Wiliam Monk 01 - The Face of a Stranger

with amazement.
    " "Course not! 'E can't even write 'is name, let alone a fekement 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 'aid, 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 fece 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