Revenge in a Cold River Page 19

  Now she was cold. “You think it could have been him?”

  “I don’t know. What did Clive say of him?”

  Now she had to say it. “That he fits the description of the man who killed Piers Astley.”

  “Killed him accidentally…or murdered him?”

  “Murdered…”

  Suddenly she wanted to put it to the test, the outcome of which she feared more than any other. She began to walk, very slowly. The wind was edged with ice and the path curved down to pass into the shelter of trees.

  He caught up with her, taking her arm as they came to some steps.

  “This is absurd. Monk would not murder anyone,” he said so decisively that she wondered if it was himself he was trying to convince.

  She took a breath, steadying herself. “Not even if perhaps the man concerned were abusing his wife?”

  “Was he? Then Miriam would have said so,” he pointed out.

  She faced straight ahead. She must say it, otherwise it would be a tacit lie. “I don’t mean beating her…I mean the sort of abuse one practices only ever in private.” Now she could never take it back. She could not look at him. She imagined the revulsion in his eyes.

  “She told you that happened?” he asked levelly.

  She tried to read the emotion in his voice and failed.

  “You don’t tell anyone such things….” she replied.

  He said nothing. They walked a few paces farther on. They were on the level now and he let go of her arm. The wind scythed across the grass, cutting through scarves and veils, even through the woolen fabric of coats.

  “No,” Rathbone said at last, “I suppose one doesn’t.” There was intense gentleness in his voice, and perhaps even remembered pain. He felt that for Miriam, perhaps because she was beautiful, and he hardly knew her. What would he feel for Beata? She did not wish pity. Thank God she had tested him only with the thought of someone else!

  “And the shame!” she added fiercely, and instantly wished she had not.

  He took her arm again and she did not move away.

  “It is not her shame,” he replied. “It is his.”

  Now she was fighting tears. Thank heaven the wind was harsh enough to explain them. “And hers, too,” she said huskily. “For not having seen what he was…”

  “Beata, no one wears such a thing on his shirt front!”

  “And having put up with it,” she added. She must say it now. She would never ever speak of this again.

  “We do,” he said gently. “We put up with all kinds of things, hoping it will get better, that it won’t happen again, or that there will be something we can do.” He was chiding her, as if she were judging someone else too harshly.

  “Do you think so? How do you know?” Then she blinked. That was a question she should not have asked. “I’m sorry, Oliver! That was…” She had no word for it.

  He smiled. “Honest? I’m a criminal lawyer, Beata. I’ve defended a few people who were driven to kill, in self-defense. And I’ve prosecuted a few who richly deserved it. Although their stories also would make you weep. Most of us at one time or another, are guilty of ‘passing by on the other side,’ at the very least. We all have times when we are willing to see only what we can bear.”

  “And you don’t despise them for tolerating it?” It was the last question, the last fear.

  “That’s how fear works,” he answered. “Pain, humiliation, until you believe you deserve it, and it is inevitable. In the end the victim accepts that there is nowhere to which they could escape.”

  They walked a few more paces in silence. Finally she had to speak.

  “You must have seen some terrible things…you haven’t looked away. Pity hurts, too….”

  “Very much,” he agreed. “But sometimes you win. Fighting helps, it really does.”

  “And if you lose?”

  “I don’t lose very often.”

  “I know that. But when you do?” she insisted, turning to face him.

  “Then it hurts terribly,” he said frankly, and she saw the fear in his eyes. “But please heaven, I learn from it.”

  She wanted to tell him that Ingram York had never learned, but it would break the moment, and it was intensely important that she did not. Tentatively she slipped her arm through his.

  He put his other hand over hers for a moment, then let it go again. It would not be wise to have others observe such a moment. But she glanced at him, and saw that he was smiling. Slowly they began to walk again.

  MONK WALKED SLOWLY UP the hill toward his home. The night was intensely dark. The lights along the shore seemed hemmed in by wreaths of mist, and clouds blocked the moon.

