Dark Assassin - Anne Perry [94]
Ten minutes later they were all on the soggy, rubble-strewn shore, creeping forward a few inches at a time, feet testing the ground for litter, traps where the planking had rotted and given way under the weight and broken timbers protruded through. Somewhere ahead of them the thieves were gathering; from the thefts they had counted ten.
Monk had a cutlass in his hand, given him by Orme. The weight of it was unfamiliar but deeply reassuring. Please God, he would know how to use it if he should have to.
They continued forward, ten river police surrounding an unknown number of thieves, and perhaps their receivers as well. They were inside the first buildings now, the remnants of abandoned warehouses, cellars already flooded. The sour stench of tidal mud and sewage, refuse, and dead rats was thick in the throat. Everything seemed to be moving, dripping, creaking, as if the whole edifice were slipping lower into the ooze, drowning inch by inch.
A rat scuttled by, its feet scraping on the boards. Then it plopped into a puddle of water, and the empty sounds of the night closed in again. There was no living slap of the tide here, only the groan of timber settling and breaking and sagging lower.
There were voices ahead, and lights. Monk, cutlass ready, stood half behind a doorway and watched. He could see the squat shapes of the men, now no more than humps, a deepening of the shadows, but the man with the ivory carving was there.
He froze, barely breathing. He did not catch the words they said, but flight actions were plain. They were dividing the spoils of the day. His stomach knotted at the sight of how much they had. It was far more than he had known about.
He waited. Orme was somewhere to the left of him, Butterworth to the right; Jones and the others had gone around behind the chairs to encircle them.
The thieves were arguing over how to sell the ivory carving. It seemed to go on interminably. There were nine of them, not ten. Monk must have miscounted earlier. He was cold to the bone, his feet numb, his teeth chattering. The odds were against them. But the statue was what mattered; above all he must get that back, that and the Fat Man.
The stench of the mud almost choked him.
Why didn’t they agree with the obvious and take the carving to the Fat Man? He was the king of the opulent receivers. He would give them the best price for it because he would be able to find a buyer.
They weren’t going to! They knew he would take half, so they were going to try to sell it themselves. Then all Monk would get would be the carving back, and a handful of petty thieves. It would stop the robberies for perhaps a week or two, but what was that worth? Instinctively he turned towards Orme and saw his face for an instant in the faintest light from the thieves’ candles. The defeat in him twisted inside Monk as if he himself were responsible for the failure.
Another rat squeaked and ran, claws rattling on the wood. Then there was a different sound: softer, heavier. Monk’s heart pounded in his chest and his mouth was dry. Orme turned the same instant as he did, and both saw the shadow of a man blend into the sagging walls and disappear.
Monk swiveled around the other way. To his right Butterworth was rigid, listening. He too had heard something and was straining his eyes, but not to where Monk had seen the man disappear. Butterworth was staring at least fifteen feet away.
Monk was freezing. His hand clenched on the hilt of the cutlass was like ice, clumsy, all thumbs. His body was shaking.
He had been right the first time. There had been ten, but one of them had left, betraying his fellows. To whom?
The answer was already emerging into the pool