Blood on the Water (5 page)

There was a shout from the shore. Then as they watched, the funnel of the boat broke the surface. No one made a sound. It was so quiet he could hear the gushing of water out of the sides.

Without weighing his words, Scuff turned to the man.

“You shouldn’t watch this, sir. If you lost someone, you don’t need ter see it.” Then he stopped abruptly. It was out of place. He had no right to speak. They had not asked him.

The man turned toward him in surprise, as if he had not realized Scuff was there. “You’re right,” he said quietly. “And maybe you shouldn’t either. Did you lose someone, lad?”

“No. My pa’s in the River Police. He worked all night trying to save people, an’ now they’ve taken ’im off the case. Given it to the land police.” Scuff’s voice was bitter, but he could not help it.

The man’s arm tightened around the woman beside him. “You’re
right. We can’t do anything here. Come on, Jenny. Don’t look. Remember him the way he was. Lad’s right.” He looked again at Scuff. “Your pa send you to report back to him?”

“No, sir! ’E thinks I’m at school! But I gotter do something. This in’t right. It’s our river. What kind of a cruise was it, sir? What kind o’ people?”

The man began to move away from the place where he had been standing. His arm was still around the woman, but his glance included Scuff.

“Just a pleasure cruise,” he replied. “The
Princess Mary
. Started up at Westminster Bridge and went as far as Gravesend, then back again. Expensive, at least for those attending the party. Very good food, lots of champagne and that sort of thing. Just … just people having fun.” Suddenly his face tightened with fury. “What kind of a madman would want to hurt people like that? Why, for God’s sake?”

“Albert …” The woman’s hand tightened, dragging his arm down toward her. “The boy doesn’t know. Nobody does. It’s mad … mad things don’t make sense.”

Scuff wanted to say something that would make her feel better. What would Hester have said?

“They don’t. But they can’t stop us doing our best,” he told her.

The man stared at him, but the woman suddenly smiled. It changed her face completely. “I’ll try to remember that,” she promised.

Scuff smiled back, then left them and started to work his way down the river toward the stretch he knew better. He must find some of the people he used to know before he went to live with Monk and Hester. They were the people who would never tell the police anything, either River Police or the ordinary sort. If the
Princess Mary
had started at Westminster Bridge, then whoever blew it up had got on before that—unless it was one of the people on the cruise. Most likely it was a porter or servant of some sort, what Monk called “invisible people.” But Scuff knew beggars, peddlers, petty thieves, people on the fringes of life—they often walked unseen, but they saw everyone.

It took him most of the morning to find exactly the right ones. Far more had changed than he could have foreseen. People had grown up; some had gone away, perhaps to sea. Some had died. No one seemed to know him anymore, and the mudlarks—the boys who scavenged on the shore for bits and pieces they could sell, as he had once done—were all strangers to him. And they all looked so small! He had not really thought of it before, but when he remembered how many new pairs of trousers Hester had bought him, he realized he’d probably grown six inches in the last few years.

Suddenly he felt awkward. They should have grown too, and they hadn’t. He saw one boy with no socks and odd boots, just as he had had. He had been going to speak to him and then changed his mind, feeling self-conscious—no, more than that, guilty. He could give this boy a few pence for a pie and a cup of tea, but what about all the others? Scuff now ate well, whenever he wanted to. Why not them? He had been no different from them, once.

He walked away along the bank. The wind in his face smelled of salt and fish and the fetid thickness of river mud. A string of barges went past, the lighterman balancing effortlessly.

Scuff did not know how he ought to feel. How could a few years make him into a different person?

Just beyond the New Crane Stairs by the West India Docks he found a boy he used to know. He was taller and heavier than before, but the wild pattern of his hair was just the same. He was standing in front of a pile of debris. There were glints of metal and brass in it, possibly something worth salvaging.

“ ’Allo, Mucker,” Scuff said cheerfully. “ ’Ere, I’ll ’elp yer.” He took part of the weight Mucker was carrying, and his legs nearly buckled under it. Scuff was taller and heavier than he used to be, too, but he was not used to hard physical labor anymore.

Mucker looked startled. “ ’Oo the ’ell are you?”

“Scuff. Don’t you remember me?”

