William Monk 08 - The Silent Cry

Now there was nothing in her but hurt, a blind confusion because she did not see the enemy. For once she could not fight her own battle.
    It could have been a ridiculous subject. She was not speaking of respectable women in some pleasant area, but of sweatshop workers who eked out a living laboring around the clock, then going home to one room in a tenement, perhaps shared with half a dozen other people of all ages and both sexes. Crime and violence were a way of life with them. For her to have come to him, an ex-policeman, seeking to pay him to help her, she must be speaking of something quite outside the ordinary.
    “Tell me about it,” he said simply.
    She had already broken the first barrier. This was the second. He was listening; there was no mockery and no laughter in his eyes.
    “First orff I din’t think nothink to it,” she began. “Jus’ one woman lookin’ a bit battered. ’Appens. ’Appens lots o’ times. ’Usband gets a bit drunker’n usual. We often gets women interthe shop wif a black eye, or worse. Specially on a Monday. But then the whisper goes around she’s been done more than that. Still I take no notice. In’t nuffink ter do wif me if she’s got a bad man. There’s enough of ’em ’round.”
    He did not interrupt. Her voice was tighter and there was pain in it.
    “Then there were another woman, one ’oo’s ’usband’s sick, too sick ter beat ’er. Then there’s a third, an’ by now I wanna know wot in ’ell’s goin’ on.” She winced. “Some of ’em in’t more’n children. Ter cut it short, Mr. Monk, these women is gettin’ raped an’ beat up. I gets the ’ole story. I makes ’em come in an sit down in me parlor, one by one, an’ I gets it out of ’em. I’ll tell you wot they tol’ me.”
    “You had better put it in order for me, Mrs. Hopgood. It will save time.”
    “ ’Course! Wot did you think I were gonna do? Tell it yer like they tol’ me? We’d be ’ere all ruddy night. In’t got all night, even if you ’as. I spec yer charge by the hour. Mos’ folks do.”
    “I’ll charge by the day. But only after I’ve taken the case … if I do.”
    Her face hardened. “Wot yer want from me … more money?”
    He saw the fear behind her defiance. For all her brashness and the show of bravado she put on to impress, she was frightened and hurt and angry. This was not one of the familiar troubles she had faced all her life, this was something she did not know how to deal with.
    “No,” he interrupted as she was about to go on. “I won’t say I can help you if I can’t. Tell me what you learned. I’m listening.”
    She was partly mollified. She settled back into the chair again, rearranging her skirts slightly around her extremely handsome figure.
    “Some of our respectable women’s fallen on ’ard times and thinks they’d never sell theirselves, no matter wot,” she continued. “Thinks they’d starve before they’d go onter the streets. But it’s surprisin’ ’ow quick yer can change yer mind when yerkids is starvin’ an’ sick. Yer ’ears ’em cryin’, cold an’ ’ungry long enough, an’ yer’d sell yerself ter the devil if ’e paid yer in bread an’ coal for the fire, or a blanket, or a pair o’ boots. Martyrin’ yerself is one thing, seein’ yer kids die is diff’rent.”
    Monk did not argue. His knowledge of that was deeper than any individual memory; it was something of the flesh and bone.
    “It began easy,” she went on, her voice thick with disgust. “First just a bloke ’ere an’ there wot wouldn’t pay. It ’appens. There’s always cheats in life. In’t much yer can do but cut yer losses.”
    He nodded.
    “I wouldn’t ’a thought nuffink o’ that.” She shrugged, still watching him narrowly, judging his reactions. “Then one o’ the women comes in all bruised an’ bashed around, like she bin beat up proper. Like I said, at first I took it as ’er man ’ad beat ’er. Wouldn’t ’a blamed ’er if she’d stuck ’im wif a shiv fer that. But she said as it’d bin two men wot’d bin customers. She’d picked ’em up in the street an’ gone fer a quick one in a dark alley, an’ then they’d beat ’er. Took ’er by force, even though she were willin’, like.” She bit her full lip. “There’s always them as likes ter be a bit rough, but this were real beatin’. It in’t the same, not jus’ a few bruises, like, but real ’urt.”
    He waited. He knew from her eyes that there