Blood on the Water Read online

  “I’ll give you a written report of what I saw,” Monk said, his voice rasping. “Whatever they find now you’ll see for yourself. No doubt you’ll speak to my men who interviewed people on the shore … and the survivors.”

  “I will. Thank you. You should go home and get some food, and some sleep,” Lydiate said unhappily. His embarrassment was clearly acute and he did not seem able to add anything more.

  Monk nodded and walked on up the incline and into the street. He barely saw the buildings around him or the people. His misery settled into a hard, white-hot rage inside him. This was his river, his responsibility. The people who had been killed had been in his charge. And now there was nothing he could do to keep his promise to find the truth, and exact whatever kind of justice there was to exact.

  CHAPTER

  2

  HESTER HEARD THE EXPLOSION from their home in Paradise Place, which was about a quarter of a mile from the riverbank on the south side, opposite the Wapping Police Station. Like everyone else along the small street, she went outside immediately and stared across the rooftops of Greenwich and the darkening expanse of the river toward the Pool of London. The flames were brilliant orange, illuminating everything around them for a few terrible seconds, and then they were gone. All along the street there was only silence.

  The woman next door stood paralyzed, a dish towel in her hands, her face contorted with horror. Farther down, where the street turned into Union Road, there were a couple of men, also motionless, shoulder to shoulder, staring toward the river. Then a youth came running up the cobbles shouting something.

  Hester realized that Scuff was beside her and she had not even heard his feet on the stones. He was sixteen now, taller than she was, unrecognizable as the urchin she and Monk had befriended when he was, by his own estimation, roughly eleven. Then he had been narrow-shouldered, undersized, and frighteningly streetwise. Children did not survive in the London Docks alone if they were not. It was debatable whether they had adopted him, or he had adopted them. It was not discussed, but tacitly accepted, that his home with them had become permanent.

  He touched her hand. “What ’appened?” he said huskily.

  She did not hesitate to put her arm around him. “I don’t know. A very big explosion and fire, and then it went out completely.”

  “Ship,” he answered. “Must ’ave gone down like a stone. Monk won’t … be …” His voice choked off with fear.

  “No, of course he won’t,” Hester said firmly. “But he’ll be going to it. I expect we won’t see him again until tomorrow.”

  “Are you sure?”

  “No, not absolutely.” She had never lied to him. He was too much of a realist to have believed her if she had tried. Perhaps if she had known him since he was a baby there would have been a time when she would have offered only comfort, and let reality come later. But he had been a survivor when they met. His trust in them had grown slowly, and they must honor that trust with honesty, no matter how crushing the truth might be for him.

  “I’ll go …” he started.

  “No you won’t,” she replied. “You’ll stay here. I’ll go down to the wharf and ask. I have the right to know, and, believe me, I won’t take any soothing answers. I’ll come back and tell you. Promise me you’ll stay here?” She turned to face him. “I mean it, Scuff. I need to be able to trust you. And if it’s bad, I’ll need you to help me.”

  His eyes widened and he caught his breath, understanding filling his eyes. “Yes …” he nodded. “I’ll stay ’ere, I promise. But … yer’ll come back, won’t yer?”

  “Of course I will, as soon as I know anything. I promise that.”

  He sighed. “All right, then.”

  SHE RETURNED A LITTLE before midnight.

  Scuff was asleep in front of the remnants of the fire, but he woke as soon as she came into the room, fear stark in his face.

  “He’s all right,” she said immediately. “It was a pleasure boat that sank. Almost everyone on it was lost.” She came in and sat on the chair opposite him. In the dim light of the gaslamp he looked crumpled and terribly vulnerable, like any child woken from sleep.

  “The River Police will be working all night, trying to save anyone they can,” she went on. “I expect by daylight they’ll still be finding out what happened. We’ll just have to wait. Do you want a hot drink before you go to bed? I do. I know it’s May, but it’s still awfully cold out there.”

  He nodded. “ ’E’s all right, then?”

