Execution Dock - Anne Perry [0]
FEATURING WILLIAM MONK
The Face of a Stranger A Breach of Promise
A Dangerous Mourning The Twisted Root
Defend and Betray Slaves of Obsession
A Sudden, Fearful Death Funeral in Blue
The Sins of the Wolf Death of a Stranger
Cain His Brother The Shifting Tide
Weighed in the Balance Dark Assassin
The Silent Cry Execution Dock
FEATURING CHARLOTTE AND THOMAS PITT
The Cater Street Hangman Traitors Gate
Callandar Square Pentecost Alley
Paragon Walk Ashworth Hall
Resurrection Row Brunswick Gardens
Bluegate Fields Bedford Square
Rutland Place Half Moon Street
Death in the Devil's Acre The Whitechapel Conspiracy
Cardington Crescent Southampton Row
Silence in Hanover Close Seven Dials
Bethlehem Road Long Spoon Lane
Farriers’ Lane Buckingham Palace Gardens
The Hyde Park Headsman
THE WORLD WAR I NOVELS THE CHRISTMAS NOVELS
No Graves as Yet A Christmas Journey
Shoulder the Sky A Christmas Visitor
Angels in the Gloom A Christmas Guest
At Some Disputed Barricade A Christmas Secret
We Shall Not Sleep
A Christmas Beginning
A Christmas Grace
ONE
he man balanced on the stern of the flat-bottomed lighter, his wild figure outlined against the glittering water of the Thames, hair whipped in the wind, face sharp, lips drawn back. Then, at the last moment, when the other lighter was almost past him, he crouched and sprang. He only just reached the deck, scrambling to secure his footing. He swayed for a moment, then regained his balance and turned. He waved once in grotesque jubilation, then dropped to his knees out of sight behind the close-packed bales of wool.
Monk smiled grimly as the oarsmen strained to bring the police boat around against the outgoing tide and the wash from barges on their way up to the Pool of London. He would not have given orders to shoot, even were he certain of not hitting anyone else in the teeming river traffic. He wanted Jericho Phillips alive, so he could see him tried and hanged.
In the prow of the boat, Orme swore under his breath. He was a grizzled man in his late fifties, a decade older than the lean and elegant Monk who had been in the Thames River Police Force only half a year. It was very different from the force ashore, where his experience lay, but more difficult for him was taking over the leadership of men to whom he was an outsider. He had a reputation for brilliance in detection, but also for a nature ruthless and hard to know, or to like.
Monk had changed since then. The accident eight years ago in 1856, which had wiped out his memory, had also given him a chance to begin again. He had learned to know himself through the eyes of others, and it had been bitterly enlightening. Not that he could explain that to anyone else.
They were gaining on the lighter, where Phillips was crouching out of sight, ignored by the man at the helm. Another hundred feet and they would draw level. There were five of them in the police boat. That was more than usual, but a man like Phillips might require the extra strength to take him down. He was wanted for the murder of a boy of thirteen or fourteen, Walter Figgis, known as Fig. Phillips was thin and undersized, which might have been what had kept him alive so long. His trade was in boys from the age of four or five up to the time when their voices changed and they began to assume some of the physical characteristics of adults, and they were thus of no use in his particular market of pornography.
The police boat's bow sliced through the choppy water. Fifty yards away a pleasure boat went lazily upstream, perhaps eventually towards Kew Gardens. Colored streamers blew in the wind, and there was the sound of laughter mixed with music. Ahead of them nearly a hundred ships from coal barges to tea clippers were anchored in the Upper Pool. Lighters plied back and forth, and stevedores unloaded cargoes brought in from every corner of the earth.
Monk leaned forward a little, drawing in breath to urge the oarsmen to even greater effort, then changed his mind. It would look as if he did not trust them to do their best