A Sunless Sea (2 page)

“And the … mutilation?”

“Long blade: four or five inches, I’d say. The cuts are deep, edges pretty sharp. Butcher’s knife, sailor’s knife—or sailmaker’s, for that matter. For God’s sake, man, half the chandlers, lightermen, or boatbuilders on the river have something that could have cut the poor woman open.
Even a razor! Could be a barber, for that matter. Or any man who shaves himself.” He seemed annoyed, as if his inability to narrow his answer stung him like some kind of guilt.

“Or any housewife with a kitchen,” the sergeant added.

Monk glanced at him.

“Sorry, sir.” The man lowered his eyes.

“No need,” Monk replied. “You’re right. Could be anyone at all.” He turned to Overstone again. “What about the woman herself? What can you tell me?”

Overstone shrugged in a gesture of futility. “Mid-forties. Quite healthy, as far as I can tell at a quick examination,” he replied. “About five foot four. Fairish hair, bit of gray at the sides. Blue eyes, pleasant face but no remarkable features. Good teeth; I suppose that’s unusual. Very white. Slight crossover at the front. I imagine when she smiled that might have been attractive.” He looked down at the worn, wooden floor. “Sometimes I hate this bloody job!”

Then instantly he lifted his head and the moment’s weakness was past. “Might be able to say more tomorrow. One thing I can tell you now, with mutilation like this, feelings are going to run very high. As soon as word gets out there’ll be fear, anger, then maybe panic. I don’t envy you.”

Monk turned to the sergeant. “You’d best keep it as quiet as you can,” he ordered. “Don’t give any details. The family doesn’t need to know them, anyway. If she had one. Don’t suppose anyone’s been reported missing?”

“No, sir,” the sergeant replied unhappily. “And we’ll try.” But his words lacked conviction.

M
ONK AND
O
RME BEGAN
near Limehouse Pier and worked along the stretch of Narrow Street, north and south, asking everyone they passed, or in the shops now open, if they had seen anyone going toward the pier the previous evening. Did they know anyone who would return home that way after work, or prostitutes who might seek customers in the area?

The description of the woman was too general for the police to try
to identify her: average height, fair brown hair, blue eyes. And it was too early for anyone to be considered missing.

They were told of several prostitutes, even one or two people who liked to walk that route, as Narrow Street offered a pleasant view of the river in places. They gathered a dozen names.

They moved inland up the alleys to Northey Street, Orme in one direction, Monk the other, asking the same questions. It was cold, but the wind had dropped and there was no rain. The low winter sun held no heat.

Monk was walking along the footpath in Ropemakers Fields when a small woman in gray came out of a door carrying a bundle of laundry balanced on her hip. Monk stopped almost in front of her.

“Excuse me, do you live here?” he asked.

She looked him up and down suspiciously. He was dressed in his usual dark, plain clothes, like those a waterman might wear, but the cut was far better, as if a tailor had made them rather than a chandler. His speech was precise, his voice gentle, and he stood with both grace and confidence.

“Yeah …,” she said guardedly. “ ’Oo are yer as wants ter know?”

“Commander Monk of the River Police,” he replied. “I’m looking for anyone who might have heard a fight last night, a woman screaming, perhaps a man shouting at her.”

She sighed and rolled her eyes wearily. “If I ever ’ave a night when I don’t ’ear nobody fighting I’ll tell yer. In fact, I’ll tell the bleedin’ newspapers. Now, if yer don’t mind, I got work ter do.” She pushed her hair out of her eyes and with an irritable gesture began to move past him.

Monk stepped sideways to block her way. “This wasn’t an ordinary fight. The woman was killed. Probably an hour or two after dark, on Limehouse Pier.”

“Wot kind of woman?” she asked him, her face suddenly frightened, mouth drawn tight with a new anxiety.

“About forty or so,” he replied. He saw her face relax. He guessed she had daughters who passed that way, possibly even stood around gossiping or flirting. “She was an inch or two taller than you, fair hair with a little gray in it. Quite pretty, in a quiet way.” He remembered the teeth. “Probably a nice smile.”

“Dunno,” the woman with the laundry answered. “Don’t sound like no one as I ever seen. Yer sure she were forty, like?”