  “Yes. He’ll be tired and cold, by the time he gets home, but safe—yes.”

  Scuff’s face filled with relief. “Yeah. Can we ’ave some cocoa?”

  “Good idea,” Hester agreed. “Of course we can.”

  “I’m not going to school till ’e comes back …” Scuff said. He made it sound like a statement, but in his eyes there was a question, and he looked at her anxiously to try to judge her reaction.

  She wanted to give in to him this time, and the little prickle of uncertainty within her made it easy. “This once,” she agreed.

  He smiled, but did not push his good fortune. “I’ll make the cocoa?” he offered. “Stove’s ’ot.”

  “Thank you.” She accepted his offer, following him down the passage into the kitchen. She was momentarily overwhelmed by a wave of emotion. She loved this boy far more than she had imagined possible. He was an urchin from the dockside, and yet she understood his mind. She saw in his gestures and expressions a strange reflection of herself and now, as he matured, a greater measure of Monk also. Could the connection of love be as powerful as that of blood?

  MONK CAME IN MIDMORNING. Hester had been watching for him through the window. He was still dressed in the borrowed clothes from the police station. He moved stiffly and his face was gray with exhaustion, and every few steps he hitched at his ill-fitting trousers as they slipped on his waist.

  Hester met him in the passage, and after a glance into his eyes she silently put her arms around him. He stiffened for an instant as though he were too tender to bear her touch. Then he relaxed and his arms tightened around her until she had to bite her lip not to make a sound at the strength of his hold.

  It was several moments before she looked up into his face, leaning back only inches. She could have asked him how he was, but words were insufficient for what she knew he must have seen. Instead she reached out and put her fingers gently to his cheek and gave a tiny smile.

  “At the least a hundred and fifty dead.” He gave the numbers that made the enormity of it unalterable. “Someone did it on purpose, put explosives in the bow and blew it out. I went down—”

  She froze. “Down …?”

  “Diving suit,” he explained. “I’ve done it before. They’re most of them still there, trapped. They hadn’t a chance, not ever.”

  Questions teemed in her mind, though none of them right to ask now. He could not know all the answers yet. The immediate things he needed were comfort, warmth, food, then as much sleep as possible.

  “How long do you have before you need to go back?”

  There was something in his face she could not read, a fury, a grief that surged into him until his body was rigid.

  “William?” she said quickly. “What is it? Can’t you stay?” She drew breath to argue that he must, but the look in his eyes stopped her.

  “I can stay as long as I want to,” he said gruffly, his voice catching in his throat. “They’ve taken the River Police off the case. Too many important people killed. They’ve given it to the commissioner—Lydiate.”

  All sorts of protests boiled up inside her. It was a ridiculous decision, and completely unfair. Whoever had made it was incompetent. But none of these objections would change anything. Years ago, when she had been a nurse to the army in the Crimea, she had fought hotly against injustice, vanity, and blind, towering stupidity. Occasionally, on the battlefield where death was a reality, she had won. But once back in England, making such arguments was like trying to write in the sand;
the weight and complexities of the hierarchy of power erased her efforts like an incoming tide.

  For seconds she did not answer, even though she knew Monk was waiting. Then at last she stepped back a little.

  “How unfortunate for Lydiate,” she said quietly, judging her words as she would the pressure of a bandage on a raw wound. “He’ll be completely out of his depth because he doesn’t know the river well enough to deal with this. But then I wonder if anyone can. It’s going to be a terrible mess. Just at the moment we are all numb with shock, still trying to realize what has happened. But it won’t be long before the anger comes. People will want to blame someone. Rage is so much easier than facing loss. They’ll demand answers. The newspapers will be on it all the time. Why did it happen? Why didn’t somebody prevent it? Why haven’t the police caught whoever it is? No matter what Lydiate does, it won’t be enough.”

