The Shifting Tide (9 page)

That led him to the crux of the question: Was it a theft of opportunity or a planned crime with a particular receiver in mind? The hour it must have happened, according to Hodge’s death, indicated the former. If the latter, then Monk had very little chance of recovering the ivory, because it was almost certainly well beyond the river by now.

He crossed the street and walked along the narrow footpath as a cart rattled over the cobbles. The lamplighter was busy, tipping his long pole to touch the wicks and bring the gift of sudden vision and the illusion of warmth. There was no mist off the water, just the customary driving wind and the faint haze of smoke. To the east, where it was darkest and the river wound beyond Greenwich and the Estuary to the sea, a few stars glittered sharp and brittle.

Monk turned the corner into the wind again, pulled his coat collar higher and tighter around his neck, and quickened his pace to Louvain’s offices. He was obliged to wait in the foyer for a quarter of an hour, pacing back and forth on the bare floor, before Louvain sent for him. But he would know there was no news yet. Had there been, Monk would have come earlier.

The office was warm, but Monk could not relax. The force of Louvain’s personality dominated the room, even though he looked tired. The lines on his face were deeper than before, and his eyes were pink-rimmed.

“I’m here because I said I would be,” Monk replied. “I need to cultivate informants—”

“Is that an oblique way of saying you want more money?” Louvain looked at him with undisguised contempt.

“Not more than I have,” Monk replied coldly. “If I do, then I’ll tell you in a manner you won’t mistake.” He looked at Louvain more closely. He would be a fool to miss such an opportunity to observe him. The theft might have been by chance, but it was equally likely to have been deliberate. He could not afford any kind of ignorance. Louvain stood in front of his desk now, with his back to the gas lamp on the wall. It was an easy and perfectly natural position, but it also concealed his expression, giving his features an unnatural and somber look.

“And how long does this process take?” he asked. There was an edge to his voice, anxiety and perhaps tiredness making it rough. He worked long hours. It was possible more of his fortune rested on recovering the ivory than he had told Monk.

“I should reap some benefits tomorrow,” Monk replied rashly.

“Do you have a plan?” Louvain enquired. Now his face was softer, something like a lift of hope in it. Perhaps his contempt was meant to conceal the fact that the theft mattered to him intensely, and he was dependent upon Monk. He employed him, and could pay him or not, but he would not find his ivory without help, and they both knew that.

Monk weighed his answer carefully. The tension in the room prickled as they each watched the other, weighing, judging. Who had the strength of will to bend the other? Who could harness his vulnerability and disguise it as a weapon?

“I need to narrow down the kind of receiver who could handle a load like that,” Monk said levelly. “A man with the connections to sell it on.”

“Or a woman,” Louvain amended. “Some of the brothel-keepers are receivers as well. But be careful; just because they’re women doesn’t mean they wouldn’t slit your throat if you got in their way.” The vaguest smile crossed his face and then vanished. “You’re no use to me dead.”

If it happened it would anger him, but it would not lie on his conscience. There was a certain respect in him, a levelness in the gaze, a candor he would not have used with a lesser man.

Monk refused to be ruffled. He glanced around the office at the pictures on the walls. They were not of ships, as he had expected, but were wild landscapes of fierce and alien beauty, stark mountains towering above churning water, or barren as the volcanoes on the moon.

“Cape Horn,” Louvain said, following his look. “And Patagonia. I keep them to remind me who I am. Every man should see such places at least once, feel the violence and the enormity of them, hear the noise of wind and water that never stops, and stand on a plain like that, where the silence is never broken. It gives you a sense of proportion.” He hunched his shoulders and pushed his hands into his pockets, still staring, not at Monk but at the pictures. “It measures you against circumstance so you know what you have to do—and what it will mean to fail.”

Monk wondered for an instant if it was a warning, but when he looked at the intense concentration in Louvain’s face, he knew the man was speaking to himself.

“It’s a cruel beauty,” Louvain went on, his voice touched with awe. “There’s no mercy in it, but it’s also freedom, because it’s honest.” Then, as if suddenly remembering that Monk was a hired hand, not an equal or a friend, he stiffened and the emotion fled from his face. “Get my ivory back,” he ordered. “Time’s short. Don’t waste it coming here to tell me you’ve got nothing.”

Monk swallowed the retort that came to his lips. “Good night,” he answered, and before Louvain responded he turned and went out.

