William Monk 08 - The Silent Cry

unpicking or cutting or stitching. The practicalities must be observed. Also it crossed Monk’s mind that perhaps Mr. Hopgood was not aware of her campaign, and that indirectly he was paying for it. He might very well not feel as personally about the issue as she did.
    Monk caught up with her as she strode purposefully around the corner into another one of the multitudinous alleyways of Seven Dials, crossed a courtyard with a well and pump in it. A drunk lounged in one doorway, a couple kissed in another, the girl giggling happily, the youth whispering something inaudible to her. Monk wondered at their absorption in each other, that they seemed oblivious of the wind and the snow.
    Behind a lighted window someone raised a jug of ale, and candlelight fell on a woman’s bright hair. The sound of laughter was quick and clear. Past them and across a main thoroughfare an old woman was selling sandwiches and a running patterer finished up his tale of lust and mayhem and began to jog along the pavement to another, warmer spot to entertain a new crowd with stories, news and general invention.
    The next victim of violence was Clarrie Drover. She was almost sixteen, the eldest of a family whose parents were both missing or dead. She looked after six younger brothers and sisters, earning what she could one way or another. Monk did not enquire. They sat in one large room all together while she told Vida what had happened to her in a breathless voice which whistled through a broken front tooth. One sister, about a year and a half younger, nursed her left arm in front of her, as if her chest and stomach hurt her, and she listened to all Clarrie said, nodding her head now and then.
    In the dim light of one candle, Vida’s face was a mask of fury and compassion, her wide mouth set, her eyes brilliant.
    It was very much the same story. The two eldest girls had been out, earning a little extra money. It was obviously the way the next girl, now almost ten, would also feed and clothe herself and her younger siblings in a year or less. Now she was busy nursing a child of about two or three, rocking him back and forwards absently as she listened.
    These two children were not visibly hurt as badly as the older women Monk had seen, but their fear was deeper, and perhaps their need of the money greater. There were seven to feed, and no one else to care. Monk found the anger so deep in his soul that, whether Vida Hopgood paid him or not, he had every intention of finding the men who had done this and seeing them dealt with as harshly as the law allowed. And if the law did not care, then there would be others who would.
    He questioned them carefully and gently, but on every detail. What could they remember? Where did it happen? What time? Was anything said? What about voices? What were the men wearing? Feel of fabric, feel of skin, bearded or shaven? What did they smell like, drunken or sober, salt, tar, fish, rope, soot? The older girl looked blank. All her answers confirmed the previous stories but added nothing. All either of them clearly recalled now was the pain and the overriding terror, the smell of the wet street, the open gutter down the middle, the feel of cobbles hard in their backs, the red-hot pain, first inside their bodies, then outside, bruising, pummeling. Then afterwards they had lain in the dark as the cold ate into them, and at last there had been voices, they had been lifted, and there had been the slow return of sensation and more pain.
    Now they were hungry, there was hardly any food left, no coal or even wood, and they were too frightened to go out, but the time was coming when they would have to or starve inside. Monk fished in his pocket and left two coins on the table, saying nothing but seeing their eyes go to them.
    “Well?” Vida demanded when they were out on the street again, facing into the wind, heads down. There was a thin rime of ice on the stones and the snow was lying over it. It lookedeerie in the gloom, reflecting back the distant street lamps with a pale blur against the black of the roofs and walls and the dense, lightless sky. It was slippery and dangerous underfoot.
    Monk shoved his hands deeper into his pockets and hunched his coat around him. His body was rigid with anger, and it was making him even colder.
    “Two or three men are beating and raping working women,” he answered bitterly. “They’re not local men, but they could be from anywhere else. They’re not laborers, but they could