The Shifting Tide (19 page)

He felt a prickle at the back of his neck. He must not betray his ignorance to her. “My money’s on Louvain,” he said.

She pulled her mouth into a thin line. “Then yer knows summink as I don’t. Like where ’is ivory went ter, mebbe? ’Cos if ’e don’t get that back afore March closes in on ’im, ’e won’t ’ave the money ter pay ’is debt. ’E’ll lose ’is ware’ouse, an’ he won’t be able ter pay up fer that damn big clipper as is comin’ up for sale when she makes port. An’ ol’ Bert Culpepper’ll get it, sure as God made little fishes. An’ then where’ll Clem Louvain be, eh? I’ll tell yer, a week be’ind for the rest of ’is days. An’ you an’ I but know wot good a cargo is a week be’ind! So yer put yer money on Clem Louvain if yer want, but I’m keepin’ mine in me pocket till I sees which way the cat jumps.”

Monk smiled at her very slowly. “Then so will I,” he said softly. It was what he had wanted at last.

She was uncertain just how deep his agreement was. She wanted it all, but she knew she had to play it slowly. She had reeled in many fish in her day, and this was a tasty one.

Monk sat back again, still looking at her. “You said something about watches?”

She moved her fingers gently on the fabric of her embroidery. “Yer got watches?”

“Three . . . for now.”

She held out her hand.

He gave them to her, one at a time, hoping she would either give them back to him or pay him something like their worth. If not, the information she’d just revealed would have been bought at a price he could not afford.

It took him nearly an hour to haggle with her, and she relished every moment of it as if it were a kind of game between them. She sent for a bottle of gin, and it was brought by a thin man with muscles like cords in his neck, and a knife scar over the crown of his shaven head. He brought it with ill grace, and Lil barely looked at him. She was bored with him, her appetite was sharp for Monk.

They sat in front of the fire, sipping gin, arguing back and forth. She leaned forward so close to him he could smell the warmth and the staleness of her, but he dared not let her see that. He could feel the sweat trickling down his body and knew it was as much from revulsion as from the heat of the room. He had walked into this knowingly, using what he saw in her face, and now he did not know how to get out. He was tempted to settle for less than the watches were worth—anything to escape. But if he did that she would know why, and not only despise him for it but be insulted, which would be far more dangerous. Every instinct in him screamed that a woman rebuffed was an enemy no man could afford. Better a man robbed of his goods, or insulted in his honor, better almost anything rather than that.

The minutes ticked by. She sent for the man with the corded neck again to fetch more coal. Apparently his name was Ollie.

He brought it. She told him to stoke the fire. He did so. She dismissed him.

“Forty pound,” she said as Ollie closed the door behind him. “That’s me last offer.”

He pretended to weigh it very carefully. He had asked forty-five, three pounds more than the forty pounds Louvain had given him, expecting to have to come down. This would mean he lost two pounds, but he would not do better. “Well . . . I suppose there’s more to a price than money,” he said at last.

She nodded with satisfaction. “Gimme.”

He passed over the watches, and she stood up and went to a locked box in the far corner of the room. She opened it and brought back forty sovereigns, counting them out for him.

He took them and put them in his own inside pockets. He knew better than to leave instantly. It was another five minutes before he rose to his feet, thanked her for her hospitality, and said he would be back the next time he had business of a similar nature.

He walked briskly to Louvain’s office, tense all the way, thinking he heard footsteps behind him. He could not afford to lose the money. He went in with a sense of relief so overwhelming it was like exhaustion suddenly catching up with him. He asked to see Louvain immediately, and was shown in within ten minutes.

“Well?” Louvain demanded, his face dark with anger and impatience.

Monk realized how glad he was that he had something positive to report—and that the coins were in his pocket. He took them out and put them on the desk. “Forty pounds,” he said. “It bought me information that you should have told me in the first place.”

Louvain looked at the money for a moment, then picked it up, scraped his fingernail across one of the coins, and put them in his pocket. “What information is that?” he said quietly. There was a rough, dangerous edge to his voice, and his eyes were cold, but he did not ask for the other two pounds.

“That your warehouse is surety for a loan from Bert Culpepper, and if you don’t redeem it you can’t put it up for collateral to buy the clipper when it comes up for auction,” Monk told him.

