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“Get up!” Rathbone whispered to him harshly. “Or I will let Monk give you to the brothel owners you've put away in the past. That death will be very slow, and very intimate, I promise you.”
Hester gasped. She saw Monk stiffen.
Sullivan staggered to his feet and swayed as his clumsiness rocked the boat and nearly plunged him over the side. Monk caught hold of him just in time.
Sullivan spoke his name, and repeated the password that identified him.
The watchman relaxed. He turned and spoke to his companion, who had come to reinforce him, just in case Monk should try to board as well. He offered his hand to Sullivan. The boat pulled close enough for Sullivan to scramble up and heave himself on to the deck just as Hester saw the shadow move behind him. A moment later first one watchman fell, and then the other. Orme, Sutton, and more River Police crowded over the deck.
Sullivan stood frozen.
Monk, Rathbone, and Sutton clambered over the gunwale. Hester picked Snoot up and passed him into Sutton's hands, then gripped Monk's outstretched arm. The next moment she was on the deck herself, leaving only one man to keep the boat.
Silently they moved over to the hatch. She saw the faint gleam of light on the barrel of a gun in Orme's hand, and realized from the way Monk held his right arm that he had one also. This could end in blood and death.
Orme bent and opened the hatch. Light flooded up, and the noise of jerky, nervous laughter with a slight edge of hysteria sharp and veering out of control, prickly with excitement. There was an odor of whisky, cigar smoke, and sweat. Hester gulped. Fear shot through her, like pain, not for herself but for Monk as he went inside and down.
He was followed immediately by Orme, then Sullivan, Rathbone, and two of the police. Two more remained on deck to impersonate the unconscious men who were now bound and gagged. Hester followed through the hatch and into a surprisingly clean and comfortable cabin. It was small, only a couple of yards across, clearly an anteroom to the main saloon, and whatever rooms were beyond that for more private entertainment. She was familiar with the geographic layout of brothels, although few were as extensive as the property at Portpool Lane.
The salon was filled with half a dozen guests, well-dressed men of varying ages. At a glance they had little in common but a fever in the eyes and a sheen of sweat on the skin. Jericho Phillips stood at the far end, next to a small rise in the floor, like a stage, on which were two boys, both naked, One was about six or seven years old, bending over on his hands and knees like an animal; the other was older, just entering puberty. The act they were performing was obvious, as was the coercion of a lit cigar smoldering in Phillips's hand, and unhealed burn marks on the older boy's back and thighs.
“Come ter join us at last, ‘ave yer, Mr. Monk?” Phillips asked with a curl of his lip that showed his teeth. “Knew yer would, one day. Must say though, I thought it'd take yer longer.” His eyes flickered to Sullivan, and then to Rathbone, and he wet his lips with his tongue. His voice was brittle and half an octave too high.
Fear was acrid in the air, like stale sweat. Some men shifted from one foot to the other, tense, on the edge of some kind of violence. They were robbed of the release for which they had come, uncertain what was happening, or who the enemy was, like animals on the edge of a stampede.
Hester was rigid, heart pounding. Did Monk know how close they were to mindless violence? This was nothing like the army in the moments before battle: tight with discipline, ready to charge into what could be death, or worse—hideous mutilation. This was guilty and tainted men afraid of exposure and its shame. This was animals unexpectedly and at the last moment robbed of their prey, the feeding of their primal hungers.
She glanced at the other police, at Phillips's guards in the room, then caught Rathbone's eye. She saw the desperate revulsion in him and something more: a deep and tearing pain. Beside him Sullivan was shaking, his eyes darting one way, then the other. His hands clenched, then unclenched as if his fingers sought something to grip.
It was Sutton who sensed the danger. “Get on with it!” he hissed at Monk.
“I don't want to join you exactly,” Monk answered Phillips. “I'd like some of your guests to join us, just to clear the way a bit.”
