William Monk 17 - Acceptable Loss

entertainment.”
    He saw Rupert wince, the shame filling his face. He had expected it. It hurt Monk to have to be so blunt, but it changed nothing. “Whereas if you don’t tell me, you will be betraying the children on that boat—and all those like them. And if you think carefully and with absolute honesty, you’ll realize you will be betraying your father, and perhaps the better part of yourself.”
    Rupert shook his head slowly. “You don’t know what you’re asking …”
    “Really?” Monk raised his eyebrows. “Do you think your social class are the only people who feel loyalty toward their friends, or to those to whom they are bound by promises of conspiracy, and hiding their shame? You are ashamed of it, aren’t you?”
    A flame of anger lit Rupert’s eyes. “Yes, of course I am! You …” He struggled for words, and could not find them.
    “And you think embarrassment and an apology are enough to make the balance even again?”
    “No, I don’t! I’ll regret it the rest of my life!” Rupert was shouting now. “But I can’t undo it.”
    “Remorse is excellent,” Monk said levelly. “But it isn’t enough. Nor is money. If you want any kind of redemption, then you must help me stop at least some of it from happening again.”
    “How many times do I have to tell you? I don’t know who killed Parfitt!” Rupert said desperately. “It may well have been Ballinger, but I don’t know anything to help you prove it. I didn’t see him, and I wouldn’t recognize him if I had. I don’t even remember half that evening, except as a nightmare. Telling you the names of my friends who went there isn’t going to do anything except embarrass them and make me a social outcast.”
    “That’s the price,” Monk replied. “And is their friendship worth that much to you?”
    “Don’t be such a damn fool!” Rupert’s voice was high and angryagain, touched with fear. “Everyone will despise me for ratting on friends, not just the men concerned, and their families, and their friends.”
    Monk felt the resolve harden in him, like a cold, gray stone in his gut. “Then, tell me about the ‘performances.’ ” He accentuated the word. “Where did you meet? Did you all go to Chiswick separately, or together? Shared a hansom, perhaps? You wouldn’t go in your own carriages—they might be recognized—or want your coachman to know, for that matter.”
    “Separately, mostly,” Rupert answered grimly. “What has that to do with Ballinger, or anything else?”
    Monk ignored the question. “How do you get from the shore to Parfitt’s boat?”
    “Someone rowed us. Either that revolting little man with the walleye—”
    “ ’Orrible Jones?”
    “If you say so. Or the other. Why?”
    Monk ignored that question too. “By agreement? How did you know he wasn’t just a ferryman? How did he know who you were, and that you wanted to go to that boat and not just to the other shore? How did he know you were one of Parfitt’s clients? You could even have been police.”
    “It’s not illegal,” Rupert said miserably.
    “Just immoral?” Monk asked sarcastically. “That’s why you do it up there in Chiswick, miles from home, and at night on the river?”
    Rupert glared at him. “I didn’t say I was proud of it, just that it isn’t anything to do with the police.”
    “Actually, torturing and imprisoning children is illegal,” Monk told him.
    “We didn’t do … that … to anyone!”
    “You just watched other people do it!” Monk’s disgust made his voice shake, his throat straining with the force of his emotions. “And homosexuality is illegal too.”
    Rupert’s face was scarlet.
    “Apart from the question of legality, Mr. Cardew,” Monk went on ruthlessly, “would you like to be forced to have anal intercourse withanother man, for the entertainment of a crowd of drunken lechers? Did that happen to you when you were six or seven years old, and you screamed, and bled, and that’s why—”
    “Stop it!” Rupert shouted, his voice cracking. “All right! I understand. It was bestial, and I shall pay for it in shame for the rest of my life!”
    “And you will also tell me who else was there,” Monk said. “Every man whose face you recognized. I can’t arrest them for it, but I can question them for information. I’m going to hang the creature behind this, and I’m going to use every perverted bastard I can find to do it.”
    “You’re going to talk to them?” Rupert