The Silent Cry (32 page)

She swallowed, her face white. "It doesn't prove anything!" She was struggling and they both knew it.

"Don't, Hester!" he begged. "Rhys was there, with two of his friends.

Together they answer to descriptions exactly. If Leighton Duff knew, or suspected, and followed Rhys to argue with him, to try to prevent him from doing it again, then there was plenty of motive to kill him.

He may even have found them immediately after they attacked the women that night. Then they would have no defence.”

"It… it could have been Duke, or… Arthur…" Her words trailed away. There was no belief in them, or in her eyes.

"Are they injured?" he asked gently, although he knew the answer from her face.

She shook her head minutely. There was nothing to say. She stared at him. The facts closed in like an iron mesh, unbendable, inescapable.

Her mind tried every direction, and he watched her do it, and fail each time. There was no real hope in her, and gradually even the determination died.

"I'm sorry," he said softly. He thought of adding how much he wished it had not been so, how hard he had looked for other answers, but she knew it already. There was no need for such explanations between them.

They understood pain and reality far too well, the dull ache of knowledge that must be faced, the familiarity of pity.

"Have you told Evan yet?" she asked when she had mastered the tension in her voice, or almost.

"No. I shall tell him tomorrow.”

"I see.”

He did not move. He did not know what to say, there was nothing, and yet he wanted to say something. He wanted to remain with her, at least to share the hurt, even though he could not ease it. Sometimes sharing was all there was left.

"Thank you… for telling me first." She smiled a little crookedly.

"I think…”

"Perhaps I-shouldn't have," he said with sudden doubt. "Maybe it would have been easier for you if you had not known? Then your response would have been honest. You would not have had to wait tonight, knowing, when they didn't. I…”

She started to shake her head.

"I thought honesty was best," he went on. "Perhaps it wasn't. I thought I knew that, now I don't.”

"It would have been hard either way," she answered him, meeting his eyes with the same candour as in the past, in their best moments. "If I know, tonight will be hard, and tomorrow. But when Evan does come, then I shall have prepared myself, and I shall have the strength to help, instead of being stunned with my own shock. I shan't be busy trying to deny it, to find arguments or ways to escape. This is best.

Please don't doubt it.”

He hesitated for an instant, wondering if she were being brave, taking the responsibility upon herself to spare his feelings. Then he looked at her again, and knew it was not so. There was a kind of understanding in her which bridged the singleness of this incident and was part of all the triumphs and disasters they had ever shared.

He walked over to her and very gently bent forward and kissed her temple above the brow, then laid his cheek against hers, his breath stirring the loose tendrils of her hair.

Then he turned and walked away without looking back. If he did, he might make an error he could never redeem, and he was not yet ready for that.

Evan knew that Monk had crossed into St. Giles, although of course they were on different cases.

"Wot does 'e want?" Shotts said suspiciously, as they were walking back towards the station.

"To find out who raped the women in Seven Dials," Evan replied. "It's a problem we can't help.”

Shotts swore under his breath, and then apologised. "Sorry, guy.”

"You don't need to be," Evan said sincerely. His father might have been offended, but that case angered him so profoundly the release of shouting and using language otherwise forbidden seemed very natural.

"If anyone can deal with it, it will be Monk," he added.

Shotts gave a snort of derision, edged with something which could have been fear. "If 'e catches the bastards I'll lay they'll wish they were never born. I wouldn't want Monk on my back, even if I hadn't done anything wrong!”

Evan looked at him curiously. "If you hadn't done anything wrong, would he be on your back?”

Shotts looked at him, hesitated a moment on the edge of confiding, then changed his mind.

"Course not," he denied.

It was a lie, at least in intent, and Evan knew it, but it was pointless to pursue. Nor was it the only time Shotts had told him something which he had later learned to be false. There was time unaccounted for, small errors of fact. He glanced sideways at Shotts' stolid face as they crossed the street, avoiding the gutter and the horse dropping awash in the rain, ducked past a coal cart and on to the farther footpath. What else was there that he had not yet learned? Why should Shotts lie to him about anything?

He had a sudden acutely unpleasant feeling of loneliness, as if the ground had given way beneath him and old certainties had vanished without anything to replace them. All around him was grey poverty, people whose lives were bounded by hunger, cold and danger. They were so used to it they could eat and sleep in its midst, laugh and beget children, bury their dead, steal from each other, and practise their trades and their crafts, legal or otherwise. Illegality was probably the least of their problems, except in so much as it trespassed certain safeguards. The cardinal principle was to survive. If he had spoken to them of his father's notion of a just God, one who loved them, he would have been greeted with utter incomprehension. Even good fairy stories had some relevance to fact, some meaning that a person could understand.

They entered an alley too narrow to walk abreast, and Shotts went first, Evan behind him. It was a short cut back to the main thoroughfare. They crossed a tanner's yard stinking of hides, and went through a gate that was loosely chained, and into the footpath.

