William Monk 17 - Acceptable Loss

and then blew them out again. “Mebbe I shouldn’t a said that. Still an ’andsome enough figure of a man.”
    “Fair hair?” Hester asked, thinking of Rupert standing in the sun in the doorway of the clinic. “Slender, but quite tall?”
    “No,” the ferryman said decisively. “Sorry, love. ’E’d a bin sixty,like as not, dark ’air, near black, close as I could tell in the lamplight, like. But a big man, ’e were, an’ not tall, as yer might say. More like most.”
    Considering that the ferryman was unusually short, Hester wondered what he considered was average. However, it might only insult him to ask, and apart from anything else, she needed his help.
    “Did he come back again later?” she asked, changing the subject. She felt awkward, now that she had established that it was not the mythical deserting husband she had suggested. Then a new idea occurred to her. “You see, I’m afraid it could have been my father. He has a terrible temper, and …” She left the rest unsaid, a suggestion in the air. “He wasn’t … hurt, was he?”
    “Yer do pick ’em, don’t yer?” The ferryman shrugged. “But ’e were fine. Bit scruffed up, like ’e ’ad a bit of a tussle, but right as rain in ’isself. Walked down the bank an’ leaped inter his boat. Don’t you worry about ’im. Don’t know about the young feller with the fair ’air. I never see’d ’im.”
    “Perhaps he wasn’t here.” She said it with an upsurge of relief. She knew it was foolish even as she welcomed it. It meant nothing, only one difficulty avoided of a hundred.
    “Wot does it mean?” Scuff asked as they thanked the man and walked away along the path. “Is it good?”
    “I’m not sure,” Hester replied. That at least was true. “It certainly wasn’t Rupert. Even in the pitch dark you couldn’t mistake him for sixty. And if this man were scruffed up, he would have been in a fight, which, from the sound of it, he won.”
    “Like chokin’ Mickey Parfitt and sending ’im over the side?”
    “Yes, something like that,” she agreed.
    He shivered. “Was there other people in the boat?”
    “Not that evening, apparently, except for the boys, locked in belowdecks.”
    He hesitated. “Where are they now?”
    Hester heard the strain in his voice, saw the memory bright and terrible in his eyes.
    “They’re all safe,” she told him unwaveringly. “Looked after and clean and fed.”
    It was a moment or two before he was satisfied enough to believe her. Gradually the stiffness eased out of his back and shoulders. “So ’oo were it, then? Were it the man ’oo killed Mickey Parfitt?”
    “Quite possibly.”
    “ ’Ow do we find out ’oo ’e is?”
    “I have an idea about that. Right now we are going home.”
    “We in’t gonna look fer ’im?” He was shivering very slightly, trying to stand so straight that it didn’t show. He pulled his coat tighter deliberately, although it was not any colder.
    “I need to ask William a few questions before that. I don’t think I will get two chances to speak to him about this, so I need to do it properly the first time.”
    “ ’E in’t gonna let yer,” Scuff warned. “I wouldn’t, if I was ’im.”
    “I dare say not.” She did not bother to hide her smile. “Which is why I won’t ask him, and neither will you.”
    “I might.”
    She looked at him. It wasn’t a threat. He was afraid for her. She saw it in his eyes, like a hard, twisting pain. He had found some kind of safety for the first time in his life, and it was threatened already. He was used to loss. Although this was too deep for him to handle alone, he was too used to loneliness to be able to share, too vulnerable even to acknowledge it.
    “I’ll come wif yer,” he said, watching her face, waiting for her to refuse him.
    “Thank you,” she accepted. It was rash. Perhaps it would cost them both. “If William is angry later, I’ll tell him you came only to make sure I was safe.”
    He smiled and pushed his hands deeper into his pockets. “Right,” he agreed, overwhelmed with relief.
    W HAT H ESTER ACTUALLY WANTED to know from Monk was what he had been told about where Arthur Ballinger had been on the night of Parfitt’s death. The ferryman’s description fitted him extraordinarily well—although, of course, it also fitted several thousandother men closely enough. She hated even thinking that it might’ve been Ballinger, because of how it would hurt Rathbone, and of course