"Elephant Stair?" Monk repeated with a surge of hope. "Thank you very much. I'm obliged to you. I'll try the Crown and Anchor." And he walked briskly along the river's edge to the Elephant Stair, where the shallow stone steps led down into the creeping tide, salt-sharp and slapping against the walls, crunching and pulling on the shingle. He turned right and went up Elephant Lane.

He went into the crowded, noisy, steamy barroom and ordered and ate a good meal of pie with excellent pastry. He dechned to imagine what the filling might be, judging that he preferred not to know. He followed it with a treacle suet pudding and a glass of stout, then began his enquiries.

He was glad he had eaten first; he needed the strength of a full stomach and a rested body to hear what was told him. It seemed the landlord had paid more attention to the low price than to the goods he was purchasing. When he had got the girls back to Rotherhithe he had put them to work in the sculleries washing glasses and dishes and scrubbing the floors. They had worked from before dawn until the public house closed at night. They had eaten what they could scavenge, and slept on the kitchen floor in a pile of sacking by the hearth, curled up together like cats or dogs.

They were willing enough to work, but they were slow, hampered by partial deafness and by being undersized and frequently ill. After a few months he had come to the conclusion that they were a bad bargain and cost him more than they were worth. He had been offered the chance to sell them to a gin mill in St. Giles, and seized the opportunity. It was a few shillings' return on his investment.

Where was the gin mill?

The publican had no idea.

Would a little money help him to recall?

It might. How much money?

A guinea?

Not enough.

The anger exploded inside Monk. He wanted to hurt the man, to wipe the greedy smile from his face and make him feel for a few minutes the misery and fear those children must have known.

"There are two possible ways of encouraging people to tell you what you need to know," he said very quietly. "By offering a reward ..." He let the suggestion hang in the air.

The man looked at Monk's face, at his eyes. He was slow to see the rage there. He felt no more than a short shiver of warning. He was still working out how much money he could squeeze.

"Or by threat of something very nasty happening to them," Monk finished. His voice was still polite, still soft, but there was an edge of viciousness in it a sensitive ear would have caught.

"Oh, yeah?" the man said with more bravado than assurance. "You got something nasty in mind, then, 'ave yer?"