Execution Dock (5 page)

Rathbone lowered his voice, while making sure that every word still carried to the jury and to the benches where the public sat awed and silent.

“Are you saying that he felt so passionately that he devoted his off-duty time to it, until the tragedy of his own early death cut short his dedication, to finding the person who had tortured and then killed this boy?”

“Yes, sir, I am. An’ then when ‘e found the notes Mr. Durban left, Mr. Monk took up after ‘im,” Walters said defiantly.

“Thank you.” Rathbone held up his hand to stop any more revelations. “We will get to Mr. Monk in due time. He can testify himself, should that prove necessary. You have made it all very clear, Mr. Walters. That is all I have to ask you.”

Tremayne shook his head, his face a little tight, concealing a certain unease.

The judge thanked Walters and excused him.

Tremayne called his next witness: the police surgeon who had examined the body of the boy. He was a thin, tired man with receding sandy hair and a surprisingly good voice, in spite of having to stop and sneeze, then blow his nose from time to time. He was obviously practiced at such court appearances. He had every answer on the tip of his tongue, and told them of the state of the boy's body briefly and precisely. Tremayne did not need to prompt him in anything. He used no scientific language to describe the wasted flesh, which was underdeveloped, barely beginning to show signs of puberty. He spoke simply of the flesh scarring that could have been made only by something like the lit end of a cigar. Finally he told them that the throat was cut so violently that the wound reached to the spine, so the whole head was only just attached. In such unaffected words the description seemed immeasurably more appalling. There was no passion or disgust in his language; it was all in his eyes, and in the rigid angles of his body as he gripped the rail of the witness stand.

Rathbone found it hard to speak to him. Legal tactics melted away. He was face-to-face with the reality of the crime, as if the surgeon had brought the smell of the mortuary with him, the blood and carbolic and running water, but nothing washed away the memory.

Rathbone stood in the middle of the floor with every eye in the room on him, and wondered suddenly if he really knew what he was doing. There was nothing this man could add that would help him. Yet to fail to ask him at least one question would make that obvious. He must never let Tremayne see any weakness. Tremayne might look like a dandy, a poet and dreamer caught by chance in the wrong place, but it was an illusion. His mind was keen as a razor, and he would scent weakness as a shark scents blood in the water.

“You were obviously very moved by this particular case, sir,” Rathbone said with great gravity. “Perhaps it was one of the most distressing you had seen?”

“It was,” the surgeon agreed.

“Did Mr. Durban seem to you similarly distressed by it?”

“Yes, sir. Any civilized man would be.” The surgeon looked at him with distaste, as if Rathbone himself were devoid of decency. “Mr. Monk after him was equally upset, if you were going to ask,” he added.

“It had occurred to me,” Rathbone acknowledged. “As you've implied, it is an appalling piece of savagery, and against a child who had obviously suffered already. Thank you.” He turned away.

“Is that all you have to ask me?” the surgeon called after him, his voice harder, challenging.

“Yes, thank you,” Rathbone replied with a slight smile. “Unless my learned friend has anything further, you are free to leave.”

Tremayne next called Orme. He was a solemn figure, not overtly nervous. He held his hands at his sides, not gripping the rail except when he went up the steps. Then he stood square in the box and faced Tremayne with as little expression on his face as he could manage.

Rathbone knew he would be a difficult man to break, and if he did so and the jury saw it, they would not forgive him. He glanced at them now, for the first time. Immediately he wished he had kept his resolve not to. They were mostly middle-aged men, old enough to have sons the victim's age. They sat stiffly in their sober best suits, white-faced and unhappy. Society had entrusted them not only with weighing the facts, but also with seeing the horror and dealing with it on behalf of everyone. If they sensed that they were being manipulated they would not pardon the man who did it.

“Mr. Orme.” Tremayne began his questions, which were likely to go on until the adjournment for lunch, and long into the afternoon, perhaps until evening. “You worked with Mr. Durban during the rest of his life, from the time the boy's body was pulled out of the river until Mr. Durban's own death at the end of last year?”

“Yes, sir, I did.”

“We have already heard that Mr. Durban took a special interest in this case. As far as you know from your own direct observation, will you describe what was done to solve it, either by him, of which you have the evidence, or by yourself?”