Evan increased his stride and caught up with Shotts.

"Why did you lie to me?" he said bluntly.

Shotts tripped on the kerb stone then regained his balance and stood still.

"Sir?”

Evan stopped also. "Why did you lie to me?" he repeated, his voice mild, no accusation in it, simply puzzlement and curiosity.

Shotts swallowed. "About what, sir?”

"Lots of things: where you were last Friday when you told me you were questioning Hattie Burrows. You weren't, because I learned afterwards where she was, and it was not with you. About Seven Dials and the running patterer, and hearing from him the case Monk was on.”

"That…" Shotts began. "That was a… mistake…" He did not look at Evan as he was speaking.

"Have you a bad memory?" Evan enquired politely, in the same tone as he would have asked if Shotts liked sausages.

Shotts was caught. To say he had would make him an unsuitable policeman. Above all a policeman needed keen observation and an excellent memory. He had already demonstrated these qualities very effectively.

"Well… pretty good… most of the time… sir," he compromised rather well.

"You need to have a perfect memory to be a good liar," Evan resumed walking at a level pace, and Shotts kept up, but not looking at him.

"Better than yours. Why, Shotts? Do you know something about this murder that you don't want to tell me? Or is it something else altogether that you are hiding?”

Shotts blushed scarlet. He must have felt the heat flush up his face, because he surrendered.

"It's nothing agin' the law, sir, I swear it! I would never do nothing agin' the law!”

"I'm listening," Evan kept his eyes straight ahead.

"It's a girl, sir, a woman. I were seein' 'er well I shouldn't 'ave.

It's me only chance, yer see, wi' all the extra duty I been pullin', withe murder. I was… I was tryin' ter keeper fam'ly out o' it. Not that they're in it…”

Evan attempted to hide his smile, and only partially succeeded.

"Oh! Why the secrecy?”

"Mr. Runcorn wouldn't approve, sir. I mean ter marry 'er, but I 'aven't saved enough money yet, an' I can't afford ter lose me job.”

"Then be a little more efficient with your lying, and Mr. Runcorn won't need to find out. At least be wholehearted in your inventions!”

Shotts stared at him.

Evan kept on walking, coming to the crossroads and aft era brief glance to left and right, striding out, leaving Shotts on the kerb as a rag and bone cart lumbered between them. Now he was smiling widely.

When Evan reached the police station there was a message that Monk wanted to see him, and had information to impart relevant to the Leighton Duff case of a nature which would bring to a conclusion the initial part of the enquiry. That was very strong language for Monk, who never exaggerated, and Evan went out again immediately and took a hansom to Grafton Street, and knocked on the door of Monk's rooms.

It was some time since he had been there, and he was surprised to see how comfortable they were, in fact even inviting. He was too intent on his purpose for calling to notice more than peripherally, but he was aware of personal touches. It was not something he would have associated with Monk, it was too restful. There were antimacassars on the chair backs and a palm tree of some sort in a large, brass pot. The fire was hot, as if it had been lit for some time. He found he was relaxing, in spite of himself.

"What is it?" he asked as soon as his coat was off and even before he sat in the chair opposite Monk's. "What have you found out? Have you proof?”

"I have witnesses," Monk replied, crossing his legs and leaning back, his eyes on Evan's face. "I have several people who saw Rhys Duff in St. Giles at the time leading up to the murder including a prostitute he used there on several occasions. It was definitely him. She identified him from the picture you gave me, and she knew him by name, also Arthur and Duke Kynaston. I even have the last victim of rape, attacked just before the murder, only a few yards from Water Lane.”

"She identifies Rhys Duff?" Evan said incredulously. It was almost too good to be true! How had he and Shotts missed that? Were they really so inferior to Monk? Was his skill, and his ruthlessness, so much greater? He looked across at where Monk sat, the firelight red on his lean cheeks, and casting shadows across his eyes. It was a strong, clever face, but not insensitive, not without imagination or the possibility of compassion. There was a certain darkness in it now, as if this victory destroyed as well as created. There was so much in him Evan did not understand, but it did not stop him caring. He had never been afraid to commit his friendship.

"No," Monk answered. "She described three men, one tall and fairly slight, one shorter and leaner built, and one of average height and thin. She did not see or remember their faces.”

"That could be Rhys Duff, and Duke and Arthur Kynaston, but it's not proof," Evan argued. "A decent defence lawyer would tear that apart.”

Monk linked his fingers together in a steeple and stared at Evan. "When this defence lawyer you have in mind asks why on earth Rhys Duff should murder his father," he said. "He was a decent, well-bred young man who, like any other of his age and class, occasionally took his pleasures with a prostitute. Simply because his father was a trifle straight-laced about such things, even a little pompous perhaps, is not cause for anything beyond a quarrel, and perhaps a reduction in his allowance. This provides their answer: because Leighton Duff interrupted his son and his friends raping and beating a young woman.