  She smiled bleakly, and her voice became even softer. “That is, if he can do anything at all. Nothing will bring those people back. They’ll want to blame somebody, hang somebody, even if it isn’t the right person. Catching someone will make everyone feel as if they’re not completely powerless. There’ll be all kinds of crazy theories and rumors. It’s stupid that they have taken the case from you. You’re the one person who might have been able to solve it—but realistically, maybe no one can …”

  He let out his breath in a sigh. His voice shook a little. “They should have let me try! The victims deserve that! I promised …” He blinked hard. “Hester, I spoke with the survivors, all huddled up, battered, freezing, and stunned with loss. One man was on the boat with his daughter. She had just recovered from a long illness. They were celebrating. One moment she was laughing, the next she was gone.” His voice cracked. “I promised I’d find whoever did this …”

  “I know,” she whispered. “I’ve made promises I couldn’t keep. I know how it hurts …”

  “Do you?” he demanded, his voice tight with pain.

  Memories of the battlefields surged back into her mind, drenched with the smell of blood. “I’ve promised soldiers I’d save them, and I couldn’t always …”

  He drew in a breath. “Oh, Hester! I’m sorry …” His arms tightened around her again and it was moments before he let her go. Only then did he notice Scuff standing in the doorway, pale-faced but with a thin, shy smile.

  “You all right?” Scuff asked nervously. “You want a cup o’ tea, or something?”

  “Yes,” Monk replied immediately. “Yes, please. And what are you doing here at this time of day? You should be at school. You ducking it again?”

  “Couldn’t go till I knew you was all right,” Scuff replied.

  “You—” Monk began.

  “Couldn’t leave Hester, could I?” Scuff glared at him. Then he swallowed hard and turned on his heel to go and make the tea.

  Hester started to laugh a little jerkily, trying to stop it turning into tears.

  AS SOON AS HE had drunk his tea, Scuff left Paradise Place, but he did not go to school. Actually he had not said that he would, not in so many words, although he knew both Hester and Monk had assumed he was headed there.

  But this was not the time to go and learn things in books, however important they may be one day. Right now he must return to the river. Some stupid man in a clean shirt and a woolen suit had taken away Monk’s right to work this momentous case, when the damage was not just on the river but actually in it. Well, under it, now! Policing the river was Monk’s job. That was who he was. They had no right to do this, no matter what Hester had said to comfort him about it being a bad case that maybe no one could solve. Monk could do all kinds of things other people couldn’t. She just didn’t want him hurt, which was all right, except life wasn’t like that. All those people were dead and under the water. That was wicked, and had to be sorted out, and somebody needed to be punished, really punished, for it.

  And it was Scuff’s river too. He had been born on its banks and grown up within sight of it, to the sounds of it, feeling its damp all his life. Even in his sleep he could hear the lapping of its tide, and its foghorns booming in the distance. Almost all the treasures of his childhood had been saved from its depth, not to mention the pieces of coal, metal, china—even wood, now and then, that he had sold to feed himself. How could any ordinary land-bound London policeman know the river, or care about it as he and Monk did?

  First he would go to where they were hauling the ship up, but quietly, not speaking to anyone who might know him. This must not get back to Monk, which meant that Scuff must steer clear of Mr. Orme as well. Although he would have been with Monk, so he had likely been up all night too, and sent home as Monk had been. Scuff figured he was safe for a while.

  He walked briskly down to the ferry and used some of his savings to pay his fare to the other side. He climbed up the Wapping Stairs, keeping his face averted from the police station. He went as quickly as possible along the bank toward the dock where he knew from the ferryman that the pleasure boat was being dragged up. He tried to imagine what strength that would take, and what kind of engines it would need. And chains. They’d better be good! If one of them snapped it could take the heads of half a dozen men standing too close. He refused even to think of that!

  He moved quickly, used to slipping by unnoticed. It was not so far, about a mile or so. There were loads of people standing around watching. What did they expect to see? A broken ship and a whole lot of dead bodies? They looked sort of huddled, even though it was a bright May morning. You would have thought it was winter! Maybe they were there because they’d lost someone they loved and they felt they had to come to see the boat pulled from the river, out of a kind of respect, like standing at the graveside at a funeral. Scuff did not like funerals. He did not want to see dead bodies here either. He’d seen people drowned before. It was horrible … the bodies all bloated out of shape, and squashy.

