Execution Dock Page 0,55

graceful. For a moment surprise caught him off guard. "Yer not so daft, are yer! Gawd 'elp yer if 'e catches yer is all I can say."

Monk could wrest no more out of him, and twenty minutes later he and Scuff were back on the dockside.

"Yer gonna set 'is customers agin' 'im?" Scuff said in awe. "Ow yer gonna do that?" He looked worried.

"I'm not sure what I'm going to do," Monk answered, starting to walk along the dockside. They were on the north bank, back near the Wapping Police Station. "For now I'll settle for learning a great deal more about him."

"If yer can prove for sure that 'e killed Fig, will they 'ang 'im?" Scuff asked hopefully.

"No." Monk kept his pace even, though he was not yet certain where he was going. He did not want Scuff to realize that, although he was beginning to appreciate that Scuff was a far sharper judge of character than he had previously given him credit for. It was disconcerting to be read so well by an eleven-year-old. "No," he said again. "He's been found not guilty. We can't try him again, no matter what we find. In fact, even if he confessed, there'd still be nothing we could do."

Scuff was silent. He turned towards Monk, looking him up and down, his lips tight.

Monk was unpleasantly aware that Scuff was being tactful. He was touched by it, and at the same time he was hurt. Scuff was sorry for him, because he had made a mistake he did not know how to mend. This was a far cry from the brilliant, angry man he had been in the main Metropolitan Police onshore, where criminals and slipshod police alike were frightened of him.

"So we gotta get 'im for summink else, then," Scuff deduced. "Wot like? Thievin'? Forgin'? 'E don't do that, far as I know. Sellin' stuff wot was nicked? 'E don't do that neither. An' 'e don't smuggle nothin' so 'e don't pay the revenue men be'ind 'is back, like." He screwed up his face in an unspoken question.

"I don't know," Monk said frankly. "That's what I need to find out. He does lots of things. Maybe Fig isn't the only boy he's killed, but I need something I can prove."

Scuff grunted in sympathy and walked beside Monk, trying very hard to keep in step with him. Monk wondered whether to shorten his stride. He decided not to; he did not want Scuff to know that he had noticed.

The police surgeon was busy and short-tempered. He met them in one of the stone-floored and utilitarian outer rooms of the mortuary. He had just finished an autopsy and his rolled-up sleeves were still splashed with blood.

"Made a mess of it, didn't you," he said bitterly. It was an accusation, not a question. He glanced at Scuff once, then disregarded him. "If you expect me to rescue you, or excuse you, for that matter, then you're wasting your time."

Scuff let out a wail of fury, and stifled it immediately, terrified Monk would make him go away, and then he would be no use at all. He stood shifting his weight from one foot to the other in his odd boots, and glaring at the surgeon.

Monk controlled his own temper with difficulty, only because his need to find some new charge against Phillips was greater than his impulse for self-defense. "You deal with most of the bodies taken out of this stretch of the river," he replied, his voice tight. "Figgis can't have been the only boy of that age and general type. I'd like to hear about the others."

"You wouldn't," the surgeon contradicted him. "Especially not in front of this one." He indicated Scuff briefly. "Won't give you anything useful, anyway. If we could've tied any of them to Jericho Phillips, don't you think we would have?" His dark face was creased with an inner pain that perhaps he did not realize showed so clearly.

Monk's anger vanished. Suddenly they had everything that mattered in common. The retort that apparently the surgeon had been no cleverer than anyone else died on his tongue.

"I want to get him for anything I can," he said quietly. "Loitering with intent or being a public nuisance, if it would put him away long enough to start on the rest."

"I want to see him hang for what he does to these boys," the surgeon replied. His voice shook very slightly.

"So do I, but I'll settle for what I can get,"