Blood on the Water Read online

  “I don’t know,” Runcorn said unhappily. “But there were all sorts of toffs on the guest list. Investors with money to burn. At least that’s what Lord Ossett, the government adviser to the Home Office and the Foreign Office, told me. Not just British, but European, Middle Eastern, even American.”

  “Is that what it is about?” Monk began to see a much uglier and more complicated picture than he had initially imagined. He had assumed it was an isolated incident, but perhaps it wasn’t. Perhaps he should be grateful that Lydiate had been given the burden of solving it—and preventing any further attacks. If what Runcorn was suggesting was true, this wasn’t really a river crime. The fact that the first blow had taken place there might be incidental.

  As if reading his thoughts, Runcorn spoke again. “Have you seen the papers? They’re screaming so loudly they’re getting in the way. All kinds of people are coming forward telling us things that don’t matter, and the people that might know something relevant are so frightened they’re hiding, lying, telling us whatever they think we want to hear. You’ve no idea how many one-eyed black dwarfs there are in the London docks …”

  “What?” Monk was incredulous. Then he saw Runcorn’s face and understood. “Monsters—anyone but us,” he said, leaning back in his chair again. “Any real hope?”

  Runcorn sighed. “A bit. We’ve spoken to a lot of people up and down the river. Could be getting closer to who actually planted the stuff—which incidentally we are certain was this new Swedish dynamite—but we still don’t know why, or, more important, who is truly behind it.”

  For the first time Monk heard the real strain in Runcorn’s voice. Monk knew what it was like to have those frightened demands for an answer ringing in your ears every day. You felt hounded. It was too easy to make mistakes, to tell your superiors anything just to make them go away. Every man would be doing his best, but there was just too little to grasp. It depended on luck, asking the right question at the right moment.

  “Call if I can help,” he said impulsively. “It doesn’t have to be official.”

  Runcorn nodded. “I will, if I think of anything. I don’t want to defy Ossett. He’s a decent enough chap, but he’s dead set on handling it his own way. I dare say a lot of people higher up are leaning on him.”

  HESTER WALKED BRISKLY ALONG Portpool Lane to the huddle of interconnected houses that had once been a thriving brothel run by one Squeaky Robinson. A few years ago, at the successful conclusion of a case, Sir Oliver Rathbone had tricked Squeaky and his silent backers out of possession of the place. Several of them had ended up in prison, but Squeaky had remained in the place, not as owner or manager anymore, but as a peculiarly gifted bookkeeper.

  The property itself had, with minor changes, been turned into a clinic for sick or injured prostitutes. Hester, with her military nursing experience in the Crimean War, ran the place. She managed to obtain professional help from one or two doctors willing to give their time without charge. Funds for simple maintenance were obtained by different volunteers: ladies of a charitable nature who were prepared to ask their friends, acquaintances, and even strangers for help.

  Margaret Ballinger, later Oliver Rathbone’s wife, and now his ex-wife, had been one of the best at raising funds. It was a sadness to Hester that she no longer worked with them. However, Hester’s relationship with Margaret had suffered irreparable damage thanks to the tragedy that had struck Margaret’s family, and the way in which Margaret had reacted to it.

  Now, as Hester went in through the door to the room turned into a reception hall, she was greeted by Claudine Burroughs, a woman in her middle years, plain of countenance but remarkable of character. Her success here had given her a sense of freedom from her restrictive marriage, and the friendships she had won at some cost enriched her in all manner of ways. Her face lit up when she saw Hester.

  “How are you?” she asked warmly. “We’ve missed you since that dreadful event on the river.” She looked Hester up and down, assessing if she was really well enough, regardless of what she might say.

  Hester smiled back. “Feeling totally useless,” she replied. She felt comfortable being completely honest Claudine, and had for some time now. It was inevitable, given the work they faced together. They had shared triumphs and disasters both in the clinic and beyond. They helped people, sometimes cured them, but the very nature of their purpose meant that they came late into every battle against death, and often lost. Sometimes all they could give was warmth, peace, and a little dignity, making sure a woman didn’t feel alone in the last days of her life.

