William Monk 17 - Acceptable Loss

just a record of debts and payments, dates, names, amounts. The pictures would have been far more carefully hidden, as Jericho Phillips’s had been. Perhaps even Tosh didn’t know that.
    The thought of Phillips’s pictures still made Monk’s stomach lurch with rage and disgust so violent that he was nauseous with it, but he forced a smile. “Looking for the pictures, were you?”
    Tosh was staring at him, studying his face. He must have considered lying, and decided against it. “Just wanted to find out ’oo owed ’im still. An’ o’ course ’oo ’e owed. Got ter pay the bills.” He gave a tight, ugly smile.
    “Of course,” Monk agreed. “I imagine his partners will be after their share of the takings—present and future. Will you be keeping the business on, Tosh?”
    This time Tosh was caught. “ ’Ow do I know?” he answered irritably. “I jus’ worked for ’im. In’t none of it mine.”
    “No, of course not,” Monk agreed, and saw the anger harden in Tosh’s face. He would have liked it to have been his. He would be waiting now for the silent partner, whoever it was who had put in the money in the first place, to turn up and take the lion’s share. Someone had backed Mickey Parfitt, just as someone had backed Jericho Phillips.
    Sullivan had said that it was Ballinger who’ been behind Phillips. Was that true, or the lie of a desperate man seeking a last revenge? But to what end if Ballinger was not actually involved? Because Ballinger had seen his weakness, and in some way used it?
    And could Ballinger be behind both of them? Or was Monk only entertaining the idea because he was so desperate to believe he could end this hideous trade, at least here on the river he had taken for his own? And it was even more urgent to him to give Scuff the illusion of safety that would stop the nightmares and make him believe there really was someone who could protect him from the worst fears and atrocities of life.
    And did Monk need, for himself, to be the one who saved Scuff? If so, that was his own weakness, and to pursue Ballinger for it was worse than unjust; it was vicious and irrational, the kind of obsession he most despised in others.
    “Tell me about the night Mickey was killed,” he said abruptly.
    Tosh was startled, but after the initial surprise, his confidence returned, as if now Monk had moved away from the area of danger.
    “I told yer already …” He repeated the detailed account of his movements exactly as he had said before, almost reciting it. Of course Monk would check, but—looking at Tosh’s face—he was certain he would find it all well proved, perhaps as well as if Tosh had known he would need it to withstand investigation. A faint satisfaction gleamed behind his anger now.
    “W HAT DO YOU THINK?” Monk said to Orme as they sat in the hansom on the way back toward Wapping. It was dusk, and they had done all they could for the day. Monk was tired; not his feet—he wasused to walking—but in his mind. He felt as if Jericho Phillips were back and he, Monk, were retracing the pain of the old failure.
    Did he secretly want Parfitt’s murderer to escape, because he would like to kill all men like that himself? Especially if Parfitt had, like Phillips, been prepared to murder the boys who became troublesome as they grew too mature to satisfy the tastes of their abusers? Could it even be one of them, escaped, returned, and now strong enough, who had killed Parfitt in revenge?
    If it was, then Monk had no desire to catch him. Perhaps he would deliberately fail to, even at the cost of his own so fiercely nurtured reputation.
    He looked across at Orme beside him, trying to read his face in the flashes of lamplight from passing hansoms going the other way. It told him nothing, except that Orme was troubled also, which Monk already knew.
    “Who put up the money for the boat in the first place?” Monk asked.
    Orme pursed his lips. “And why’d he kill Parfitt? Getting above himself, d’you suppose? Stealing the profits?”
    “Perhaps,” Monk replied. “What did Crumble have to say?”
    “Just what you’d expect,” Orme said. “Lots of men coming and going, mostly well-dressed but keeping very quiet. Always after dark, and trying to look like they were just taking a ferry, or something like that.” Orme’s mouth was drawn tight, his lips a thin line in the reflected lamplight. “It’s Phillips all over again. Just this time somebody else got to him before we