Louvain let out his breath slowly, his jaw clenched so the muscle stood out. “Who told you that? And what you say had better be the truth.”

“An opulent receiver,” Monk replied. “If you want to know who else knows, I can’t tell you, I didn’t learn that.”

“So now they know you’re my man!”

“I’m not your man! And no, they don’t know.”

“You’re my man until I say you aren’t.” Louvain leaned forward over his desk, his hands, callused and scarred by ropes, spread wide on the polished wood. “How does knowing about Culpepper and the clipper get you any further? I told you I needed to deliver the ivory because it was due. I hadn’t time to tell you all my enemies along the river. I have crossed every man on it, one time or another. And they’ve crossed me. It’s not a trade for the squeamish.”

“Because if you’d told me about Culpepper I could have started to trace the ivory from the other end!” Monk answered back with equal bitterness. “Following the ivory from the ship I’m always at least two days behind.”

A dull flush spread up Louvain’s cheeks. “Well, go and get on with looking at Culpepper, but for the love of God, be careful! You’re no use to me at the bottom of the river with your throat cut.”

“Thank you,” Monk said sarcastically, then turned on his heel and went out. He felt safer now that he had only a little silver and copper change in his pocket, but he still kept to the middle of the road all the way back to the omnibus stop.

He was standing, waiting, hunched against the wind, when another man came up, presumably to wait also. Only when he stood beside him was Monk suddenly aware of a weight pressing into his side. He turned to complain, and saw the hatred in the man’s eyes. He had a hat on, covering his shaven head and the strangely muscular neck, but Monk recognized his jaw and mouth. It was Ollie, who had waited on him at Little Lil’s.

“Yer in’t ready ter go ’ome yet, Mr. Busybody,” Ollie hissed softly, as if someone might overhear him. “Fancy yerself, do yer? Think our Lil’d give yer more’n the time o’ day, do yer? Well yer in’t gonner ’ave the chance, see, ’cos yer comin’ wi’ me fer a little trip down Lime’ouse way.” He jerked the knife blade in his hand a little more sharply into Monk’s ribs. “An’ there in’t nob’dy listenin’, so don’ bother yellin’ out, ner thinkin’ as mebbe I wouldn’t stick yer, ’cos I would.”

Monk did not doubt it. He might get a chance to overpower him later, but certainly not now. And his mind was filled with the memory of the knife in his arm as a scream filled the silence. Obediently he turned from the omnibus stop and walked back along the dark, gusty street, the wind in his face, the stones slick under his feet.

They were alone side by side, Ollie close and a little behind, always keeping the knife bumping Monk’s back. He must have done such a thing before, because never once—all the way along the road, across the dark inlet to the Shadwell Docks and beyond, towards the curve southward of Limehouse Reach—did he ever let Monk move far enough from him to turn or escape the prodding blade.

Monk saw the cranes and warehouses of the West India Dock ahead. The rain was spitting in their faces and the air was pungent with the smells of fish and tar when Ollie ordered him to stop. “Yer goin’ fer a nice little swim, you are,” he said with malicious delight. “Mebbe our Lil won’t fancy yer so much when they fish yer out.” He laughed to himself, a sound like a clearing of the throat. “That’s if they do, like! Sometimes bodies get caught up in the piers an’ no one ever finds ’em. They stay there forever.”

“I’ll make damn sure you come with me!” Monk retorted. “Is this what Lil wants?”

“Don’t yer talk abaht ’er, yer . . .” Ollie’s voice shook with rage.

Monk felt the knifepoint prick him. He moved towards the broad surface of the wharf where it stretched out ten or twelve yards into the dark water before dropping off abruptly, nothing beyond but the creaking, dripping stumps poking up like dead men’s bones. The smell of wood rot was heavy in his nose. It was dark but for the riding lights of a ship twenty yards away.

“Garn!” Ollie prompted, shoving Monk forward with the knife blade. He was too close behind for Monk to twist and lunge back at him. Monk stepped down as he was told, and felt the boards slippery under his feet. The wood was pitted and slimy with age. He could hear the river swirling and sucking around the stakes, only a few feet below him now. Would he have any chance of swimming in that current? Could he catch hold of the next stake as he was carried against it? If it was that easy, why did people drown? Because the tide was fast, and the eddies pulled you away. Clothes soaked with water were too heavy to move in, and they pulled you under, no matter what you did.