  But if he was ever going to be a policeman like Monk, then he’d better get used to it. Even Hester could look at dead bodies! But then she could do a lot of things that most people couldn’t.

  He moved to stand beside a man and woman who were nicely dressed, but pale-faced and as close together as they could get. What would he say to them? Something that would not sound stupid, or childish, or cruel. Nobody was coming out of the wreck alive. Did they hope there was? They couldn’t be that daft—could they?

  There was a shout from the shore. Then as they watched, the funnel of the boat broke the surface. No one made a sound. It was so quiet he could hear the gushing of water out of the sides.

  Without weighing his words, Scuff turned to the man.

  “You shouldn’t watch this, sir. If you lost someone, you don’t need ter see it.” Then he stopped abruptly. It was out of place. He had no right to speak. They had not asked him.

  The man turned toward him in surprise, as if he had not realized Scuff was there. “You’re right,” he said quietly. “And maybe you shouldn’t either. Did you lose someone, lad?”

  “No. My pa’s in the River Police. He worked all night trying to save people, an’ now they’ve taken ’im off the case. Given it to the land police.” Scuff’s voice was bitter, but he could not help it.

  The man’s arm tightened around the woman beside him. “You’re right. We can’t do anything here. Come on, Jenny. Don’t look. Remember him the way he was. Lad’s right.” He looked again at Scuff. “Your pa send you to report back to him?”

  “No, sir! ’E thinks I’m at school! But I gotter do something. This in’t right. It’s our river. What kind of a cruise was it, sir? What kind o’ people?”

  The man began to move away from the place where he had been standing. His arm was still around the woman, but his glance included Scuff.

  “Just a pleasure cruise,” he replied. “The Princess Mary. Started up at Westminster Bridge and went as far as Gravesend, then back again. Expensive, at least for those attending the party. Very good food, lots of champagne and that sort of thing. Just … just
people having fun.” Suddenly his face tightened with fury. “What kind of a madman would want to hurt people like that? Why, for God’s sake?”

  “Albert …” The woman’s hand tightened, dragging his arm down toward her. “The boy doesn’t know. Nobody does. It’s mad … mad things don’t make sense.”

  Scuff wanted to say something that would make her feel better. What would Hester have said?

  “They don’t. But they can’t stop us doing our best,” he told her.

  The man stared at him, but the woman suddenly smiled. It changed her face completely. “I’ll try to remember that,” she promised.

  Scuff smiled back, then left them and started to work his way down the river toward the stretch he knew better. He must find some of the people he used to know before he went to live with Monk and Hester. They were the people who would never tell the police anything, either River Police or the ordinary sort. If the Princess Mary had started at Westminster Bridge, then whoever blew it up had got on before that—unless it was one of the people on the cruise. Most likely it was a porter or servant of some sort, what Monk called “invisible people.” But Scuff knew beggars, peddlers, petty thieves, people on the fringes of life—they often walked unseen, but they saw everyone.

  It took him most of the morning to find exactly the right ones. Far more had changed than he could have foreseen. People had grown up; some had gone away, perhaps to sea. Some had died. No one seemed to know him anymore, and the mudlarks—the boys who scavenged on the shore for bits and pieces they could sell, as he had once done—were all strangers to him. And they all looked so small! He had not really thought of it before, but when he remembered how many new pairs of trousers Hester had bought him, he realized he’d probably grown six inches in the last few years.

  Suddenly he felt awkward. They should have grown too, and they hadn’t. He saw one boy with no socks and odd boots, just as he had had. He had been going to speak to him and then changed his mind, feeling self-conscious—no, more than that, guilty. He could give this boy a few pence for a pie and a cup of tea, but what about all the others? Scuff now ate well, whenever he wanted to. Why not them? He had been no different from them, once.