Revenge in a Cold River Page 22

  Monk felt a wave of resentment rise inside him. It was the first thing Clive had said that showed an uglier side of him. It was a warning, whether he intended it to be or not. Monk would be wise not to show his distaste.

  “Unfortunate,” he said with a slight show of regret. “I can see why she chose to return to England.”

  “People came for many reasons,” Clive said mildly. “I often wondered why you returned. You seemed to be doing rather well for yourself.” It was not a question, yet unanswered it would become one, a sign of weakness.

  Monk felt himself like a butterfly pinned to a board, struggling. It was all very civilized, nothing but polite conversation around whether there were any danger to Clive’s wealth or his security from some indeterminate theft that was looking increasingly like a mirage.

  But if it were real, and Monk had not acted, he would look a complete incompetent. Who was playing him? McNab? Or Clive? Or both of them, each for his own reason? Clive’s most visibly prized possession was his wife, and Monk was quite sure he had never trespassed there. Whatever his memory loss, it would have been in Miriam’s face when she came to visit him.

  “Got an interesting offer,” he lied. “The California coast is marvelous, but this one has its charms, too.”

  “The river?” Clive’s eyes widened. He sat back a little in his chair. “The Thames, as opposed to the Barbary Coast? For a man like you?”

  Monk met his eyes unflinchingly. “I’m English, blood and bone. This is my heritage. Go down the Thames, slowly, and you pass through history, from the Roman legions of Julius Caesar to the Greenwich Observatory, where the world’s time is set, from zero longitude.”

  “Is that what you love?” Clive said curiously. “The heart of empire? How very English.”

  “No,” Monk said with sudden realization. “It’s dawn farther east, the huge skies over the Estuary with the wild birds flying over with such purpose and certainty, as if they know something we don’t.”

  For once Clive was silent.

  “It’s worth caring for,” Monk added. “All its teeming life, good and bad, it’s something to care about.”

  Clive did not answer. He returned instead to the subject of the possible robbery, and remained with it until it was exhausted and Monk excused himself. He had done all he could to forewarn Clive of an event neither of them believed in.

  As he was walking away toward the road he saw Miriam Clive coming toward him. She was wearing a deep burgundy-colored morning dress and a jacket trimmed with black fur. Again he was startled by her appearance. Her beauty was fierce, almost exotic, with high cheekbones and wide, dark eyes, but it was the passion in the mouth that most caught the attention. It was a face to reflect storms of the soul.

  “Good morning, Mrs. Clive,” he said politely.

  She stopped, as if pleased to see him. “Good morning, Commander Monk. I hope it is not business that brings you here?”

  “Only precaution,” he replied. “Mr. McNab still seems to think it is possible, if unlikely, that someone may attempt a robbery.”

  She concealed all emotion in her expression. “Mr. McNab? Really.”

  “I believe you know him, at least slightly?”

  She moved one slender shoulder in what was almost a shrug.

  “I am acquainted with him. I think he is something of an opportunist. I would take what he says with a degree of skepticism. But I’m sure you already know that.”

  He was aware that she was watching him closely. Did she care what he thought of McNab?

  “Of what he says to me, yes,” he agreed. “But to you?”

  Miriam drew in a deep breath and let it out slowly, her decision made. He had placed her in a position where she had to answer, or deliberately evade it.

  “Yes,” she said with a charming smile. “I wanted to find out more about you from McNab. I knew Piers was dead but I need to know who killed him. McNab told me you are the best detective in London, and of course you were in San Francisco at the time of Piers’s death. I knew that if anybody could succeed in finding the truth, it would be you, and I had to convince you to help me.”

  “But what difference would it make to you now?”

  She smiled still. “In knowing who did kill Piers, Mr. Monk, then I also know who did not. That is sometimes even more important, don’t you think?”

  She was lying. He was absolutely certain of it, yet what she said was absolutely true; it was just not what she meant. Did she want the truth in order to hide it forever? Or to manipulate someone? What could McNab have to do with it, other than as a means of contacting Monk?