He had to fight now or not at all. And Ollie knew that, too. He gave another stiff prod and Monk stumbled forward onto his knees and rolled over rapidly, in a single movement, just as Ollie flung himself into the place where he had been, knife blade arcing in the air and stabbing downward.

Monk scrambled to get up as a board cracked under his weight and swung for a moment, then plunged into the water below.

Ollie was on his feet again. He grunted with satisfaction. He knew the pier, where the rotten planks were, and he had the knife. He was between Monk and the way back, but at least there was space between them now and Monk could make out his shape in the darkness. Would that be enough? It had been a long time since he had fought physically for his life—in fact, not since that dreadful night in Mecklenburg Square before his accident, and he remembered that only in flashes.

Ollie was balancing on the balls of his feet, preparing to lunge.

This was ridiculous! If he were not facing death it would be funny. He was fighting a man he did not know for the favor of a woman he would have paid not to touch! And if he told Ollie that, Ollie would be so insulted for Lil he would murder Monk in outrage.

Monk gave a bark of laughter for the sheer lunacy of it.

Ollie hesitated. For the first time he was faced with something he did not understand.

Monk moved a step sideways, away from the board he knew was rotted and closer to the way back.

Ollie froze, looking beyond Monk.

It was then that Monk turned and saw the other figure in the gloom—solid, menacing, huge, with the riding lights behind him. Monk broke out in a sweat of panic—then the instant after, when the figure moved, recognized the slightly rolling gait of Durban from the River Police.

“Now then, Ollie,” Durban said firmly. “You can’t take us both, an’ you don’t want to finish up on the end of a rope. It’s a bad way to go.”

Ollie remained motionless, his jaw hanging.

“Put that away an’ go on home,” Durban went on, moving a step farther towards Monk. His voice held such certainty as if there was no question in anyone’s mind that Ollie would obey.

Ollie stood still.

Monk waited.

Underneath them the water sucked and belched, swirling around the pier stakes, and, somewhere, something was washed away and fell in with a splash.

Monk was shuddering with cold, and relief.

Ollie made his decision. He lowered his hand with the knife in it.

“Into the water,” Durban directed.

Ollie squawked with indignation, his voice high and harsh.

“The knife!” Durban said patiently. “Not you.”

Ollie swore, and tossed the knife. It fell into the water with only the faintest sound.

Monk stifled a laugh that was far too close to hysteria.

Ollie turned and stumbled up towards the street and the darkness swallowed him up.

Another figure appeared behind Durban, slighter, and moving with an ease that suggested he was also younger.

“You all right, sir?” His voice was concerned, challenging.

“Yes, thank you, Sergeant Orme,” Durban replied. “Just Ollie Jenkins getting a bit above himself again. Thinks Mr. Monk here has designs on Little Lil.”

Sergeant Orme was satisfied. The rigidity in him relaxed, but he did not leave.

“What exactly is it that you’re doing here, Mr. Monk?” Durban asked. “What are you looking for?”

“Thank you,” Monk said with profound feeling. It was embarrassing, being rescued by the River Police. He was used to being the one who helped, who did the favor and found the solutions. It was made the more so because he respected Durban and loathed not being able to be honest with him. It was a kind of grubbiness he would have paid a great deal to avoid.

“What are you looking for?” Durban repeated. The water gurgled around the pier, the wash from something passing in the gloom sloshed against the stakes and the wood creaked and sagged sideways. “I know you’re a private agent of enquiry,” Durban said in an expressionless voice. What he thought of such an occupation could only be guessed at. Did he think Monk was a scavenger in other people’s misery, or a profiteer from their crimes?

“Stolen goods,” he answered finally. “So I can return them to their owner.”

Still Durban did not move. “What sort of goods?”

“Anything that belongs to one man and has been taken by another.”

“You’re playing with fire, Mr. Monk, an’ you aren’t good enough at it, at least not down here on the river,” Durban told him softly. “You’ll get burnt, an’ I already have enough murders on my stretch without you. Go back to the city an’ do what you know how.”