"I know.”
Evan was puzzled. Why did Monk's contempt for Runcorn run so deep?
Runcorn was pompous at times, but it was his manner of defending himself from the triviality he felt in his life, perhaps the loneliness. He was a man who seemed to know little else but the concern of his work, the value it gave him, even his relationships with others. Evan realised he knew nothing whatever of the man Runcorn was when he left the police station, except that he never spoke of family or other friends, other pastimes. Had Monk ever considered such things?
"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 beginning of a doubt in his mind. "You say that as if the answer were not a certainty! Why not? I thought they were the qualities you valued most. Aren't they?”
"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.
"Yes. We always went in with at least two at a time, usually more.”
"He hasn't spoken of it.”
"No. He wouldn't." Monk's voice dropped at the end of the sentence, betraying a sense of loss, not for Runcorn's friendship, but for whatever it was which had destroyed it. Evan understood what it was that disturbed him, but it was too delicate to speak of between them.
Monk wanted to know what it had been, but only step by step, so he could withdraw again if it became too ugly. It was his own soul he was exploring, the one territory from which there was no escape, the one enemy which must always be faced, sooner or later, more certain than anything else in life or death.
"He never mentions family," Evan said aloud. "He didn't marry.”
"Didn't he…" Monk's tone was remote, as if the remark were meaningless, but the tension in his body belied that.
"I think he regrets it," Evan added, remembering casual references made, and the momentary grief in Runcorn's face, instantly hidden.
There had been a sergeant's wedding anniversary, everyone had wished him well, spoken of their own families. For an instant Evan had seen the pain in Runcorn's eyes, the knowledge of loneliness, of exclusion.
He was not a man gifted by his nature or temperament to fill his own emptiness. He would have been happier with someone there, someone to encourage him when he failed, admire him, be grateful for his support, someone with whom he could share his successes.
Had Monk, with his greater inner strength, his natural courage, intentionally or not, robbed Runcorn of that? Monk feared he had blocked Runcorn's professional success, stood in his path, taken credit for some victory that rightly belonged to him. The inner loss was the one Evan feared, the confidence, the hope, the courage to put fate to the test, and abide the consequences, that was what nestled cold in Evan's mind. Could one man really rob another of that? Or merely fail to help?