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‘Can’t you do something?’ Monk asked the doctor desperately.
It was a question not really worth asking. Of course he couldn’t, or he would have done it already.
‘Can I stay with him?’ he asked a moment after.
‘Yes, of course,’ the doctor answered, smiling for an instant, then his attention was back on those he could help. He excused himself, leaving Monk alone.
He looked at Orme, and thought of all the times they had shared, all the myriad things that Orme had taught him, by example, very seldom indeed in words. He was a quiet man, resolute, at first glance seeming even grim.
But he was always softly spoken, slow to judge, even though Monk had exasperated him often. They had shared food in companionable silence. He remembered standing beside the brazier, shivering with cold in the February wind slicing up from the river, and Orme paying the chestnut man extra. Neither of them spoke of it. He could picture Orme in his mind’s eye, smiling and unconsciously tapping his foot in time to the band playing on one of the docksides. It was a dancing tune. He wondered with whom Orme had danced to that particular tune. His wife, long since dead?
He reached out his hand and put it over Orme’s. He began to talk to him about all the things he recalled, good things and bad, many of them funny, confidences, jokes, and memories.
Orme stirred and opened his eyes once, looking at Monk with a moment’s hesitation, not certain if he knew him or not. Then he smiled.
The moment disappeared and it was as if he had left the room. Monk knew Orme would not speak to him again; nevertheless, he went on talking quietly, reminiscing.
It occurred to him that perhaps he should have sent a message to Orme’s daughter, but he did not recall her address, only that she lived a considerable way down the river. The information was in his office, not his mind.
Someone at the office would have a messenger take her a letter. But Monk knew that Orme was dying, perhaps already deep into unconsciousness. The poor woman could not get here in time. And someone you did not know, carrying a letter, was not the way to find out that your father was dead.
It was Monk’s duty to tell her, one he dreaded, but it was inescapable. He would do it, when he was not needed here. Orme might never waken again, but if he did, he would find Monk here with him.
The doctor returned some time later – Monk had lost track of how long – and it did not matter.
‘I’m sorry,’ the doctor said quietly. ‘He’d lost too much blood. It’s shock . . . the body can’t make it up . . .’ He shook his head, the energy that had driven him all night gone in defeat. ‘Did you know him well?’
‘Yes,’ Monk answered. ‘But perhaps not as well as he knew me.’ He stood up stiffly. His whole body ached. ‘Thank you . . .’
He went back to the police station at Wapping. It was almost deserted, only a few men keeping watch. He called in only to tell them of Orme’s death, to find out if the injured were all right, and to pick up Orme’s daughter’s address.
He was so tired his whole body ached, and he was longing to see Hester, but this must be done first. He must get a ferry to take him down river, wait for him, then bring him back. This was going to be the worst duty of the day, but it was inescapable, and it was his to do. He owed Orme that, and far more.
Hester had put in a long day nursing Radnor. He was not an easy patient and his illness was extremely serious. Her excitement at the possibility of a cure was deeply shadowed by Hamilton Rand’s means of treating him.
She was so tired her whole body ached, but she must confront him before she went home, and it must be done privately. It was not an issue that should be referred to at all in front of other staff, and least of all in front of Radnor himself, or his daughter.
She looked first in his office, not really expecting to find him there, and then went to the laboratory.
He was bent over a microscope, studying whatever it was on the glass slide. A look of annoyance at the interruption crossed his face, until he recognised her.
‘What is it, Mrs Monk? Has his condition changed?’
She closed the door behind her. She did not want even the slightest chance of being overheard.
‘Only for the better,’ she replied, walking past the jars and bottles, the burners and vials. She stopped close enough to him to see that it was a smear of blood he was examining.
‘Then why are you interrupting me?’ he asked.
‘The children are getting weaker,’ she said slowly and clearly. ‘You can’t go on taking blood from them at this rate. It’s too much.’
He straightened up slowly, staring at her as if she were a specimen he had just recognised. His eyes were both intimate and strange. ‘Exactly what are you proposing, Mrs Monk?’ he said softly.
She felt a chill, her mouth dry, but she had to speak.
‘That you delay the treatment, or find other donors as well.’
‘And if I refuse?’ he whispered.