“Yes. And she was wearing ordinary clothes, not like a woman looking for business,” he added. “And there was no paint on her face that we could see.” He felt callous speaking of her like that. He had robbed her of character, of humor or dreams, likes and dislikes; probably because he wanted to rob her also of her terror. Please God, she did not know what had happened to her afterward. He hoped she had not even seen the blade.

“Then ’er ’usband done ’er in,” the woman replied, pulling an expression of weary grief. “But I dunno ’oo she is. Could be anyone.” She pushed a few trailing hairs back off her face again and adjusted the weight of the laundry bag on her hip.

Monk thanked her and moved on. He stopped other people, both men and women, asking the same questions and getting more or less the same answers. No one recognized the woman from Monk’s description of her. No one admitted to being anywhere near Limehouse Pier after dark, which at this time of the year was about five o’clock in the afternoon. The evening had been overcast and damp. Little work was possible after that. No one had heard shouting or anything that sounded like a fight. They were all keen to go home and eat, find a little warmth and possibly a pint or two of ale.

Monk met up with Orme at noon. They had a cup of hot tea and a ham sandwich at the corner stand, finding a little shelter in a doorway as they spoke, coat collars turned up.

“Nobody’s seen or heard anything,” Orme said unhappily. “Not that I expected them to. Word’s out already that it’s pretty bad. All suddenly blind and deaf.” He took another bite of his ham sandwich.

“Not surprising,” Monk answered, sipping his tea. It was hot and a bit too strong, but he was used to it. It was nothing like the fresh, fragrant tea at home. This was probably made hours ago, and added to with boiling water every time it got low. “Ruby Jones probably told her friends, and they told theirs. It’ll be all over Limehouse by this afternoon.”

“They should be frightened enough to want this butcher caught,” Orme said between his teeth.

“They’re shutting their eyes and pretending it’s all miles away,” Monk replied. “Can’t blame them. I would if I could. That’s how half the bad things happen. We don’t want to know, don’t want to be involved. If the victim did something wrong, something stupid, and brought it on themselves, if we stay out of it then it won’t happen to us.”

“But it isn’t miles away,” Orme said softly. He was leaning a little against a stanchion, gazing far away into the distance. Monk had no idea what he saw in it. There were startling moments when he felt he knew Orme intimately because of the bitter and terrible experiences they had shared, things that were understood but could never be put into words. But there were far more days like this when they worked together with mutual respect, something bordering on a kind of friendship, but the difference between them was never forgotten, at least not by Orme. “It’s right here. Unless she came here by boat. Either way, she was killed there on the pier, and then cut open like that.” His mouth tightened. His face was very pale under his windburn. “Or I suppose they could’ve killed her somewhere else, and then cut her here?” he suggested, his voice grating in his throat.

“She wouldn’t have bled like that if she’d been dead awhile,” Monk replied. “Overstone said that from the way the blood was, and the bruising, he reckoned she was just recently dead.”

Orme swore under his breath, then apologized.

Monk waved his hand, dismissing it.

They both stood on the cold stones of the street, saying nothing for several moments. Other people were coming for the tea, their footsteps loud on the cobbles. Somewhere a dog was barking.

“Do you think they could’ve cut her up like that in the dark?” Orme finally broke the silence. “Not seeing what they were doing?”

Monk looked at him. “There were no streetlamps where we found her. Either they did it in the dark, or while there was still some daylight left.”

“Why there, anyway?” Orme asked. He tightened his hunched shoulders as if his jacket were not enough to keep him warm. “It’s not a place a prostitute would take a man. The riding lights of a barge would illuminate you long enough to be seen.”

“Maybe they
were
seen,” Monk thought aloud. “From the distance,
a man struggling with a woman could look like an embrace. Lightermen would just laugh at his boldness doing it out in the open, a kind of bravado. They would think he was taking his pleasure, not killing her.”

“Not much point looking for anyone who saw,” Orme said unhappily. “They could be anywhere by now, from Henley to Gravesend.”

“Wouldn’t help us much anyway,” Monk replied. “They’d have no way of knowing if it was her they saw, or any other couple.” The thought depressed him. A woman could be murdered and gutted like a fish, out in the open, in full view of the ships going past, on the most populous river in the world, and no one notice or understand what was happening.

He straightened up, eating the last of his sandwich. He had to choke it down. There was nothing wrong with it, but his mouth was dry. The bread tasted like sawdust.

