Anne Perry - Execution Dock

“It's not nice,” Palk warned.

“Is it true?” Hester asked, although she had not yet been included in the conversation.

“Oh, yes, it's true. Lots of folks around here know that.”

“Then please tell me.”

He looked at her, for the first time, curiosity sharp in his face.

“You have to understand, Durban was a man of strong passions,” he began. “Nice on the surface, funny when he wanted to be. I've seen him set the whole room laughing. And generous, he could be. But he felt some things hard, and it seems this Mary Webber was one o’ them. Never heard why. Never heard who or what she was that made him care.”

“He never found her?”

“Don't know, Miss, but if he didn't, it wasn't for want of trying. This all started when he went to Ma Wardlop's house. Brothel it is-mebbe a dozen girls or so. Asking her if she'd seen Mary Webber.” He shook his head. “Wouldn't let it drop, no matter what. Finally Ma Wardlop told him one of the girls knew something, and took him to her room. He questioned her in there for more than an hour, until she was screaming at him. That point Ma went an’ fetched a revenue man who lived a couple o’ doors away. Big man, he was.” He pulled his lips into a thin line, an expression of great sadness. “Punched the door in and said he found Durban in a position no policeman should be with a whore, but didn't say what it was, exactly. She claimed he'd forced himself on her. He said he never touched her.”

Hester did not reply. Her mind raced from one ugly scene to another, trying to find an answer that would not disgust Monk.

Palk's face was screwed up in revulsion, but it was impossible to say whether it was for Durban, or the lie the prostitute might have told. “Ma Wardlop said she'd keep her mouth shut about it all if Durban would be wise enough to do the same. Only she meant about anything he might see in the future, and he knew that.”

“Blackmail,” Hester said succinctly.

He nodded again. “He told her to go to hell, and take the revenue man with her.” Palk said it with some satisfaction, curling back his lips in a smile that showed surprisingly strong white teeth. “They said they'd not just spread it around the streets, they'd put it in the papers too. He told them he agreed with the Duke of Wellington-‘publish and be damned.’ He wasn't going to keep his mouth shut about anything he didn't want to.”

“And what happened?” she asked, fear and admiration tightening inside her, her stomach knotted, her breath slow, as if the noise of it might stop her hearing what he would say next. It was stupid. Durban was dead and could not be hurt anymore. And yet she cared painfully that he had had the courage and the honor to defy them.

“Nothing, until the next time he caught them robbing a customer,” the little man answered. “And put the girl in prison for it. Then they published it all right.” His eyes did not move from hers. “Very embarrassing it was for Durban, but he weathered it. Lost a good few he'd thought were friends. Hard way to find out they weren't. Got laughed at in places where they used to call him ‘sir.’ It hurt him, but I only seen him show it once, and then just for a moment. He took it like a man, never complained, and never, far as I know, looked the other way on anything they did.”

“What happened to the girl?” She felt a flood of warmth inside her, an easing of the ache of tension, then the chill again, and fear of the next answer.

“Nothing,” Palk told her, his eyes reading her emotions like print on the page. “That wasn't Durban 's way. He knew she was only doing what she had to, to get by. He had a hot temper, but he never took it out on women or kids. Soft, he was, in his own fashion, as if he knew what it was like to be poor, or hungry, or alone.” He smiled at the memory. “Beat the hell out of Willy Lyme for knocking his wife around, but gentle as a woman with old Bert when ‘e got daft and didn't even know who he was anymore. Went into the canal after the poor old sod drowned himself, and cried when he couldn't save him. Poor old Bert. Came to his funeral, Durban did. Never knew for sure, but I reckoned he paid for most of it. Bert hadn't sixpence to his name.”

He looked narrowly at Hester. “I don't know why yer want to know, Miss. You can't hurt Durban now, but there's a lot of folk won't take it kindly if you speak ill of him. Wouldn't be a good thing.”

“I'm trying to stop those who would,” she replied.

He looked puzzled, searching her face.

She smiled at him. “My husband took his place in the River Police, because Durban suggested him. We tried to solve Durban 's last case, and we failed so badly we can't go back and do it again. I want to show that the court was wrong and we were right, Durban and my husband and I.”

“Won't do any good,” Palk told her.

“Yes, it will. We'll know it, and that matters.”

“Is Monk the new fellow at Wapping?”

“Yes.”

“Won't be easy to follow Durban.”

“Depends where he was going.”

He looked at her without blinking. “Right and wrong,” he said. “No man's right all the time, but he was more than most.”

She stood up. “I hope so. But I need the truth, whatever it is.”

“And then you'll tell everybody?”

“Depends. I don't know what it is yet.”

He nodded. “That'll do. But be careful. There's plenty that'd kill to make sure you don't.”

“I know that.”

He hitched himself down off his chair, awkward, one shoulder almost half a foot higher than the other, and made his way to the door to show them out.

Unaware of Hester's mission, Monk started out again in the morning, with Scuff beside him, dressed as yesterday in the old boots. Very soon Monk would get him something better, but now he was compelled to go back to tracing Durban 's search for Mary Webber. He would rather have been alone. The effort of concealing his emotions and keeping up a civil conversation was more than the value of any help Scuff could give. But he had left himself no choice. Apart from wounding him by rejection, he dare not allow Scuff to wander around by himself now. He had endangered him, and he must do what he could to protect him from the consequences.

By midmorning, after several failed attempts, he was almost robbed by the very scuffle-hunter he was actually looking for. They were at the Black Eagle Wharf, between a cargo of timber and lightermen unloading tobacco, raw sugar, and rum. There was no breeze off the river to move the smell of it in the air. The tide was low again, and the water slurped over the weed on the steps and the lighters bumped against the stones.

An argument between a lighterman and a docker spread until it involved half a dozen men shouting and pushing. It was a form of robbery Monk had seen many times. Bystanders watched, a crowd gradually gathered, and while their attention was on the fighting, pickpockets did their silent job.

Monk felt the jolt, swung around, and came face-to-face with an old woman who grinned at him toothlessly, and at the same moment there was a touch behind him so light, the thief was a couple of yards away before Monk lunged after him and missed. It was Scuff who brought him down with a swift kick to the shins, which left him sprawling on the ground, yelling indignantly and hugging his left leg.

Monk yanked him to his feet without sympathy. Ten minutes later they were sitting on the top of the steps, the scuffle-hunter between them, looking uncomfortable, but willing to talk.

“I didn't tell ‘im nowt ‘cause I don't know nuffin’,” he said aggrievedly “I never ‘eard o’ Mary Webber. I said I'd ask around, an’ I did, I swear.”

“Why did he want her?” Monk answered. “What kind of woman was she supposed to be? When did he first ask? He must have told you something more than her name. How old was she? What did she look like? What did he want her for? Why ask you? Was she a pawnbroker, a money lender, a receiver, a brothel keeper, an abortionist, a whore, a procuress? What was she?”