He hesitated in the street. The wind was knife-edged, and a sickle moon was rising across the water. Ice rimed over the cobbles, making them slippery, and his breath was a plume of vapor in the air. The thought of going home was sweet, like a burst of warmth inside him, but it was too soon to give up on the day. It was only a little after six, and he could put in at least another two or three hours. The thieves would already have gotten rid of the ivory by now, and the receiver would be looking to place it. He needed to find it before then.

He walked back along the street towards the public house on the corner, pushed the door open, and went in. The room was warm and noisy, full of shouts, laughter, and the clink of glasses. The floor was covered with dirty straw. People jolted each other to move closer to the bar and into the lantern’s yellow light; the barman’s face gleamed with sweat above the tankards topped with foam. It all smelled of ale; the steam from hot, weary bodies; wet clothes; mud and horse manure on boots.

Monk waited his turn, moving slowly closer to the front of the queue, all the time listening and watching. There were street women among the men, garish in red and pink dresses low on the shoulder, faces painted with false gaiety. Their voices forced the laughter, and their eyes were tired.

He listened to snatches of conversation, straining to link them together and make sense of them. He had worked many years in the city; he knew receivers of stolen goods by instinct. It was not in their appearance so much as in their manner. Some were hearty, some furtive; some talked a great deal, others were terse. Some offered magnificent prices and sang praise of their own generosity and how it would ruin them; others haggled over every halfpenny. But they all had a watchfulness about them; they did not miss a word or a gesture from anyone, and they could assess the monetary worth of anything in seconds.

There was also a defiance, a cautious caginess with which other people approached them, not as friends but always with a mind to business.

He saw several transactions—some with a discreet hand in and out of the pocket, a piece of jewelry or a trinket shown; some were merely words. If one of them had concerned Louvain’s ivory he would not have known, but only a fool buys something he has not seen, and fools do not survive long in such a trade.

He reached the front of the queue and bought his ale. Then he found a place to sit and drink it, next to a man with a scar down his cheek and an empty left sleeve of his jacket.

Monk took the opportunity to strike up conversation. Within half an hour he had refilled his own glass and the man’s, getting them each a pork pie at the same time. It was an expense that could go on Louvain’s bill.

“ ’Course we still get some like it,” the sailor said, taking up his tale where he had left it when Monk stood up. “But not like the old days. Real pirates, they were.” His watery eyes were bright with memory. “Me granpa were one o’ the first in the River P’lice; 1798 that were. In them days there was crime on the river you wouldn’t believe!” He nodded. “Not now, seein’ as ’ow it’s all tame an’ respectable, like. Near ’alf the men in the docks was thievin’ back then.” He held up his fingers. “Two men, they were, Arriott an’ Colquhoun, set up the P’lice. Got rid of ninety-eight out of every ’undred o’ thieves, they did, in jus’ one year!” He stared at Monk challengingly. “Think on it! Don’ it eat yer ’eart out, eh? They was real men.” He said it with a fierce, happy sense of pride.

“Were you in the River Police?” Monk enquired with interest.

The man laughed so hard he all but spilled his ale. “No! No, I in’t an oggler, bless yer. I bin ter sea most o’ me life, till I lorst me arm. But that were river pirates, an’ all! Comin’ back from the Indies, we were.” He leaned forward confidentially, his voice quieter and more urgent as memory flooded back. “Java way. Them China Seas is summink ’orrible in bad weather, an’ swarmin’ wi’ pirates.” He took a long swig of his ale and wiped the back of his hand across his mouth. “Don’ trust nobody. Keep a watch on deck all hours, an’ keep yer gun loaded an’ yer powder dry. But we made it all the way ’ome, down the Indian Ocean.” He made a circular movement with his finger. “ ’round the Cape o’ Good ’Ope and up the Atlantic past the Skeleton Coast o’ Africa, across Biscay . . . are yer followin’ me, like?”

“Yes, of course.”