  Claudine frowned. “Come and have tea. The accounts are all done and we are in quite good shape. I didn’t ask Mr. Robinson where our latest funds came from. I don’t know if you care to know?” Her expression reflected her erratic opinion of and relationship with Squeaky. To begin with they had despised each other. He was a renegade in every respect, loathing the law and having little regard for women, particularly of the stiff, plain, middle-aged, and genteel variety—all of which Claudine so perfectly epitomized.

  She saw him, in return, as devious, despicable, and personally repulsive. Experience had taught both of them their mistakes. Tolerance had very gradually turned into something almost resembling affection.

  “Thank you,” Hester said drily. “I have sufficient troubles not to go courting anymore. I have to say I miss Margaret’s help in the funding.”

  “You mean Lady Rathbone …” Claudine said with a slight rasp to her voice. She was intensely loyal to those who had offered her friendship, but she regarded Margaret as one who had betrayed them all.

  They went into Claudine’s storeroom—now also her office—where Ruby was counting bandages, bottles of medicine, and packets of powder of one sort or another. She gave Hester a shy smile.

  Claudine asked her if she would be kind enough to get them tea and she went off to do it, relieved she wouldn’t have to focus on numbers in front of her superiors.

  “She’s improving,” Claudine said the moment the door was closed. “She doesn’t make many mistakes, although she hasn’t really got the difference between three and five yet.”

  Hester smiled. It had been a long and wandering journey with Ruby, but the successes were joyous.

  “How is Mr. Monk?” Claudine asked with a look of sudden gravity in her face. “I don’t know whether to be furious that they have taken the investigation away from him, or relieved that he can’t be blamed if they don’t catch anyone. I think he is the only person who might have had a chance.”

  “That is precisely how I feel,” Hester agreed. “But I am angry with myself for being angry that they took the case away from him. I’m sure the Home Office did what they thought was most beneficial to finding out the truth, and I ought to care only about the truth. A hundred and seventy-nine people died.” She refused to visualize it in her mind; it was a hideous picture.

  “One or two women we know were on it,” Claudine said quietly.

  Hester was startled. “Women we know? You mean contributors to the clinic?”

  “No, I mean patients we’ve had,” Claudine answered with a wry smile at Hester’s misunderstanding. “It was a pleasure boat, with a big party on board. Apparently planned for some time. All sorts of people were there, several very wealthy, and liking their entertainment. And I heard talk that there were a good few army men expected, young and unattached.” She did not elaborate on her meaning; it was obvious.

  “I’m sorry, I didn’t realize. That is terrible.” Hester said quickly. She meant it. You cannot nurse someone and see them in extreme distress without feeling a degree of pity. Of course, the information should not have come as a surprise, considering their clientele. “How do you know?”

  “From Kate Sawbridge,” Claudine replied. “You know her? Big girl with a lot of fair hair. She said Jilly Ford told her about it, especially the soldiers, and she wished she’d been asked. Could have been fun, and good pay. Maybe something on the side. She said Jilly was showing of
f a bit.” Suddenly her face was bleak. “Poor soul …”

  Hester thought of Monk, remembering how he had looked when he came home after fishing the dead out of the river all night, and then diving to look at those left in the wreck before they raised it. It must have been like a battlefield under the water. She had seen enough of them on land. She thought that with time she would have forgotten, but she never did.

  She forced her mind back to the present and practical things.

  “Do you think Kate might know some details about the boat, if the party was talked about?” she asked. “There’ll be other girls who wanted to go, and didn’t. Or whose friends went. Let’s see what the gossip is. There could be bits and pieces which, if we put them together, make something useful.”

  “Certainly,” Claudine said quickly. “I dare say we’ll get a lot of nonsense, wishful thinking, and gossip having to do with old scores, but we’ll sort it out.”

  MONK WAS FRUSTRATED THAT he could do nothing to help the ongoing investigation. And he was still angry with the insult to the River Police. He found himself talking to his men more, encouraging them, even praising them at times. It was not his usual habit, and he knew he was saying to them what he felt the authorities should have: They had earned better regard than this.