  But he knew the way so well that even the gaps in the cobbles seemed familiar.

  So Piers Astley was dead, and had been for nearly twenty years. He had been murdered in the time Monk could no longer remember. In fact, it was even possible that Monk himself had been in San Francisco when it had occurred.

  Astley had apparently been Aaron Clive’s chief lieutenant, if a military term were appropriate. Perhaps it was, in such a hectic age when power was extreme. Gold made fortunes in a week, a day, and violence was easy, and there was no law except whatever you provided in agreement with others, and such decency as was not tainted with gold.

  What sort of man had Aaron Clive been then? Had his ease and apparent sophistication come with power? Or had he always possessed it? What Monk had heard suggested the latter. If anything, the extraordinary preeminence he had had in the gold rush seemed to have tarnished a little of it, overlaid the original modesty with a certain sense of entitlement. But was any man free from hubris, if circumstances gilded everything he touched? The great landed aristocracy of England certainly was not. Some saw their position as a call to duty. For others it was a birthright, to be used as they chose.

  Monk turned the last corner and continued to climb. In a few minutes he would see the lighted windows of his home. Hester would be waiting for him. He would ask about her day at the clinic, and for a while he would put off his own decisions about McNab, the question of a plot to rob Clive, and the fact that Astley could have had no part in it.

  Tired as he was, he increased his stride.

  Hester opened the door before he had time to take out his own key. He stepped inside, finding himself smiling with the pleasure of seeing her. He pushed the door closed behind him and then took her in his arms, holding her so closely she gasped and pushed him away a couple of inches so she could breathe.

  Then after tightening her arms about him just as fiercely, she stepped back and looked at him with her clear, unwavering gaze. She had been skirting around the issue for some time. Now she was characteristically blunt.

  “What is it, William?” She bit her lip so slightly the movement was almost invisible. “What are you afraid is going to happen?”

  That was it…fear of what was going to happen? Now it was either lie to her, or tell her the whole truth. As long as he had known her she had trusted him, even when it seemed impossible that he could be either honest, or completely right about the facts. That trust was perhaps the most precious thing in his life. Certainly it seemed so now. And one lie would break it. Then what would he have left?

  “I can’t remember twenty years ago….” Why was he beginning here? She knew that. “It looks as if I could have been in San Francisco in the gold rush, even if only for a short time, a year, or less. Not for gold! As a seaman. I don’t know if I’m imagining the things I hear about, or if I remember them. Just a flash here and there. The way the light hits the water, bright flowers that don’t grow in England, places I’ve seen pictures of, but haven’t been to. Like a harbor crammed with ships, where thousands of people live on them.”

  “Is San Francisco like that?” she asked, always practical. Nurses dealt only in the real. First establish with the physical!

  “It was twenty years ago,” he answered. “I expect it’s changed a lot now. Even London changes in twenty years.”


  “Not much,” she said with a flash of wry humor. “Why does it matter so much?”

  “Because I can’t remember…” He had not meant his voice to sound desperate, but it did. They were still standing in the hall, close together. “But I’m afraid that Aaron Clive can…and maybe Fin Gillander, the schooner captain, can as well.”

  “Oh…” Her eyes were clouded now. She understood. She had lived through all this dark uncertainty before.

  He had still avoided the most dangerous part. He should say it, before somehow he evaded it. “I looked at all my old records that there are, and I still don’t know why McNab hates me so. It’s more than just professional rivalry. I can see it in his face. I can almost smell it on him. And I’m afraid…” There, he had said the word, the weakest, ugliest one. “I’m afraid he knows that I can’t remember why. If he really does know that everything’s gone from my memory before ’56, he’ll use it when it’s worst for me, when it will ruin me.” Had he meant to say so much? He could hear the edge of despair in his voice.

