Anne Perry: Acceptable Loss

“Needed a little ’elp,” he explained when they asked him about ’Orrie’s delay in returning for Parfitt the previous night. “Weren’t thinkin’ o’ the time. Can’t let people get away without payin’, or word’ll get about, an’ everyone’ll be tryin’ it. Mr. Parfitt’s money.”

Monk made a mental note to find out whose money it would be now, and perhaps also roughly how much of it there was. Constable Coburn would be well qualified to do that.

He went through the pattern of the evening once again, then thanked Crumble and left.

It was after six by the time Monk and Orme finally found themselves upstream toward Mortlake. They had borrowed a police boat and now rowed across from the north bank to the south. Finally they were approaching the large vessel moored close to the trees in a quiet, easily overlooked place, sheltered from the wake of passing barges and unseen from the road.

The north bank opposite was marshy and completely deserted-a place no one would be likely to wander. There were no paths in it, no place to tie a boat and no reason to.

They rowed across the bright water. The early evening sun was low on the western horizon, already filling the sky with color. It was not yet a year since Monk had taken this job, but even in that time the strength of his arms and chest had increased enormously. He hardly felt the pull of the oars, and he was so accustomed to working with Orme that they fell into rhythm without a word.

He knew that Parfitt had been murdered, most probably on this boat that lay motionless on the silent river ahead of them. Still, the movement, the creak of the oarlocks, the whisper of water passing, the faint drip from the oars, had a kind of timeless calm that eased the knots inside him. He found he was smiling.

They pulled up alongside the boat and shipped their oars. Orme stood and caught the rope ladder that lay over the surprisingly high side. They tied their own ropes to it, and then climbed up.

The boat was larger than it had looked from the shore. It was a good fifty feet long, and about twenty wide at its broadest point. Given the height of it, there would be two decks above the waterline, and perhaps another below, then the bilges. What did Mickey Parfitt use something this size for, moored away up here beyond the docks? Certainly not cargo. There were no masts for sails, and no towpaths on the shore.

Monk glanced at Orme.

Orme’s face was turned away, but Monk saw the hard lines of his jaw, the muscles knotted, his shoulders tight.

“We’d better go below,” Monk said quietly. They had brought crowbars in case it proved necessary to break open the hatches.

He wondered what had happened on this boat. Had someone crept aboard in the dark, rowing out just as they had, climbing on board silently, creeping soundlessly across the wooden planking and taking Mickey Parfitt by surprise? Or was it someone he had expected, someone he had assumed to be a friend, and then he had suddenly, horribly, found that he was wrong?

Orme was bending over the hatch.

“We’ll have to break it,” he said, frowning. “He must’ve been killed on deck.”

“Or he never got this far,” Monk replied.

Orme looked up at him. “You mean it could have nothing to do with this? Why would ’Orrie tell that story about bringing him here if he didn’t? If he’s got the guts to lie at all, surely he’d say he knew nothing about it?”

Monk took one of the crowbars and levered it into the lock in the hatch. “Maybe other people know he took Parfitt out. He might have been seen on the dockside.”

“At eleven at night?” Orme said skeptically. He slid his own crowbar into place and leaned hard on it, but the heavy metal hasp of the lock did not budge.

Monk put his weight behind his crowbar too, working in unison with Orme.

On the fourth attempt the wood splintered. On the fifth it gave, tearing the other end of the lock off and pulling the screws out.

“What the hell has he got in here that’s so valuable?” Orme said in amazement. “Smuggling? Brandy, tobacco? Must be a hell of a lot of it. Unless whoever killed him took it?”

Monk did not reply. He hoped that was what it was. “I think ’Orrie’s afraid of Tosh, don’t you?”

Orme straightened his back, pulling the hatch open. “You mean Tosh told him what to say? That would mean Tosh has a fair idea of what really happened.”

The sky was darkening around them, the light draining out of the air. There was no sound but the faint ripple of the water.

“Or else he’s protecting someone else,” Monk suggested. He moved closer to the black square of the hatch. Only the new wood where the screws were torn out showed pale. “We’d better get down there while we can still see. We’ll need a lantern below anyway.”

They did not look at each other. They both knew what they were afraid of. The same memories crowded both their minds.

Orme struck a match. In the still air he did not have to shelter it; carrying it carefully, he started down the wooden steps into the bowels of the boat.

Monk followed. It was surprisingly easy, and he knew as he went down and his hand found the rail that this deck was designed for passengers, not cargo. A sense of foreboding closed in on him. Even the smell in the air was disturbingly familiar: the richness of cigar smoke, the overripe sweetness of good alcohol, but stale, mixed with the odor of human bodies.

Orme held the lantern high and shed its light onto the smooth painted walls of a wide cabin. It looked something like a floating withdrawing room. There were cupboards at one end, and a bench with a polished mahogany surface, a gleaming brass rail around the edges.

It brought back a memory of Jericho Phillips’s boat so sharply that for an instant Monk felt his gorge rise and was afraid he was going to be sick. He strode across the carpeted floor to the door into the next cabin and jerked it open so hard it crashed against the wall and swung back on him.

Orme followed him with the light. Monk heard his breath expelled in a sigh. This cabin was similar, only larger, and at the far end there was a makeshift stage.

“Oh, Jesus!” Orme said, then apologized instantly. The horror in his voice made his words scarcely a blasphemy, more a cry for help, as if God could change the truth of what the sergeant knew.

Monk needed no explanation; it was his worst imagining come true again. This was another boat, just like Jericho Phillips’s, where pornographic shows of children entertained those with a perverted addiction to such things, and with an addiction to the danger of watching it live. This was what Phillips would have done with Scuff, and Monk and Hester would never have found him. Even if they had, what of his heart and mind would have remained whole, let alone his body?

Were there boys here now, locked behind other doors, too afraid to make a sound?

Orme moved forward, and Monk put a hand on his arm. “Listen,” he ordered. Orme was breathing hard, shaking a little. For all his years on the river, there were still times when the sight of pain tore through his control.

They both stood motionless, ears straining. The boat was well made. Even the joints in the wood did not creak with the faint movement of the water. The tide had turned and was coming in again.

“They must be here.” Monk dropped his voice to a whisper. “They can’t bring them out here for the show every time. Too many other boats-they’d be seen. And too many chances to escape. They’re here somewhere.” He could not even bring himself to say that they might all be dead.

“A mutiny?” Orme suggested with a lift of hope. “Maybe they killed him? One hit him with something, two others strangled him? That could be why the odd marks. Maybe it isn’t a rope at all? Could be boys’ shirts, all tied together.” He turned to face Monk, his features ghostly in the lantern light. “They’d have gone. We’ll never find them.” All the emotion of his unspoken meaning was in his face.