  “I’m sorry I’ve been of no help to you,” he said as courteously as he could.

  Her face was completely unreadable. “Not at all, Commander. You have helped me understand a great many things. My old friend Beata speaks of you most highly, and I am sure she is right.” She glanced beyond him, across the river to where the Summer Wind lay at anchor. “And of course, Mr. Gillander,” she added. She turned back to Monk. “Good day.”

  “Good day, Mrs. Clive,” he replied. In spite of himself, he watched her until she turned the corner toward Clive’s office and disappeared.

  —

  WHEN HE ARRIVED BACK at the Wapping Station, Hooper was pacing the floor waiting for him. He swiveled around on his heel and grasped Monk by the arm, half-dragging him outside again onto the dockside.

  “I’ve got it,” he said urgently. “Laker found for certain that it was Pettifer that shot Blount, possibly on McNab’s orders. But we’ve got McNab. It’ll never stand up in court, but we know what happened with the gunrunners and the raid, and that McNab’s directly responsible for it. We can finish it our own way.” His face was alight with the certainty of it, and in spite of himself Monk felt a surge of exhilaration.

  “How? If you can’t prove it…” he asked. Questions filled his mind. Could he afford to challenge McNab? McNab would fight for his freedom, his life. If he went down, he had the means and the will to take Monk with him.

  Hooper’s smile was wolfish. “Mad Lammond,” he replied.

  Monk was stunned. “Mad Lammond? The bloody river pirate?” Of course he would not stand up in court. The man’s name was an obscenity from London Bridge to the English Channel.

  Hooper colored very faintly. “You’ll know the truth,” he said a little less jubilantly. “Knowledge is power, even if you can use it only limitedly. Come with me; he’ll tell you himself.”

  Monk stood his ground. “Why the devil should he? Why wouldn’t he just slit our throats?”

  “My enemy’s enemy is my friend,” Hooper quoted. “At least sometimes. By Mad Lammond’s reckoning, McNab owes him money, which he isn’t going to pay.”

  “Explain yourself,” Monk requested. “What kind of business could McNab and Lammond have together?” He would like to believe it, but he couldn’t.

  “Guns,” Hooper answered, as if it should have been obvious.

  Monk began to see the glimmer of light. “The pirates that attacked us on the gunrunner’s ship were Mad Lammond and his men?”

  “Right!”

  “McNab told them of the raid? Why?” Monk was so overwhelmed by the memory of it he had to clear his throat to speak. “So Mad Lammond killed Orme? Why the hell did McNab want that? It’s only me he hates. Was he really prepared to kill anyone to get to me?”

  “No,” Hooper said quietly. “It was you they were supposed to kill. The rest of us were incidental. Only they got Orme, and we won the battle. They got no guns, and McNab wouldn’t pay the second half of what he owes Mad Lammond because you were still alive.”

  Monk blasphemed, something he rarely did. It was terrible, worse even than he had thought. The guilt was suffocating. Orme had not only died because of the battle; he had died in Monk’s place.

  “All over Robbie Nairn…” Monk said quietly. “Revenge is a hideous thing, a kind of madness that rots the heart.”

  “Yes,” Hooper said quietly.


  “And you believe this? It was Pettifer, acting for McNab? Giving Mad Lammond the information, and money to kill me?”

  “And disgrace the River Police in general,” Hooper added. “But we can’t prove it…not yet, anyway.”

  “God help us,” Monk said softly, and he meant it.

  MONK WAS WOKEN EARLY the following morning, before daylight. It was still pitch-dark outside, and it took a moment before he realized where he was. He had been dreaming of bright sunlight and heavy seas roaring into a rocky coast, crashing in white water.

  Hester turned over and sat up, pushing her hair out of her eyes. She was immediately wide awake. Her voice came out of the darkness beside him.

  “What is it? What’s happened?”

