Blood on the Water Page 11

  Ossett looked up at him. “You have a considerable loyalty to your men, I hear. Which is as it should be. A leader has no right to expect loyalty if he does not first give it.” His eyes were for a moment far away, as if he were thinking of other times, and other people. “The reputation of the Thames River Police, by implication, has been insulted. I know their history, and they are owed better.”

  Monk looked at him questioningly, a sinking in the pit of his stomach warning him of something ugly to come.

  “I regret taking this from Lydiate, but it has been too compromised for him to retain it.” His voice was tight, almost gravelly with his own dislike of what he felt forced to do. “But he is no longer in a position to handle the further investigation. I am handing it back to the River Police. It should never have been taken from you. It was a political decision, in light of the many foreign merchants and dignitaries who were lost on the Princess Mary. It is now painfully clear that it was a mistake.”

  Monk had anticipated this news from the moment Hooper had told him Lord Ossett wished to see him. The whole issue was poisoned beyond any possibility of finding evidence uncontaminated by time, interference, emotion, or confusion. And—worse than that—when they failed, as they certainly would, the blame would rest with them, not the Metropolitan Police who had actually mishandled it. People would remember only that it was the River Police who had ended it in disaster, confusion, and injustice.

  Ossett took a deep breath. “And now with this attack on Beshara in prison,” he went on, his face bleak with misery, “our reputation suffers even more. It was very severe. He is a sick man, and now he may not live. It will appear as if we deliberately allowed it to happen.” He lowered his eyes, no longer able to meet Monk’s gaze. “I wish I could be absolutely certain that that is not so.”

  CHAPTER

  7

  HESTER KNEW THE MOMENT Monk came in through the door that there had been a major change. There was something more than tiredness in his face: a mixture of surprise, anger, and resolution. If he did not tell her what had happened, then she would press him. But first she would pretend that she had not noticed and allow him time to choose his words and tell her when he had caught his breath, and had a cup of tea.

  Actually he left it until after they had eaten, and they were sitting by the door to the back garden, open to let in the summer breeze. He was sorely trying her patience. Even Scuff was aware that something was amiss. He looked at her, then at Monk, started to speak, and changed his mind. He excused himself and went upstairs.

  “What’s the matter with him?” Monk asked as they heard Scuff’s feet on the stairs.

  “He’s wondering what it is you’re not saying,” Hester replied. “He won’t ask you … but I will. What is it?”

  He gave a bleak smile. “You know me too well.”

  It was on the tip of her tongue to tell him to stop being so evasive. It was not a time for word games. But from the look in his eyes it was too serious even for that.

  “Wouldn’t you ask me?” she said more gently. “If I were so troubled about something?”

  “That’s different,” he started, then realized his mistake. “I was finding the right words. I’m still not sure that I have them.”

  “Try anyway,” she said, controlling with effort the fear mounting inside her.

  He had not told her about McFee’s evidence. He did so now. She had been at Beshara’s trial. She did not need to have any part of its importance explained to her. The evidence against him had been cumulative. It was like a house of cards. To remove any part of it would make it collapse on itself.

  “Who have you reported it to?” she asked quietly, trying to assess the weight of the problem, and the potential damage.

  “Lydiate. He deserved to know. He told Lord Ossett, who sent for me.” He gave a little grunt. “And Ossett has given the case back to me.”

  “You’re taking it?” She made it a question, although she knew the answer. The only alternative was one Monk would never have accepted.

  “I have to,” he said flatly, but he was searching her eyes, not for answer so much as understanding as to why he had to.

  “Where do you begin?” She said “you” deliberately, not because she did not intend to help, but because she would do it her own way, and not necessarily discuss it with him until such time as she had learned something of use.

