William Monk 14 - The Shifting Tide

particular receiver in mind? The hour it must have happened, according to Hodge’s death, indicated the former. If the latter, then Monk had very little chance of recovering the ivory, because it was almost certainly well beyond the river by now.
    He crossed the street and walked along the narrow footpath as a cart rattled over the cobbles. The lamplighter was busy, tipping his long pole to touch the wicks and bring the gift of sudden vision and the illusion of warmth. There was no mist off the water, just the customary driving wind and the faint haze of smoke. To the east, where it was darkest and the river wound beyond Greenwich and the Estuary to the sea, a few stars glittered sharp and brittle.
    Monk turned the corner into the wind again, pulled his coat collar higher and tighter around his neck, and quickened his pace to Louvain’s offices. He was obliged to wait in the foyer for a quarter of an hour, pacing back and forth on the bare floor, before Louvain sent for him. But he would know there was no news yet. Had there been, Monk would have come earlier.
    The office was warm, but Monk could not relax. The force of Louvain’s personality dominated the room, even though he looked tired. The lines on his face were deeper than before, and his eyes were pink-rimmed.
    “I’m here because I said I would be,” Monk replied. “I need to cultivate informants—”
    “Is that an oblique way of saying you want more money?” Louvain looked at him with undisguised contempt.
    “Not more than I have,” Monk replied coldly. “If I do, then I’ll tell you in a manner you won’t mistake.” He looked at Louvain more closely. He would be a fool to miss such an opportunity to observe him. The theft might have been by chance, but it was equally likely to have been deliberate. He could not afford any kind of ignorance. Louvain stood in front of his desk now, with his back to the gas lamp on the wall. It was an easy and perfectly natural position, but it also concealed his expression, giving his features an unnatural and somber look.
    “And how long does this process take?” he asked. There was an edge to his voice, anxiety and perhaps tiredness making it rough. He worked long hours. It was possible more of his fortune rested on recovering the ivory than he had told Monk.
    “I should reap some benefits tomorrow,” Monk replied rashly.
    “Do you have a plan?” Louvain enquired. Now his face was softer, something like a lift of hope in it. Perhaps his contempt was meant to conceal the fact that the theft mattered to him intensely, and he was dependent upon Monk. He employed him, and could pay him or not, but he would not find his ivory without help, and they both knew that.
    Monk weighed his answer carefully. The tension in the room prickled as they each watched the other, weighing, judging. Who had the strength of will to bend the other? Who could harness his vulnerability and disguise it as a weapon?
    “I need to narrow down the kind of receiver who could handle a load like that,” Monk said levelly. “A man with the connections to sell it on.”
    “Or a woman,” Louvain amended. “Some of the brothel-keepers are receivers as well. But be careful; just because they’re women doesn’t mean they wouldn’t slit your throat if you got in their way.” The vaguest smile crossed his face and then vanished. “You’re no use to me dead.”
    If it happened it would anger him, but it would not lie on his conscience. There was a certain respect in him, a levelness in the gaze, a candor he would not have used with a lesser man.
    Monk refused to be ruffled. He glanced around the office at the pictures on the walls. They were not of ships, as he had expected, but were wild landscapes of fierce and alien beauty, stark mountains towering above churning water, or barren as the volcanoes on the moon.
    “Cape Horn,” Louvain said, following his look. “And Patagonia. I keep them to remind me who I am. Every man should see such places at least once, feel the violence and the enormity of them, hear the noise of wind and water that never stops, and stand on a plain like that, where the silence is never broken. It gives you a sense of proportion.” He hunched his shoulders and pushed his hands into his pockets, still staring, not at Monk but at the pictures. “It measures you against circumstance so you know what you have to do—and what it will mean to fail.”
    Monk wondered for an instant if it was a warning, but when