yer jus’ don't learn, do yer!” He turned to Wilberforce, the sneer broadening on his face, his contempt naked. “No need to get inter a sweat, sir. ‘E can't do nothin’ to yer. Think o’ ‘oo you are, an’ ‘oo ‘e is, an’ get an ‘old o’ yerself. Yer got all the cards, if yer play ‘em right.”
There was a snigger of laughter from one of the other men. They began to relax. They were the hunters again, no longer the victims.
Orme had taken off his jacket and given it to the older boy to cover his nakedness and his humiliation. Sutton did the same for the younger one.
The movement caught Hester's eye and suddenly she realized that they were all frozen here, arguing, and any torture could be happening to Scuff. There was no purpose in pleading with Phillips to tell them where he was. She slipped between two of the customers and touched Orme. “We have to look for Scuff,” she whispered. “There may be other guards, so keep your gun ready.”
“Right, ma'am.” He yielded immediately. He nodded to Sutton, who was almost beside him, Snoot now on the floor at his heels. The three of them inched towards the doorway as the quarrel between Monk and Phillips grew uglier. Monk's men were posturing themselves to take over with violence, moving to get the physical advantage, disarm those most likely to have weapons, or to be able to seize one of the children to use as a hostage. Wilberforce was drawn in. Sullivan swayed from one side to the other, his face dark, congested with a desperate hatred like a trapped creature between its tormentors.
Monk would strike soon, and then the fighting would be swift and hard.
Hester was afraid for him, and for Rathbone as well. She had seen a horror in his eyes far beyond the cruelty or coarseness of the scene. He was struggling with some decision of his own that she did not yet recognize. She imagined that it could be a kind of guilt. Now at last he was seeing the reality of what he had defended, not the theory, the high words of the law. Perhaps some time she would even apologize to him for the harsher things she had said. This was not his world; he might really not have understood.
Now all that mattered was to find Scuff. She dared not let her mind even touch on the chance that he was not here, but held captive locked in some room on shore, or even dead already. That would be almost like being dead herself.
She followed Sutton through the doorway and found herself instantly in a passage so narrow the slightest loss of balance bumped her shoulders into the wo
oden walls. Sutton had already turned left towards the bow of the boat. Snoot was almost under his feet, but as always not making the slightest sound except for the faint scrape of his claws on the damp wood of the floor. The smell of bilges and the mustiness of wet rot were stronger as they went forward. Sutton turned abruptly left again and scrambled down a steep flight of steps. He reached for the dog, but Snoot slithered down, fell the last short way, and was on his feet again in an instant.
Here the ceiling was low, and Hester had to bend to avoid cracking her skull on the crossbeams. Sutton half-crouched as well. The smell was stronger here, and the dog's hackles were raised, his small body shivering and bristling in awareness of something deeply wrong.
Hester could feel her breath tight in her chest and the sweat running down her back inside her clothes.
There was a row of doors.
Sutton tried the first one. It was locked. He lifted his leg and kicked it hard with the flat of his foot. It cracked but did not give. Snoot was growling high and softly in the back of his throat. His sensitive nose picked up the odor of fear.
Sutton kicked again, and this time it gave way. It crashed open to reveal a small room, little more than a cupboard, in which cowered three small boys dressed in rags, their eyes wide with terror. They were comparatively clean, but the arms and legs poking out of their clothes were thin and as pale as splintered matchwood.
Hester almost choked with hope, and then despair.
“We'll come back for you,” Sutton told them.
Hester was not sure whether that was a promise or a threat to them. Perhaps their choice lay between Phillips and starvation. But she must find Scuff; everything else would have to wait.
Sutton forced open another door to a room with more boys. He found a third, and then a fourth that was right at the very stern, empty. Scuff was nowhere.
Hester could feel her throat tighten and the tears sting her eyes. She was furious with herself. There was no time for this. He had to be somewhere. She must think! What would Phillips do? He was clever and cunning, and he knew Monk, as it was his business to know his enemies. He found, stole, or created the right weapon against each of them.
Snoot was quivering. He darted forward and started to run round in tight little circles, nose to the floor.
“C'mon, boy,” Sutton said gently. “Don't matter about rats now. Leave ‘em alone.”
Snoot ignored him, scratching at the floor near the joints in the boards.
“Don't matter about rats,” Sutton repeated, his voice tight with grief.
Snoot started to dig, scraping his claws along the joints.
“Snoot!” Sutton reached for the dog's collar.
There was a faint scratching sound beneath.
Snoot barked.
Sutton grasped his collar but the dog was excited, and he squirmed out of Sutton's grasp, yelping.
Sutton bent forward and Hester was right behind him. Looking more closely at the floor, she saw that the lines of the boards were not quite even.
“It's a trapdoor!” she said, hardly daring to believe it.
“To the bilges. Mind your hands, there'll be rats. Always is,” Sutton warned her, his voice breaking with tension. He reached for the knife at his belt, flicked open the blade, and used it as a handle to ease the trap open and pull it up.
Below them Scuffs ashen face looked up, eyes wide with terror, skin bruised and smeared with blood and filth.
Hester forgot all the decorum she had promised herself and reached down to pull him up and hold him so tightly in her arms she might easily have hurt him. She pressed her face into his neck, ignoring the stench of rot on his skin and hair and clothes, thinking only that she had him at last, and he was alive.
He clung to her, shuddering uncontrollably, sobs racking his thin chest.
It was Sutton's voice that brought her back to the present, and the danger she had momentarily forgotten.