He was horrified and appalled. He would not accept it as part of any young man's natural appetites. Therefore he had to be silenced.”

Evan followed the reasoning perfectly. A possible motive had been the one thing lacking before. A quarrel was easy to understand, even a few blows struck. But a fight to the death over the issue of using a prostitute was absurd. The issue of a series of rapes of increasing violence, by three of them together, and caught red-handed, was another matter entirely. It was repellent, and it was criminal. It was also escalating to the degree when sooner or later it would become murder.

To imagine three young men, fresh from the victory of violence against a terrified victim, beating to death the one man who threatened their exposure, was sickening but not difficult to believe.

"Yes, I see," he agreed with a sudden sadness. They were hideous crimes, so ugly he should have been overwhelmed with revulsion and a towering anger against the young men who had committed them. Yet what filled his mind was the picture of Rhys as he had seen him on the cobbles, soaked with blood, insensible, and yet still breathing, still just barely alive.

And then leaping to his mind came the sight of him in the hospital bed, his face swollen and blue with bruising as he opened his eyes and tried desperately to speak, choking in horror, gagging, drowning in pain.

Evan felt no sense of victory, not even the usual loosening of tension inside himself that knowledge brought. There was no peace in this.

"You had better take me to these witnesses," he said flatly. "I presume they will tell me the same thing? Will they swear in court, do you suppose?" He did not know what he hoped. Even if they would not, nothing could alter the truth of it.

"You can make them," Monk answered with impatience in his voice. "The majesty of the law will persuade them. Once in the witness box they have no reason to lie. That is not your decision anyway.”

He was right. There was nothing to argue about.

"Then I'll take it to Runcorn," Evan went on. He smiled with a downward turn of his lips. "He won't be amused that you solved the case.”

A curious look crossed Monk's face, a mixture of irony and something which could have been regret, or even a form of guilt. Evan was aware of uncertainty in him, a hesitation as if there were something else he wanted to talk about, but was unsure how to begin. He was making no move to rise from his comfortable chair.

"I know he refused to pursue the rapes," Evan started. "But with this it's different. No one will bother prosecuting that when there is the murder. That's what we'll charge them with. We will only prove the rapes to establish motive. The ones in Seven Dials will be by implication.”

"I know.”

Evan was puzzled. Why did Monk's contempt for Runcorn run so deep?

Runcorn was pompous at times, but it was his manner of defending himself from the triviality he felt in his life, perhaps the loneliness. He was a man who seemed to know little else but the concern of his work, the value it gave him, even his relationships with others. Evan realised he knew nothing whatever of the man Runcorn was when he left the police station, except that he never spoke of family or other friends, other pastimes. Had Monk ever considered such things?

"Do you still think he should have pressed the cases of rape alone?" he asked, hearing the criticism in his voice.

Monk shrugged. "No." He sounded reluctant. "He was right. It would have put the victims through more of an ordeal than the offenders…

presuming they would even have testified… which they probably wouldn't. I would not ask any woman I cared for to do that. We would be pursuing it far more for our own sense of vengeance than anything to do with the well-being of the women, or even justice. They would suffer and the men would go free. We wouldn't even be able to try them again, even if we eventually found proof, because they would have been vindicated by the law.”

There was anger in his face, but it was for the situation, not for Runcorn.

"Rape is not a crime for which we have any answer even remotely just, or compassionate," he went on. "It strikes at a part of the emotions which we don't exercise honestly, let alone govern with rationality. It is even more primitive than murder. Why is that, Evan? We deny it, excuse it, torture logic and twist facts to pretend it did not happen, that somehow it was the victim's fault, and therefore not the crime we named it.”

"I don't know," Evan said, even as he was thinking. "It is something to do with violation…”

"For God's sake! It is the woman who is violated!" Monk exploded, his face dark.

"Yes, it is," Evan agreed wryly. "But the violation we get so upset about is our own. Our property has been spoiled. Someone has taken something to which only we have the right. The rape of any woman is a reminder that our own women can also be spoiled that way. It is a very intimate thing.”

"So is murder!" Monk retorted.

"Murder is only your own life." Evan was still thinking aloud. "Rape is the contamination of your posterity, the fountainhead of your immortality, if you look at it that way.”

Monk's eyebrows rose. "Do you look at it that way?”

"No. But then I believe in a resurrection of the body." Evan had thought he would apologise to Monk for his faith, but he found himself speaking with a perfectly calm and untroubled voice, as his own father would have done to a parishioner. "I believe in an individual soul which travels through eternity. This life is far from all there is, in fact it is a minute part, simply an antechamber, a deciding place where we choose the light from the dark, where we come to know what we truly value.”

"It's a place of bloody injustice, inequity and waste!" Monk said hoarsely. "How can you possibly walk around St. Giles, as you have been doing, and even imagine a God that is fit for anything but fear, or hate? Better for your sanity to think it is random, and simply do what you can to redress the worst monstrosities.”