William Monk 14 - The Shifting Tide

he heard footsteps behind him. He could not afford to lose the money. He went in with a sense of relief so overwhelming it was like exhaustion suddenly catching up with him. He asked to see Louvain immediately, and was shown in within ten minutes.
    “Well?” Louvain demanded, his face dark with anger and impatience.
    Monk realized how glad he was that he had something positive to report—and that the coins were in his pocket. He took them out and put them on the desk. “Forty pounds,” he said. “It bought me information that you should have told me in the first place.”
    Louvain looked at the money for a moment, then picked it up, scraped his fingernail across one of the coins, and put them in his pocket. “What information is that?” he said quietly. There was a rough, dangerous edge to his voice, and his eyes were cold, but he did not ask for the other two pounds.
    “That your warehouse is surety for a loan from Bert Culpepper, and if you don’t redeem it you can’t put it up for collateral to buy the clipper when it comes up for auction,” Monk told him.
    Louvain let out his breath slowly, his jaw clenched so the muscle stood out. “Who told you that? And what you say had better be the truth.”
    “An opulent receiver,” Monk replied. “If you want to know who else knows, I can’t tell you, I didn’t learn that.”
    “So now they know you’re my man!”
    “I’m not your man! And no, they don’t know.”
    “You’re my man until I say you aren’t.” Louvain leaned forward over his desk, his hands, callused and scarred by ropes, spread wide on the polished wood. “How does knowing about Culpepper and the clipper get you any further? I told you I needed to deliver the ivory because it was due. I hadn’t time to tell you all my enemies along the river. I have crossed every man on it, one time or another. And they’ve crossed me. It’s not a trade for the squeamish.”
    “Because if you’d told me about Culpepper I could have started to trace the ivory from the other end!” Monk answered back with equal bitterness. “Following the ivory from the ship I’m always at least two days behind.”
    A dull flush spread up Louvain’s cheeks. “Well, go and get on with looking at Culpepper, but for the love of God, be careful! You’re no use to me at the bottom of the river with your throat cut.”
    “Thank you,” Monk said sarcastically, then turned on his heel and went out. He felt safer now that he had only a little silver and copper change in his pocket, but he still kept to the middle of the road all the way back to the omnibus stop.
    He was standing, waiting, hunched against the wind, when another man came up, presumably to wait also. Only when he stood beside him was Monk suddenly aware of a weight pressing into his side. He turned to complain, and saw the hatred in the man’s eyes. He had a hat on, covering his shaven head and the strangely muscular neck, but Monk recognized his jaw and mouth. It was Ollie, who had waited on him at Little Lil’s.
    “Yer in’t ready ter go ’ome yet, Mr. Busybody,” Ollie hissed softly, as if someone might overhear him. “Fancy yerself, do yer? Think our Lil’d give yer more’n the time o’ day, do yer? Well yer in’t gonner ’ave the chance, see, ’cos yer comin’ wi’ me fer a little trip down Lime’ouse way.” He jerked the knife blade in his hand a little more sharply into Monk’s ribs. “An’ there in’t nob’dy listenin’, so don’ bother yellin’ out, ner thinkin’ as mebbe I wouldn’t stick yer, ’cos I would.”
    Monk did not doubt it. He might get a chance to overpower him later, but certainly not now. And his mind was filled with the memory of the knife in his arm as a scream filled the silence. Obediently he turned from the omnibus stop and walked back along the dark, gusty street, the wind in his face, the stones slick under his feet.
    They were alone side by side, Ollie close and a little behind, always keeping the knife bumping Monk’s back. He must have done such a thing before, because never once—all the way along the road, across the dark inlet to the Shadwell Docks and beyond, towards the curve southward of Limehouse Reach—did he ever let Monk move far enough from him to turn or escape the prodding blade.
    Monk saw the cranes and warehouses of the West India Dock ahead. The rain was spitting in their faces and the air was pungent with the smells of fish and tar when Ollie ordered him to stop.