“Scuff?” Mucker’s blunt face twisted with disbelief. “Never! Scuff
were a useless little article, a foot shorter’n you! Fly as an eel, but …” He stared at Scuff with narrowed eyes. “Wot ’appened to yer? Somebody stretch yer legs?”

“Yeah, summink like that,” Scuff agreed, resting one foot on an old timber. “Want ter talk to yer. I’ll get yer a decent pie an’ a cup o’ tea.”

“Wi’ wot?” Mucker asked suspiciously. Then he took a second look at Scuff’s jacket and trousers and decided he was possibly on to a good thing. “Yeah, if yer want. But I ain’t rattin’ on nobody.”

“Know anyone who were drowned in that boat what blew up?” Scuff asked casually.

Mucker’s bushy eyebrows shot up. “Jeez! No. Do you? Yer gone up in the world, ain’t yer? They was all toffs!”

“Crew as well?” Scuff asked drily.

“No, course not.” Mucker stopped abruptly. “Why’d yer want to know? Wot’s it ter you?”

Scuff was prepared for that one. He smiled. “Making my way,” he replied. “Wouldn’t rat on a friend, past or present. But I reckon as someone ’oo’d blow up two hundred people ’oo are just ’aving fun is no friend of anyone on our river. Would you?”

Mucker did not even hesitate. “No. It’s bad for everyone. So wot d’yer think yer goin’ ter do about it, then?”

“Boat picked up all these people at Westminster Bridge. Where’d it come from before that? Who got on wi’ explosive stuff and set it in the bow?”

“ ’Ow d’you know it were in the bow?” Mucker asked instantly.

“ ’Cos I know someone ’oo was on the river an’ saw it go up. Anyway, stands to reason. It went down bow first, not broke its back. They’re pulling it up now.” He waved his arm in the general direction of the wreck.

“Wot’s it worth?” Mucker asked bluntly. “More’n a cup o’ tea?”

“A blind eye now and then, when you need it,” Scuff replied without hesitation. He had seen that one coming, too.

Mucker grinned. “I always thought you was a fly little sod,” he said
cheerfully. “Right—ye’re on. Come back termorrer.” He turned back to his work dismissively and resumed sorting through his find.

Scuff had never imagined he could learn enough in one day. School would have to be forfeited tomorrow and maybe the day after as well. He slapped Mucker on the shoulder in agreement. The promise was made. He might have to ask Hester for money for more pies, but he’d deal with that one only if he had to.

The next person he looked for was a bargee that he had known when he was a mudlark. Again, it took several moments before the man recognized him, and Scuff had to bite his tongue not to apologize for his good fortune. He gave the same reason for wanting to know about the wreck of the
Princess Mary
: that it was bad for the river.

“They’ll be coming around asking everyone on the river what they know,” he said reasonably. “If they think of it.”

The bargee was busy splicing ropes. His gnarled fingers grasped the shiny hook and wove it in and out almost as if the task needed no thought. Scuff had seen old women knit the same way.

“River Police’ll think of it,” the bargee said with a downturn of his mouth. “Got their long bloody noses into everything. Still, according to old Sawyer down the way—an’ ’e’s ninety if ’e’s a day—it used ter be a lot worse, before they came.”

Scuff was startled. “When was that?”

The bargee grinned. “Afore your time, son. In the 1790s, or thereabouts. When the French were all cutting each other’s ’eads off. Told yer, ’e’s ninety or more. Says the river were the worst place in the world then. Pirates all over the place. Murder was as common then as thievin’ is now. An’ thievin’ were as common as takin’ a breath of air. So what is it yer want, then?”

“Could anyone ’ave got that stuff to blow them up an’ put it in when they were on the river?” Scuff asked. “After dark, like? Or did it ’ave ter be when they was tied up somewhere? Like Westminster Bridge, or Gravesend?”

“Yer sayin’ as maybe one of us did it?” The bargee’s face was suddenly hard, his eyes angry.

“No I in’t!” Scuff snapped back. “What d’yer take me for? I know that. And like as not, the River Police know. But they in’t in it, are they! It’s bin taken off them and given to the regular land police, ’oo don’t know nothin’!”

The bargee glared at him, the splicing hook idle in his hand for a moment.

