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MacPherson pushed out his lip, his eyes hot and angry. “No protection,” he said aloud. “Easy pickings. If we knew who it was, and they come back to St. Giles, it’ll be their last trip. They’ll not go home again, an’ that’s a promise.”
“You’ll not be the first in the line,” Monk said dryly. “But we have to find them before we can do anything about it.”
MacPherson looked at him with a bleak smile, showing his teeth. “I know you, Monk. Ye may be a hard bastard, but ye’re far too fly to provoke a murder that can be traced back to ye. Ye’ll no tell the likes o’ me what ye find.”
Monk smiled back at him, although it was the last thing he felt like. Every other time he spoke, MacPherson was adding new darkness to Monk’s knowledge of himself. Had he really been a man who had led others to believe he could countenance a murder, any murder, so long as it could not be traced to him? Could it conceivably be true?
“I have no intention of allowing you, or Vida Hopgood, to contrive your own revenge for the attacks,” he said aloud icily. “If the law won’t do it, then there are other ways. These men are not clerks or petty tradesmen with little to lose. They are men of wealth and social position. To ruin them would be far more effective. It would be slower, more painful, and it would be perfectly legal.”
MacPherson stared at him.
“Let their own punish them,” Monk went on dryly. “They are very good at it indeed … believe me. They have refined it to an art.”
MacPherson pulled a face. “Ye have no’ changed, Monk. I should no’ have underestimated ye. Ye’re an evil devil. I could no’ cross ye. I tried to warn Runcorn agin ye, but he was too blind to see it. I’d tell him now to watch his back for getting rid o’ ye from the force, but it would no’ do any good. Ye’ll bide your time, and get him one way or another.”
Monk felt cold. Hard as he was, MacPherson thought Monk harder, more ruthless. He felt Runcorn the victim. He did not have the whole story. He did not know Runcorn’s social ambitions, his moral vacillation when a decision jeopardized his own career, or how he trimmed and evaded in order to please those in power … of any sort. He did not know his small-mindedness, the poverty of his imagination, his sheer cowardice, his meanness of spirit!
But then Monk himself did not know the whole story either.
And the coldest thought of all, which penetrated even into his bones, was whether Monk was responsible for what Runcorn had become. Was it something Monk had done in the past which had warped Runcorn’s soul and made him what he was now?
He did not want to know, but perhaps he had to. Imagination would torment him until he did. For now, perhaps it would be useful to allow MacPherson to retain his image of Monk as ruthless, never forgetting a grudge.
“Who do I go to?” he said aloud. “Who knows what’s going on in St. Giles?”
MacPherson thought for a moment or two.
“Willie Snaith, for one,” he said finally. “And old Bertha for another. But they’ll no’ speak to ye unless someone takes ye and vouches for ye.”
“So I assumed,” Monk replied. “Come with me.”
“Me?” MacPherson looked indignant. “Walk out on my business? And who’s to care for this place if I go attendin’ to your affairs for ye?”
Monk took one of Vida’s guineas out of his pocket and put it on the table.
MacPherson grunted. “Ye are desperate,” he said dryly. “Why? What’s it to you if a few miserable women are raped or beaten? Don’t tell me any of them mean something to you.” He watched Monk’s face closely. “There must be more. These bastards cross you somehow? Is that it? Or is it still to do with Runcorn and the po-liss? Trying to show them up, are ye?”
“I’ve already told you,” Monk said waspishly. “It’s not a police case.”
“Ye’re right,” MacPherson conceded. “It couldn’t be. Not one for putting himself out on a limb, Runcorn. Always safe, always careful. Not like you.” He laughed abruptly, then rose to his feet. “All right, then. Come on, and I’ll take you to see Willie.”
Monk followed immediate
ly.
Outside, both dressed again in heavy overcoats, MacPherson led the way deeper into St. Giles and the old area that had earlier in the century been known as the Holy Land. He did not go by streets and alleys as Evan had done, but through passages sometimes no more than a yard wide. The darkness was sometimes impenetrable. It was wet underfoot. There was a constant sound of dripping water from eaves and gutterings, the rattle and scratch of rodent feet, the creak of rotting timbers. Several times MacPherson stopped and Monk, who could not see him, continued moving and bumped into him.
Eventually they emerged into a yard with a single yellow gas lamp and the light seemed brilliant by comparison. The outlines of timber frames stood sharp and black, brick and plaster work reflecting the glow. The wet cobbles shone.
MacPherson glanced behind him once to make sure Monk was still there, then went across and down a flight of stone steps into a cellar where one tallow candle smoked on a holder made of half an old bottle, but it showed the entrance to a tunnel and MacPherson went in without hesitation.
Monk followed. He had a sharp memory of stomach-knotting, skin-prickling danger, of sudden pain and then oblivion. He knew what it was. It came from the past he dreaded, when he and Runcorn had followed wanted men into areas just like this. Then there had been comradeship between them. There had never been the slightest resentment on his part, he knew that clearly. And he had gone in headfirst without a second’s doubt that Runcorn would be there to guard his back. It had been the kind of trust that had been built on experience, time and time again, of never being found wanting.
Now he was following Jamie MacPherson. He could not see him, but he could re-create in his mind exactly his broad shoulders and slight swagger as he walked, a little roll, as if in his youth he had been at sea. He had a pugilist’s agility and his fists were always ready. He looked in his middle fifties, his reddish fair hair receding.
How long ago had it been that Monk and Runcorn had worked together there? Twenty years? That would make Monk in his twenties then, young and keen, perhaps too angry still from the injustice to the man who had been his friend and mentor, too ambitious to gain the power for himself which would allow him to right the wrongs.
Hester would have told him he was arrogant, claiming for himself a position in judgment to which he had no right and no qualification. He would never admit it to her, but he winced now for the truth of it.
