by Anne Perry
Evan, with his fair face and wide, humorous eyes, looked too clean to be dishonest. There was none of the wiliness of a survivor in him; yet some of the best survivors of all were those most skilled in deception and the most innocent of face. The underworld was big enough for any variation of lie and fraud, and no weakness was left unexploited.
They began a little to the west of Mecklenburg Square, going to the King’s Cross Road. When the first tavern produced nothing immediate, they moved north to the Pentonville Road, then south and east again into Clerkenwell.
In spite of all that logic could tell him, by the following day Monk was beginning to feel as if he were on a fool’s errand, and Runcorn would have the last laugh. Then, in a congested public house by the name of the Grinning Rat, a scruffy little man, smiling, showing yellow teeth, slid into the seat beside them, looking warily at Evan. The room was full of noise, the strong smell of ale, sweat, the dirt of clothes and bodies long unwashed, and the heavy steam of food. The floor was covered with sawdust and there was a constant chink of glass.
“’Ello, Mr. Monk; I hain’t seen you for a long time. W’ere yer bin?”
Monk felt a leap of excitement and studied hard to hide it.
“Had an accident,” he answered, keeping his voice level.
The man looked him up and down critically and grunted, dismissing it.
“I ’ears as yer after som’un as’ll blow a little?”
“That’s right,” Monk agreed. He must not be too precipitate, or the price would be high, and he could not afford the time to bargain; he must be right first time, or he would appear green. He knew from the air, the smell of it, that haggling was part of the game.
“Worf anyfink?” the man asked.
“Could be.”
“Well,” the man said, thinking it over. “Yer always bin fair, that’s why I comes to yer ’stead o’ some ’o them other jacks. Proper mean, some o’ them; yer’d be right ashamed if yer knew.” He shook his head and sniffed hard, pulling a face of disgust.
Monk smiled.
“Wotcher want, then?” the man asked.
“Several things.” Monk lowered his voice even further, still looking across the table and not at the man. “Some stolen goods—a fence, and a good screever.”
The man also looked at the table, studying the stain ring marks of mugs.
“Plenty o’ fences, guv; and a fair few screevers. Special goods, these?”
“Not very.”
“W’y yer want ’em ven? Som’one done over bad?”
“Yes.”
“O’right, so wot are vey ven?”
Monk began to describe them as well as he could; he had only memory to go on.
“Table silver—”
The man looked at him witheringly.
Monk abandoned the silver. “A jade ornament,” he continued. “About six inches high, of a dancing lady with her arms up in front of her, bent at the elbows. It was pinky-colored jade—”
“Aw, nar vat’s better.” The man’s voice lifted; Monk avoided looking at his face. “Hain’t a lot o’ pink jade abaht,” he went on. “Anyfink else?”
“A silver scuttle, about four or five inches, I think, and a couple of inlaid snuffboxes.”
“Wot kind o’ snuffboxes, guv: siller, gold, enamel? Yer gotta give me mor’n vat!”
“I can’t remember.”
“Yer wot? Don’t ve geezer wot lorst ’em know?” His face darkened with suspicion and for the first time he looked at Monk. “’Ere! ’E croaked, or suffink?”
“Yes,” Monk said levelly, still staring at the wall. “But no reason to suppose the thief did it. He was dead long before the robbery.”
“Yer sure o’ vat? ’Ow d’yer know ’e were gorn afore?”
“He was dead two months before.” Monk smiled acidly. “Even I couldn’t mistake that. His empty house was robbed.”
The man thought this over for several minutes before delivering his opinion.
Somewhere over near the bar there was a roar of laughter.
“Robbin’ a deadlurk?” he said with heavy condescension. “Bit chancy to find anyfink, in’ it? Wot did yer say abaht a screever? Wot yer want a screever fer ven?”
“Because the thieves used forged police papers to get in,” Monk replied.
The man’s face lit up with delight and he chuckled richly.
“A proper downy geezer, vat one. I like it!” He wiped the back of his hand across his mouth and laughed again. “It’d be a sin ter shop a feller wiv vat kind o’ class.”
