William Monk 17 - Acceptable Loss

pornographic business on the boats were next, a piece at a time. She smiled across at Hattie and thanked her again.

CHAPTER
7
    M ONK WENT ACROSS THE river on the early morning ferry. It was a cool, quiet day, barely a ripple on the water in the slack tide. Swathes of mist half veiled the ships at anchor. Strings of barges seemed to appear out of nowhere.
    He had been collecting the evidence against Rupert Cardew to present when he came to trial. It was a miserable job, and in truth he had little more taste for it than Hester had. But the more he learned, the easier it became to see Rupert as a spoiled young man whose louche style of life and ungoverned temper had finally caught up with him. In Mickey Parfitt he had met the one problem his father could not solve for him. No amount of money would have been sufficient to stop the blackmail that had clearly worked so well.
    The only inconsistency was that Parfitt was a professional at extortion. He had been thirty-seven years old, and had survived for the last ten of these by profiting one way or another from other men’s weaknesses. There had been at least one suicide among his victims,possibly more, but no one had ever attacked him before. It seemed he had judged very precisely where to draw the line in his bloodsucking, or his threats. A dead victim is bad for business, and he never forgot that—at least not until recently.
    Was that a weakness in the case, or simply a fact yet to be explained? Rathbone had not merely beaten Monk in the trial of Jericho Phillips, he had humiliated him, and later—when she had testified—Hester as well. He had done it with the knowledge of how to hurt that only a friend possesses.
    Monk still felt a tide of anger burn up in him when he remembered it. Perhaps it hurt him more on her behalf than it had Hester herself. They had never spoken of it, as if it were a wound still too painful to touch.
    This time Monk would make sure that Rupert Cardew was guilty, and that he had proved it beyond any doubt, reasonable or not; or else Monk would find the man who was guilty, and prove that.
    Of course what he wanted, far more than the poor devil who’d killed Mickey Parfitt, was the man who had set him up in business, and had found his clientele among those whose weakness for the excitement of the forbidden, the illegal, and the obscene he had fed and exploited. Monk would find and prove that, whoever it was, even if it were Arthur Ballinger himself, as Sullivan had claimed. Indeed, even were it Lord Cardew—anyone, without exception.
    The ferry reached the far side. Monk paid the fare and climbed the slippery steps up to the dock.
    He was reluctant to prosecute Rupert Cardew, but there was no possible way to avoid it. What grieved him most was that the whole thing was so utterly pointless. He would never have taken off his distinctive silk cravat, deliberately knotted it, and then strangled an unconscious man. It seemed such an unnecessary thing to do—and, Monk realized, one that would give him no emotional satisfaction. There was no bodily contact, no release of the pent-up violence. There was something cold-blooded about it. But that was the only part he did not understand. The passion to destroy Parfitt he understood perfectly.
    He reached the top of the steps as the sun came through the hazeand made the dew on the stone momentarily bright. He walked quickly toward the road.
    Had Rupert really been naïve enough to think that would end the trade? Was he so spoiled, so cosseted from reality, that he believed a man like Parfitt was the power behind the business, the one who found the vulnerable patrons and then judged exactly how far to bleed each one?
    But it was the man behind Parfitt that Monk wanted, and that was what he had in mind an hour later when he called to see Oliver Rathbone. After a short wait, he was shown into Rathbone’s neat and elegant room.
    “Good morning, Monk,” Rathbone said with some surprise. “A new case?” He indicated the chair opposite his desk for Monk to sit down.
    “Thank you.” Monk accepted, leaning back as if he were relaxed, crossing his legs. “The same case.”
    Rathbone smiled, sitting also and hitching his trouser to stop it from creasing as he crossed his legs, and he too leaned back. “Since we are on opposite sides, this should prove interesting. What can I do for you?”
    “Perhaps save Cardew from the rope.”
    Rathbone’s smile vanished, a look of pain in his eyes. Monk saw it