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“Likely gorn off with some tart or other, stupid sod,” the cabby said dismissively. “Gorn private then, ’ave yer? Chasin’ runaway ’usbands for women as ’ave lorst ’em.” He grinned, showing gapped teeth. “Bit of a comedown for yer, in’t it—Hinspector Monk?”
“Warmer than driving a cab!” Monk snapped, then remembered he needed the man’s goodwill. The words choked in his throat to be civil. “Sometimes,” he added between clenched jaws.
“Well now, Mr. Monk.” The cabby sniffed and wiped his nose on his sleeve, looking at Monk maliciously. “If yer asks me, polite like, I might tell yer w’ere I took ’im. Mind I want me cup of char as well, an’ me drop o’ brandy in it. Don’t want no cheap gin. An’ I can tell the diff’rence, so don’t go fobbin’ me orff.”
“How shall I know if you’re telling me the truth?” Monk asked bluntly.
“Yer won’t,” the cabby said with satisfaction. “ ’Ceptin’ I don’t suppose as yer’ve changed all that. Don’t want yer on my tail fer ever more. Right narsty yer can be if’n yer crorssed, an’ no mistake. Best suits me if yer pays me fair an I tells yer fair.”
“Good.” Monk fished in his pocket and brought out a sixpence. “Take me to where you let him off, and I’ll get your tea and brandy at the nearest pub.”
The cabby took the sixpence as earnest of his intent, bit on it automatically to test its genuineness, then slipped it into his pocket.
“Come on then,” he said cheerfully, walking towards his horse and untying the reins as he mounted the box.
Monk stepped up into the cab and took his seat. They set off at a fast walk, then a trot.
They crossed the Blackfriars Bridge, then moved steadily eastwards through the City, then Whitechapel and into Limehouse. The streets became narrower and grimier, the brick darker, the windows smaller, and the smell of midden and pigsty more pervasive. Drains overflowed into gutters, and there had obviously been no crossing sweepers or dung carts near for weeks. In Bridge Road cattle had passed on the way to the abattoir. The smell brought back sharp memories to Monk’s mind, but of emotions, not faces or events. He remembered overwhelming anger and urgency, but not the reasons for them. He could recall his heart pounding and the smell sticking in his throat. It could have been three years ago or twenty. Past time had no meaning, nothing to relate to.
“ ’Ere y’ are!” the cabby said loudly, pulling his horse to a halt and tapping on the hatch.
Monk returned his mind to the present and climbed out. They were in a narrow, dirty street running parallel to the river in an area known as Limehouse Reach. He fished in his pocket and pulled out the fare, adding it to the sixpence he had already given.
“An’ me drink,” the cabby reminded him.
Monk added another sixpence.
“Ta,” the cabby said cheerfully. “Anyfink else as I can do for yer?”
“Ever picked up the same man before?” Monk asked.
“Couple o’ times. Why?”
“Where did you take him?”
“Once ’ere, once up west. Oh, an’ once ter someplace orff the Edgware Road, to an ’ouse. Reckon as maybe ’e lived there. Rum, innit? I mean, why do a proper sort o’ gent like that wanna come ’ere? In’t nuffin’ ’ere as anybody’d want. Even got the typhus less than ’alf a mile away.” He gestured with his mittened thumb eastwards. “An’ someone told me as they’d got the cholera in Whitechapel too, or mebbe it were Mile End. Or Blackwall, or summink.”
“I don’t know,” Monk replied. “It wants explaining. I don’t suppose you saw which way he went?”
The cabby grinned. “Wondered if yer’d think o’ that. Yeah, ’e went that way.” He jerked his thumb again.
“ ’Long there t’wards the Isle o’ Dogs.”
“Thank you.” Monk closed the conversation and set out along the road the cabby had indicated.
“If ’e went in there yer won’t never find ’im!” the cabby called out. “Poor sod,” he added under his breath.
Monk feared he was right, but he did not turn or alter his stride. It was going to be difficult to trace Angus, except that dressed as he was he would have stood out from the regular inhabitants, just as Monk did now. But he was unlikely to have stopped to purchase anything in the various shops that were spaced sporadically along the street. There were no newspaper vendors. People in Limehouse Reach had no spare money for such luxuries, even supposing they could read. They learned of such events that interested them by word of mouth, or from the running patterers, men whose trade was to put into endless doggerel whatever bulletin or gossip they heard and relay it in a kind of one-man musical sideshow from place to place, collecting a few coppers from appreciative listeners. Here and there billboards were posted for the few who were literate, but no one stood about selling. Even peddlers went farther west, where custom was more likely.
He went into a grocer’s shop selling tea, dried beans, flour, molasses and candles. It was dark and smelled of dust, tallow and camphor. He produced the drawing of Angus and received a blank stare of incomprehension. He also tried an apothecary, a pawnbroker, a rag and bone merchant and an ironmonger, all with similar results. They stared at Monk’s expensive clothes, his warm, well-cut overcoat and polished boots which kept out the wet, and knew he was alien. Children in layers of rags, some of them barefoot, faces gap-toothed and dirty, followed him, begging for money, alternately whistling and catcalling. He gave what pennies he had, but when he asked after Caleb Stonefield, they fell silent and ran away.
On Union Road, which sloped down towards the river with pavement so narrow he could hardly stand on it, its cobbles chipped and uneven, simply because he knew nothing else to do, he tried a cobbler who made new shoes from old.
“Have you ever seen this man, dressed in a good coat and high hat, maybe carrying an umbrella?” he asked flatly.
The cobbler, a narrow-chested little man with a wheeze, took the paper in one hand and squinted at it.
“Looks a bit like Caleb Stone ter me. And I only seen ’im a couple o’ times, an’ that were a couple too many. But it in’t a face as yer’d forget. ’Cept this gent looks sane enough, and real tidy. Dressed like a toff, yer said?”