Monk took a gold half sovereign out of his pocket and put it on the table. The man’s eyes fastened onto it as if it mesmerized him.
“I want the screever who made those fakements for them,” Monk repeated. He put out his hand and took the gold coin back again. He put it into his inside pocket. The man’s eyes followed it. “And no sly faking,” Monk warned. “I’ll feel your hands in my pockets, and you remember that, unless you fancy picking oakum for a while. Not do your sensitive fingers any good, picking oakum!” He winced inwardly as a flash of memory returned of men’s fingers bleeding from the endless unraveling of rope ends, day in, day out, while years of their lives slid by.
The man flinched. “Now vat ain’t nice, Mr. Monk. I never took nuffink from yer in me life.” He crossed himself hastily and Monk was not sure whether it was a surety of truth or a penance for the lie. “I s’pose yer tried all ve jollyshops?” the man continued, screwing up his face. “Couldn’t christen that jade lady.”
Evan looked vaguely confused, although Monk was not sure by what.
“Pawnshops,” he translated for him. “Naturally thieves remove any identification from most articles, but nothing much you can do to jade without spoiling its value.” He took five shillings out of his pocket and gave them to the man. “Come back in two days, and if you’ve got anything, you’ll have earned the half sovereign.”
“Right, guv, but not ’ere; vere’s a slap bang called ve Purple Duck dahn on Plumber’s Row—orf ve Whitechapel Road. Yer go vere.” He looked Monk up and down with distaste. “An’ come out o’ twig, eh; not all square rigged like a prater! And bring the gold, ’cos I’ll ’ave suffink. Yer ’ealf, guv, an’ yers.” He glanced sideways at Evan, then slid off the seat and disappeared into the crowd. Monk felt elated, suddenly singing inside. Even the fast-cooling plum duff was bearable. He smiled broadly across at Evan.
“Come in disguise,” he explained. “Not soberly dressed like a fake preacher.”
“Oh.” Evan relaxed and began to enjoy himself also. “I see.” He stared around at the throng of faces, seeing mystery behind the dirt, his imagination painting them with nameless color.
Two days later Monk obediently dressed himself in suitable secondhand clothes; “translators” the informer would have called them. He wished he could remember the man’s name, but for all his efforts it remained completely beyond recall, hidden like almost everything else after the age of about seventeen. He had had glimpses of the years up to then, even including his first year or two in London, but although he lay awake, staring into the darkness, letting his mind wander, going over and over all he knew in the hope his brain would jerk into life again and continue forward, nothing more returned.
Now he and Evan were sitting in the saloon in the Purple Duck, Evan’s delicate face registering both his distaste and his efforts to conceal it. Looking at him, Monk wondered how often he himself must have been here to be so unoffended by it. It must have become habit, the noise, the smell, the uninhibited closeness, things his subconscious remembered even if his mind did not.
They had to wait nearly an hour before the informer turned up, but he was grinning again, and slid into the seat beside Monk without a word.
Monk was not going to jeopardize the price by seeming too eager.
“Drink?” he offered.
“Nah, just ve guinea,” the man replied. “Don’ want ter draw attention to meself drinkin’ wiv ve likes o’ you, if ye
r’ll pardon me. But potmen ’as sharp mem’ries an’ loose tongues.”
“Quite,” Monk agreed. “But you’ll earn the guinea before you get it.”
“Aw, nah Mr. Monk.” He pulled a face of deep offense. “’Ave I ever shorted yer? Now ’ave I?”
Monk had no idea.
“Did you find my screever?” he asked instead.
“I carsn’t find yer jade, nor fer sure, like.”
“Did you find the screever?”
“You know Tommy, the shofulman?”
For a moment Monk felt a touch of panic. Evan was watching him, fascinated by the bargaining. Ought he to know Tommy? He knew what a shofulman was, someone who passed forged money.
“Tommy?” he blinked.
“Yeah!” the man said impatiently. “Blind Tommy, least ’e pretends ’e’s blind. I reckon as ’e ’alf is.”
