The Shifting Tide

by Anne Perry

  “In’t nuffin’,” Scuff said generously, and took a huge bite of his ham sandwich.

  “So who do I have ter ask fer the tusk?” Crow enquired.

  “Gould, the boatman.”

  “Who works from the steps here?” Crow said with surprise. “Knew he was a thief, of course, but ivory’s a bit much for him. Yer sure?”

  “No, but I think so.”

  “Right.” Crow finished his sandwich and his tea, and rubbed his hands together to signify he was ready to begin.

  Monk looked at Scuff, who was waiting expectantly. “Will you come with me, and when I’m sure where Gould is leading us, take a message to Mr. Louvain and tell him where we are, then go and fetch Mr. Durban of the River Police so we can arrest Gould and get the ivory back?”

  Crow’s eyes widened. “Louvain?” he said with a sharpness to his voice, a sudden wariness as if it changed his perception.

  “It’s his ivory,” Monk replied. “I’m going to return it to him. That’s what he hired me for.”

  Crow whistled through his teeth. “Did ’e? Yer do this kind o’ thing often?”

  “All the time, just not on the river before.” He tried to judge whether Crow would consider it a compliment or an insult to be offered money. Monk stroked his face, having no idea of the answer.

  Then Crow grinned hugely, showing magnificent teeth. “Right!” He rubbed his mittened hands together. “Let’s go an’ find Mr. Gould. I’m ready! By the way, ’ow am I supposed ter know if ’e’s got ivory?”

  “From an informant who is unusually observant, and whom it would be more than your life’s worth to name!” Monk said with an answering smile.

  “Yeah! Right.” Crow put his hands in his pockets. “But if yer comin’ after me, I’d be ’appier if yer ’ad a boatman I could trust. I’ll get Jimmy Corbett. ’e won’t let yer down.” And without waiting for Monk’s agreement he strolled over towards the edge and started to walk along, scanning the water.

  Scuff picked up the mugs and returned them, at a run, and he and Monk set off a comfortable distance behind Crow as he went to search for Jimmy Corbett, and then for Gould.

  It took them nearly an hour before it was accomplished and Monk and Scuff saw the lanky figure of Crow finally step down into Gould’s boat and pull away just to the east of Wapping New Stairs and turn back upstream, not down, as they had expected. They climbed hastily into Jimmy Corbett’s waiting boat and pulled away into the traffic on the river, turning west as well. This was going to prove an expensive business.

  “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 shrugg
ed. 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.

  Monk was disgusted, but he dared not show it. He thought of Hodge lying on the step above the hold, his head broken, his brain crushed.

  “Twenty-five,” he said.

  They argued back and forth, up a pound, down a pound. Monk realized that Crow had gone—please God to fetch help, though he owed Monk nothing, no friendship, no loyalty. But he prayed that Scuff had managed to get Louvain. Durban would not need to be asked more than once.

  “It’s worth more than that!” Gould said angrily when Monk refused to go any higher, afraid of agreement and the end of the conversation. “I worked bleedin’ ’ard fer it!” Gould went on. “You any idea ’ow ’eavy them things are?”

  “Too heavy for one man,” Monk responded. “Someone helped you. Where is he? Behind me? Or are you planning to cut him out of the deal?”

  There was a faint movement in the passage ten or fifteen feet beyond the doorway. Now he wished Crow had not gone—although there was no guarantee of which side he would have been on. Perhaps a thieves’ quarrel was his best chance. “Were you the one that went into the hold of the Maude Idris?” he asked, his voice louder than he meant, and unsteady. He wanted to know who had killed Hodge then he would have no guilt in killing him in return, if he had to in order to escape with his own life. Where the hell was Louvain? He had had time to get there by now.

  “Why d’you care?” Gould’s eyes narrowed.

  “Were you?” Monk demanded, taking a step forward.

  “Yeah! So wot of it?” Gould challenged.

  “Then it was you who murdered Hodge!” Monk accused. “Perhaps your partner won’t be so happy to share the rope that’s waiting for you, along with the price of your tusks?”

  Gould froze. “ ’Odge? I never murdered no one! ’Oo’s ’Odge?” He sounded honestly confused.

  “The night watchman whose head you beat in,” Monk said bitterly. “Did that slip your mind?”

  “Geez! I din’t bash ’is ’ead in!” Gould’s voice rose to a screech. “There weren’t nothin’ wrong wi’ ’is ’ead!” He looked gray-white, even in the gloom, his eyes wide with horror. Had he not seen Hodge’s body himself, Monk would have sworn it was genuine.

  “Rubbish!” he barked, rage welling up inside him for the lie as much as the violence. It was twisting his own emotions because he wanted to believe him, and it was impossible.

  “So ’elp me Gawd, it’s the truth!” Gould ignored the ivory and stepped forward towards Monk, but there was no threat in him, only urgency, even pleading. “ ’e were lyin’ there on the step. I thought ’e were dead drunk. He must a fell from the top.”

  Monk hesitated. “Did you look at the back of his head?” he asked.

