William Monk 08 - The Silent Cry

cursing, but without anger. A beggar wrapped his coat tighter around himself and settled down in a doorway. Within moments another man joined him. They would be warmer together than separate.
    Dot MacRae told them essentially what they had already heard. She was older than the others, maybe forty, but still handsome. Her face had character and there was courage in her eyes. There was also a helpless anger. She was trapped and she knew it. She did not expect either help or pity. She told Monk quite simply what had happened some two and a half weeks before, when she had been attacked by two men approaching her from opposite sides of a courtyard. Yes, she was quite certain it had been only two men. One of them had held her down while the other had raped her, then when she had fought back, they had both beaten and kicked her, leaving her almost senseless on the ground.
    She had been found and helped home by Percy, a beggar who frequently slept in a doorway in the area. He had seen there was something badly wrong and done all he could to assist her. He had wanted to report it to someone, but who was there? Who cared if a woman who sold her body was beaten a little or taken by force?
    Vida did not comment, but again her feeling was evident in her face.
    Monk asked questions about time and place, anything Dot could remember which would differentiate these men from any others.
    She had not seen them clearly; they had been no more than shapes, weight, pain in the darkness. She had been aware of an overwhelming sense of rage in them, and then afterwards excitement, even elation.
    Monk walked away through the snow so blind with anger he was almost oblivious of being cold. He had left Vida Hopgood at the corner of her street and then turned to leave Seven Dials and head back towards the open thoroughfares, the lights and the traffic of the main areas of the city. Later he would find a hansom and ride the rest of the way to his rooms in Fitzroy Street. Now he needed to think and to feel the quick exercise of muscles, pour his energy into movement, and smart under the sting of ice on his face.
    This helpless rage at injustice was familiar. It was an old pain, dating far back before the accident, into the times he only caught glimpses of when some emotion, or some half-caught sight or smell, carried him back. He knew the real source of it. The man who had been his guide and mentor when he had newly come south from Northumberland, bound to make his fortune in London, the man who had taken him in, taught him so much not only about merchant banking and the uses of money but about cultured life, about society and how to be a gentleman, had been ruined by injustice. Monk had done everything he could to help him, and it had not been enough. He had suffered that same feeling of frustration then, pacing the streets racking his brain for ideas, believing the answer was beyond his reach, but only just.
    He had learned a lot since then. His character had become harder, his mind faster, more agile, more patient to wait his chance, less tolerant of stupidity, less afraid of either success or failure.
    The snow was settling on his collar and seeping down his neck. He was shuddering with cold. Other people were dim forms in the gloom. In the streets the gutters were running over. He could smell the stench of middens and sour drains.
    There was a pattern in these rapes. The violence was the same … and always unnecessary. They were not seeking unwilling women. God help them, they were only too willing. These were not professional prostitutes. They were desperate women who worked honestly when they could and went to do the streets only when hunger drove them.
    Why not the professional prostitutes? Because they had men who looked after them. They were merchandise, too valuable to risk. If anyone was going to beat them, disfigure them, reduce their value, it would be the pimps, the “owners,” and it would be for a specific reason, probably punishment for thieving, for individual enterprise instead of returning their takings to their masters.
    Monk had already ruled out a rival trying to take over a territory. These women did not share their takings with anyone. They certainly did not threaten any regular prostitute’s living. Anyway, a pimp would beat, but he would not rape. This had none of the marks of an underworld crime. There was no profit in it. People who lived on the edge of survival did not waste energy and resources on pointless