William Monk 17 - Acceptable Loss

sacrifice Rupert Cardew in the process.”
    Crow’s eyes widened incredulously. “Would you like the crown jewels at the same time, maybe, just as a nice finish?” He skirted around a pile of refuse, and a rat scuttled away.
    “Not particularly,” Hester answered, keeping her face perfectly straight. “I haven’t sufficient use for them. One would have to walk terribly upright to keep a crown from falling off. I don’t think I could do that.”
    Scuff was puzzled.
    “She’s joking,” Crow told him, putting his hand on the boy’s shoulder. “At least I hope she is.”
    “Half,” Hester conceded. Then she smiled. “I might be able to, but if I dropped anything, somebody else would have to pick it up for me.”
    “If you were wearing a crown, I expect they’d feel obliged,” Crow answered.
    Scuff laughed, but the fear of being lost again, separated from her, was tight underneath, as sharp as a knife point.
    They all walked in silence for a couple of hundred yards past more boxes, barrels, and piles of wood. Finally they reached the steps to the ferry to the north bank. The tide was turning and the water was choppy. Strings of lighters were making their way upriver laden with coal, timber, and round wooden barrels lashed together. A coastal barge passed by, sails full-set, billowing out. The light was bright on the water, and the wind caught the edges of the waves, whipping up a fine spray.
    “I want to know the details the police won’t be able to find,” Hester told Crow after they were ashore on the north bank. “Any whispers.” She did not really know what she was asking for. The facts said that Rupert was guilty. But might a jury be persuaded to ask for leniency? Or when they heard what bestiality Parfitt sold, might they believe that any man who’d become involved, no matter how ignorant he’d been initially, was little better than Parfitt himself?
    Or was it just that she liked Rupert, and for Scuff’s sake she was desperate to find the man behind Parfitt’s business, so she could prevent him from starting up again with someone new? Scuff needed to see them succeed, to believe it really could happen, and that he was a part of it.
    “Crow …”, she began. “Do you think it could be something as simple as a business rivalry? Parfitt must have earned a lot of money from that boat. If someone else took over his trade and his clients, they’d make just as much, wouldn’t they? Perhaps what I really need to know is how the business was run. Who profits from his death, in a business way? Never mind the blackmail or the moral side of it. Let’s look at the money.”
    He nodded very slowly, his smile widening. “Give me a couple of days.” He tilted his head a little to one side. “I suppose you want the details, rather than just my conclusions?”
    “Yes, please. My conclusions might be different.”
    He did not answer that, but a brief flash of amusement lit his eyes. “It’ll be ugly,” he warned.
    “Of course it will. Thank you.”
    There was really nothing more to be added now, and she thanked Crow and left.
    “Where we goin’ now?” Scuff asked, keeping up with her by adding an extra skip into his step now and then. “We in’t just leavin’ it to ’im, are we?”
    “No,” Hester answered decisively. “We are going to see if someone else with an interest in the boat’s profits might have been there the night Parfitt was killed.”
    “ ’Ow’re we gonna do that?”
    “Well, if it is one of the people I think it might be, he will have to have come up the river from his home. If I can find someone who saw him, it would be a start.”
    She had not told Scuff anything about what Sullivan had said of Arthur Ballinger, and she assumed Monk hadn’t either. If there was really anything behind it, ignorance would be the safest shield for him.
    “Like a cabby?”
    “I think I’ll begin with the ferryman. Cabbies don’t see a lot of people’s faces, especially after dark.”
    “Course!” Scuff said eagerly. “Yer sittin’ in a boat, an’ the ferryman’s gotta see yer, eh? So if ’e don’t wanna be seen an’ ’ave folks remember ’im, ’e’d row up the river ’isself. Or if ’e couldn’t, then ’e’d cross where ’e’d least likely be noticed a ’ole lot.”
    “Definitely,” she agreed. “Let’s try the ferrymen in Chiswick first.”
    It took them well into the afternoon to get from the eastern end, nearer the sea and the great wharfs and