William Monk 18 - A Sunless Sea

“Not seeing what they were doing?”
    Monk looked at him. “There were no streetlamps where we found her. Either they did it in the dark, or while there was still some daylight left.”
    “Why there, anyway?” Orme asked. He tightened his hunched shoulders as if his jacket were not enough to keep him warm. “It’s not a place a prostitute would take a man. The riding lights of a barge would illuminate you long enough to be seen.”
    “Maybe they
were
seen,” Monk thought aloud. “From the distance,a man struggling with a woman could look like an embrace. Lightermen would just laugh at his boldness doing it out in the open, a kind of bravado. They would think he was taking his pleasure, not killing her.”
    “Not much point looking for anyone who saw,” Orme said unhappily. “They could be anywhere by now, from Henley to Gravesend.”
    “Wouldn’t help us much anyway,” Monk replied. “They’d have no way of knowing if it was her they saw, or any other couple.” The thought depressed him. A woman could be murdered and gutted like a fish, out in the open, in full view of the ships going past, on the most populous river in the world, and no one notice or understand what was happening.
    He straightened up, eating the last of his sandwich. He had to choke it down. There was nothing wrong with it, but his mouth was dry. The bread tasted like sawdust.
    “We’d best see if we can find out who she was,” he said. “Not that it will necessarily help us much. She was probably just in the wrong place at the wrong time.”
    “There’ll still be people to tell,” Orme responded. “Friends, even a husband.”
    Monk did not answer. He knew it. It was the worst part of the beginning in any murder case: telling those who had cared about the victim. In the end, the worst was finding the person who had done it, and those who cared about them.
    Together they walked back up Narrow Street to the corner of Ropemakers Fields and then along it slowly. On the north side there were alleys every few dozen yards. Some led up to Triangle Place, and then on to the workhouse.
    They asked there, giving as good a description of the dead woman as they could, but no one was missing. In any case, the dead woman’s hands had not looked like those of a woman used to physical labor: red from long hours wet or submerged in caustic soap, scrubbing floors or laundering, or calloused from the constant prick of the needle while sewing canvas.
    Was she a prostitute, well past her prime, perhaps desperate for a few shillings and easily persuaded to go anywhere, even the open spaceof a pier as darkness fell? With the money at least she could eat, or buy a few pieces of coal to keep herself warm.
    In spite of himself Monk imagined it: the offer, the need on both their parts, the brief struggle, which she easily mistook for fumbling, clumsy desire, perhaps a man angry with himself for needing such a release, angry with her because she had the power to give it to him, and was demanding money. Then the crushing blow and the consuming darkness.
    Why had he then mutilated her? Had he known her, and this was some uncontrollable personal hatred? Or was he a madman, and any victim would have done just as well? If that were so, then this would be only the beginning.
    They walked the length of Narrow Street again, and Ropemakers Fields, and up and down the alleys, but no one had seen anything that helped, no man and woman together going toward the pier at dusk or shortly before, or if they had, they had barely noticed, or preferred not to remember. No amount of questioning elicited anything helpful.
    They needed to find out who she was, who she had been before this.
    “We’ll get a drawing of her,” Monk said as they walked back toward the local police station and the sky darkened into late afternoon. “There’s a constable there who’s good with a pencil to catch a likeness. We’ll get him to make at least a couple of pictures. Try again in the morning.”
    M ONK WAS TIRED ENOUGH to sleep well that night. He told Hester nothing about the woman on the pier, not wanting to shatter the brief peace of the evening. If she knew there was any worry, she was too wise or too gentle to say so.
    He woke early the next morning and went out before breakfast to get at least a couple of the daily newspapers from the stand on the corner of Paradise Place and Church Street. By the time he had walked the hundred yards or so back home, he knew the worst.