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“Get a grip on yourself, man!” Rathbone said between his teeth. “I'm not going to let this pass. Those boys are beaten and sodomized, and the ones who rebel are tortured and murdered. You and I have both connived to let Phillips get away with it, and you and I are going to put that right!”
“You can't,” Sullivan said weakly “No one can stop him. You've seen that. You were used just as much as I was. If you turn against him now, he'll say you were a customer, and defended him to save yourself That your payment was blackmail.” Hope flickered on his face, pasty and sheened with sweat. He took several steps backwards, but there was nowhere to escape to.
Rathbone followed him, even further away from the crowd. People assumed they were speaking confidentially and left them alone. The crowd swirled around them and away, oblivious.
“How in God's name did this happen to you?” Rathbone demanded. “Sit down, before you fall over and make a complete fool of yourself.”
Sullivan's eyes widened as if the idea appealed to him. Insensibility! There was a way to get out after all.
“Don't entertain it!” Rathbone snapped. “People will think you are drunk. And it will only delay what is inevitable. If you could control yourself, if you could stop, surely to God in heaven, you would have?”
Sullivan shut his eyes to block out the sight of Rathbone's face. “Of course I would have, damn you! It all began … in innocence, before it became an addiction.”
“Really?” Rathbone said icily.
Sullivan's eyes flew open. “I only wanted … excitement! You can't imagine how … bored I was. The same thing, night after night. No thrill, no excitement. I felt half alive. The great appetites eluded me. Passion, danger, romance was passing me by. Nothing touched me! It was all served up on a plate, empty, without … without meaning. I didn't have to work for anything. I ate and left as hungry as I came.”
“I presume you are referring to sexual appetite?”
“I'm referring to life, you smug bastard!” Sullivan hissed. “Then one day I did something dangerous. I don't give a damn about relations with other men. That disgusts me, except that it's illegal.” His eyes suddenly shone. “Have you ever had the singeing in your veins, the pounding inside you, the taste of danger, terror, and then release, and known you are totally alive at last? No, of course you haven't! Look at you! You're desiccated, fossilized before you're fifty. You'll die and be buried without ever having really been alive.”
A world he had never thought of opened in front of Rathbone, a craving for danger and escape, for wilder and wilder risks.
“And do you feel alive now?” he asked softly. “Helpless to control your own appetites, even when they are on the brink of ruining you? You pay money to a creature like Jericho Phillips, and he tells you what to do, and what not to, and you think that is power? Hunger governs your body, and fear paralyzes your intellect. You have no more power than the children you abuse. You just don't have their excuses.”
For an instant Sullivan saw himself as Rathbone did, and his eyes filled with terror. Rathbone could almost have been sorry for him, were it not for his complete disregard for the other victims of his obsession.
“So you went to Ballinger to find a lawyer who could get Phillips off,” he concluded.
“Of course. Wouldn't you have?” Sullivan asked.
“Because he's my father-in-law, and I was Monk's friend, and knew him well enough to use the weaknesses that were the other side of his strengths.”
“I'm not a fool!” Sullivan said waspishly.
“Yes, you are,” Rathbone told him. “A total fool. Now you have not only Phillips blackmailing you, you have me as well. And the payment I shall require is the destruction of Phillips. That will silence me forever on this issue, and obviously it will get rid of Phillips, on the end of a rope, with luck.”
Sullivan said nothing. His face was sweating, and there was no color in his skin at all.
“I won't ruin you now,” Rathbone said with disgust. “I need to use you.” Then he turned and walked away.
In the morning Rathbone sent a mess
age to the Wapping Station of the River Police, asking Monk to call on him as soon as he was able to. There was no point in going to look for Monk, who could have been anywhere from London Bridge to Greenwich, or even beyond.
Monk arrived before ten. He was immaculate, as usual, freshly shaved and with a neatly pressed white shirt under his uniform jacket. Rathbone was mildly amused, but too sick inside to smile. This was the Monk he knew, dressed with the careless grace of a man who loved clothes and knew the value of self-respect. And yet there was no lift in his step, and there were shadows of exhaustion around his eyes. He stood in the middle of the office, waiting for Rathbone to speak.
Rathbone was horribly familiar with the charges against the River Police in general, and Durban and Monk in particular. He had resented it before. Since last night it woke an anger in him that he could hardly contain.
He wanted the rift between Monk and himself healed, but he avoided words; they only redefined the wound.
Monk was waiting. Rathbone had sent for him, so he must speak first.
“The situation is worse than I thought,” he began. He felt foolish for not having seen it from the start. “Phillips is blackmailing his clients, and God only knows who they are.”
“I imagine the devil knows too,” Monk said drily. “I assume you didn't send for me to tell me that. You can't have imagined that I was unaware. I'm threatened myself, because I've taken in a mudlark, largely for his protection. Phillips is suggesting that I am his partner in procuring.”
Rathbone felt the heat of guilt in his face. “I know where the money came from that paid me,” he said. “I will donate it to charity, anonymously, I think. I am not proud of the way I obtained the information.”