  “There weren’t nothin’ wrong wi’ it!” Gould insisted. “ ’e might a banged it bad, I dunno, but it weren’t bashed so’s I could see. ’Ow’d you know, anyway?”

  “I’m looking for the ivory because I’m paid to,” Monk said bitterly. “But I’m looking for whoever killed Hodge because I want him to answer for it.”

  “Well, it in’t me!” Gould said desperately.

  Monk stood still, his back to the doorjamb. It was bitterly cold in there, so cold his fingers were dead and his feet were growing numb. The damp was everywhere, heavy with the reek of mud and effluent and the sweet stench of rot. Everything was sagging, dripping, full of slight sounds like the soft tread of feet, rat feet, human feet, creaking like the shifting of weight, and always water oozing and trickling, the slow sinking of the land and the rising of the river.

  He tried to clear his head. He was beginning to believe Gould, and yet it made no sense. Who would beat in the head of a man already dead?

  There was a distinct sound about a dozen yards away, a movement too big to be a rat. Monk swiveled around to look. The shadows changed. Was there someone there, a man coming this way, creeping step by step? The sweat broke out on his skin, and his body was shaking. He backed farther into the room, looking at Gould. “Someone’ll hang for it,” he said softly. “The police are coming, and they’ll make sure of that. It’ll be prison, then trial, then three weeks of waiting, and one morning they’ll take you for the short walk and the long drop—into eternity, darkness . . .”

  “I din’t kill ’im!” Gould’s cry was stifled in his throat, as if he could already feel the rope.

  At that moment the other man reached the doorway just behind Monk. Monk saw it in Gould’s face, and twisted away as the man lunged forward and Monk caught him a glancing blow on the side of the head, bruising his own hand.

  Gould stood frozen, indecision wild in his face. Were the police really coming? Crow was gone, and he knew where to lead them back.

  Monk waited, his heart pounding.

  The man started to get up. Gould swung his arm and hit the man hard, sending him backwards, his head thudding against the floor, and he lay still. “I din’t kill nobody!” Gould said again. “But they’ll kill you if yer don’t get out of ’ere! C’mon!” He started to move past Monk.

  “Wait!” Monk commanded. “I need one tusk to prove to the police that they were here.” He stepped back and picked up the largest one from the pile. It was startlingly heavy, cold and smooth to the touch. He hoisted it onto his shoulder with difficulty, the effort tearing at his injured arm, then he staggered after Gould, leaving the other man senseless on the floor. They did not go the way they had come in, but awkwardly veering a little from right to left under the burden of the tusk, up a short flight of steps.

  At the top he leaned against the wall and the rotted paneling gave way behind him. He swung around and let the tusk slip into the cavity, easing the crick out of his shoulder, then turned to see if it was still visible. It wasn’t, but he could feel it. He would be able to show Durban where it was.

  He hurried after Gould along the corridor. Broken windows let in the gray light. He caught up with him going down another stair with iron rails
, then through a door into an open patch of ground overgrown with weeds just as Louvain and four of his men emerged from the ruins of a warehouse at the other side. They were wind-burned, brawny men dressed in seamen’s jackets.

  Monk and Gould stopped abruptly, five or six yards from them.

  “Well?” Louvain said grimly. “What have you got? I don’t see anything!”

  “Thirteen tusks of ivory,” Monk replied. He jerked his hand. “Back there. You might have to fight for them.”

  “Thirteen?” Louvain questioned, his face darkening. “Do you think you’re keeping one for yourself? That wasn’t the bargain.”

  “One for the police, for evidence,” Monk replied. “Or would you rather the thieves got away with it?” He let a slight sneer into his voice. “That’s not good for business. You’ll get the last one back when the case is over. Keep it for a memento. You’ve got away cheaply. A damned sight cheaper than Hodge.”

  Louvain looked puzzled for an instant, then realization flooded his face. “Who’s he?” he demanded, indicating Gould with a jerk of his head.

  Instinct made Monk lie. “He’s with me. Did you think I’d come here alone?”

  Louvain’s face relaxed. He did not ask who had killed Hodge, and the omission angered Monk. “Right. We’ll take the ivory. I want to be gone before the police get here. No questions. Come to my office tonight and I’ll pay you.” It was curt, dismissive. He strode past Monk and into the shadows of the building, leaving his men to follow.

  Durban should be here any time now, Monk realized. He glanced at Gould, white-faced, shifting from foot to foot.

  “Don’t think of it,” Monk warned. “You’ll be hunted down like a rat.”

  “I din’t kill ’im!” Gould’s voice was hoarse with fear, and his eyes begged for belief. “I swear on my life!”

  “Very appropriate,” Monk said dryly. “Since it’s with your life you’ll be paying for it.” But he felt a tug of pity he had not expected. Was it even imaginable that one of the crew had killed Hodge? A quarrel of some sort? Perhaps there had even been a traitor in the crew, and Hodge had seen him, and would have told Louvain? Had they stunned him first, and killed him after Gould had gone, perhaps because he would have told Louvain?