William Monk 08 - The Silent Cry

1
    J ohn Evan stood shivering as the January wind whipped down the alley. P.C. Shotts held his bull’s-eye lantern high so they could see both the bodies at once. They lay crumpled and bloody, about seven feet apart on the icy, cobbled alleyway.
    “Does anybody know what happened?” Evan asked, his teeth chattering.
    “No sir,” Shotts replied bleakly. “Woman found them and ol’ Briggs came an’ told me.”
    Evan was surprised. “In this area?” He glanced around at the grimy walls, the open gutter and the few windows, blacked with dirt. The doors he could see were narrow, straight onto the street, and stained with years of damp and soot. The only lamppost was twenty yards away, gleaming balefully like a lost moon. He was unpleasantly aware of movement just beyond the perimeter of light, of hunched figures watching and waiting, the myriad beggars, thieves and unfortunates who lived in this slum of St. Giles, only a stone’s throw from Regent Street in the heart of London.
    Shotts shrugged, looking down at the bodies. “Well, they obviously in’t drunk or starved or freezin’. All that blood, I reckon as she likely screamed, then were afraid someone ’eard ’er, an’ she din’t wanter get blamed, so she went on screamin’, an’ other folk came.” He shook his head. “They ain’t always bad about lookin’ arter their own around ’ere. I daresay as she’d ’a kept walkin’ if she’d ’ad the nerve, an’ thought of it quick enough.”
    Evan bent down to the body nearest to him. Shotts lowered the light a little so it showed the head and upper torso more clearly. The victim was a man Evan guessed to be in his middle fifties. His hair was gray, thick, his skin smooth. When Evan touched it with his finger it was cold and stiff. His eyes were still open. He had been too badly beaten for Evan to gather anything but a very general impression of his features. He might well have been handsome in life. Certainly his clothes, though torn and stained, had been of excellent quality. As far as Evan could judge, he was of average height and solid build. It was not easy to tell because he was so doubled up, his legs splayed and half under his body.
    “Who in God’s name did this to him?” he asked under his breath.
    “Dunno, sir,” Shotts answered shakily. “I in’t never seen anyone beat this bad before, even ’ere. Must ’a bin a lunatic, that’s all I can say. Is ’e robbed? I s’pose ’e must ’a bin.”
    Evan moved the body very slightly so he could reach into the pockets of the coat. There was nothing in the outside one. He tried the inside and found a handkerchief, clean, folded linen, roll-hemmed, of excellent quality. There was nothing else. He tried the trouser pockets and found a few coppers.
    “Button’ ole’s torn,” Shotts observed, staring down at the waistcoat. “Looks like they ripped orff ’is watch an’ chain. Wonder wot ’e was doin’ ’ere. This is a bit rough fer the likes of a gent. Plenty o’ tarts an’ dolly mops no more ’n a mile west. ’Aymarket’s full of ’em, an’ no danger. Take yer pick. W’y come ’ere?”
    “I don’t know,” Evan replied unnecessarily. “Perhaps if we can find the reason, we’ll know what happened to him.” He stood up and moved across to the other body. This was a younger man, perhaps barely twenty, although his face also was so badly beaten only the clean line of his jaw and the fine texture of his skin gave any indication. Evan was racked with pity and a terrible, blind anger when he saw the clothes on the lower part of the torso soaked in blood, which still seeped out from under the body onto the cobbles.
    “God in heaven,” he said huskily, “what happened here,Shotts? What kind of creature does this?” He did not use the name of deity lightly. He was the son of a country parson, brought up in a small, rural community where everyone knew each other, for better or worse, and the sound of church bells rang out over manor house, farm laborer’s cottage and publican’s inn alike. He knew happiness and tragedy, kindness and all the usual sins of greed and envy.
    Shotts, raised near this uglier, darker slum of London, found his imagination less challenged, but he still looked down at the young man with a shiver of compassion and fear for whoever could do this.
    “Dunno, sir. But I ’ope we catch the bastard, and then I trust they’ll ’ang ’im. Will if I ’ave anything ter do with it. Mind,