  “Back to the beginning,” he answered. “Ever since that night there’s been something at the edge of my memory. I didn’t know whether it was important or just part of the general horror and sense of helplessness. But it came back to me when I was on the ferry. That evening Orme and I were rowing toward Wapping, but from the south. We were facing backward, as always, so we were looking directly at the ship, and she was faster than we were, and gaining on us. I was watching her, and I saw a man on the deck, and he jumped off into the water, just seconds before the explosion. Afterward I put it all together, as if he’d been part of the explosion, but he wasn’t. He leaped several seconds before.”

  “Escaping …” she said slowly, realizing what it meant. “He set the fuse. Man? Just one?”

  “Unless anyone went over the other side, away from us, yes, one.”

  “Beshara did it alone?” she said doubtfully.

  “I’m not sure now that he had anything to do with it at all,” Monk replied. “But whoever laid the explosives or detonated them in the first place, there are a hell of a lot more people involved now.”

  She knew he was watching her, waiting to see if she understood all the things he had not yet said about the investigation and the trial, the commuting of the death sentence to life in prison, then the attack on Beshara in prison, which had so nearly been fatal.

  She wished there were some way he could avoid accepting the case. The coldness inside her was fear, and there was no way at all she could think of to protect him.

  She even played with the idea of asking him to find whatever solution they wanted, short of blaming an innocent man: to say it was an Egyptian who had escaped, gone back to the Middle East, a conspiracy of some sort, not involving anyone still in England; to say it quickly, before they knew beyond doubt that it was not true.

  Then she was ashamed of herself. She might understand any woman who asked a man she loved to do such a thing, but it could only be because she thought his morality would allow it. Monk’s would not. She had known that since their first dark days together after the murder of Joscelyn Grey.

  And what could she ever tell Scuff, if he knew she’d done that? Don’t do anything dangerous! If it gets really tough, to hell with the right. Just run away!

  Outside the light was fading. The starlings were circling back and settling in the trees.

  “What is it?” Monk said quietly.

  “Nothing,” she answered. “Just thinking. You’ll … be extremely careful, won’t you? Perhaps …” She was fumbling for words, ideas. “Perhaps it would be a good idea if whatever you do, you do it so many people know? I mean people other than Orme and your own men.”

  “Hester, I don’t know who else is complicit in this,” he said patiently. “It stretches a long way! I might be telling the very people I’m trying to catch!”

  She clenched her fists in her lap, where he could not see them. “I know that, William! That is precisely what I mean. If they know that there are plenty of other people who know all that you do, there would be no point in hurting you! In fact, it would only make matters worse for them.” She sat motionless, holding her breath for his reaction.

  He laughed, but it had a harsh note to it, not of anger but fear. The fact that she knew it too made it impossible for him to deny without putting a barrier between them that neither of them could live with. However much he might wish to protect her, they had experienced too much together for him to pretend now.

  “That’s probably good advice,” he conceded. “I’ll keep Orme in the picture, and probably Hooper. I’m beginning to appreciate what a good man he is.
Maybe I’ll speak to Runcorn too.”

  “Promise me you will!” she urged. “Especially Runcorn! He’s a … a safety escape.”

  “I know. Fancy that, after all these years of hating each other.”

  There was a lot she could have said about that, but this was not the time.

  “William …”

  He was waiting, watching her.

  “You don’t know how high up this goes,” she began tentatively. As an army nurse she had more experience than he with the hierarchy of authority, men who felt that a threat to their authority was a threat to their lives, and to question orders was treason. They might break, if the pressure were overwhelming, but could not bend.

  “No, I don’t,” he agreed, smiling at her because he understood what she was trying to say, and why there were no words. “And you’re right … a degree of openness is the only safety. It really is a bag of snakes, isn’t it!”

  SCUFF STOOD IN THE kitchen doorway, taller now than Hester, an achievement he was immensely pleased about.

  “Another cup of tea?” she asked without turning around.

  He sat down at the kitchen table, dropping his bag of school books on the floor. “Not yet,” he replied. “Wot’s ’appened?”

