And could Ballinger be behind both of them? Or was Monk only entertaining the idea because he was so desperate to believe he could end this hideous trade, at least here on the river he had taken for his own? And it was even more urgent to him to give Scuff the illusion of safety that would stop the nightmares and make him believe there really was someone who could protect him from the worst fears and atrocities of life.

And did Monk need, for himself, to be the one who saved Scuff? If so, that was his own weakness, and to pursue Ballinger for it was worse than unjust; it was vicious and irrational, the kind of obsession he most despised in others.

“Tell me about the night Mickey was killed,” he said abruptly.

Tosh was startled, but after the initial surprise, his confidence returned, as if now Monk had moved away from the area of danger.

“I told yer already …” He repeated the detailed account of his movements exactly as he had said before, almost reciting it. Of course Monk would check, but—looking at Tosh’s face—he was certain he would find it all well proved, perhaps as well as if Tosh had known he would need it to withstand investigation. A faint satisfaction gleamed behind his anger now.

“WHAT DO YOU THINK?” Monk said to Orme as they sat in the hansom on the way back toward Wapping. It was dusk, and they had done all they could for the day. Monk was tired; not his feet—he was used to walking—but in his mind. He felt as if Jericho Phillips were back and he, Monk, were retracing the pain of the old failure.

Did he secretly want Parfitt’s murderer to escape, because he would like to kill all men like that himself? Especially if Parfitt had, like Phillips, been prepared to murder the boys who became troublesome as they grew too mature to satisfy the tastes of their abusers? Could it even be one of them, escaped, returned, and now strong enough, who had killed Parfitt in revenge?

If it was, then Monk had no desire to catch him. Perhaps he would deliberately fail to, even at the cost of his own so fiercely nurtured reputation.

He looked across at Orme beside him, trying to read his face in the flashes of lamplight from passing hansoms going the other way. It told him nothing, except that Orme was troubled also, which Monk already knew.

“Who put up the money for the boat in the first place?” Monk asked.

Orme pursed his lips. “And why’d he kill Parfitt? Getting above himself, d’you suppose? Stealing the profits?”

“Perhaps,” Monk replied. “What did Crumble have to say?”