  He climbed out of bed and went to the window, pulling the curtains aside. In the dim glow from streetlights twenty feet away he could see two uniformed police standing on the pavement just outside his front door.

  “Police,” he told her. “I’ll turn up the gas on the landing and go down. Something must have happened. I’ll dress first.” There was no time to shave. He dashed cold water over his face and pulled his clothes on. Running his fingers through his hair, he went down the stairs to the front hall. He pulled the bolts back and opened the door.

  There were two police in uniform standing on the step, so close to the door now that it was as if they were trying to hide from the street. In the light from the hall they both looked uncomfortable.

  “What’s happened?” Monk demanded, thoughts of a fatality filling his mind, some appalling incident, even something like the sinking of the Princess Mary a year ago.

  “I’m sorry, sir,” the taller one said quietly. “We’ve come to arrest you for the murder of James Pettifer, off Skelmer’s Wharf. Yer’d be wise to come quietly, sir. We don’t want to waken all the neighbors, do we?”

  Monk was absolutely stunned, as if he needed to grasp the doorframe to make the world stay still. It made no sense. It was totally absurd. And yet, staring at the men, he could see they were police. Their uniforms were plainly visible, along with the numbers that identified them. The shorter of the two actually held a warrant in his hand, awkwardly, as if he were not sure what he was supposed to do with it.

  And they were right. The last thing Monk wanted was to have the neighbors wakened to come out to see what was happening.

  He stepped back a pace or two, still dizzy.

  The taller policeman looked nervous, and took the same size step to keep the distance between them, as if he were afraid Monk might slam the door on him.

  “I’m going to tell my wife,” Monk meant to snap at him, but his voice was hoarse and the words came out lamely, even a little mumbled.

  The policeman looked past him up the stairs to where Hester was coming down slowly, her gown held tightly around her. With her hair loose and falling over her shoulders she looked younger, and more vulnerable.

  “I’m sorry, ma’am,” the policeman said unhappily. “But we’ve got to do this. Don’t make it worse than it is.”

  “Do what?” She looked bewildered.

  “Arrest Mr. Monk for ’aving drowned Mr. Pettifer, ma’am.”

  “Drowned him?” she said incredulously. “Pettifer jumped in the water himself! Commander Monk was trying to rescue him!”

  “Was you there, then, ma’am?” he asked politely, but his knowledge that she was not was clear in his face.

  She drew in her breath to argue, and then realized the futility of it. It was not this man’s decision, and he had not the power to disobey.

  She came down the rest of the stairs and took Monk’s heavy overcoat off the peg in the hall.

  “I’ll get dressed and then I’ll go straight to see Oliver,” she said quite calmly.

  That was Hester! She would always be calm in the crisis, and then lie awake, reliving it when it was all over, trying to think what she could have done differently.

  If this would ever be all over!

  Monk put the coat on. “Thank you,” he answered, hoping she understood that it was “thank you” for everything, all the past, and the future.

  She smiled at him, meeting his eyes for one intense moment, then turned away.

  He followed the policemen out onto the step, then into the road. They did not look at him. Was it decency, to allow him this dreadful moment in some privacy? Or were they embarrassed?

  It was bitterly cold with the wind coming up off the water, and the roadway was slick with ice. A carriage was waiting for them. It was much like an ordinary hansom cab, not a Black Maria, the usual closed-sided vehicle for carrying prisoners.

  Monk climbed in, one policeman on each side of him, and they moved off, turning west, away from the beginning of the dawn paling in the east. The wide, flat surface of the river was already dotted with ships.

  Where were they taking him? This had to be some idiotic mistake! It was perfectly obvious he had tried to save Pettifer. Even thinking at the time that he was Owen, the escaped prisoner, he had still done all he could to get the man out of the water. If he hadn’t clipped him over the side of the head, he could not have saved him. It would simply have meant they both drowned. Everyone who works near the water knows that a drowning man can panic, and take you both down.