  She must include him as if he were an adult. In wisdom of the street, he was so more than she. If she in any way excluded him she would not be able to make up for it later.

  “One of the people who gave testimony in court about seeing Beshara in a certain place was lying,” she told him. “Or at best he was badly mistaken. That means that now all the evidence needs to be questioned to see what else could be wrong. They call it an ‘unsafe’ verdict.” She wanted to see if he understood.

  “ ’E din’t do it, then?” he summed it up.

  “We don’t know. But it means it hasn’t been proved that he did. So they are asking that the River Police take the case back and start all over again.”

  Scuff’s eyes widened. “Can they do that? Take it from us, mess it all up, then say, ‘ ’Ere y’are, ’ave it back!’ ”

  “Yes, it looks as if they can,” she admitted.

  “I’d tell them ter—” He remembered who he was speaking to and blushed.

  She tried to hide her smile, failing conspicuously. “I’d be tempted to as well,” she agreed. “But that would be like saying that you didn’t think you could do it. And somebody has to. All those people are still dead. It’s not just a matter of finding the guilty ones; it’s clearing the innocent ones as well.”

  He looked at her for a long, steady moment, and then he nodded. “Yeah. So ’ow are we goin’ ter start, then?”

  She felt a sudden sting of tears in her eyes and blinked an extra time. “First we think very carefully, and make plans—which we keep to ourselves.”

  “O’ course,” he agreed. “We will tell ’im when we know anything, though, won’t we?”

  “Yes, the moment we are sure it makes sense,” she agreed. “The important thing is that we tell each other, just to keep safe. You must promise me?”

  He hesitated.

  “Scuff! If you don’t tell me where you are going to be, I will be so worried about you I won’t be able to think straight myself. If I didn’t tell you, wouldn’t you worry?”

  “ ’Course I would! You—” Then he saw he was cornered. “Yeah … that’s fair … I s’pose.”

  She smiled and held out her hand.

  Soberly he took it and they shook on the deal.

  She could remember most of the evidence in the trial, and checking on that was a good way to start. She wrote everything down, trusting that Scuff would be able to read her writing. She had long practiced making it clearer than character and nature had intended. A mistake in medical notes could be fatal.

  “ ’Oo are they?” he asked, taking the paper from her and scowling at it.

  “All the people who say they saw something, or somebody,” she replied. “As clearly as I recall.”

  He searched her face. “You think they’re lying?”

  “Not necessarily. But they might have been saying what they thought people wanted to hear. Have you ever seen something happen, and then asked three different people what it was?”

  “Yeah,” he nodded, understanding bright in his face. “They all remember it different. You reckon that’s what ’appened ’ere?”

  “Maybe. But they’ve said it so many times now that they’re remembering what they said, not what they saw. We need to know what evidence is there that’s not about faces and memories. Or at least is not from people who’ve already testified; they will feel that they can’t afford to go back on what they said now, because they’ll look stupid, and everyone will know. And, of course, they could be charged with perjury—lying in court when you’ve sworn to tell the truth.”

  “You mean we need to speak to the people what isn’t noticed, like?”

  “People who aren’t noticed,” she corrected automatically.

  “Them too,” he grinned. “I can find out. An’ before you tell me, I’ll be careful. I know people who the police don’t. Even the River Police.”

  She didn’t have the heart to tell him it should have been “whom.”

  “Thank you. And be careful! Whoever really did it could still be out there.” Now she had misgivings about including Scuff in the hunt. Hurt feelings were much easier to deal with than if Scuff should be physically harmed. “People who will blow up a boat with two hundred men and women on it won’t think twice about drowning one inquisitive boy!” she said sharply.

  He winced. “I know,” he answered almost under his breath. “Or one woman either. Is that going to stop you?”

  “It’s going to make me very careful indeed,” she replied.

  He looked at her absolutely levelly. “Good. I’ll tell Monk that, if he asks me.”