  Going upriver from Wapping toward Westminster, he found himself digging deep into the water and throwing all his weight behind the oar, forcing Orme to pull harder as well. His mind was full of questions about who had placed the dynamite, and why. The theft he was now investigating barely touched his thoughts.

  Was Runcorn right and it was political? Personally he still thought smuggling was also a possibility. There was a lot of money in that, a fortune, if one really big shipment made it through all the barriers. The sinking of the boat might have been away to get the goods, whatever they were, past customs somehow; it might also convince the original owner that they were destroyed, lost forever!

  Would Lydiate’s men even think of such a thing? Or know who to ask, in order to find out?

  Darker ideas invaded his mind. Was there corruption involved, and that was why the River Police were excluded? They knew the water officials, the excise men! They would be far less easily deceived by a web of lies. He drove the oar in deeper. The boat slewed slightly, because Orme had not been ready for such a surge forward.

  Monk should apologize. More than that: He should measure his stroke more evenly.

  It was a bright day, full of little shivering gusts that made the ripples scurry first one way then the other.

  They rowed in silence, passing the usual river traffic of lighters, ferries, cargo-laden barges, and freighters low in the water. There were very few pleasure boats, although the weather was steadily improving.

  He caught Orme’s eye once or twice and knew his mind was filled with the same thoughts. He could see the suppressed anger in Orme’s weathered face mirroring his own. This exclusion was an insult to the whole force. It didn’t matter that the case was difficult, that maybe no one would solve it completely. This was their river, their beat.

  They swung the boat shoreward and pulled in toward the bank just short of Westminster Bridge. This was where most of the pleasure boats left to go either up the river toward Kew Gardens, Lambeth Palace, and the little river islands; or downstream through the Pool of London, the Tower, the Isle of Dogs, and eventually Gravesend and the wide estuary to the sea.

  They tied up and climbed out into the dock. It was good to stand after the long row.

  Orme shook his head. His eyes were narrowed against the sun, and the cap he always wore was pulled down over his brow.

  “Anyone could get on or off here,” he said flatly, voicing what they were both thinking. “All you need is a peacoat on and a cap, and you’d be invisible. We don’t even know who we’re looking for. He could be anyone! Waterman, laborer, tourist, or even a gentleman. Or a soldier on leave.”

  “He must have been checked as he boarded,” Monk replied. “He was either guest or crew.”

  “Crew,” Orme said quietly. “Guests would have been known by name, and the survivors spoken to. That’s a risk he wouldn’t take.”

  “I wonder if they’ve thought to check that no guests got off again before she set sail,” Monk thought aloud.

  Orme gave a tight smile. “Don’t think much of them, do you!”

  “I wouldn’t like to go through that guest list looking for whoever set the bomb off,” Monk replied. “They’ll have to do it, just in case they miss something. But apparently there’s a lot of money, power, and privilege involved, people who don’t expect to account to the police for anything.”

  Orme gave him a wide-eyed stare.

  “All right,” Monk agreed. “If they’ve any sense at all, Lydiate’ll make damn sure they don’t miss it! I wonder who was paid to turn a blind eye … and what they thought it was about.”

  Orme didn’t answer, but turned slowly, gazing around the sheds and ticket offices, entrance booths and places for passengers to wait in an orderly fashion, without spilling over into the road above.

  The wind had dropped here. The small sailboats barely moved, their hulls and slack sails reflected in the water. There were few sounds except the slurping of the tide and an occasional shout.

  A string of barges came past slowly, lightermen balancing with an odd, almost awkward grace in the sterns. A ferry wove in and out, and then docked gently at the steps twenty yards downstream.

  “Of course the dynamite itself could have come on board with the catering,” Monk went on. “Orme, who are the invisible people?”

  Orme looked startled. “What?”

