The Silent Cry - Anne Perry [112]
Snaith grinned. “Eye ter the main chance, that one, I know that, whereas you … yer like a dog wi’ a bone. Never let go. Cut orff yer ’ead an’ yer teeth’d still be fast shut. Bleedin’ bastard, y’are! Still, nobody crossed yer twice, not even yer own.”
“You said that before.” Monk was stung by his helplessness. “Did I do anything to Runcorn he didn’t have coming?” He framed the question aggressively, as if he knew the answer, but his stomach knotted as he looked at Snaith’s face in the gaslight and waited for the answer. It seemed an age in coming. He could feel the seconds slip by and hear his own heart beating.
MacPherson cleared his throat.
Snaith stared back, his round, hazel eyes shadowed, his face a trifle puckered. Monk knew before he spoke that his reply was the one he feared.
“Yeah, I reckon so. Enemy in front of yer’s one thing, be’ind yer’s another. I don’ know wot yer dun ter ’im, but it fair broke ’im, an’ ’e weren’t ’spectin’ it from yer. Learned me summink abaht yer. Never took yer light arter that. Yer an ’ard bastard, an’ that’s the truth.” He took a breath. “But if yer want the swine wot done them women in Seven Dials, I’ll ’elp yer ter that. I in’t fussy ’oo I use. Go an’ ask Wee Minnie. Ol’ Bertha dunno nuthink. Find Wee Minnie an’ tell ’er I sent yer.”
“She won’t believe me,” Monk said reasonably.
“Yeah, she will, ’cos less’n I tell yer w’er ter find ’er, yer’ll be wand’rin’ around the rookeries for the rest o’ yer life.”
“That’s the truth, so it is,” MacPherson agreed.
“So tell me,” Monk said.
Snaith shook his head. “In’t yer never scared, Monk? In’t it never entered yer ’ead as we’d cut yer throat an’ drop yer in the midden, jus’ for ol’ times’ sake?”
Monk grinned. “Several times, and if you do there is nothing I can do now to stop you. I’m too far into St. Giles to yell for help, even supposing anyone would come. But you’re a businessman, at least MacPherson is. You want what I want. You’ll wait until I’ve got it before you do anything to me.”
“There are times when I could almost like yer,” Snaith said, surprised at himself. “One thing I’ll say for yer, yer in’t never an ’ypocrite. Got that much on Runcorn, poor sod.”
“Thank you,” Monk said sarcastically. “Wee Minnie?”
It was a tortuous hour, and Monk got lost three times before he finally slipped through an alley gateway, across a brick yard and up the back steps into a series of rooms which finally ended in the airlessly hot parlor where Wee Minnie sat on a pile of cushions, her wrinkled face in a toothless smile, her gnarled hands clicking knitting needles of bone as she worked on what appeared to be a sock without looking at it.
“So yer got ’ere,” she observed with a dry chuckle. “Thought as yer’d got lorst. Yer wanter know about rape, do yer?”
He should have known word would reach her before he did.
“Yes.”
“There was two. Bad, they was, so bad no one never said nothing.”
“I don’t understand. If it was bad, surely that was all the more reason to do something, warn people, stay together … anything …”
She shook her head, her fingers never losing their rhythm.
“Yer gets beat, yer tell people. It in’t personal. Yer gets raped bad, it’s different.”
“How do you know?”
“I know everything.” There was satisfaction in her voice. Then suddenly it hardened and her eyes became cruel. “Yer get them bastards! Give ’em ter us an’ we’ll draw an’ quarter ’em, like they did in the old days. Me gran’fer told me abaht it. Yer string ’em up, or by ’ell’s door, we will!”
“Can I speak to the women who were raped?”
“Can yer wot?” she said incredulously.
“Can I speak to the women?” he repeated.
She swore under her breath.
“I need to ask them about the men. I have to be sure it was the same ones. They might remember something—a face, a voice, even a name, the feel of fabric, anything.”
“It were the same men,” she said with absolute certainty. “Three of ’em. One tall, one ’eavier, an’ one on the skinny side.”
He