William Monk 17 - Acceptable Loss

did.”
    “One of his clients? Victims of blackmail? One of his boys?” Monk tried to frame the ugliest thought in his mind, the one he did not want ever to look at. But Orme’s own honesty was too all-inclusive for Monk to say anything less now without it being a deliberate evasion. It cost Monk an effort. He had never worked with others before whom he trusted. He had commanded, but not led. He was only lately beginning to appreciate the difference. “Or his backer needing to silence him?”
    “Could be,” Orme replied quietly. “Don’t know how we’ll find that out, let alone get evidence.”
    “No,” Monk agreed. “Neither do I, yet.”
    ———
    W HEN M ONK FINALLY REACHED home, it had long been dark. The glare of the city lights was reflected back from a low overcast sky, making the blackness of the river look like a tunnel through the sparks and gleams and the glittering smear of brightness all around.
    He walked up the hill from the ferry landing at Princes Stairs, turned right on Union Road, then left into Paradise Place. He could hear the wind in the leaves of the trees over on Southwark Park, and somewhere a dog was barking.
    He let himself in with his own key. Too often he was home long after Hester needed to be asleep, although she almost always waited up for him. This time she was sitting in the big chair in the front room, the gas lamp still burning. Her sewing had slipped from her hands and was in a heap on the floor. She was sound asleep.
    He smiled and walked quietly over to her. How could he avoid startling her? He went back and closed the door with a loud snap of the latch.
    She woke sharply, pulling herself upright. Then she saw him and smiled.
    “I’m sorry,” she apologized. “I must have drifted off.” She was still blinking sleepily, but trying through the remnant of dreams to study his face.
    “I’ll get us a cup of tea,” he said gently. This was home: comfortable, familiar, where he had been happier than he had thought possible. Here he was freer than anywhere else in the world, and yet also more bound, because it mattered so much; to lose it would be unbearable. It would have been easier to care less, to believe there was something else that could nourish his heart, if need be. But there wasn’t, and he knew it.
    “How’s Scuff?” he asked over his shoulder.
    “Fine,” Hester answered, bending to pick up the fallen sewing and put it away. “I didn’t tell him you found another boat. If he has to know, I’ll tell him later.” She came up behind him. “Are you hungry?”
    “Yes.” Suddenly he realized that he was. “Bread will do.”
    “Cold game pie?” she offered.
    “Ah! Yes.”
    It was not until he was sitting down with pie and vegetables and a cup of tea that he realized she intended to draw from him all that he had learned so far.
    “Not as much as the pie is worth,” he said.
    “What isn’t?” She tried to look as if she did not know what he meant, but ended with a brief laugh at herself. “Is it another one like Phillips’s?” she said softly.
    “Yes. I’m sorry.”
    Between mouthfuls Monk told her what he knew so far, keeping his voice so low that he would hear any creak of Scuff’s footsteps on the stairs.
    She was very grave. “Could it be Arthur Ballinger?” she asked when he came to a stop. She knew of Sullivan’s charge.
    “Yes,” he answered. “Not to have killed him, of course, but he could be the one backing the enterprise financially, and taking a share of the profits.”
    “Could you prove it?”
    “Perhaps. I’ll put Orme on to the accounts tomorrow, and see if he can trace the ownership of the boat back to someone. Although I’ll be surprised if it’s that easy.”
    She was sitting upright, her back stiff. The lamplight made her hair look fairer than it was, almost like a halo. “So why would Ballinger kill him, or have him killed? Do you think Phillips’s death scared him and he was afraid you would pursue the issue until you found who was behind it?”
    Monk considered the idea for several moments. Would he have taken Sullivan’s word, unverified as it was, and continued to hunt for whoever had conceived the original idea, found the rich men ripe for the danger and the titillation of child pornography? Perhaps the threat of the double disgrace of child abuse and homosexuality was part of the excitement. These men had not considered the possibility that the very hand that tempted them, and then fed them,