  Among his own men, who was going to take over at Wapping while he was gone? Hooper? No, of course not—Monk was only going to be away a day or two at the most. This whole thing was farcical! Some young man looking for fame must have jumped to a wrong conclusion and acted without reference to anyone senior. It would probably all be over tomorrow—maybe later today.

  He wouldn’t even have to disturb Rathbone with it.

  “Why am I supposed to have drowned Pettifer?” he asked.

  “I wouldn’t know that, sir,” the taller man answered. “We’re just the arresting officers.”

  “I’d never met him, never even heard of him,” Monk went on. “We didn’t know which man was the fugitive and which the officer. In fact, we got it wrong.”

  “Maybe that’s why you killed him,” the policeman suggested. “You thought he was the escaping prisoner?”

  “Or looking at it the other way,” the shorter man added, “maybe you knew right enough that Pettifer were the customs man, and the one who got away were the fugitive?”

  “Why on earth would I do that?” Monk asked angrily.

  “Most likely money,” the man answered. “That’s why most people do things they shouldn’t.”

  Monk drew in breath to argue, and then knew it was pointless. They were only making noises. Nobody’s mind was going to change. This was a waste of time he could not afford. They were ordinary police who had arrested him, but who was behind it? McNab…surely? Pettifer had been his man, and Owen the second prisoner to escape from his custody. There was no one else involved.

  There was no great conspiracy to rob Clive, or anyone else. But he had been sure of that yesterday. It was all to do with Robbie Nairn, and the past.

  Monk had been in San Francisco; that now seemed unarguable. God only knew how many other places he had been, how many other enemies he had made who could remember his acts, good or bad, and he did not even know their names, their faces, anything about them at all. He was stumbling around like a blind man, falling over things everyone else could see.

  He must stop this! Panic would take away any chance he had to save himself. The truth was that Pettifer had effectively drowned himself, because he had panicked! Monk had done all he could to save him. That was an irony. Was he now going to drown—in the law—because he panicked? Pettifer’s revenge!

  If McNab were behind it, it was because of Nairn, whom Monk had not spared. It was irrelevant now as to whether he should have or not. Perhaps he should have tried. There had been a lack of pity in him then that he did not admire now. But there was no going back. The only way anyone could move was forward. He couldn’t change the past, only learn from it.

  Or did Clive have something to do with it also? Clive a
nd McNab together? Why? What could he have done to Clive?

  Or Miriam…Astley, as she was then? Had Monk had some part in Astley’s death that he could not remember? Was that why it seemed that everyone’s hand was against him? If he had killed Astley, then maybe he deserved it.

  He had lacked pity, wisdom, patience, humility…but surely he had never been a gun for hire? To murder people, for someone else? There was no money on earth that could make that of him!

  Damn, damn, damn that carriage accident that had robbed him of all his past…not the living of it, but the recall! How could you repent of or make good what you did not know about?

  He straightened up. This was pointless self-pity and would gain him nothing except perhaps other people’s contempt—and his own. Wiping out the past was not all loss. It had given him a chance to begin again, to weigh and judge who he had been and to see more clearly, from the evidence, what was ugly in him and must be changed. How many people got an opportunity to do that? Habits locked them in, but he was free.

  Hester believed in him. So did Scuff, rightly or not. And others. No matter what he owed himself, he owed it to them to fight to the very last breath.

  If McNab were behind this accusation, there must still have been an element of collusion with someone else, or betrayal. Gillander, after all? Why? In justice for Piers Astley? Or did McNab have some hold on him, perhaps for a crime committed along the river? Smuggling? Maybe not a crime, just a carelessness? Or to protect Miriam Clive? He would probably do almost anything for her. Getting rid of Monk, if he were somehow in her way, would be a small thing.

  Or of course to revenge herself on him if he had killed Astley. She said he had helped her to know who it was!

  And she had said she didn’t care if the law could touch him or not. She did not need the law. She was going to find her own vengeance—intimate, not impersonal, like the gallows. So did this all have to do with San Francisco, and Astley’s death?