“We’d best see if we can find out who she was,” he said. “Not that it will necessarily help us much. She was probably just in the wrong place at the wrong time.”

“There’ll still be people to tell,” Orme responded. “Friends, even a husband.”

Monk did not answer. He knew it. It was the worst part of the beginning in any murder case: telling those who had cared about the victim. In the end, the worst was finding the person who had done it, and those who cared about them.

Together they walked back up Narrow Street to the corner of Ropemakers Fields and then along it slowly. On the north side there were alleys every few dozen yards. Some led up to Triangle Place, and then on to the workhouse.

They asked there, giving as good a description of the dead woman as they could, but no one was missing. In any case, the dead woman’s hands had not looked like those of a woman used to physical labor: red from long hours wet or submerged in caustic soap, scrubbing floors or laundering, or calloused from the constant prick of the needle while sewing canvas.

Was she a prostitute, well past her prime, perhaps desperate for a few shillings and easily persuaded to go anywhere, even the open space
of a pier as darkness fell? With the money at least she could eat, or buy a few pieces of coal to keep herself warm.

In spite of himself Monk imagined it: the offer, the need on both their parts, the brief struggle, which she easily mistook for fumbling, clumsy desire, perhaps a man angry with himself for needing such a release, angry with her because she had the power to give it to him, and was demanding money. Then the crushing blow and the consuming darkness.

Why had he then mutilated her? Had he known her, and this was some uncontrollable personal hatred? Or was he a madman, and any victim would have done just as well? If that were so, then this would be only the beginning.

They walked the length of Narrow Street again, and Ropemakers Fields, and up and down the alleys, but no one had seen anything that helped, no man and woman together going toward the pier at dusk or shortly before, or if they had, they had barely noticed, or preferred not to remember. No amount of questioning elicited anything helpful.

They needed to find out who she was, who she had been before this.

“We’ll get a drawing of her,” Monk said as they walked back toward the local police station and the sky darkened into late afternoon. “There’s a constable there who’s good with a pencil to catch a likeness. We’ll get him to make at least a couple of pictures. Try again in the morning.”

M
ONK WAS TIRED ENOUGH
to sleep well that night. He told Hester nothing about the woman on the pier, not wanting to shatter the brief peace of the evening. If she knew there was any worry, she was too wise or too gentle to say so.

He woke early the next morning and went out before breakfast to get at least a couple of the daily newspapers from the stand on the corner of Paradise Place and Church Street. By the time he had walked the hundred yards or so back home, he knew the worst.
WOMAN HORRIBLY MURDERED ON LIMEHOUSE PIER
, read one headline.
WOMAN GUTTED AND LEFT TO DIE LIKE AN ANIMAL
, said another.

He had them folded, headlines concealed under his arm, when he reached his own kitchen door. He smelled bacon and toast, and heard the kettle whistling on the hob.

Hester was standing with the toasting fork in her hand, taking the fresh piece off and putting it into the rack with the others, so it would stay crisp. She closed the oven door and smiled at him. She was dressed in her favorite deep blue. For a moment, looking at her, Monk could put off a little longer the thoughts of violence and loss, the chill on the constantly moving water and the smell of death.

Perhaps he should have told her last night about the woman, but he had been tired and cold, and aching to put the horror of it out of his mind. He had needed to get warm and dry, to lie close to her and hear her talk about something else—anything at all that had to do with sanity and the small, healing details of life.

She was looking at him now and reading in his face that something was badly wrong. She knew him far too well for him to dissemble—not that he ever had. She had been an army nurse in the Crimean War, a dozen years ago, before they had met. There were few horrors or griefs he could tell her that she did not already know at least as well as he.

“What is it?” she asked quietly, perhaps hoping that he could tell her before twelve-year-old Scuff came down for his breakfast, eager for the new day, and everything he could eat. About a year ago they and Scuff had mutually adopted each other, Hester and Monk because Scuff was homeless, living precariously on the river, mostly by his wits. It was not that he was an orphan, but that his mother had too many younger children to have time for him, or maybe his mother’s new husband did not want him. Scuff had adopted Monk because he thought Monk lacked adequate knowledge of dockside life to do his job and needed someone like Scuff to look after him. Hester he had grown close to more reluctantly, in small steps, both of them being careful, afraid of hurt. The whole arrangement had begun tentatively on all sides, but over the year it had become comfortable.