“Where do I find him?” If he could avoid admitting anything, perhaps he could bluff his way through. He must not either show an ignorance of something he would be expected to know or on the other hand collect so little information as to be left helpless.
“You find ’im?” The man smiled condescendingly at the idea. “Yer’ll never find ’im on yer own; wouldn’t be safe anyhow. ’E’s in ve rookeries, an’ yer’d get a shiv in yer gizzard sure as ’ell’s on fire if yer went in vere on yer tod. I’ll take yer.”
“Tommy taken up screeving?” Monk concealed his relief by making a general and he hoped meaningless remark.
The little man looked at him with amazement.
“’Course not! ’E can’t even write ’is name, let alone a fakement fer some’un else! But ’e knows a right downy geezer wot does. Reckon ’e’s the one as writ yer police papers for yer. ’E’s known to do vat kind o’ fing.”
“Good. Now what about the jade—anything at all?”
The man twisted his rubberlike features into the expression of an affronted rodent.
“Bit ’ard, vat, guv. Know one feller wot got a piece, but ’e swears blind it were a snoozer wot brought it—an’ you din’t say nuffink abaht no snoozer.”
“This was no hotel thief,” Monk agreed. “That the only one?”
“Only one as I knows fer sure.”
Monk knew the man was lying, although he could not have said how—an accumulation of impressions too subtle to be analyzed.
“I don’t believe you, Jake; but you’ve done well with the screever.” He fished in his pocket and brought out the promised gold. “And if it leads to the man I want, there’ll be another for you. Now take me to Blind Tommy the shofulman.”
They all stood up and wormed their way out through the crowd into the street. It was not until they were two hundred yards away that Monk realized, with a shudder of excitement he could not control, that he had called the man by name. It was coming back, more than merely his memory for his own sake, but his skill was returning. He quickened his step and found himself smiling broadly at Evan.
The rookery was monstrous, a rotting pile of tenements crammed one beside the other, piled precariously, timbers awry as the damp warped them and floors and walls were patched and repatched. It was dark even in the late summer afternoon and the humid air was clammy to the skin. It smelled of human waste and the gutters down the overhung alleys ran with filth. The squeaking and slithering of rats was a constant background. Everywhere there were people, huddled in doorways, lying on stones, sometimes six or eight together, some of them alive, some already dead from hunger or disease. Typhoid and pneumonia were endemic in such places and venereal diseases passed from one to another, as did the flies and lice.
Monk looked at a child in the gutter as he passed, perhaps five or six years old, its face gray in the half-light, pinched sharp; it was impossible to tell whether it was male or female. Monk thought with a dull rage that bestial as it was to beat a man to death as Grey had been beaten, it was still a better murder than this child’s abject death.
He noticed Evan’s face, white in the gloom, eyes like holes in his head. There was nothing he could think of to say—no words that served any purpose. Instead he put out his hand and touched him briefly, an intimacy that came quite naturally in that awful place.
They followed Jake through another alley and then another, up a flight of stairs that threatened to give way beneath them with each step, and at the top at last Jake stopped, his voice hushed as if the despair had reached even him. He spoke as one does in the presence of death.
“One more lot o’ steps, Mr. Monk, from ’ere, an’ Blind Tommy’s be’ind ver door on yer right.”
“Thank you. I’ll give you your guinea when I’ve seen him, if he can help.”
Jake’s face split in a grin.
“I already got it, Mr. Monk.” He held up a bright coin. “Fink I fergot ’ow ter do it, did yer? I used ter be a fine wirer, I did, w’en I were younger.” He laughed and slipped it into his pocket. “I were taught by the best kids-man in ve business. I’ll be seein’ yer, Mr. Monk; yer owes me anuvver, if yer gets vem fieves.”
Monk smiled in spite of himself. The man was a pickpocket, but he had been taught by one of those who make their own living by teaching children to steal for them, and taking the profits in return for the child’s keep. It was an apprenticeship in survival. Perhaps his only alternative had been starvation, like the child they had passed. Only the quick-fingered, the strong and the lucky reached adulthood. Monk could not afford to indulge in judgment, and he was too torn with pity and anger to try.
