Read William Monk 17 - Acceptable Loss for Free Online Page B

and leaned hard on it, but the heavy metal hasp of the lock did not budge.
    Monk put his weight behind his crowbar too, working in unison with Orme.
    On the fourth attempt the wood splintered. On the fifth it gave, tearing the other end of the lock off and pulling the screws out.
    “What the hell has he got in here that’s so valuable?” Orme said in amazement. “Smuggling? Brandy, tobacco? Must be a hell of a lot of it. Unless whoever killed him took it?”
    Monk did not reply. He hoped that was what it was. “I think ’Orrie’s afraid of Tosh, don’t you?”
    Orme straightened his back, pulling the hatch open. “You mean Tosh told him what to say? That would mean Tosh has a fair idea of what really happened.”
    The sky was darkening around them, the light draining out of the air. There was no sound but the faint ripple of the water.
    “Or else he’s protecting someone else,” Monk suggested. He moved closer to the black square of the hatch. Only the new wood where the screws were torn out showed pale. “We’d better get down there while we can still see. We’ll need a lantern below anyway.”
    They did not look at each other. They both knew what they were afraid of. The same memories crowded both their minds.
    Orme struck a match. In the still air he did not have to shelter it; carrying it carefully, he started down the wooden steps into the bowels of the boat.
    Monk followed. It was surprisingly easy, and he knew as he went down and his hand found the rail that this deck was designed for passengers, not cargo. A sense of foreboding closed in on him. Even the smell in the air was disturbingly familiar: the richness of cigar smoke, the overripe sweetness of good alcohol, but stale, mixed with the odor of human bodies.
    Orme held the lantern high and shed its light onto the smooth painted walls of a wide cabin. It looked something like a floating withdrawing room. There were cupboards at one end, and a bench with a polished mahogany surface, a gleaming brass rail around the edges.
    It brought back a memory of Jericho Phillips’s boat so sharply thatfor an instant Monk felt his gorge rise and was afraid he was going to be sick. He strode across the carpeted floor to the door into the next cabin and jerked it open so hard it crashed against the wall and swung back on him.
    Orme followed him with the light. Monk heard his breath expelled in a sigh. This cabin was similar, only larger, and at the far end there was a makeshift stage.
    “Oh, Jesus!” Orme said, then apologized instantly. The horror in his voice made his words scarcely a blasphemy, more a cry for help, as if God could change the truth of what the sergeant knew.
    Monk needed no explanation; it was his worst imagining come true again. This was another boat, just like Jericho Phillips’s, where pornographic shows of children entertained those with a perverted addiction to such things, and with an addiction to the danger of watching it live. This was what Phillips would have done with Scuff, and Monk and Hester would never have found him. Even if they had, what of his heart and mind would have remained whole, let alone his body?
    Were there boys here now, locked behind other doors, too afraid to make a sound?
    Orme moved forward, and Monk put a hand on his arm. “Listen,” he ordered. Orme was breathing hard, shaking a little. For all his years on the river, there were still times when the sight of pain tore through his control.
    They both stood motionless, ears straining. The boat was well made. Even the joints in the wood did not creak with the faint movement of the water. The tide had turned and was coming in again.
    “They must be here.” Monk dropped his voice to a whisper. “They can’t bring them out here for the show every time. Too many other boats—they’d be seen. And too many chances to escape. They’re here somewhere.” He could not even bring himself to say that they might all be dead.
    “A mutiny?” Orme suggested with a