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Monk swallowed. “Who got to Durban?”
“Ow do I know?” Smiler asked sadly. “‘Arbormaster, magistrates, men with money and their heads in politics. Lumpers, fer all I know, judges too. Yer cut off one arm, an’ while yer lookin’ for the second one, it'll grow the first one back again. Yer'll not win. Yer'll just end up dead, like Durban. No one'll care. They'll say yer were a fool, and they'll be right.”
“They won't say I didn't try!”
Smiler pulled an exaggerated expression, curling his lips downwards. “An’ what good'll that do yer, in yer grave?”
“I'm going to see Phillips hang, I promise you,” Monk said rashly. He could feel the rage boil up inside him and see in his mind Phillips's sneering face in the dock as the verdict came in.
“Yer'd best slit ‘is throat, if yer can catch ‘im,” Smiler advised. “Yer'll not catch him fair, any more than Durban did. After ‘im like a terrier with a rat one minute, an’ the next he backed off like ‘e'd been bit ‘isself Then six months later, back after ‘im again. Then out of the blue sky, ‘ands off an’ leave ‘im alone as if ‘e were the Lord Mayor o’ the river. Durban din't call the tune, I can promise you that. An’ neither will yer, for all yer swank coat an’ yer quality boots. Yer'll end up just like ‘im, bitin yer own tail. I'll give yer ten shillings fer them boots, if yer don't ruin ‘em first?”
“So someone's protecting him,” Monk said acidly. “I'll get them too. And I'll keep my boots.”
Smiler gave a sharp bark that with him passed for laughter. “Yer don't even know ‘oo they are. An’ before yer start threatening me, like Durban did, I take bloody good care not ter know either. Offer's open on the boots.”
“Who is Mary Webber?”
“Gawd! Not yer too?” Smiler rolled his eyes. “I got no idea. I never ‘eard of ‘er till Durban came threatenin’ everyone with Gawd knows what if we didn't tell ‘im. I dunno!” His voice rose sharply aggrieved. “Get it? I dunno!” Now get out of ‘ere an’ leave me to do me business, before I set the dog on yer … by accident, like. I keep ‘im on a chain, but sometimes I think it in't too strong. Not my fault. Not that that'll ‘elp yer much.”
Monk retreated, his mind crowded with thoughts. He was quite sure Smiler would lie if it suited him, but what he had said fit in too well with the facts so far.
Durban was not the simple man that Monk had thought, and that he had wanted him to be.
He crossed the road and turned back towards Shadwell High Street.
Yet Monk could remember the man he had known vividly: his patience, his candor, the way he unquestioningly shared food and warmth, his optimism, his compassion for even the most wretched. Could it all have been a lie, even his laughter?
He shivered even though the sun was bright off the water and the air was warm. There was a sound of music in the distance from a hurdy-gurdy somewhere out of sight.
What a living hell this world was. But for boys like Fig, and perhaps Reilly, and any number of others whose names he would never know, there had been no choice, and no escape, except death.
No wonder Durban had done everything he could to catch Phillips and have him hanged, even at the cost of bending a few rules. Or that the men who had already paid so much paid even more to protect their provider and tormentor. It gave new layers to the concept of corruption.
Who had paid Oliver Rathbone to defend this man in court? And why?
Monk was on the open dock n
ow, not far from Wapping. The tide was rising, and the water lapped over the stone steps, creeping higher and higher. The smell of it was harsh, and yet he had become accustomed to it, welcomed it. This was the greatest maritime highway in the world, beautiful and terrible in all its moods. At night its poverty and dirt were hidden. Lights of ships from Africa and the Pole, China and Barbados, danced on the tides. The city, domed and towered, was black against the stars.
At dawn it would be misted, softened by silver, fast-running waters glittering. There were moments in the flare of sunset when it could have been Venice, the dome of St. Paul's above the shadows a marble palace floating on the lagoon towards the silk roads of the east.
The sea lanes of the world met here: the glory, the squalor, the heroism, and the vice of all humanity, mixed with the riches of every nation known to man.
He faced the question deliberately.
What would Monk have done were it someone he loved who faced exposure and ruin from Phillips? Would he have protected them? Belief in your ideals was one thing, but when it was a living human being who trusted you, or perhaps deepest of all, who loved and protected you in your need, that was different. Could you turn away? Was your own conscience more precious than their lives?
Did you owe loyalty to the dead? Yes, of course you did! You did not forget someone the moment the last breath left their lips.
He looked around the skyline to the north and south, and across the teeming water. This was a city of memories, built of the great men and women of the past.
Around midafternoon of the next day, Monk faced the opulent receiver known as Pearly Boy. He had been known that way for so long nobody could remember what his original name had been, but it was only since the death of the Fat Man the previous winter that he had taken over a far larger slice of business along the river, and prospered to the degree of wealth that he now possessed.
He was slender and soft-faced, and he wore his hair rather long. He always spoke quietly, with a very slight lisp, and no one had seen him, winter or summer, without his waistcoat, which was stitched with hundreds of pearl buttons that gleamed in the light. He was the last man one would expect to have a reputation for ruthlessness not only for a hard bargain, but if necessary, with a knife— pearl-handled, of course.
They were sitting in the small room behind Pearly Boy's shop in Limehouse. The shop was ostensibly to sell ships’ instruments: compasses, sextants, quadrants, chronometers, barometers, astrolabes. Set out in order on a table was a variety of dividers and parallel rules. But Pearly's main business took place in the back room, largely concerning stolen jewelry, objets d'art, paintings, carvings, and jewel-encrusted ornaments. He had already taken over most of the Fat Man's territory.
He looked at Monk blandly, but his eyes were as cold as a polar sea. “Always ‘appy to ‘elp the police,” he said. “What are you looking for, Mr. Monk? It is ‘Monk,’ isn't it? ‘Eard word, you know. Reputation.”
