William Monk 17 - Acceptable Loss

him?” he said sharply.
    This time it was ’Orrie who looked uncomfortable, shifting his weight awkwardly. “Yeah. I got ’eld up. Some fool wouldn’t pay, an’ we ’ad ter ask ’im a bit ’arder. Crumble’ll tell yer.”
    Monk looked at Coburn.
    “Crumble is one of Parfitt’s pimps,” Coburn replied.
    ’Orrie looked at him with disapproval. “Yer shouldn’t say things like that, Mr. Coburn. Crumble just looks after things.”
    Coburn shrugged.
    Monk did not pursue it. ’Orrie was probably telling the truth, and it was quite possible that none of them had a very clear idea of time. Monk would have to look further into the various sources of money to see whether ’Orrible Jones had any apparent motive either to kill Parfitt himself or to shield anyone else who had.
    They questioned ’Orrie further, but he had nothing to add to the simple fact that he had rowed Mickey Parfitt out to his boat, which was moored upstream from the local island, Chiswick Eyot, shortly after eleven o’clock. He had waited until midnight to go back for him, and then had been delayed by trouble in one of the taverns, where a customer had refused to pay for several drinks. Monk had no doubt it was actually a brothel, but for the purpose of accounting for ’Orrie’s time, it came to the same thing. When ’Orrie had rowed back just before one, Mickey Parfitt was nowhere to be seen. He said he had looked for him until he believed it was pointless, and then he had gone back home and gone to bed.
    In the morning, when ’Orrie had called on Mickey and found he was still not around, he had been sufficiently concerned to go and waken Tosh. Tosh had told him to go back to bed, but instead ’Orrie had begun to search for Mickey. In little more than an hour, he had found the body.
    Monk excused ’Orrie, for the time being, and went to find Crumble, who appeared to have no other name. He was in the cellar of the pub, moving kegs around with more ease than Monk would have expectedfrom a man so small. He was less than five feet, with round eyes, and features so indistinct that they seemed about to blur into one another. His eyebrows were ragged, his nose shapeless—perhaps the bone had been broken too many times. He spoke with a soft, curiously high-pitched voice.
    “Needed a little ’elp,” he explained when they asked him about ’Orrie’s delay in returning for Parfitt the previous night. “Weren’t thinkin’ o’ the time. Can’t let people get away without payin’, or word’ll get about, an’ everyone’ll be tryin’ it. Mr. Parfitt’s money.”
    Monk made a mental note to find out whose money it would be now, and perhaps also roughly how much of it there was. Constable Coburn would be well qualified to do that.
    He went through the pattern of the evening once again, then thanked Crumble and left.
    I T WAS AFTER SIX by the time Monk and Orme finally found themselves upstream toward Mortlake. They had borrowed a police boat and now rowed across from the north bank to the south. Finally they were approaching the large vessel moored close to the trees in a quiet, easily overlooked place, sheltered from the wake of passing barges and unseen from the road.
    The north bank opposite was marshy and completely deserted—a place no one would be likely to wander. There were no paths in it, no place to tie a boat and no reason to.
    They rowed across the bright water. The early evening sun was low on the western horizon, already filling the sky with color. It was not yet a year since Monk had taken this job, but even in that time the strength of his arms and chest had increased enormously. He hardly felt the pull of the oars, and he was so accustomed to working with Orme that they fell into rhythm without a word.
    He knew that Parfitt had been murdered, most probably on this boat that lay motionless on the silent river ahead of them. Still, the movement, the creak of the oarlocks, the whisper of water passing, the faint drip from the oars, had a kind of timeless calm that eased the knots inside him. He found he was smiling.
    They pulled up alongside the boat and shipped their oars. Orme stood and caught the rope ladder that lay over the surprisingly high side. They tied their own ropes to it, and then climbed up.
    The boat was larger than it had looked from the shore. It was a good fifty feet long, and about twenty wide at its broadest point. Given the height of it, there would be two decks above the waterline, and perhaps