William Monk 16 - Execution Dock

and torn apart never a reality. There must be a streak of sadism in him as well. There had never been chance, or excitement, or a hope of escape for the boys. Disgust welling up inside him, cold and sour, heturned away. “Rathbone will tell you what to do,” he said. “Perhaps he'd better bring you.”
    “Of course I'll bring him,” Rathbone retorted with a sting in his voice. “Do you think I'm not coming?”
    Monk was startled. He swung back, eyes wide, warmth inside him again.
    Rathbone saw it. He smiled very slightly, but his eyes were bright and clear. “You'll need all the help you can get,” he pointed out. “And possibly a witness whose word may stand up in court.” His mouth twisted with irony. “I hope. Apart from that, do you think I could miss it?”
    “Good,” Monk responded. “Then we will meet at the Wapping Stairs at dusk. Hester will join us.”
    Rathbone was stunned for a moment, then denial swept in. “You can't possibly let her come!” he protested. “Apart from the danger, it'll be something no woman should see! Haven't you listened to your own evidence, man? We're not going to find just poverty, or even fear or pain. It'll be …” he stumbled to a halt.
    “I gave her my word,” Monk told him. “It's Scuff.” He found it hard to say. “And apart from that, she is the only one with any real medical ability, if someone is hurt.”
    “But it will be men at their most …” Rathbone started again.
    “Raw?” Monk suggested. “Naked?”
    “No woman should …” Rathbone tried again.
    “Do you think you'll manage?” Monk said with an edge of pain in his voice that surprised him.
    Rathbone's eyes widened.
    “Have you ever seen a battlefield?” Monk asked him. “I have, once. I've never known such horror in my life, but Hester knew what to do. Forget your preconceptions, Rathbone; this will be reality.”
    Rathbone closed his eyes and nodded, speechless.
    Monk waited on the dockside just beyond Wapping Stairs at dusk, Hester beside him. She was dressed in trousers that Orme had borrowed from the locker of a young River policeman. It would be dangerouslyimpractical for her to go on an expedition like this either hampered by a skirt or recognizably vulnerable as a woman.
    Darkness was shrouding the water, and the farther side was visible only by the lights along the bank. Warehouses and cranes stood up hard and black against the southern sky and after the warmth of the day, a few threads of mist dragged faint veils across the water, catching the last of the light.
    There was a bump of wood against stone as Orme drew up with one of the police boats. The second boat loomed out of the shadows with Sutton already in it, Snoot crouched beside him on the rear seat.
    Footsteps sounded along the quay. Rathbone crossed the shaft of light from the police station lamp, Sullivan reluctantly behind him, his shoulders high and tight, his eyes sunken like holes in his skull.
    No one spoke more than a word, a gesture of recognition. Sutton nodded at Rathbone, possibly remembering many of their narrow escapes.
    Rathbone nodded back, a bleak smile brief in his face before turning to the business of climbing down the wet, slimy steps into the two boats. They had four River Police to row, and, as soon as they were seated, they slid out into the still water, which was slack at the turn of the tide. They moved out noiselessly except for the bump of metal against wood as the oars rattled in their locks.
    No one spoke. Everything had already been said, all the plans argued over and decided. Sullivan knew the price of refusal, and worse, of betrayal. Even so, Hester sat beside Monk in the stern of the second boat and watched the judge with coldness creeping up inside her, cramping her stomach and tightening her chest until she found it hard to breathe. There was a desperation in him that she could smell in the air, sharp and sour, above the detritus drifting on the oily water. He was cornered, and she was waiting for him to attack. Something, long ago, had separated him from the compassion he should have had, and left him erratic and ultimately unreachable.
    At another time she could have pitied him as a man incomplete. Now all she could think of was Scuff alone and terrified, intelligent enough to know exactly what Phillips would do to him. He would know that Monk would try everything he knew or could invent to rescuehim; he also knew that they had all failed before. Phillips had beaten them,