Phillips shook his head slowly, the smile still fixed on his lips, his eyes dead as stone. “I don't think any of ‘em would care to go with yer. An’ as yer can see, they're gentlemen as yer can't push around like they was nob'dy.” He was motionless, not moving his hands, or his gaze from Monk's face, but several of the men seemed to be waiting for some signal from him. Did his men have knives? Easier to use in this enclosed space, less likely to injure your own.
“Yer already made a fool o’ yerself once,” Phillips continued. “Yer can't do that again an’ ‘ope ter keep yer job, Mr. Monk. Not as I minds if yer don't! Ye're too stupid ter be a real bother ter me, but I wouldn't care if yer went. ‘Oo'ever comes after yer won't be no better neither, just like Durban wasn't.” His voice was softer, and still he did not move his hands. “The river'll go on, an’ men wi’ ‘ungers they can't feed wi'out me, or someone like me. We're like the tide, Mr. Monk; only a fool stands in our way. Get yerself drownded.” He relished the word on his tongue. The tension was slipping out of him now. The years of self-discipline were winning. He was in control again; the moment of fear had passed.
Monk had to balance Phillips's likely impulses either to panic and bolt for freedom, or to marshal his returning confidence and attack the police. Neither would help find Scuff. The one advantage he had was that Phillips did not want violence either; it would be bad for business. His clients wanted imaginary danger, not the reality. They sought sexual release, bloodshed, but not their own.
He made his decision. “Jericho Phillips, I am arresting you for the murder of the boy known as Scuff.” He held the gun so that it was clearly visible now, pointed at Phillips's chest. “And Mr. Orme is going to arrest Sir John Wilberforce there.” He named the only other guest whose face he recognized.
Wilberforce burst into protest, his cheeks scarlet, streaming with sweat. Orme, his back to the bulkhead, raised his gun. The light gleamed on the barrel, and Wilberforce abruptly fell silent.
It was Phillips who spoke, shaking his head slowly from side to side. “Makin’ a fool o’ yerself again, Mr. Monk. I dunno where your boy is, an’ I dint kill no one. We been through all o’ that, as ‘is Lordship Sullivan'll ‘ere tell yer, an’ Sir Oliver an’ all. Yer jus’ don't learn, do yer!” He turned to Wilberforce, the sneer broadening on his face, his contempt naked. “No need to get inter a sweat, sir. ‘E can't do nothin’ to yer. Think o’ ‘oo you are, an’ ‘oo ‘e is, an’ get an ‘old o’ yerself. Yer got all the cards, if yer play ‘em right.”
There was a snigger of laughter from one of the other men. They began to relax. They were the hunters again, no longer the victims.
Orme had taken off his jacket and given it to the older boy to cover his nakedness and his humiliation. Sutton did the same for the younger one.
The movement caught Hester's eye and suddenly she realized that they were all frozen here, arguing, and any torture could be happening to Scuff. There was no purpose in pleading with Phillips to tell them where he was. She slipped between two of the customers and touched Orme. “We have to look for Scuff,” she whispered. “There may be other guards, so keep your gun ready.”
“Right, ma'am.” He yielded immediately. He nodded to Sutton, who was almost beside him, Snoot now on the floor at his heels. The three of them inched towards the doorway as the quarrel between Monk and Phillips grew uglier. Monk's men were posturing themselves to take over with violence, moving to get the physical advantage, disarm those most likely to have weapons, or to be able to seize one of the children to use as a hostage. Wilberforce was drawn in. Sullivan swayed from one side to the other, his face dark, congested with a desperate hatred like a trapped creature between its tormentors.
Monk would strike soon, and then the fighting would be swift and hard.
Hester was afraid for him, and for Rathbone as well. She had seen a horror in his eyes far beyond the cruelty or coarseness of the scene. He was struggling with some decision of his own that she did not yet recognize. She imagined that it could be a kind of guilt. Now at last he was seeing the reality of what he had defended, not the theory, the high words of the law. Perhaps some time she would even apologize to him for the harsher things she had said. This was not his world; he might really not have understood.
Now all that mattered was to find Scuff. She dared not let her mind even touch on the chance that he was not here, but held captive locked in some room on shore, or even dead already. That would be almost like being dead herself.
