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“I don’t understand. If it was bad, surely that was all the more reason to do something, warn people, stay together … anything …”
She shook her head, her fingers never losing their rhythm.
“Yer gets beat, yer tell people. It in’t personal. Yer gets raped bad, it’s different.”
“How do you know?”
“I know everything.” There was satisfaction in her voice. Then suddenly it hardened and her eyes became cruel. “Yer get them bastards! Give ’em ter us an’ we’ll draw an’ quarter ’em, like they did in the old days. Me gran’fer told me abaht it. Yer string ’em up, or by ’ell’s door, we will!”
“Can I speak to the women who were raped?”
“Can yer wot?” she said incredulously.
“Can I speak to the women?” he repeated.
She swore under her breath.
“I need to ask them about the men. I have to be sure it was the same ones. They might remember something—a face, a voice, even a name, the feel of fabric, anything.”
“It were the same men,” she said with absolute certainty. “Three of ’em. One tall, one ’eavier, an’ one on the skinny side.”
He tried to keep the sense of victory out of his voice. “What age were they?”
“Age? I dunno. Don’t yer know?”
“I believe so. When were these attacks?”
“Wot?”
“Before or after the murder in Water Lane?”
She looked at him with her head a trifle to one side, like a withered old sparrow.
&nb
sp; “Afore, o’ course. In’t bin nuffink since. Wouldn’t, would there now?”
“No, I think not.”
“That were ’im, then, wot got killed?” she said with satisfaction.
“One of them.” He did not bother to correct her error. “I want the other two.”
She grinned toothlessly. “You an’ a few others.”
“Where did they happen, exactly? I need to know. I need to speak to people who might have seen them coming or going, people in the street, traders, beggars, especially cabbies who might have brought them or taken them away afterwards.”
“Wot fer?” She was genuinely puzzled; it was plain in her face. “Yer know ’oo it were, don’t yer?”
“I think so, but I need to prove it.…”
“Wot fer?” she said again. “If yer think as the law’ll take any notice, yer daft. An’ yer in’t daft, not yer worst enemy’d say that o’ yer. Other things mebbe.”
“Do you want them caught?” he asked. “You imagine after what happened to one of them, they’ll come back to St. Giles, for you to knife them and dump them on some midden? It’ll be Limehouse, or the Devil’s Acre, or Bluegate Fields next time. If we want justice, it will have to be in their territory, and that means with better weapons than yours. It means evidence, proof, not for the law, which, as you say, doesn’t care, but for society, which does.”
“Abaht prostitutes gettin’ raped or beat?” she said, her voice cracking high with disbelief. “Yer’ve lorst your wits, Monk. It’s finally got to yer.”
“Society ladies know their men use prostitutes, Minnie,” he explained patiently. “They don’t like to think other people know it. They certainly don’t like to marry their daughters to young men who frequent places like St. Giles to pick up stray women, who could have diseases, and who practice violence against women, extreme violence. What society knows and what it acknowledges can be very different. There are things which privately can be overlooked but publicly are never forgiven or forgotten.” He looked at her wrinkled face. “You have loyalties to your own. You understand that. You don’t betray the tribe with someone else. Neither do they. These young men have let the side down; they will not be forgiven for that.”