“An’ ’ome ter Spit’ead,” he said triumphantly. “Five-masted schooner, we was, wi’ a good set o’ guns fore an’ aft. We passed Gravesend, tacked up Fiddler’s Reach, past the marshes on either side of us, safe as ’ouses. Gallion’s Reach right up ter Woolwich.” He sniffed lugubriously. “Could smell ’ome it were that close. ’Eave to for the night off Bugsby’s Marsh ter make the Isle o’ Dogs an’ the Pool the next day. Damn it if we weren’t boarded in the middle watch by ’alf a dozen river pirates an’ cut loose.” He banged his fist on the table. “Tide took us onter the mud banks an’ by dawn there weren’t a bleedin’ thing left o’ the cargo they could shift, the sons o’ bitches. On the watch raised the alarm, poor sod! Cost ’im ’is life. An’ we all come up on deck wi’ pistols an’ cutlasses, an’ it were a right battle. But yer can’t fight ’em bastards an’ the wind an’ the tide at once.”

Monk imagined it—the ship drifting, picking up speed with the current, the men fighting desperately on deck, trying to swing swords in the narrow spaces, seeking to shoot at moving, uncertain targets in the swaying lantern light, the violence, the fear, the pain.

“What happened?” He had no need to pretend interest.

“We killed three of ’em,” the man replied with satisfaction, licking his lips after the last mouthful of the pork pie. “Lost two o’ us, though. Wounded two more o’ them pretty bad, an’ put ’em over the side. They drowned.”

“Then what?”

“ ’Alf a dozen more of ’em, weren’t there!” he said bitterly. “I ’ad me arm gashed so bad I bled like a stuck pig. Got it all stitched up like, but went wi’ the gangrene. Took it off, they did. ’Ad ter, ter save me bleedin’ life!” He said it wryly, as if it were a long time ago and hardly mattered anymore, but Monk saw the pain in his eyes, and the memory of what he had been. He could feel not the physical agony of the knife, but the mental scream as he became less than whole, the mutilation that tore through him still.

Monk did not know how to respond. Should he acknowledge the pain he had seen, and attempt to convey some understanding of it, or was it better to behave as if he had not noticed?

“Are there still pirates on the river, even today?” he asked. It was an evasion, but it was the best he could do.

“Some,” the man answered, the brilliance of hurt fading from his eyes. “The ogglers is pretty good, but even they can’t do it all.”

“Are there pirates this far up the river?”

“Prob’ly not. Up by Lime’ouse an’ that way it’s opium eaters an’ them kinds o’ things. But yer never know. There’s other folks ’as ’ad a few run-ins wif ’em, ’part from me.”

“Louvain?” The moment Monk had said it, he wondered if it were wise.

The man’s face lit up with pleasure. “Clem Louvain? Yer damn right! ’e cut them up summink beautiful, ’e did! Yer never seen a better man wi’ a cutlass than Clem! They rued the day they messed wi’ ’im!” He sniffed cheerfully. “Mind, that’s a few year ago now, but it don’t make no diff’rence. Summink like that yer don’ forget. They don’ mess wif ’im still, an’ all!”

Monk measured his words carefully. “I’m surprised they don’t want revenge,” he said with a deliberate lift of curiosity.

The man grinned, showing gapped teeth. “Come up from ’ell ter ask for it, yer reckon?”

“Dead?” Monk was surprised.

“ ’Course, dead!” the man said contemptuously. “Two killed right there on the deck o’ the
Mary Walsh
an’ two ’anged up Execution Dock. I seed it meself. Went ter watch, I did. Rare sight, that.”

“No one left to . . . want payment for it?” Monk pressed.

“Not for that bleedin’ lot o’ sods.” The man upended the glass to drain the last of his beer. “Reckon as Mr. Louvain’s ’ealth were drunk right well in a few ’ouses up an’ down the river that night.” He took his mug and pushed it an inch closer to Monk without looking at him. “River’s full o’ tales,” he added.

Monk took the hint and fetched them both another pint, although he had no capacity or wish to drink any more himself. He was prepared to listen for another hour at least.

His companion settled down to picking from his memory tales of violence, failed robberies and successful ones, and eccentric characters in the last fifty years along the river.

“Most o’ ’em back then,” he said gleefully. He wiped the back of his hand across his mouth. Monk had bought him a second pie. The color with which he painted the river life contained many warnings that might prove useful, and it gave Monk a far better understanding of the intricacies of illicit trade, of light-horsemen, heavy-horsemen, lumpers, plunderers, and crooked Revenue men. Monk heard stories, some of the legendary receivers, including the present-day Fat Man, the most famous opulent receiver along this stretch of the water.

Monk did not arrive home until after nine o’clock, by which time Hester was concerned. The dinner she had made was far past its best and barely edible.