“Yes, sir.” Orme stood stiffly. “It was plain from the beginning that the boy was murdered, and that he'd been pretty badly used before that,” he said distinctly, his voice carrying throughout the room. No one moved or whispered in the jury box or the gallery “We ‘ad to find out who he was, and where he came from. There was nothing on the body that'd give ‘is name, but the way ‘e'd been treated it seemed likely ‘e'd fallen into the ‘ands of one o’ them who sells children for the use of brothels an’ pornographers and the like.” He said the words with withering disgust.

“You could tell that from a body?” Tremayne said, affecting some surprise.

All this was exactly what Rathbone had expected, and what he would have done had their roles been reversed-draw it all out in the fashion of a story, and with detail the jury would never forget. The poor devils would probably have nightmares for years to come. They would waken in a sweat with the sound of running water in their ears.

“Yes, sir, pretty likely,” Orme replied. “Lots of boys, an’ girls too, is ‘alf starved. You're poor, you've got no choice. But the burns are different.”

“Is it not possible that a poor man, violent, perhaps drunken, in his despair might hurt even his own children?” Tremayne pressed.

“Yes, sir,” Orme conceded. “‘Course it is. But poor men don't ‘ave cigars to do it with. It isn't a bad temper that makes you light a cigar, smoke it till it's hot, then hold the end of it against a child's body till it burns through the skin into the flesh, and then makes scabs that bleed.”

Several people in the gallery cried out, stifling the sound instantly, and one of the jurors looked as if he might be sick. His face was sweaty, and had a faintly greenish hue. The man next to him grasped his arm to steady him.

Tremayne waited a moment before going on.

Rathbone understood. He would have done the same.

“Did that prompt any particular course of action from you?” Tremayne asked, retaining his composure as if with difficulty.

“Yes, sir,” Orme answered. “We visited the places we knew of where people kept boys o’ that age to use. We'd looked at them pretty hard, sir. ‘E wasn't a chimney sweep's boy, nor a laborer of any kind. Easy enough to see by ‘is ‘ands. No dirt from chimneys, no calluses from oakum picking or any other sort of thing like that. But if you'll pardon me, sir, in public like, there were other parts of his body that'd been ‘ard used.” His face was red, his voice cracking with emotion.

“The surgeon didn't testify to that,” Tremayne pointed out reluctantly. His body was oddly stiff as he stood, his usual grace lost.

“We didn't ask ‘im, sir. It isn't medical, it's common sense,” Orme told him.

“I see. Did that cause you to look anywhere in particular?”

“We tried lots o’ places up and down the river. It's our job to know where they are.”

“And did you find out where he came from?”

“No, sir, not for sure.”

“Only ‘sure’ will do here, Mr. Orme.”

“I know that!” Orme's temper was suddenly close to the surface, the emotion too raw to govern. “We know that Jericho Phillips kept a lot o’ boys, especially young ones, small as five or six years old. Took them in from wherever ‘e found them, and gave them a bed and food. Lot of them lived on a boat, but we'd never find anything there. He had lookouts, and they always knew who we were.”

Rathbone considered objecting that Orme was stating an opinion rather than presenting evidence, but it was hardly worth making a fuss over. He decided against it.

“So you never saw anything amiss on his boat?” Tremayne concluded.

“No, sir.”

“Then why did you raise his name at all?” Tremayne asked gently, as if he were puzzled. “What was it that drew him to your attention, other than a growing desperation to find at least a name for this dead boy?”

Orme let out his breath in a sigh. “An informant came to us and said that Jericho Phillips was keeping a kind o’ cross between a brothel and a peep show on his boat. He ‘ad young boys there and forced them to perform certain… acts…” He stopped, obviously embarrassed. His eyes flickered to the public gallery, aware that there must be women there. Then he looked away again, angry with himself for his weakness.

Tremayne did not help him. It was clear from the expression on his face, the slight downturn of his mouth, that he found the subject repellent, and touched on it only because he owed it to the dead, and to the truth.

“Unnatural acts, with children,” Orme said miserably. “Boys. ‘E used cameras to make pictures, so ‘e could sell them to people. Get more money than just from those who watched.” His face was hot, the color reaching all the way up to his hair.

Tremayne was exquisitely careful. “That is what this man told you, Mr. Orme?”

“Yes, sir.”

