The Silent Cry - Anne Perry [34]
“You had better put it in order for me, Mrs. Hopgood. It will save time.”
“ ’Course! Wot did you think I were gonna do? Tell it yer like they tol’ me? We’d be ’ere all ruddy night. In’t got all night, even if you ’as. I spec yer charge by the hour. Mos’ folks do.”
“I’ll charge by the day. But only after I’ve taken the case … if I do.”
Her face hardened. “Wot yer want from me … more money?”
He saw the fear behind her defiance. For all her brashness and the show of bravado she put on to impress, she was frightened and hurt and angry. This was not one of the familiar troubles she had faced all her life, this was something she did not know how to deal with.
“No,” he interrupted as she was about to go on. “I won’t say I can help you if I can’t. Tell me what you learned. I’m listening.”
She was partly mollified. She settled back into the chair again, rearranging her skirts slightly around her extremely handsome figure.
“Some of our respectable women’s fallen on ’ard times and thinks they’d never sell theirselves, no matter wot,” she continued. “Thinks they’d starve before they’d go onter the streets. But it’s surprisin’ ’ow quick yer can change yer mind when yer kids is starvin’ an’ sick. Yer ’ears ’em cryin’, cold an’ ’ungry long enough, an’ yer’d sell yerself ter the devil if ’e paid yer in bread an’ coal for the fire, or a blanket, or a pair o’ boots. Martyrin’ yerself is one thing, seein’ yer kids die is diff’rent.”
Monk did not argue. His knowledge of that was deeper than any individual memory; it was something of the flesh and bone.
“It began easy,” she went on, her voice thick with disgust. “First just a bloke ’ere an’ there wot wouldn’t pay. It ’appens. There’s always cheats in life. In’t much yer can do but cut yer losses.”
He nodded.
“I wouldn’t ’a thought nuffink o’ that.” She shrugged, still watching him narrowly, judging his reactions. “Then one o’ the women comes in all bruised an’ bashed around, like she bin beat up proper. Like I said, at first I took it as ’er man ’ad beat ’er. Wouldn’t ’a blamed ’er if she’d stuck ’im wif a shiv fer that. But she said as it’d bin two men wot’d bin customers. She’d picked ’em up in the street an’ gone fer a quick one in a dark alley, an’ then they’d beat ’er. Took ’er by force, even though she were willin’, like.” She bit her full lip. “There’s always them as likes ter be a bit rough, but this were real beatin’. It in’t the same, not jus’ a few bruises, like, but real ’urt.”
He waited. He knew from her eyes that there was more. One rape of a prostitute was merely a misfortune. She must know as well as he did that, ugly and unjust as it was, there was nothing that could be done about it.
“She weren’t the only one,” she went on again. “It ’appened again, ’nother woman, then another. It got worse each time. There’s bin seven now, Mr. Monk, that I know of, an’ the last one she were beat till she were senseless. ’Er nose an’ ’er jaw were broke an’ she lorst five teeth. No one else don’t care. The rozzers in’t goin’ ter ’elp. They reckon as women wot sells theirselves deserves wot they get.” Her body was clenched tight under the dark fabric. “But nobody don’t deserve ter get beat like that. It in’t safe fer ’em ter earn the extra bit wot they needs. We gotter find ’oo’s doin’ this, an’ that’s wot we need you fer, Mr. Monk. We’ll pay yer.”
He sat without replying for several moments. If what she said was true, then he also suspected that a little natural justice was planned. He had no objection to that. They both knew it was unlikely the police would take much action against a man who was raping prostitutes. Society considered that a woman who sold her body had little or no rights to withdraw the goods on offer or to object if she were treated like a commodity, not a person. She had voluntarily removed herself from the category of decent