  “Who are the invisible people?” Monk repeated. “The ones who are always here, so much so that we end up not really seeing them; just like postmen, delivery boys, cabdrivers, maids coming out to shake carpets or fetch water, fill coal scuttles.”

  Orme stared at him. “Same sorts of people around here,” he said slowly. “Men who fill and empty things, clean up, tidy after us, drive us on land or ferry us on the water. The landsmen investigating the bombing won’t think to seek them out, I bet.” There was frustration in his voice. “You’re going to tell ’em that?” he said.

  Monk hesitated, but not because he wasn’t sure what the answer was. He was remembering the river at dusk, the lights of the pleasure boat, then the roar as the bow exploded and the screams that followed. And the darkness engulfing the water as the ship plunged down. He had to force out of his mind the people they had tried to help, and couldn’t because their boat was too full already, too far away, too late.

  Orme waited silently, as he so often did, like a ship for the tide.

  “Yes, of course I will,” Monk finally said. As he turned around and started walking back across the wooden quay up toward the street, he saw a police sergeant coming toward them.

  The man stopped in front of them, glancing at Orme, then back at Monk.

  “Sorry, sir,” he said awkwardly. “I know as you’re River Police, but this is still a restricted area, unless you got a reason you need to be here? There in’t no one landed here this last couple of hours, I can swear to that.”

  Monk looked at him. The man was perhaps thirty, clean-shaven, eager, and at this moment embarrassed.

  “Who did you see?” Monk asked him mildly.

  The sergeant looked around. “No one, sir, as I said. Who were you looking for?”

  “Who’s that over there?” Monk gestured toward a ferry pulling away southward.

  “No one, sir, just the regular ferry to the steps there.”

  “And over there?” Monk pointed again, a few yards across the water.

  “Lighterman, sir. Going up with the tide. It’s just turned. ’E’d ’ave had to wait or he’d ’ave been battling the current.”

  “Exactly,” Monk agreed. “The river is full of invisible people like that. They come and go, and we don’t see them, unless they do something out of character. Is your commander as observant as you
are? Would he notice anyone different, a stranger, out of step with the tide? Or maybe not out of step, not different at all?”

  The sergeant’s face blanched in the late afternoon sun. He swallowed. “I don’t know, sir. Do you think it could be a lighterman, or … someone like that who’s behind this?”

  “Well, if it wasn’t someone you saw, then it was someone you didn’t,” Monk said reasonably. “Someone who was there, but that you expected to be there, so you didn’t notice him.”

  The sergeant shook his head. “I don’t think so, sir. From the looks of it, it’s political. Least that’s what they’re reckoning. We’ve got a line on an Egyptian man. Worked for the caterers. Bit of a malcontent. Always complaining, and expressed some pretty ugly opinions when he wasn’t being too careful. Quite a bit of evidence against him, I hear.”

  “Egyptian? On the Thames?” Monk affected to be polite rather than interested.

  “World’s getting smaller, sir,” the sergeant replied. “They open up that canal and we’ll be getting to the Indies in a matter of days rather than weeks. No more clipper ships, I reckon. And we’ll miss them. Most beautiful thing I ever saw was one o’ them under full sail. Couldn’t take my eyes off it.”

  With a wave of sorrow Monk realized exactly what he meant.

  Change was coming. And there was always a price to be paid for it.

  He turned and looked at Orme in the waning light, and thought he saw the same understanding in his face, and perhaps also the same sense of inevitable loss. Change comes like a tide, and any seaman knows the tide waits for no one.

  “Why would an Egyptian blow up an English pleasure boat on the Thames?” he asked the sergeant.

  “No idea, sir,” the man replied. “Not sure that I want to know. Lot of money involved in the canal project, though, an’ Mr. Lydiate says it’ll change all sorts of things for the Egyptians too. Lot of them died building it, that’s for sure. Some say it was in the hundreds!”

  Monk nodded. He saw very well the layers of money, influence, lies, and debts that could be connected to the canal project. There were infinite possibilities for secrets and distortion of facts. Perhaps Runcorn was right and none of them would unravel all that lay behind the sinking of the Princess Mary.