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They spent a miserable afternoon well into the early evening moving from one to another of Squeaky's contacts in his previous life as a brothel owner.
They continued the next day, going deeper into the network of alleys in Limehouse, Shadwell, and the Isle of Dogs on the north bank of the river, and Rotherhithe and Deptford on the south. Hester felt as if she had walked as far as from London to York circling the same narrow byways crowded with doss-houses, taverns, pawnshops, brothels, and all the multitudinous traders associated with the river.
Squeaky was very careful, even secretive about their search, but his whole manner changed when it was time to bargain. The casual, rather inconspicuous air vanished, and he became subtly menacing. There was a stillness about him, a gentleness to his voice that contrasted with the noise and bustle around him.
“I think yer know better than that, Mr. Kelp,” he said in almost a whisper. They were standing in what was ostensibly a tobacconist's shop, darkly wood paneled, one small window, its glass ringed like the base of a bottle. The lamps were lit or they would not have been able to see the wares laid out, although the pungent aroma was powerful enough to drift out into the alley and tempt people, even above the stench of rotting wood and human waste.
Kelp opened his mouth to deny it, and reconsidered. There was something about Squeaky's motionless figure in its faded, striped trousers and ancient frock coat, his stringy hair and lantern face that frightened him. It was as if Squeaky somehow knew himself to be invulnerable, in spite of not apparently having any weapon, and no one with him but one rather slightly built woman. It was inexplicable, and anything he could not understand alarmed Mr. Kelp.
He swallowed. “Well …” he prevaricated. “I heard things, o’ course, if that's wot you want, like?”
Squeaky nodded slowly. “That's wot I want, Mr. Kelp, things you've ‘eard, accurate things, things you believe yerself An’ yer would be very wise indeed not ter tell anybody else that I ‘ave asked, an’ that yer ‘ave been good enough ter ‘elp me. There are those with long an’ careful ears who would not be pleased. Let us leave them in their ignorance, shall we?”
Kelp shuddered. “Oh, yes, Mr. Robinson, sir. Very definitely.” He did not even glance at Hester standing a little behind Squeaky. She was watching with growing surprise. This was a side of Squeaky she had not imagined, and her own blindness to its possibility was disturbing. She had grown accustomed to his compliance in the clinic, and forgotten the man he used to be. In fact, she had never really known more than the superficial fact that he had owned the brothel that had occupied the Portpo
ol Lane houses.
Squeaky was approximately in his fifties, but she had thought of him as old, because he sat in a bent, hunched position, and his hair was long and gray, hanging thinly down to his collar. He had complained vociferously about being cheated and abused, as if he were a man of peaceful habits wrongfully treated. The man she saw here in the tobacconists’ was nothing like that. Kelp was afraid of him. She could see it in his face, even smell it in the air. She felt a shiver of doubt at her own foolhardiness, and forced it from her mind with some difficulty.
Kelp swallowed what appeared to be a lump in his throat, and proceeded to tell Squeaky everything he knew about the procuring of boys for men like Jericho Phillips. It was sad and very ugly, full of human failure and the opportunism of the greedy who preyed on the weak.
It also included Durban catching boys, some no more than five or six years old, stealing food and small articles to sell. He had seldom charged them, and the assumption was that he had bought them from their parents in order to sell them to Phillips, or others like him. There was no proof, one way or the other, but too many of them had not been seen again in the usual places, nor was anyone saying where they had gone, or with whom.
“I'm sorry,” Squeaky said as towards evening they walked along the path close to the river on the Isle of Dogs. They were making for All Saints Stairs to catch a ferry across to the pier on the south side, and then a bus to Rotherhithe Street, from which it was a short walk to Paradise Place. Squeaky had insisted on seeing her home, even though she frequently rode the bus or a cab by herself. “Looks as if yer Durban could ‘a been bent as a pig's tail,” he added.
She found it difficult to speak. What was she going to tell Monk? She needed to know before he did, so that she could do something to soften the blow. But what? If this were true, it was worse than she had imagined. “I know,” she said huskily.
“D'yer want ter keep on?” he asked.
“Yes, of course I do!”
“That's wot I thought, but I gotter ask.” He glanced at her, then away again. “It could get worse.”
“I know that too.”
“Even good men ‘ave got their weaknesses,” he said. “An’ women too, I s'pose. I reckon yers is believin’ people. It's not a bad one ter ‘ave, mind.”
“Am I supposed to be grateful for that?”
“No. I reckon it ‘urts yer. But if yer knew everythin’ yer'd be too cocky ter be nice.”
“Not much chance of that,” she replied, but she did smile, faintly, even though he could not see it in the fitful street lighting.
They made their way down towards the top of the All Saints Stairs. Just before they reached them, a figure stepped out of the shadows of a crane, and the light from the street lamp showed his face like a yellow mask, wide, thin mouth leering. Jericho Phillips. He looked at Hester, ignoring Squeaky.
“I know you've been looking for Reilly, Miss. Yer don't want ter do that.”
Squeaky was taken aback, but he hid it quickly. “You threatenin’ ‘er, Mr. Phillips?” he asked with exaggerated politeness.
“Spot of advice,” Phillips replied. “Friendly, as it were. Reckon I owe ‘er a lot.” He smiled, showing his teeth. “Might be swingin’ on a gibbet by me neck, if it weren't for ‘er evidence at me trial.” He laughed softly, his eyes dead as stones. “Yer would find out a lot o’ things yer'd be ‘appier not knowin’, seein’ as you admired Mr. Durban so much. Yer find Reilly, poor boy, an’ you'll like as not find out what ‘appened to ‘im. An’ believe me, Miss, yer won't like that at all.”
There was a ferry making its way across the oily black surface of the water, oars dipping in and out rhythmically.
“Brave boy, Reilly,” Phillips added. “Foolish, mind. Trusted those ‘e shouldn't ‘ave, like River Police. Found out more'n it's good fer a boy like ‘im ter know.”
“So you killed him, just as you killed Fig,” Hester said bitterly.
“No reason to, Miss,” Phillips told her. “It weren't me Reilly were goin’ ter tell on. I treat my boys very well. Stupid not to. Ask ‘em! You won't find one as'll speak against me. I don't beat ‘em, don't forget me-self an’ ‘oller and scream at ‘em. I know me business, an’ I look after it proper.”
