William Monk 15 - Dark Assassin

addressed, and they would all be waiting to see how Monk handled it. Sooner or later Clacton himself would provoke a confrontation, and Monk’s authority would hang on whether he won, and how.
    He tried to think of other plans he had used in the past to catch rings of thieves, but since the accident that had taken his memory he had worked largely on murder cases. Petty thieving belonged to a past before that—in the early years, when he and Runcorn had worked together, he thought wryly, not against each other. He had had flashes of going into the rookeries, those vast slums, which were part underground tunnels, part sagging tenements. There were passages, trapdoors, sudden drops, and blind ends—a hundred ways to get caught, and to get your throat cut. Your corpse would possibly go out on the tide, or if it finished in the sewer, most of it would be eaten by rats.
    That world was violent and ugly. The poverty in it was so absolute that only the strongest and the luckiest survived. Police seldom went there at all, but if they did, they took with them someone they trusted not only in loyalty but in skill, speed, and nerve as well, and above all courage. He and Runcorn had trusted each other like that once.
    In the rotting tenements of the waterlogged patch on the south bank known as Jacob’s Island, there could be a hundred men hidden in the wrecks of buildings sinking slowly into the mud. The same was true of the teeming slums of the docks, the ever-shifting tides of the Pool of London with its great ships, its cargoes here one day and gone the next. The opium dens of Limehouse or the wrecks on the long stretches towards the sea might conceal anything. He would need to trust Orme with his life, as Orme would have to trust him. It would not come quickly or without testing.
    “I’ll work on a plan,” he said aloud at last. “If you’ve got one, tell me.”
    “Yes, sir. I was thinkin’…” Orme stopped.
    “Go on,” Monk prompted.
    “I’d like to catch the Fat Man,” Orme said thoughtfully. “Owe ’im a lot, that one, over the years.”
    “I assume you mean a lot of harm, not a lot of good?”
    “Oh, yes, sir, a lot o’ harm indeed.” There was an edge of emotion in Orme’s voice that was extraordinarily sharp, as if from an accumulation of pain.
    Monk was overwhelmed by how much he did not know about these men. Orme seemed not to resent him. In fact, he had deliberately steered him away from the station just now so that Farnham would not see him come in late. He had covered for him yesterday so that he could pursue the Havilland case.
    An icy thought passed through Monk’s mind: that Orme was deliberately allowing him to do those things in order to betray him to Farnham, giving him enough rope to hang himself. Why had Orme himself not got Durban’s job? He was extremely able, and the men trusted him and admired him. He was far better qualified for it than Monk. Why had Durban suggested Monk? Was that a betrayal, too?
    He was floundering. His ignorance was like a vast black tide carrying him towards destruction.
    “I was thinkin’, sir”—Orme was still talking—“that if we get rid of the Fat Man, ’oo’s the best opulent receiver on the river, then someone else’ll take ’is place. I reckon that someone’ll be Toes. An’Toes is someone we can keep better under control. ’E’s greedy, but that’s all. At least fer now. The Fat Man is different, ’e ’as streaks of cruelty we need to get rid of. ’E isn’t above gettin’ people cut up slow if they really cross ’im up. Clever with a knife, ’e is. Knows ’ow to ’urt without killin’.”
    Monk looked at Orme’s grave, pinched face and read the pain in it again.
    “Very well, let’s get rid of him,” he agreed.
    Orme looked at him steadily. “Yes, Mr. Monk. An’ no private scores settled. No favors and no revenge, that’s what Mr. Durban used to say.” He turned away quickly, his breath catching in his throat, and Monk knew that the ghost of Durban was always going to be there.
    So he would use it. He would spend the day going through all Durban’s records until he had worked out what Durban would have done to trap the kidsmen and trace the goods to the Fat Man legitimately. No favors, no revenge. He also wanted to know why Orme had not been made commander. Perhaps he would be better off in ignorance, but he had to find out. It might matter one day; his life might even depend upon it.
    Most of the cases that he