“I see.” Tremayne shifted his balance a little. “And did you request that he take you so you might ascertain for yourself if this were true? After all, he could have invented the entire story, couldn't he?”

“Yes, sir, ‘e could. But ‘e refused to take us, or to testify. ‘E said he was being blackmailed, because ‘e'd looked at the pictures. It was my opinion that ‘e'd probably bought some as well. ‘E was scared stiff.”

This time Rathbone did rise to his feet and object. “The witness may be of that opinion, my lord, but that is not evidence.”

Tremayne inclined his head in acknowledgment, smiling a little, then turned again to Orme. “Did he say so, Mr. Orme?”

“No, sir, he wouldn't even give us ‘is name.”

Tremayne shrugged in a very slight, elegant gesture of confusion. “Was there any purpose in his coming forward at all, if he was prepared to say so little, and not to swear to any of it?”

“No, sir, not really,” Orme admitted. “Maybe it just helped us narrow the search, so to speak. Mr. Durban was rather good at drawing. He made a sketch of the dead boy's face, and then a picture of how he might ‘ave looked standing up and dressed. We took it around for a couple of weeks or so, to see if anyone could give ‘im a name, or say anything about ‘im.”

“And could they?”

“Yes, sir. They said ‘e used to be a mudlark. A young lad came and told us they picked coal up off the tideline o’ the river when they were six or seven years old. He just knew him as Fig, but he was certain it was ‘im, because of the funny way his hair grew at the front. Never knew his ‘ole name, or where he come from. Maybe he was a foundling, and nobody knew much more. He disappeared a few years ago, but this mudlark wouldn't say exactly where or when. Couldn't remember, and it wasn't any use pushing ‘im. We went and found a few more lads, and they confirmed what ‘e said. They all knew ‘im as ‘Fig.’”

Tremayne turned towards Rathbone, but there was no point contesting the identification. Whether it was the same boy or not was immaterial to the charge. He was somebody's child.

Tremayne led Orme in some detail through the process of the various other people who had confirmed that they knew the boy. One had added that his whole name was Walter Figgis. Others, through a laborious process that Rathbone allowed Tremayne to abbreviate, confirmed that there were boats on the river that gave shelter to children. On some of them the boys were appallingly misused. But of course there was no proof. Tremayne, wisely, barely touched on that. The generality was enough to shake the jury, and the audience in court, to a revulsion so deep that many of them were physically trembling. Some looked nauseated to the point that Rathbone was afraid they might not be able to control themselves.

Rathbone himself was aware of a depth of distress he had seldom felt before, only perhaps in cases of the most depraved rape and torture. He looked up at Phillips and saw nothing in him at all resembling human pity or shame. A wave of fury almost drowned him. The sweat broke out on his body, and the wig on his head was like a helmet. The black silk gown suffocated him as he held his arms to his sides. He was imprisoned in it.

Then he was afraid. Was Phillips beyond human emotions, unreachable? And Rathbone had promised to use all his skills to set him free again to go back to the river. He had no escape from doing it; it was his covenantal duty, which he had already accepted, and he had given his word, not only to the court, but also to Arthur Ballinger, and thus obliquely to Margaret. To refuse now would suggest to the jury that he knew something that condemned the accused beyond doubt. He was trapped by the law that he wanted above all to serve.

He had the ugly sense that Phillips knew that just as well as he did himself. Indeed, that was why he showed no fear.

They adjourned for lunch before Tremayne was finished. Orme was one of his major witnesses, and he intended to gain every word of damnation from him that he could.

They resumed after the shortest adjournment possible, and began the afternoon with Tremayne asking Orme about Durban 's death.

“Mr. Durban died last December. Is that correct, Mr. Orme?” Tremayne asked, his manner suitably grave.

“Yes, sir.”

“And Mr. Monk succeeded him as commander of the River Police at the main station, which is in Wapping?”

“Yes, sir.”

Lord Justice Sullivan was beginning to look a trifle impatient. His frown deepened. “Is there some point to this, Mr. Tremayne? The succession of events seem to be plain enough. Mr. Durban did all he could to solve the case for the police, and did not succeed, so he continued on his own time. Unfortunately, he died, and Mr. Monk took over his position, and presumably his papers, including notes on unsolved cases. Is there more to it than that?”