“It’s yours, Jack, if I get them,” he promised, then started up the last flight and Evan followed. At the top he opened the door without knocking.
Blind Tommy must have been expecting him. He was a dapper little man, about five feet tall with a sharp, ugly face, and dressed in a manner he himself would have described as “flash.” He was apparently no more than shortsighted because he saw Monk immediately and knew who he was.
“’Evenin’, Mr. Monk. I ’ears as yer lookin’ fer a screever, a partic’lar one, like?”
“That’s right, Tommy. I want one who made some fakements for two rampsmen who robbed a house in Mecklenburg Square. Went in pretending to be Peelers.”
Tommy’s face lit up with amusement.
“I like that,” he admitted. “It’s a smart lay, vat is.”
“Providing you don’t get caught.”
“Wot’s it worf?” Tommy’s eyes narrowed.
“It’s murder, Tommy. Whoever did it’ll be topped, and whoever helps them stands a good chance of getting the boat.”
“Oh Gawd!” Tommy’s face paled visibly. “I ’an’t no fancy for Horstralia. Boats don’t suit me at all, vey don’t. Men wasn’t meant ter go orf all over like vat! In’t nat’ral. An’ ’orrible stories I’ve ’eard about vem parts.” He shivered dramatically. “Full o’ savages an’ creatures wot weren’t never made by no Christian Gawd. Fings wif dozens ’o legs, an ‘fings wi’ no legs at all. Ugh!” He rolled his eyes. “Right ’eathen place, it is.”
“Then don’t run any risk of being sent there,” Monk advised without any sympathy. “Find me this screever.”
“Are yer sure it’s murder?” Tommy was still not entirely convinced. Monk wondered how much it was a matter of loyalties, and how much simply a weighing of one advantage against another.
“Of course I’m sure!” he said with a low, level voice. He knew the threat was implicit in it. “Murder and robbery. Silver and jade stolen. Know anything about a jade dancing lady, pink jade, about six inches high?”
Tommy was defensive, a thin, nasal quality of fear in his tone.
“Fencin’s not my life, guv. Don’t do none o’ vat—don’t yer try an’ hike vat on me.”
“The screever?” Monk said flatly.
“Yeah, well I’ll take yer. Anyfink in it fer me?” Hope seldom died. If the fearful reality of the rookery did not kill it, Monk certainly could not.
“If it’s the right man,” he grunted.
Tommy took them th
rough another labyrinth of alleys and stairways, but Monk wondered how much distance they had actually covered. He had a strong feeling it was more to lose their sense of direction than to travel above a few hundred yards. Eventually they stopped at another large door, and after a sharp knock, Blind Tommy disappeared and the door swung open in front of them.
The room inside was bright and smelled of burning.
Monk stepped in, then looked up involuntarily and saw glass skylights. He saw down the walls where there were large windows as well. Of course—light for a forger’s careful pen.
The man inside turned to look at the intruders. He was squat, with powerful shoulders and large spatulate hands. His face was pale-skinned but ingrained with the dirt of years, and his colorless hair stuck to his head in thin spikes.
“Well?” he demanded irritably. When he spoke Monk saw his teeth were short and black; Monk fancied he could smell the stale odor of them, even from where he stood.
“You wrote police identification papers for two men, purporting to come from the Lye Street station.” He made a statement, not a question. “I don’t want you for it; I want the men. It’s a case of murder, so you’d do well to stay on the right side of it.”
The man leered, his thin lips stretching wide in some private amusement. “You Monk?”
“And if I am?” He was surprised the man had heard of him. Was his reputation so wide? Apparently it was.
“Your case they walked inter, was it?” The man’s mirth bubbled over in a silent chuckle, shaking his mass of flesh.
“It’s my case now,” Monk replied. He did not want to tell the man the robbery and the murder were separate; the threat of hanging was too useful.
“Wotcher want?” the man asked. His voice was hoarse, as if from too much shouting or laughter, yet it was hard imagining him doing either.
“Who are they?” Monk pressed.