  “Then we must find out why,” Hester said gently. “You may learn that it is no more to his credit than to yours. William, you can’t fight without knowing! It would be throwing away all your weapons.”

  He looked at her, studying her face in the soft yellow of the gaslight on the wall. Her eyes were steady, shadowed with anxiety, but if she was afraid, he could not see it. She was angry, ready to defend him. She would not have been if she didn’t understand that the threat was real.

  “Come and have something to eat,” she said, half-turning to lead the way back to the kitchen.

  “I’m not hungry….” he began.

  “Of course not,” she agreed, walking away from him. “Hot tea, and a cold roast beef sandwich. You can’t fight on an empty stomach.”

  He was so tired his body ached, and he could feel a ridiculous prickle of emotion as his eyes stung. They had faced great voids before, determined to win. But this was the darkness of the past racing forward to engulf them. And he did not know what it was!

  She walked on toward the kitchen. She was not beautiful in any traditional sense, too thin for fashion, comfort, the sweetness some men expected from women. But her head was high, and she moved with a grace he had never seen in anyone else on earth.

  He followed her, as if she held the light.

  The kitchen was warm, and the kettle was simmering on the stove. She made tea and he sipped it while she sliced the bread and carved the beef. Perhaps he was hungry after all.

  “So what are you going to do next?” she asked as she put the plate down in front of him. “There must be a whole lot that isn’t in the police records.” She sat down opposite him and poured tea for herself as well. “You wrote them up yourself?”

  “Yes…” For a moment he did not grasp her meaning, then he understood. “You mean if there were something I was ashamed of, or embarrassed about, then I wouldn’t have put it in?”

  She winced, but she did not look away from meeting his eyes. “Would you?”

  “Probably not,” he agreed. “But I was just looking for mention of his name at all. It wasn’t there.”

  She thought for a long moment before speaking again, as if she knew that what she was going to say was delicate.

  “The only person who has known you all that time, and worked with you, is Runcorn. William, you have to know. It’s too dangerous not to…whatever the truth is. Not knowing won’t change it; it will just give McNab more weapons to hurt you.”

  She was right. Of course she was right.

  “I know,” he admitted at last. “I’ll ask him. I have avoided all discussion of my past for too long; trying to get away with not confronting it, maybe. Or just hoping that it didn’t matter, that I could actually leave it in the past.”

  Hester smiled and put her hand over his. She did not need to say anything.

  —

  THE NEXT MORNING MONK went early to see Superintendent Runcorn. He was stationed at Blackheath, which was not far away. Monk arrived well before nine o’clock, and found Runcorn sitting in his office with a large cup of tea and a pile of reports on his desk, less neatly stacked than he used to have them. He had relaxed a little at last. Happiness had bound his old demons.

  When they had both served, as younger men, in the Metropolitan Police, they had begun as friends, and gradually become enemies. Runcorn had been stiff, an obsessive rule follower, unsure of himself, only feeling safe with orders. Monk had capitalized on it, taunting him, probing his weaknesses.

  Monk himself was intelligent, quick-witted, able to improvise, a natural rebel. In the end it was Monk who had been dismissed for insubordination, and Runcorn who had been promoted. Now it was Monk who held the higher rank.

  After the accident, Monk had been forced to look a great deal harder at the man he discovered himself to be. He had not liked what he saw in himself, and he was not proud of his taunting of Runcorn.

  Later Runcorn had fallen hopelessly in love with a witness in a case they had worked on together. In spite of every difference in background, education, and social class, Melisande had seen the gentleness in Runcorn, the deep, sincere love he had for her, and had found to everyone’s surprise that she returned it. Runcorn was happier than he had dreamed possible. He was a changed man. Enough so that Monk judged him to be the one person he could trust with the question he must now pursue.

  Monk closed the office door behind him as Runcorn looked up, surprised to see Monk, and then, studying his face, concerned. He waved at the other chair for Monk to sit down.

  “Tea?” he asked.

