William Monk 08 - The Silent Cry

him from doing it again, then there was plenty of motive to kill him. He may even have found them immediately after they attacked the woman that night. Then they would have no defense.”
    “It … it could have been Duke or … Arthur …” Her words trailed away. There was no belief in them, or in her eyes.
    “Are they injured?” he asked gently, although he knew the answer from her face.
    She shook her head minutely. There was nothing to say. She stared at him. The facts closed in like an iron mesh, unbendable, inescapable. Her mind tried every direction, and he watched her do it and fail each time. There was no real hope in her, and gradually even the determination died.
    “I’m sorry,” he said softly. He thought of adding how much he wished it had not been so, how hard he had looked for other answers, but she knew it already. There was no need for such explanations between them. They understood pain and reality far too well, the dull ache of knowledge that must be faced, the familiarity of pity.
    “When will you tell Evan?” she asked when she had mastered the tension in her voice, or almost.
    “I shall tell him tomorrow.”
    “I see.”
    He did not move. He did not know what to say, there was nothing, and yet he wanted to say something. He wanted to remain with her, at least to share the hurt, even though he could not ease it. Sometimes sharing was all there was left.
    “Thank you … for telling me first.” She smiled a little crookedly. “I think …”
    “Perhaps I shouldn’t have,” he said with sudden doubt. “Maybe it would have been easier for you if you had not known? Then your response would have been honest. You would not have had to wait tonight, knowing, when they didn’t. I …”
    She started to shake her head.
    “I thought honesty was best,” he went on. “Perhaps it wasn’t. I thought I knew that, now I don’t.”
    “It would have been hard either way,” she answered him, meeting his eyes with the same candor as in the past, in their best moments. “If I know, tonight will be hard, and tomorrow. But when Evan does come, then I shall have prepared myself, and I shall have the strength to help, instead of being stunned with my own shock. I shan’t be busy trying to deny it, to find arguments or ways to escape. This is best. Please don’t doubt it.”
    He hesitated for an instant, wondering if she were being brave, taking the responsibility to herself to spare his feelings. Then he looked at her again and knew it was not so. There was a kind of understanding in her which bridged the singleness of this incident and was part of all the triumphs and disasters they had ever shared.
    He walked over to her and very gently bent forward and kissed her temple above the brow, then laid his cheek against hers, his breath stirring the loose tendrils of her hair.
    Then he turned and walked away without looking back. If he did, he might make an error he could never redeem, and he was not yet ready for that.

9
    E van knew that Monk had crossed into St. Giles, although, of course, they were on different cases.
    “Wot does ’e want?” Shotts said suspiciously as they were walking back towards the station.
    “To find out who raped the women in Seven Dials,” Evan replied. “It’s a problem we can’t help.”
    Shotts swore under his breath and then apologized. “Sorry, guv.”
    “You don’t need to be,” Evan said sincerely. His father might have been offended, but that case angered him so profoundly the release of shouting and using language otherwise forbidden seemed very natural. “If anyone can deal with it, it will be Monk,” he added.
    Shotts gave a snort of derision edged with something which could have been fear. “If ’e catches the bastards I’ll lay they’ll wish they were never born. I wouldn’t want Monk on my back, even if I hadn’t done anything wrong.”
    Evan looked at him curiously. “If you hadn’t done anything wrong, would he be on your back?”
    Shotts looked at him, hesitated a moment on the edge of confiding, then changed his mind.
    “ ’Course not,” he denied.
    It was a lie, at least in intent, and Evan knew it, but it was pointless to pursue. Nor was it the only time Shotts had told him something which he had later learned to be false. Therewas time unaccounted for, small errors of fact. He glanced sideways at Shotts’s stolid face as they crossed the street, avoiding the gutter and the horse droppings awash in the rain,