William Monk 17 - Acceptable Loss

themselves, if we stay out of it then it won’t happen to us.”
    “But it isn’t miles away,” Orme said softly. He was leaning a little against a stanchion, gazing far away into the distance. Monk had no idea what he saw in it. There were startling moments when he felt he knew Orme intimately because of the bitter and terrible experiences they had shared, things that were understood but could never be put into words. But there were far more days like this when they worked together with mutual respect, something bordering on a kind of friendship, but the difference between them was never forgotten, at least not by Orme. “It’s right here. Unless she came here by boat. Either way, she was killed there on the pier, and then cut open like that.” His mouth tightened. His face was very pale under his windburn. “Or I suppose they could’ve killed her somewhere else, and then cut her here?” he suggested, his voice grating in his throat.
    “She wouldn’t have bled like that if she’d been dead awhile,” Monk replied. “Overstone said that from the way the blood was, and the bruising, he reckoned she was just recently dead.”
    Orme swore under his breath, then apologized.
    Monk waved his hand, dismissing it.
    They both stood on the cold stones of the street, saying nothing for several moments. Other people were coming for the tea, their footsteps loud on the cobbles. Somewhere a dog was barking.
    “Do you think they could’ve cut her up like that in the dark?” Orme finally broke the silence. “Not seeing what they were doing?”
    Monk looked at him. “There were no streetlamps where we found her. Either they did it in the dark, or while there was still some daylight left.”
    “Why there, anyway?” Orme asked. He tightened his hunched shoulders as if his jacket were not enough to keep him warm. “It’s not a place a prostitute would take a man. The riding lights of a barge would illuminate you long enough to be seen.”
    “Maybe they
were
seen,” Monk thought aloud. “From the distance, a man struggling with a woman could look like an embrace. Lightermen would just laugh at his boldness doing it out in the open, a kind of bravado. They would think he was taking his pleasure, not killing her.”
    “Not much point looking for anyone who saw,” Orme said unhappily. “They could be anywhere by now, from Henley to Gravesend.”
    “Wouldn’t help us much anyway,” Monk replied. “They’d have no way of knowing if it was her they saw, or any other couple.” The thought depressed him. A woman could be murdered and gutted like a fish, out in the open, in full view of the ships going past, on the most populous river in the world, and no one notice or understand what was happening.
    He straightened up, eating the last of his sandwich. He had to choke it down. There was nothing wrong with it, but his mouth was dry. The bread tasted like sawdust.
    “We’d best see if we can find out who she was,” he said. “Not that it will necessarily help us much. She was probably just in the wrong place at the wrong time.”
    “There’ll still be people to tell,” Orme responded. “Friends, even a husband.”
    Monk did not answer. He knew it. It was the worst part of the beginning in any murder case: telling those who had cared about the victim. In the end, the worst was finding the person who had done it, and those who cared about them.
    Together they walked back up Narrow Street to the corner of Ropemakers Fields and then along it slowly. On the north side there were alleys every few dozen yards. Some led up to Triangle Place, and then on to the workhouse.
    They asked there, giving as good a description of the dead woman as they could, but no one was missing. In any case, the dead woman’s hands had not looked like those of a woman used to physical labor: red from long hours wet or submerged in caustic soap, scrubbing floors or laundering, or calloused from the constant prick of the needle while sewing canvas.
    Was she a prostitute, well past her prime, perhaps desperate for a few shillings and easily persuaded to go anywhere, even the open space of a pier as darkness fell? With the money at least she could eat, or buy a few pieces of coal to keep herself warm.
    In spite of himself Monk imagined it: the offer, the need on both their parts, the brief struggle, which she easily mistook for fumbling, clumsy desire, perhaps a man angry with himself for needing such a release, angry with her because she