William Monk 17 - Acceptable Loss

and understood. Monk was glad it was not his skill or judgment on which rested the weight of the saving or losing of a man’s life.
    “I’m sorry,” Monk apologized. It was probably inappropriate, but for a moment they were not adversaries. They felt the same pity, and revulsion, at the thought of hanging. “I have no wish to prosecute him at all,” he went on. “When I first found Parfitt’s body, I considered not even looking for whoever killed him, after I’d seen the boat and the boys kept there. But when the cravat turned up, I had no choice.”
    Rathbone’s face was bleak. “I know that. What is it you want, Monk?”
    “The man behind it. Don’t you?”
    “Of course. But I have no idea who that is.” He met Monk’s eyes directly, without a flicker. Was he remembering the night when Sullivanhad killed Phillips so hideously, and then himself, after he had said that the man behind it all was Arthur Ballinger? Why had he pointed to Ballinger? Had it been anger, ignorance, madness, while the balance of his mind turned? Had it been revenge for something quite different? Or the truth?
    Rathbone could not afford to think that the man was Margaret’s father. The price of that would be devastating, yet nor could he afford to ignore it. Monk did not want to do this either, but he also could not look away, for Cardew, and, more important to him, for Scuff.
    “No …” Monk said slowly. “But if the right pressure were put upon Cardew, then he might give enough information for us to find out.”
    “Why should he?” Rathbone asked, his voice tight and careful. “Surely by doing that he would automatically be admitting to the most powerful motive for killing Parfitt. I know that you believe you can prove that he did kill Parfitt, but he swears he did not.”
    “And you believe him?” Monk said. “Actually, there is no point in your assuming that, even if you are right. It is what the jury believes that matters. If he will give us a record of every payment he made to Parfitt, dates and amounts, we might be able to trace it through Parfitt’s books. If it comes out in the open in court, it could shake other things loose.”
    “And hang Cardew for certain,” Rathbone said quietly. “His own society will never forgive him for frequenting a boat like that, whether he killed the bastard who ran it or not.” His mouth pulled into a delicately bitter smile. “Apart from anything else, it would betray the fact that men of his social and financial class were the chief clients, and enablers of creatures like Parfitt. And while that is true, making it public is another thing altogether.”
    “I know that,” Monk conceded. “But his revulsion when he learned the real nature of the business, but was still bled dry, will earn him some sympathy. That is your job, not protecting the reputations of others like him. I know no evidence that his story on that account is anything but the truth.”
    Rathbone put his elbows on the desk, and his fingertips very gently together. “You are offering me life in prison in exchange for fulladmission, with details you can prove, of his visit to the boat, the nature of what went on there, and his payment of blackmail money to Parfitt? And all this is in the hope that it will somehow lead you to the man behind it?”
    There was no point in arguing the shadings of meaning. “Yes.”
    “I’ll ask him, but I’m not sure if I can recommend it is in his interest. God, what a mess!”
    Monk did not answer him.
    M ONK WORKED ON THE river the rest of the day. There had been a large theft of spices from an East Indiaman in the Pool of London, and it took him until nearly midnight to trace the goods and arrest at least half the men involved in the crime. By quarter to one, a new moon in a mackerel sky made the river ghostly. Ships were riding at anchor, sails furled, like a gently stirring lace fretwork against the light, beautiful and totally without color. There was only a faint murmur of water and the sharp smell of salt in the air.
    Monk stepped off the ferry at Princes Stairs and walked slowly up the hill to home.
    Hester had left the light on in the parlor, but it was only when he stepped in to turn the gas off that he saw she was curled up in the large armchair, sound asleep.
    His first thought was clear. She’d been waiting for him, or she would have been in bed. Was Scuff ill? No, of course not. If he were, she would have been with him. He remembered how many nights