William Monk 08 - The Silent Cry

be clerks, shopkeepers, traders or gentlemen. They could be soldiers on leave or sailors ashore. They didn’t even have to be the same men each time, although they probably are.”
    “Fat lot o’ use that is,” she spat at him. “We bloody know that much. I in’t paying yer ter tell me wot me own sense can see. I thought you were supposed to be the best rozzer in the force. Leastways you always acted like you was.” Her voice was high and sharp with not only disgust but fear. The emotion had torn through her. She had trusted him, and he had let her down. She had nowhere else to turn.
    “Did you expect me to solve it tonight?” he asked sarcastically. “One evening, and I’m supposed to come up with names or proof? You don’t want a detective, you want a magician.”
    She stopped and faced him. For a moment she was about to come back with something equally vicious. It was instinct to fight back. Then reality asserted itself. Her body sagged. He could only see the outline of it in the dim light and the falling snow. They were twenty yards from the nearest lamp.
    “Can yer ’elp or not, Monk? I in’t got no time ter play games with yer.”
    An old man shuffled past them carrying a sack, muttering to himself.
    “I think so,” Monk answered her. “They didn’t materialize out of the ground. They came here somehow, probably a hansom. They hung around before they attacked these women. They may have had a drink or two. Somebody saw them. Somebody drove them here and drove them away again. There were either two or three of them. Men looking for womendon’t usually go around in twos and threes. Someone will remember.”
    “An yer’ll make ’em talk,” she said with a downwards fall in her voice, as if memory was bitter, and there was pain and regret in it.
    How did she know so much about him? Was it all repute, and if so, of what? They were in the borders of his area when he had been on the force. Or had they known each other well before, better than she had implied? Another case, another time? What was it she knew of him and he did not know of himself? She knew he was clever and ruthless … and she did not like him, but she respected his ability. In a perverse way she trusted him. And she believed he could work in Seven Dials.
    Far more than if she had been some decent, wealthy woman, he wanted to succeed for her. It was mainly because of the rage in him against the brutality of these men, the injustice of it all, their lives and the lives of these women; but it was also pride. He would show her he was still the man he had been in the past. He had lost none of his skills … only his memory. Everything else was the same—even better. Runcorn might not know that …
    The thought of Runcorn brought him up sharply. Runcorn had been his superior, but never felt it. He was always aware of Monk treading on his heels; Monk being better dressed, quicker witted, sharper tongued; Monk always waiting to catch him out.
    Was that memory speaking to him or only what he had deduced from Runcorn’s attitude after the accident?
    This was Runcorn’s area. When he had the evidence it would be Runcorn he would have to take it to.
    “Yes …” he said aloud. “It might be hard to find where they come from … but easier to find where they went. They’d be dirty after rolling on the cobbles with the women, fighting. One or two of them might have been marked. Those women fought … enough at least to scratch or bite.” His mind was picturing shadowy figures only, but some things he knew. “They’d be elated, touched with both victory and fear. They’d done a monstrous thing. Some echo of that would be there intheir manner. Some cabby, somewhere, will have noticed. He would know where he took them, because it would be out of the area.”
    “Said you was a clever sod.” She let out her breath in a sigh of relief. “Nah there’s one more for yer ter see. Dot MacRae. She’s married legal, but ’er ’usband’s useless. Consumptive, poor devil. Can’t do nothin’. Coughin’ ’is lungs up. She gotta work, an’ shirt stitchin’ don’t do it.”
    Monk did not argue, nor did he need it explained to him. Somewhere in his memory was burned such knowledge. He walked beside her in the thickening snow. Other people were hurrying by, heads down, occasionally calling out a greeting or even a joke. Two men staggered out of a public house, supporting each other as far as the gutter, then collapsed,