The Silent Cry

And then leaping to his mind came the sight of him in the hospital bed, his face swollen and blue with bruising as he opened his eyes and tried desperately to speak, choking in horror, gagging, drowning in pain.

Evan felt no sense of victory, not even the usual loosening of tension inside himself that knowledge brought. There was no peace in this.

"You had better take me to these witnesses," he said flatly. "I presume they will tell me the same thing? Will they swear in court, do you suppose?" He did not know what he hoped. Even if they would not, nothing could alter the truth of it.

"You can make them," Monk answered with impatience in his voice. "The majesty of the law will persuade them. Once in the witness box they have no reason to lie. That is not your decision anyway.”

He was right. There was nothing to argue about.

"Then I'll take it to Runcorn," Evan went on. He smiled with a downward turn of his lips. "He won't be amused that you solved the case.”

A curious look crossed Monk's face, a mixture of irony and something which could have been regret, or even a form of guilt. Evan was aware of uncertainty in him, a hesitation as if there were something else he wanted to talk about, but was unsure how to begin. He was making no move to rise from his comfortable chair.

"I know he refused to pursue the rapes," Evan started. "But with this it's different. No one will bother prosecuting that when there is the murder. That's what we'll charge them with. We will only prove the rapes to establish motive. The ones in Seven Dials will be by implication.”

"I know.”

Evan was puzzled. Why did Monk's contempt for Runcorn run so deep?

Runcorn was pompous at times, but it was his ma

"Do you still think he should have pressed the cases of rape alone?" he asked, hearing the criticism in his voice.

Monk shrugged. "No." He sounded reluctant. "He was right. It would have put the victims through more of an ordeal than the offenders…

presuming they would even have testified… which they probably wouldn't. I would not ask any woman I cared for to do that. We would be pursuing it far more for our own sense of vengeance than anything to do with the well-being of the women, or even justice. They would suffer and the men would go free. We wouldn't even be able to try them again, even if we eventually found proof, because they would have been vindicated by the law.”

There was anger in his face, but it was for the situation, not for Runcorn.

"Rape is not a crime for which we have any answer even remotely just, or compassionate," he went on. "It strikes at a part of the emotions which we don't exercise honestly, let alone govern with rationality. It is even more primitive than murder. Why is that, Evan? We deny it, excuse it, torture logic and twist facts to pretend it did not happen, that somehow it was the victim's fault, and therefore not the crime we named it.”

"I don't know," Evan said, even as he was thinking. "It is something to do with violation…”

"For God's sake! It is the woman who is violated!" Monk exploded, his face dark.

"Yes, it is," Evan agreed wryly. "But the violation we get so upset about is our own. Our property has been spoiled. Someone has taken something to which only we have the right. The rape of any woman is a reminder that our own women can also be spoiled that way. It is a very intimate thing.”

"So is murder!" Monk retorted.

"Murder is only your own life." Evan was still thinking aloud. "Rape is the contamination of your posterity, the fountainhead of your immortality, if you look at it that way.”

Monk's eyebrows rose. "Do you look at it that way?”

"No. But then I believe in a resurrection of the body." Evan had thought he would apologise to Monk for his faith, but he found himself speaking with a perfectly calm and untroubled voice, as his own father would have done to a parishioner. "I believe in an individual soul which travels through eternity. This life is far from all there is, in fact it is a minute part, simply an antechamber, a deciding place where we choose the light from the dark, where we come to know what we truly value.”

"It's a place of bloody injustice, inequity and waste!" Monk said hoarsely. "How can you possibly walk around St. Giles, as you have been doing, and even imagine a God that is fit for anything but fear, or hate? Better for your sanity to think it is random, and simply do what you can to redress the worst monstrosities.”

Evan leaned forward, all the energy of his spirit in his words, fragments half remembered returning to his tongue. "Do you want a just world, where sin is punished immediately, and virtue rewarded?”

"Why not?" Monk challenged. "Is there something wrong with that? Food and clothing for everyone, health, intelligence, a chance to succeed?”

"And forgiveness, and pity, and courage?" Evan pressed. "Compassion for others, humility, and faith?”

Monk frowned, the begi

"Do you value them?”

"Yes! I may not always behave as if I do, but yes, certainly.”

"But if the world were always just, and immediately so, then people would choose to be good, not out of compassion or pity, but because it would be idiotic to be anything else," Evan reasoned. "Only a fool would counsel any act he knew he would be punished for immediately and certainly.”

Monk said nothing.

"Courage against what?" Evan went on. "Do the right thing, and there can be nothing to fear. Virtue will always be rewarded, straight away.

There will be no need for humility or forgiveness either. Justice will take care of everything. For that matter neither will there be need for pity or generosity, because no one will need it. The remedy for every ill will lie with the sufferer. We would be full of judgement for each other…”

"All right!" Monk cut across him. "You have made your point. Perhaps I would rather accept the world as it is, than change it for the one you paint. Although there are times when I find this one almost beyond bearing, not for me, but for some of those I see." He rose to his feet. "Your father would be proud of you. Perhaps you are wasted on a police beat instead of a pulpit." He was frowning. "Do you want me to take you to these witnesses?”

Evan rose also. "Yes, please.”

Monk fetched his overcoat and Evan put his back on again, and together they went out into the dark, cold evening, walking side by side towards Tottenham Court Road and a hansom.

Inside, rattling towards St. Giles, Monk spoke again, his voice uncertain, as if he were struggling for words, seizing the opportunity of the temporary blindness of the night to voice some troubling thought.

"Does Runcorn ever speak to you about the past… about me?”

Evan could hear the emotion in his voice and knew he was searching for something of which he was afraid.

"Now and then, but very little," he answered as they passed the Whitefields Tabernacle and continued down towards Oxford Street.

"We used to work St. Giles together," Monk went on, staring straight ahead of him. Evan could not see his face, but could judge from the sound of his voice. "Back before they rebuilt any of it. When it was known as the "Holy Land".”

"It must have been very dangerous." Evan spoke to fill the silence.