“There's rats down ‘ere all right,” he said quietly. “It's straight to the bilges, an’ there's been another boy down ‘ere, poor little thing, but there in't much left of ‘im now, just bones an’ a bit o’ flesh. Don't look, Miss ‘Ester. Take the boy out of ‘ere. Enough to drive ‘im out of ‘is ‘ead, stuffed in ‘ere with rats and the ‘alf-rotted corpse of another child. I'll tell you this, if Mr. Monk don't get that son of the devil ‘anged this time, I'll do it with me own ‘ands …” His voice trailed off, suffocated by emotion.
Reluctantly Hester let go of Scuff, but he couldn't let go of her. He whispered softly, just a little cry, and fastened on to her more tightly. She would have had to break his fingers to loosen his hold. She staggered to the door, arms around him, keeping her head low beneath the boarded ceiling, and met Orme at the top of the steps, his face shining with relief.
“I'll tell Mr. Monk,” he said simply, swiveling to go back up again. “I'll … I'll tell ‘im.” He stood still for a moment, as if imprinting the scene on his eyes, then grinning even more widely he swung around and made his way rapidly back to the main saloon.
Hester lost count of how long she sat on the floor cradling Scuff in her arms before Monk came down, just to look at the boy for himself. The other boys explained that the corpse below the trapdoor was that of Reilly, the other missing boy who had tried to rebel. He had been almost old enough to sell to one of the ships leaving London, but he had tried to rescue some of the younger boys and had been locked in the bilges for his rebellion, as an example. He could be identified by the small charm around what was left of his neck.
“We can hang Phillips for that,” Rathbone said hoarsely, his eyes dark with horror and that terrible grief she had seen in him before.
“Are you sure?” she asked. “Really sure, Oliver? Please don't promise something you only believe. I don't want comforting. I need the truth.”
“It's the truth,” he replied.
At last she let go of Scuff and reached out to touch Rathbone's arm, very gently. Even though her hand was cold and filthy, warmth shot between them like the force of life, and passion, and gentleness.
“Then what is the truth?” she asked.
He did not evade her. “You asked me before who it was that paid me to defend Phillips,” he replied. “I thought I could not tell you, but now I know it was also he who set Phillips up in business in the beginning, knowing the weakness of men like Sullivan, and feeding it until it became consuming.”
She waited, understanding something of his horror, imagining his guilt.
“Yes, I know.” His voice was so low she could barely hear it.
Margaret's father! No, she was wrong, she had barely touched the magnitude of the horror he felt. This drowned anything else she had conceived of. It touched the very core of his own life. She struggled for words, but what could she say? She tightened her hand on his and lifted it very slowly to her cheek, then let it go. She rose and carried Scuff past him up into the light of the passage outside the saloon, leaving Rathbone by himself.
The big room was nearly empty. Monk was standing in the center with Orme. The rest of the police were gone, as were the other clients. Monk looked pale and unhappy. There was a bruise already darkening on his cheek.
“What's happened?” Hester demanded, surprised. But there was no fear in her. She had Scuff by the hand; he was standing up now, but pressed hard against her side.
“Most of them are under arrest,” he answered.
She felt a chill. “Most?”
“I'm sorry.” His voice was tight with pain, and guilt. “In the dark and the fighting, the men we left upstairs got drawn in. Sullivan betrayed us and got Phillips away. I should have watched him and seen it coming. We'll get him back, and when we do no one will help him escape the rope this time.”
She nodded, not wanting to blame him, and too near tears to speak. She felt as if some enormous weight had all but crushed her. The injustice of it was monstrous. They had tried so hard. Even as she fought for breath she knew her disappointment was childish. No
one had ever promised justice, not quickly, or that she would see it happen. They had Scuff back, alive. He might have nightmares for years, but they would look after him. She was never going to let him be alone or cold or hungry again.
She shook her head, blinking hard. “In time,” she said a little stumblingly “We've got Scuff, and you've proved what Phillips is. No one will doubt you, or Durban, or the River Police now.”
He tried to smile, then turned away. No one mentioned Sullivan, or what might happen to him, what he might testify to, beyond tonight. What was there that they could prove against him, if he accused them, as Phillips had suggested?
It was well past midnight now, and all Phillips's men were either under arrest or waiting under guard for more boats to come and collect them. There were boys frightened, humiliated, and in need of care. They were all half-starved; many had bruises on their bodies, and some had bleeding and suppurating burns.
The police were busy with the arrests.
Rathbone questioned the boys gently, drawing out detail after hideous detail. He persisted, writing everything down in a little notebook from his pocket.
Meanwhile, Sutton rummaged for all the food he could find. Most of it was delicacies meant for the jaded palates of gentlemen, not the empty stomachs of children, but he made something better of it than Hester could have.
She did the best she could to treat the boys’ hurts with cold water, salt, and good shirts and underwear torn up to make bandages. For once it was a disadvantage not to have been wearing petticoats. As soon as there were boats available she would get them to the clinic in Portpool Lane and do all this better. For now just care and gentleness helped, and the knowledge that they were on the brink of freedom. She did not stop to think how much better it would be if she could tell them that Phillips was on his way to prison, and would soon be dead.
Monk climbed the steps on to the deck as the pale, cold fingers of light crept across the water. The high tide was past and beginning to drop again. The outlines of the warehouses and cranes were sharp black against the sky. Even as he watched, the darkness receded and he saw the stakes of Execution Dock tracking the shining surface of the river. It was not until he looked more closely that he realized there were bodies there, just tipping above the tide.
