William Monk 14 - The Shifting Tide

ONE
    “The murder doesn’t matter,” Louvain said abruptly, leaning a little over his desk towards Monk.
    The two men were standing in the big office next to windows that faced the Pool of London with its forest of masts swaying on the tide against the ragged autumn sky. There were clippers and schooners from every seafaring nation on earth, barges from up and down the river, local pleasure boats, as well as tugs, ferries, and tenders.
    “I have to have the ivory!” Louvain gritted the words between his teeth. “I’ve no time to wait for the police.”
    Monk stared at him, trying to frame an answer. He needed this job, or he would not have come down to the Louvain Shipping Company offices prepared to undertake a task so far outside his usual area of skill. He was a brilliant detective in the city; he had proved it time and time again, both in the police force and later as a private agent of enquiry. He knew the mansions of the wealthy and the back streets of the poor. He knew the petty thieves and informers, the dealers in stolen goods and the brothel-keepers, the forgers and many of the general ruffians for hire. But the river, the “longest street in London,” with its shifting tides, its constant movement of ships, and men who spoke scores of different languages, was strange territory to him. The question beat in his mind, insistent as a pulse: Why had Clement Louvain sent for him rather than someone familiar with the docks and the water? The River Police themselves were older than Peel’s city police; in fact, they had existed for nearly three quarters of a century—since 1798. It was feasible that the River Police were too busy to give Louvain’s ivory the attention he wanted, but was that really his reason for calling in Monk?
    “The murder is part of the theft,” Monk replied at last. “If we knew who killed Hodge, we’d know who took the ivory, and if we knew when, we might be a lot closer to finding it.”
    Louvain’s face tightened. He was a wind-burned, slender-hipped man in his early forties, but hard-muscled like the sailors he hired to work his ships to the East African coast and back, with ivory, timber, spices, and skins. His light brown hair was thick and sprang up from his forehead. His features were broad and blunt.
    “On the river at night, time makes no difference,” he said curtly. “There are light-horsemen, heavy-horsemen, night plunderers up and down all the time. Nobody’s going to inform on anyone else, least of all to the River Police. That’s why I need my own man, one with the skills I’m told you have.” His eyes swept over Monk, seeing a man reputed to have the same ruthlessness as himself, an inch or two taller, darker, with high cheekbones and a lean, powerful face. “I need that ivory back,” Louvain repeated. “It’s due for delivery, and the money is owed. Don’t look for the murderer to find the thief. That might work on shore. On the river you find the thief, and that will lead you to the murderer.”
    Monk would have dearly liked to decline the case. It would have been easy enough; his lack of knowledge alone would have provided grounds for it. In fact, it was increasingly difficult to see why Louvain had sent for him rather than one of the many men who must at least know the river and the docks. There was always someone who would undertake a private commission—for a fee.
    But Monk could not afford to point that out. He faced the bitter fact that he must make himself obliging to Louvain, and convince him, against the truth, that it was well within his power to find the ivory and return it to him in less time, and with greater discretion, than the River Police could or would do.
    Necessity drove him, the spate of recent trivial cases which paid too little. He dared not go into debt, and since Hester had given her time to the clinic in Portpool Lane, which was wholly charitable, she added nothing to their financial situation. But a man should not expect his wife to keep herself. She asked little enough—no luxury, no vanity, only to be able to do the work she loved. Monk would have served any man to give her that. He resented Louvain because he had the power to cause him acute discomfort, but far more than that he was troubled that Louvain showed more concern about catching a thief who had robbed him of goods than a murderer who had taken Hodge’s life.
    “And if we do catch him,” he said aloud, “and Hodge is buried, what evidence do we have?