Anne Perry - The Shifting Tide

“I thought you said Greenwich!” Scuff said urgently.

“I did,” Monk admitted, equally surprised.

A pleasure boat passed them moving swiftly. People were lining the decks, scarves and ribbons fluttering. The sound of music drifted across the water from the band on deck. Some people were waving their hats and shouting.

There were ferries in the water, lighters, all kinds of craft about their business. It was not always easy to keep Gould in sight, although the tall figure of Crow in the stern helped.

Monk and Scuff sat in silence as they wound through the anchored ships, Monk wondering where they could be going. Where was there upstream that Gould would have hidden a boatload of ivory? Why would he not have left it near Culpepper’s warehouses, if not actually in one of them?

Jimmy was taking them steadily closer to the middle of the river, and then towards the south bank. They must be almost in line with Bermondsey by now.

“I know where we’re goin’!” Scuff said suddenly, his face earnest, his voice strained. “Jacob’s Island! It’s an awful bad place, mister! I in’t never bin there, but I ’eard of it.”

Monk turned to look at him and saw the fear in his face. Ahead of them, Gould’s boat was swinging around, bow to the shore where rotting buildings leaned out into the water, the tide sucking at their foundations. Their cellars must be flooded, wood dark with the incessant dripping and oozing of decades of creeping damp. Looking at it across the gray water, Monk could imagine the smell of decay, the cold that ate into the bones. Even in the city he had heard this place’s reputation.

He looked again at Scuff’s face. “When the boat drops me off, go back and tell Mr. Louvain to come immediately,” he said. “Tell him I’ve got his ivory, and if he doesn’t want the police to take it as evidence, to come and collect it before they do. Do you understand?”

“ ’e won’t know where!” Scuff protested. “I gotter foller yer till I sees where yer goin’.” He clenched his jaw tight in frightened refusal.

Monk looked at his stubborn face and the shadows in his eyes. “Thank you,” he said sincerely.

They were pulling in close to the shore now. Ahead of them, Gould was only a foot from landing on a low, almost waterlogged pier. He reached it and scrambled out, tying his boat to a rotted stake and waiting while Crow climbed out after him. Monk could tell by the way Crow moved that he was nervous. His legs were awkward, his back stiff as though he half expected to have to defend himself any moment. Was it insane to have come here alone?

Too late to change the plan now. Monk told Jimmy to put him ashore at the next landing steps onward, around the jutting buttress of the warehouse and out of sight of Gould. “Go and get Louvain!” he hissed at Scuff, who was making ready to follow him. “Now! Then get Durban!”

Scuff hesitated, glancing at the dark waste of timber ahead, the alleys, sagging windows and doorways, the rubbish and the water seeping everywhere.

Monk refused to follow his eyes, or to let his imagination picture any of it. “Go!” he ordered Jimmy, and pushed Scuff’s thin shoulders until he overbalanced back into the boat and it pulled away.

He turned back to Jacob’s Island in time to see Crow follow Gould between two of the buildings and disappear. He hurried after them, trying to move soundlessly over the spongy wood, afraid with every step that it would give way beneath him.

As soon as he was in shadow he stopped again to accustom his eyes to the gloom. He heard movement ahead of him before he saw Crow’s back just as he turned another corner and was gone. The smell of rot was heavy in the air, like sickness, and as he went under a broken arch into one of the houses, everything around him creaked and dripped. It seemed as if it were alive, beams settling, the scuffle and scratch of clawed feet. He imagined red eyes.

He went after the sounds of footsteps ahead of him, and now and then as he climbed up or down steps, or went around a corner, he saw Crow’s back, or his black head with its long hair under his hat, and knew he had not lost them yet.

Was Crow a fool to trust Monk to rescue him if Gould suspected he was being tricked? Louvain would never find them here! Or was Monk the fool, and Crow had already told Gould exactly what he was really here for? Should Monk leave now, while he could, and at least get out of it alive?

Then he would never be able to work on the river again. His name would be a mockery. And if he ran away from this, what would he stand and face in the future? Would he run away next time too? The thoughts raced in his mind while his legs were still carrying him forward. The light was dim through broken windows and here and there gaping walls. He could barely discern the figures of Gould and Crow going through the door at the end of a passage.

He hesitated, the sweat running down his back in spite of the clinging chill, then he went after them. He pushed the door open. It was a small room, dim in the gray light from one window. Gould was pulling a sack away from a pile of something that lay on the floor. One long white tusk protruded. The outlines of others beyond were plain enough to see. Monk thought for an instant of the creations that had been slaughtered and their carcasses robbed, then he remembered his own peril, and stopped abruptly.

But it was too late. Gould had seen his shadow against the door lintel and jerked his head up. His face froze.

Monk walked forward slowly. “You had better leave,” he told Crow. “I’ll talk with Mr. Gould about the ivory and what should happen to it.”

Crow shrugged. His relief was almost palpable, and yet the darkness was still in his eyes. He looked at Monk as if he was trying to convey something he could not say in words. It might be a warning of some sort-but what? That they were watched? That Gould was armed? Time was short-there was no way back. Might there also be no way forward?

Help would only come from the river, when Scuff fetched Louvain.

“ ’Oo are yer?” Gould demanded, glaring at Monk. “I’ll sell yer one tusk each, but if yer think yer gonna rob me, yer stupider than yer got any right ter be an’ stay alive.” His eyes flickered from one to the other of them nervously.

“Who am I?” Monk was taking as long as he could. “I’m someone interested in ivory, especially that shipment from the Maude Idris .”

Gould’s face showed no added fear, no sudden change at the mention of what he must know was murder. Monk felt a stab of regret that it meant nothing to him; all he thought of was the money. Monk kept his back to the door, his ear straining to hear anything human among the rat feet, the dripping wood, and the slow subsidence of the fabric of the building into the mud of Jacob’s Island.

“ ’Ow d’yer know it’s from the Maude Idris ?” Gould asked, his face puckered with suspicion.

“Get out!” Monk said again to Crow, hoping that now he would go and bring the nearest police, river or land.

“ ’Oo are yer tellin’ ter get out?” Gould said angrily. “Yer got money ter buy all this then, eh? An’ don’ think yer can rob me, ’cos yer can’t. I in’t alone ’ere. I in’t that daft!”

“Nor am I,” Monk said with a slight laugh he hoped was believable. “And I don’t want more than one tusk, and only that if the price is right.”

“Oh, yeah? An’ what price would that be, then?” Gould still had confidence.

“Twenty pounds,” Monk said rashly.

“Fifty!” Gould retorted with undisguised derision.

Monk pushed his hands into his pockets and stared at the pile of tusks thoughtfully, as if considering.

“Forty-five is the lowest I’ll go,” Gould offered.