Anne Perry: A Sunless Sea

“What is it?” Hester repeated more urgently.

“We found the body of a woman on Limehouse Pier at dawn yesterday,” Monk replied, putting his folded papers on his chair and then sitting on them. “Badly mutilated. Hoped we’d keep the worst of it out of the papers, but we haven’t. They’re making a meal of it.”

Her face tightened a little with only a tiny movement of muscles. “Who is she? Do you know?”

“Not yet. From what I could tell, she looked ordinary enough, poor but respectable. Middle forties, at a guess.” An image of the woman’s body came back to his mind. Suddenly he felt tired and chilled again, as if the lights had gone out, although the kitchen was bright and warm and full of clean, homey smells.

“The surgeon said the mutilation was done after she was dead,” he went on. “The papers didn’t say that.”

Hester looked at him thoughtfully for a moment, as if she was going to ask him something. Then she changed her mind and served his breakfast of bacon, eggs, and toast, carrying the hot plate with a tea towel and setting it down in front of him. The butter and marmalade were already on the table. She made the tea and brought it over, steam coming gently from the spout of the pot.

Scuff arrived at the door, boots in his hands. He put them down in the hall and came in, looking first at Monk, then at Hester. In spite of almost a year here he was still thin, small for his age, his shoulders narrow. But now his hair was thick and shiny, and there were no blemishes on his fair skin.

“Are you hungry?” Hester inquired, as if it were a question.

He grinned and sat down in what he now regarded as his chair.

“Yeah. Please.”

She smiled and served him the same as she had Monk. He would eat it all, then look hopefully around for more. It was a comfortable pattern, repeated every morning.

“Wo’s wrong?” Scuff regarded Monk with a frown. “Can I ’elp?”

“Not yet, thank you,” Monk assured him, looking up and meeting his eyes so Scuff would know he was serious. “Nasty case, but not mine, at least not yet.” He knew that since it was in the newspapers, Scuff would unquestionably hear about it, but for now they could still have a few hours’ peace. Since living here in Paradise Place, Scuff’s ability to read had increased dramatically. He was not fluent-there were some longer or more complex words he still had difficulty with-but the plain language of a newspaper was well within his ability.

Scuff accepted his breakfast from Hester, but it did not distract his attention from Monk. “Why’s it not yours?” he asked. “You’re ’ead o’ the River Police. ’Oo’s would it be, then?”

“Depends on who she was,” Monk replied. “We found her body on the pier, but she might have lived inland, so this case would belong to the local Limehouse police.” Even as he said it he made up his mind. Lately the papers had been rife with criticism of the police for the violence and prostitution going on in the area close to the river. There had been several knife fights, one of which had degenerated into a full-scale street battle leaving half a dozen people wounded and two dead.

The newspapers had said the police were incompetent to handle it and had lost control. Uglier suggestions still were that they had deliberately allowed it to happen, in order to infiltrate it and get rid of a few troublemakers they could not handle legally, because the whole waterfront was slipping out of their control.

The only thing that might stop further destructive speculation after this crime was a quick solution.

“No, it don’t belong ter them,” Scuff argued. “They need yer ter ’elp ’em. If they killed ’er by the river, yer gotta do it.”

Monk smiled, in spite of himself. “I’ll offer to,” he conceded. “It’s not something I really want.”

“Why?” Scuff asked, his face puzzled, fair eyebrows drawn into a frown. “Don’t you care ’oo did it?”

“Yes, of course I do,” Monk corrected himself quickly. “It’s just that we don’t know who she was yet, so we don’t know where she lived. If it’s inland, the regular police would know the people better.”

“They in’t better’n you,” Scuff said with absolute certainty. “Yer gotta do it.” He was watching Monk’s face closely, trying to read what he felt, so he could figure out how to help. “It were a daft thing ter do,” he went on. “If yer don’t want something found, you ’ide it. Yer don’t leave it out in the open so’s any ferry or lighterman can see it. That’s daft!”

Monk did not try to explain homicidal lunacy to Scuff over breakfast, or what kind of rage gets hold of a man that causes him to rip a woman’s body open, even after she’s dead.

Scuff rolled his eyes, then set the matter aside and started to eat his breakfast with intense pleasure. It would be years before he lost his excitement at a whole plate of eggs and bacon that was solely for him.

“Can you give it to Orme, or one of the other men?” Hester asked when Scuff had finished and left the kitchen.

“No,” Monk said with a brief smile at her. “If she was on or near the river, it’s ours. And it’s going to be very bad. The newspapers are already calling for questions to be asked in Parliament about the vice in the port areas: Limehouse, Shadwell, Bermondsey, Deptford-in fact both sides of the river all the way down to Greenwich.” He hesitated a moment. “Perhaps we can solve it soon.”

She smiled at him without answer. There was a world of things between them that did not require words.

Monk went down to the water’s edge to take a ferry across the river to the Wapping Station. It was a gray morning with a hard wind making the water choppy. He pulled his coat collar up around his ears as he climbed into the boat and they moved out into the open stretch of the river where the slight lee of the buildings no longer protected them.

They were in between the long strings of barges going up and down the waterway, laden with cargo. Close to the docks ships were moored, waiting to unload. The quays were busy, men beginning the hard labor of lifting, wheeling, guiding cranes and winches, always watching the wind and the tide. Even out on the water, in spite of the slap of the current against the sides of the ferry and the creaking of the oarlocks as the oars swept back and forth, he could hear the cry of gulls and the shouts of men onshore.

At the far side he paid the ferryman and thanked him. He was familiar with the ferrymen; he saw the same few almost every day and knew them by name. Then he went up the steep stone steps to the dockside and across the open space in the sharper wind to the Wapping Police Station.

Inside was warm and there was tea brewing. He had a cup while he checked the news of the night and gave the few instructions that were necessary. Then he took a hansom to Limehouse Police Station and looked at the drawings the young constable had made of the dead woman. They were good. He had a talent. He had given her features life, parting the lips a little to show the slightly crossed front tooth, making her an individual.

The constable saw Monk looking at it, and perhaps misunderstood the sudden moment of pain in his face.

“Isn’t it any good?” he said anxiously.

“It’s too good,” Monk replied honestly. “It’s like seeing her alive. It makes her death more real.” He looked up at the man and saw the slight flush on his face. “You did very well. Thank you.”

“Sir.”

Orme came in a few moments afterward and Monk gave him one of the two drawings. They agreed where each of them would go: Orme to the north, Monk south, to the Isle of Dogs.

The wind funneled down the narrow streets, carrying the smell of the river and the dank odor of rubbish and wet stones, overrunning drains. Monk questioned everyone he passed. Though the news clearly had reached them, many affected to be too busy to answer him and he had to insist. Then they were angry, wishing to do anything to stop the horror and the fear from touching their own lives.