“An’ ’ow do you know that, then?” he demanded. Scuff had his complete attention now.

“I know a lot o’ things,” Scuff replied darkly. “An’ the sooner we get this sorted, the sooner we’ll ’ave the reg’lar police off our river and get our own police back, what we know ’ow ter deal with.”

“You cunning little sod!” the bargee said with feeling. He looked Scuff up and down again, this time taking more notice of his clothes, and particularly his boots.

Scuff wanted to tell him he had not earned them himself, but that would have destroyed what little respect this man had from him, so he smiled and said nothing.

He continued all day, searching out people he had known, either directly or by repute. He visited an “opulent receiver,” a fencer of stolen goods who specialized in small and valuable pieces: jewelry, carvings in ivory, miniature portraits, and other easily hidden things worth a lot of money. Already several items had turned up, taken from the corpses that had washed onto the shore. Scuff thought robbing the dead was despicable. But he also knew hunger, cold, fear, and loneliness, and hated them; his experience made him slower to judge, and allowed him to hide his disgust. On the one hand it was like being a carrion animal; on the other, the dead had no more need of treasures, and to the living they could mean the difference between survival and death.

He must be home in time for dinner, but not because he could not go without eating. He could, and had. But if he were late Hester would want to know where he had been and he would have to come up with a very good explanation. He had no idea how she did it, but she was uncannily excellent at knowing when he was bending the truth.

Therefore he spent another few pence going back across the river in order to be able to walk up the hill to Paradise Place not so very long after he should have done were he coming home from school.

Had he accomplished anything? Possibly not. He had asked a lot of questions, trying to find out where the man with the explosives could have got into the boat, and learned that it would have been almost impossible anywhere in the first half of the voyage, partly because it would have been daylight, and to do anything unusual then would’ve been terribly risky.

But the explosives could have been loaded at Gravesend. How could he find out whether they had? Gravesend was miles away, down the estuary toward the sea.

His legs ached as he walked up the hill away from the ferry landing. He had become unused to being on his feet all day. He might be learning all kinds of interesting, useless things at school, but he was also getting soft.

He passed an old woman he knew and smiled at her. She pursed her lips and shook her head, but she wished him a good evening.

“Evenin,’ ma’am,” he answered politely. He was nearly home.

Who would do such a terrible thing as blow up a boat full of normal people, and in such a way that almost all of them drowned? Why? Did whoever had done it know that was what would happen? Of course! You put explosives in the bow of a ship, any fool knows it will sink. And any fool knows that all the people below deck will drown because there is no way on earth for them to get out in time.

He stopped still as if he had walked into a wall. That was it! It didn’t matter where the bomber got into the boat! Anywhere would do. But it mattered more than anything else where he got off! He must have known when it would explode. It was a horrible way to die—he would have left the ship before that! But where? And how? Someone swimming in the river would surely draw attention. Apart from the fact that hardly anyone could swim, the water was filthy enough to poison you.

And swim to where? They would’ve been out in the middle in the
current of the incoming tide. And the Thames tide was swift and strong.

There would have been other boats around: ferries, barges, large ships coming in to anchor in the Pool of London. They could see each other because they carried lights—they had to. Law of the sea. But a swimmer didn’t! A swimmer could be struck, swamped in the wash, or, worst of all, caught in the paddles or the screws and hacked to pieces. Scuff shuddered at the thought of it and felt his legs go weak.

He put it out of his mind and hurried the last few steps home. He wanted lights, warmth, people, even if they scolded him for being late. It was very nice to be wanted.

“You’re late,” Hester said as soon as he was in the door. “Are you all right?”

Perhaps he should have been penitent—it would have been wiser—but he could not keep the huge smile from his face.

“Yes … I’m home.” He saw the irritation in her eyes and was not absolutely certain what it was. “And I’m hungry,” he added.

Monk came in a few moments later, and spoke only of the usual sort of business on the river. He did not even mention the
Princess Mary
, so Scuff thought he had better not mention it either. Hester did not refer to the fact that he had been late, and he was too grateful for that to risk anything but enjoying the good food and comfortable silence. He did not allow into his mind those who would be sleeping outside on the dock, as he once had.