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“I’m obliged,” he said with a nod. “We’ll get ’im this time. Can’t say as we’ll make it stick, but we’ll scare the ’ell out of ’im.”
“I’m coming with you,” Monk stated.
The sergeant sucked in his breath, then changed his mind. Perhaps an extra man would be useful, especially one with such a marked interest in succes
s. And also, perhaps Monk deserved it.
“Right y’are then,” he agreed. “We’ll be off in”—he consulted his pocket watch, a handsome silver piece of considerable size—“fifteen minutes.”
Half an hour later Monk was walking down Wharf Road beside a Constable Benyon, a lean young man with an eager face and a long, straight nose. The wind, smelling of smoke, damp and sewage, blew in their faces. They had begun on the east side of the Isle of Dogs, where the Greenwich Reach moves towards the Blackwall Reach, with instructions to follow the river downstream on the north shore. Two others were taking Limehouse, two more Greenwich and the south shore. The sergeant himself was coordinating their efforts from a hansom, moving from east to west. A further constable was detailed to cross the river and meet the team from Greenwich at the Crown and Sceptre Tavern at two o’clock, unless they were hot on the trail, in which case a message would be left.
“Reckon ’e’ll be downriver, meself,” Benyon said thoughtfully. “More like Blackwall, or the East India Docks. Else ’e’ll be on t’other side. I’d a’ taken ter the marshes, if I’d a bin ’im.”
“He doesn’t think we can touch him,” Monk replied, hunching his shoulders against the chill coming up off the water. “Told me himself we’d never find the body.”
“Mebbe we won’t need one,” Benyon said, willing himself to believe it.
They turned off Barque Street onto Manchester Road, passing a group of dockers going down towards the ferry. On the corner a one-legged sailor was selling matches. A running patterer jogged towards Ship Street corner, turned and disappeared.
“Wastin’ our time ’ere.” Benyon pulled a face. “I’ll ask at the Cubitt Town pier. That’s about the best place ter start.”
They walked in silence past the Rice Mill and the Seysall Asphalt Company and made an acute right down to the pier. The cry of the gulls above the water came clearly over the rattle of wheels and the shouts of dockers handling bales of goods, bargees calling to one another, and the endless hiss and slap of the tide.
Monk hung back, not to intrude into Benyon’s questioning. This was his area and he knew the people and what to say, what to avoid.
Benyon came back after several minutes.
“Not bin ’ere terday,” he said, as if it proved his point.
Monk was not surprised. He nodded, and together they proceeded along Manchester Road past the Millwall Wharf, Plough Wharf, as far as Davis Street, then turned right and then left into Samuda Street. They stopped for a pint of ale at the Folly Tavern, and there at last heard news of Caleb Stone. No one admitted to having seen him at any specific time lately, but one little rat of a man with a long nose and a walleye followed them out and discreetly, at a price, told Benyon that Caleb had a friend in a tenement house on Quixley Street, off the East India Dock Wall Road, about three quarters of a mile away.
Benyon passed over half a crown and the man almost immediately disappeared across the alley and into the Samuda Yard with its piles of timber.
“Is that worth anything?” Monk asked dubiously.
“Oh yeah,” Benyon replied with conviction. “Sammy ’as one or two ’ostages ter fortune. ’E won’t lie ter me. We’d better find the sergeant. This’ll need at least ’alf a dozen of us. If you’d seen Quixley Street yer’d not doubt that.”
It took them over an hour and a half to find the pair from Limehouse and for all five of them, including the sergeant, to get to Quixley Street, which was a narrow through way hardly a hundred yards long backing into the Great Northern Railway goods depot, just short of the first East India Dock. Two men were sent to Harrap Street at the back, and Benyon to Scamber Street at the side. The sergeant took Monk in at the front.
It was a large building, four stories high with narrow, dirty windows, several of them cracked or broken. The dark brick was stained with damp and soot but only one of the tall chimney stacks smoked, dribbling a fine gray-black trail into the cold air.
Monk felt a shiver of excitement, in spite of the filth and misery of the place. If Caleb Stone really was here, within a matter of minutes they would have him. He wanted to see him face-to-face, to watch those extraordinary green eyes when he knew he was beaten.
There was a man lying in the doorway, either drunk or asleep. His face had several days’ growth of beard on it, and he breathed with difficulty. The sergeant stepped over him and Monk followed behind.
Inside the air smelled of mold and unemptied slops. The sergeant pushed open the door of the first room. Inside three women sat unraveling ropes. Their fingers were callused and swollen, some red with sores. Half a dozen children in various stages of undress played on the floor. A girl of about five was unpicking the stitching on a length of cloth which presumably had been a garment a short while ago. The window was boarded up. One candle relieved the shadows. It was bitterly cold. Obviously Caleb Stone was not here.
The next room was similarly occupied.
Monk glanced at the sergeant, but the grim look on his face silenced his doubts.
The third and fourth rooms were no more help. They climbed the rickety stairs, testing each stone before allowing their full weight on it. The steps rocked alarmingly, and the sergeant swore under his breath.
The first room on the next floor held two men, both in drunken sleep, but neither was Caleb Stone. The second room was occupied by a prostitute and a bargee, who hurled lurid abuse at them as they withdrew. An old man lay dying in the third, a woman keening gently beside him, rocking back and forth.
The third floor up was crammed with women sewing shirts, their heads bent, eyes straining to see, fingers flying with needle, thread weaving in and out. A man with pince-nez glasses balanced on his nose glared at the sergeant and hissed his irritation, wagging his finger like a schoolmistress. Monk longed to hit him for his meticulous cruelty, but he knew it would have done no good. One piece of paltry violence would not relieve anyone’s poverty. And he was after Caleb Stone, not one wretched sweatshop profiteer.
The first room on the top floor up was occupied by a one-armed man, carefully measuring powder into a scale. In the next room three men played cards. One of them had thin gray hair and a stomach which bulged out over his trousers. The second was bald and had a red mustache. The third was Caleb Stone.