  She would dearly like to have clipped his ears for impertinence, but that would keep for another time. “I’m going to the clinic,” she told him. “To see what help I can get from Squeaky Robinson, and anyone else.”

  Hester arrived at the clinic to find it very pleasantly free of urgencies. Perhaps the summer weather had helped. There were the usual slight injuries, bruises, dislocations, a cut or stab, but none of them life-threatening. Nor were there any of the chronic diseases of colder seasons: no pneumonia, bronchitis, or pleurisy.

  “Morning,” Squeaky said cheerfully as she came into his office, which was lined with bookshelves and locked cupboards. There were engravings on the wall that Squeaky said were worthless, and she knew were very good indeed. As usual he had the ledgers open and spread out across the table, and the top off the inkwell. It made him look busy, should Claudine come in and ask him to do anything that he did not want to—something Claudine knew perfectly well. “We need money,” he added.

  “I know,” Hester replied, ignoring the subject. She knew from Claudine that the situation was far from desperate.

  “You haven’t been here for days,” Squeaky complained. “How do you know?”

  “We always need money,” she answered with a smile, pulling out the chair opposite the desk and sitting down. “Is this a sudden crisis, or just the usual state of affairs?”

  He looked at her carefully, assessing her mood. “Usual,” he said with uncharacteristic candor. “What’s wrong?”

  She could seldom fool Squeaky. Actually she very rarely tried. Quite simply and in as few words as possible, she told him about Monk being given back the case of the Princess Mary, and why he could not refuse it.

  Squeaky grunted. “So we’ve got to sort it, then?” he concluded. “Could have told them in the beginning it wouldn’t work, putting them regular police on it. Stupid sods …”

  “They’re not stupid,” Hester said reasonably. “They just don’t know the river …”

  “Not the police, the government!” Squeaky said indignantly. “They’re covering up something, just bad at it, like everything else. Now everybody’s going to know. It’s a wonder they
can even get their clothes on straight, that lot! Couldn’t cover their backsides with a bed sheet!”

  Hester swallowed her laughter at the vision in her mind. “We still have to sort the mess,” she pointed out.

  “Why? To save them what made it? Or to get vengeance on whatever evil bastard drowned all these people?” he asked reasonably.

  “I prefer the word ‘justice’ to ‘vengeance,’ ” she answered.

  He pulled a face, but made no comment.

  “But it’s fair, either way,” she continued reasonably. “If I’d lost somebody I’d want a better answer than this. And it makes us look terribly incompetent. What faith can anyone have in justice if this is all it can do? This doesn’t comfort the innocent or scare the guilty into thinking twice.”

  Squeaky shook his head. “Sometimes I wonder about you. You bin to war, you seen hundreds of men hurt and dying, you seen what boneheaded idiots the military are. You seen hospitals where they don’t change nothing, and don’t learn nothing, you seen the police and the government and the streets, not to mention this place!” He swung his arm around, indicating the warren of a building around them. “And you still believe in fairies! I sometimes wonder if you’re all there!” He tapped his head.

  Perhaps she should have been hurt, but she wasn’t. “It’s called survival, Squeaky. Now, we must begin with the people we know. Who do we have in here at the moment that could help?”

  He looked dubious. “Don’t know as they want to …” he pointed out.

  “They want to,” she assured him. “It’s the price of medicine next time they’re cold, sick, hurt, or scared.”

  His face lit up. “I think I just seen a fairy! Little one, up in the air—with wings!”

  “Good. I’m going to see Claudine.” Hiding her smile, Hester stood up and went out of the room.

  She found her in the pantry with its shelves of powders, leaves, bottles of lotion or spirits, creams, and bandages. She was assessing what supplies they had, and how much more of anything they needed, or could afford. After the briefest greeting—they knew each other too well to need more—Hester began to assist. When they had reached a satisfactory conclusion, she told Claudine roughly what she had already explained to Squeaky. They discussed it further in the kitchen over a cup of tea. Claudine was angry.