  Monk shook his head. “Not yet…thank you. I’ve got a lot of questions to ask, and I don’t know anyone else….”

  Runcorn leaned back in his chair and looked steadily at Monk as he recounted his latest case. It turned out that, stationed as he was near the river, Runcorn already knew some of the facts and the people involved.

  “If I knew anything useful I’d have told you,” he said quietly when Monk had finished. “I’d barely heard of Aaron Clive until this episode of McNab’s man drowning. And I have no idea what Blount was doing, or Owen. I’ve asked around, but I haven’t heard anything back.”

  “What do you know about McNab?” Monk’s nerves were tight and he came straight to the point. “Why does he hate me?”

  Runcorn stared at him. He sat totally still, as if something long forgotten had suddenly flooded his mind.

  “Oh God!” he said very quietly. “I never put it together….”

  Monk was cold inside, as if the blood in him had stopped flowing. “What together? What did I do to him?”

  Runcorn pushed his hands through his thick, wiry hair. “It wasn’t really your fault, but of course that isn’t the way we look at things….”

  Monk wanted to scream at him, “What things? For the love of God—tell me!” He controlled himself with an intense effort. This was not the way to behave. He could not afford to antagonize Runcorn, who was one of the few friends he had. And he was still a friend, even though he knew so much of the truth.

  “What things?” he asked almost levelly.

  “Do you remember Robbie Nairn?” Runcorn asked, watching Monk closely, his long face very grave.

  Monk searched his mind and could think of nothing at all, yet the name was vaguely familiar. He had no idea if he was another policeman, a friend, an enemy, yet he had surely heard the name recently. “No. Who is he?”

  Runcorn sighed. “Almost sixteen years ago, a young man in his early twenties. Very violent. Also charming, in his own way. Handsome, too. Looked a bit like McNab, I suppose, though you might not see it, if you didn’t put them side by side.”

  “So who was he?” Monk did not want to know, but he had to. “McNab’s son?”

  “No…no. McNab was only thirty then, Nairn about six or seven years younger.” Runcorn looked very directly at him. There was no pleasure in his eyes or in his face. “Nairn got into a bad fight with another young man
. It ended with Nairn injured and the young man dead, his throat cut.”

  “A fight? Who started it?”

  “No one knows. Nairn had some bad injuries, too, and he said the other man started it. For a while we were inclined to believe him. It was you who discovered the evidence the other way….”

  “Was I wrong?”

  “I don’t think so. Nothing ever indicated it. The jury believed you.”

  “Did you?” Monk pressed.

  Runcorn nodded. “Yes. I had no doubt. Still haven’t. Nairn was a bad one.”

  “What are you not telling me?”

  “You pushed pretty hard to get the evidence.”

  Monk winced. “Did I beat it out of him? Keep him up all night? Shame him, threaten him? What?” He did not want to think of it, but he knew he had been capable of all that.

  “I don’t know,” Runcorn admitted. “Lots of things were suggested. You questioned him alone, which was foolish, especially with your reputation.”

  “There must have been proof. Not just my word. If it was a fight gone too far…”

  “It was more than that, Monk. There was a girl. That’s what the fight was about. She was dead. Her throat was cut, too. It was pretty horrible. Nairn said the other man did it. It was your evidence that tipped the balance.”

  “But was I wrong?” Monk asked, leaning forward, his body clenched tight. “Was there any doubt in the facts? Why would I lie?” Had he really changed so much? The thought of lying to convict a man was repellent, and worse, it was an offense against the law, and against everything that honor stood for. It was too easy to come to the wrong conclusion. All the evidence had said that Monk had killed Joscelyn Gray. He had even thought so himself! It was only Hester and John Evan, his new assistant after the accident, who had believed in him. And yet they were right. He had never harmed Joscelyn Gray, in spite of all that he had done.

  But that was after the accident. After the terror and confusion of losing all he knew of himself. What about before?