Dark Tide Rising Page 6

  No one argued with him.

  Monk thought about it. He forced himself to remember Exeter’s face, his voice, and the agony in it. And the horror when he saw Kate! That cry would stay in Monk’s ears forever, as if the silence had only just closed over it.

  Hooper was looking at him. Was that pity in his face? They had really failed this time and, as the leader, it was Monk’s failure. It could not be put right now. Even if by some fluke of luck they got the money back, it was Kate Exeter they wanted. Harry Exeter was willing to pay—that much and anything else—to get his wife back. Monk would have felt the same. Had that made him timid? Robbed him of decisiveness?

  But what could they have done differently? They had done exactly what the kidnappers had asked, to the letter: time, place, amount of money, sending Exeter in with it alone.

  “Someone hated Exeter enough to rob him of everything,” Monk said slowly. “They had the money. We were no threat to them if they simply took it and went. It was nearly dark, and the tide was rising. It was the perfect situation for them. They had every advantage.”

  “Why didn’t he tell us that there are people who hate him to this degree?” Hooper wondered. “There’s more story to this.”

  “Doesn’t matter now,” Laker said bitterly. “The poor woman’s dead, and they have got the money. But on the other hand, since they’ve got all he cares about, there’s nothing left to lose in going after them. And when he’s absorbed what’s happened, and got over the first shock a little, he’ll be furious, and take the edge off his grief with anger. A lot of people do.”

  The rest of them turned and looked at him. Their faces reflected a range of emotions: agreement, pity, suspense, even fear of what that anger might bring. No one disbelieved it.

  Monk had been too immersed in his own reactions to think about that. He did not want to imagine how Exeter felt. It was too painful, too all-encompassing to face. But Laker was right.

  What he had not said, and what weighed on Monk’s mind with further pain, was the thought that the kidnappers had known so much about their plans. There were five or six different ways the River Police could have got in, but the kidnappers had known precisely which ones they were going to use, how many men, and where they were along those tunnels and passages. What he forced himself to wonder was, who had told them?

  It hurt even to think the words, and yet they were there, whether he said them or not. Some changes had been made to their plans at the last minute. One had even been made as they reached Jacob’s Island in the fading light. It could only have been passed along at that time. So the traitor had to be one of his own men. The knowledge closed around him like a thick mist, blinding, close as the air he breathed, and knotting inside him with a rising nausea.

  He could not face it tonight. He had other, wretched things he had to do, starting with telling Rathbone what had happened.

  Then he should go to Exeter, but with some sort of plan. At the moment, he had nothing in mind. He could not tell him anything that would help, and yet he could not blame the men, as if he were not the cause of it all. He could not let Exeter think he did not care, or did not realize that it was his fault. And it was. One of the men Monk had chosen, and trusted, had betrayed them.

  He looked at them all, sitting and standing awkwardly, aware of at least some of the depth of the disaster. They were cold and filthy and, above all, hurt. The physical pain was there; some of the emotions were beginning to show. They were all looking at him, not at each other. The suspicion was taking hold.

  “All right,” Monk said quietly. “There’s nothing more we can do. Go home. Get as much sleep as you can. Look after yourselves. Unfortunately, those that are fit are going to have to start again tomorrow. Good night.”

  * * *

  —

  MONK TOOK A HANSOM to Rathbone’s house. It was late enough that Rathbone was likely to be home. Since his remarriage, he did not go out to social events unless required. He was happy in Beata’s company. They often found much to talk about, but silence was also companionable. So many of life’s necessities could be conveyed by a glance, a smile, or even a touch. Heaven knew, Rathbone had waited long enough for that kind of happiness. Monk knew it himself. He had imagined Rathbone would find it with his first wife, never foreseeing the tragedy ahead. He also knew that Rathbone had found it in the very beginning, when he had been in love with Hester, but she had chosen Monk.

  It was not particularly cold in the hansom, and yet Monk was knotted up inside, clenched too tight, as if he were frozen.

  They arrived and Monk got out of the hansom awkwardly, his foot sliding a little on the black ice of the pavement. He paid the driver and walked up to the front door. He pulled the bell rope and stepped back.

  The door was answered almost immediately by Rathbone himself. He took one look at Monk and his face tightened. There was no need to speak. He stepped back to allow Monk inside.

  Monk followed him, engulfed immediately by the warmth. Somehow, the sheer comfort made him feel worse.

  “You look perished,” Rathbone said quietly. “You need some dry clothes. Come in to the fireside. I’ll get you a whisky.” He turned and led the way into the withdrawing room.

  Beata was already standing. She was a beautiful woman, in a quiet, serene way. Her hair was so fair as to be nearly silver, but it was the calm within her that overrode everything else. It was not the absence of pain that filled her, but the overcoming of it. Rathbone never told Monk what was behind her brave serenity, except that it was rooted in her first marriage to a powerful and vindictive man.

  Now she came forward. “Oh, William, you look frozen, and…and wounded! What would you like? Hot soup? A brandy? To speak privately with Oliver?” She looked him up and down. “Dry clothes? I am sure I can find something of Oliver’s that would fit you, at least well enough for now.”

  It was instinctive to decline, to avoid putting her to trouble, and perhaps even more to avoid admitting needing help. That was foolish. It must be perfectly obvious to her that he ached for help of every sort. “Thank you. And soup would be excellent. I am tempted by the brandy, but I have more to do tonight, and a clear head is needed.”

  “I’ll be back in about fifteen minutes. Give me that wet coat and I’ll set it by the fire,” she instructed.

  He obeyed, and when she was gone he stood by the fire. He realized he was too wet and too muddy to spoil the armchair by sitting in it.

  Rathbone remained standing also, a tacit mark of companionship. “What happened?” he asked. He knew this was what Monk had come to tell him.

  “We planned it down to the last detail,” Monk replied, staring into the flames. “We even altered a couple of things at the last moment, just as we landed. I hate that place.” His voice grated with emotion. “It’s cold and wet, everything sour and rotting as it slowly sinks into the slime.”

  Rathbone’s face grew paler and the lines around his mouth clearer as he realized the depth of Monk’s defeat, if not its entire nature.

  “No doubt they chose it for that reason,” said Rathbone. “And because Exeter would be utterly lost in it, and unable to fight back or follow them. But I hadn’t thought he cared about keeping the money, and still less about their being arrested!”

  “I don’t think that he did,” Monk said flatly. Now that it came to saying the actual words, it was even harder than he had expected. “But he did care about getting Kate back.” He watched Rathbone’s face as he slowly guessed what may have happened.

  “You mean…they took the money, but kept her? What do they want? More money? I don’t think he has it! I think it took an extraordinary effort to raise this much.”

  “No.” Monk forced himself to say it. “They killed her—horribly. Slashed her to bits…” He choked to a stop.

  Rathbone went ash pale. “Oh God!” He seemed about to say something more, and then re
alized the futility of it. Monk would not have said such a thing were it not the complete and unarguable truth. “He knows…?” Rathbone began.

  “Yes. He was one of the first into the place where it happened. He saw her.” Monk would never forget that cry.

  “Did you get any of them?” Rathbone asked.

  “No. We hurt a few quite badly, and most of my men were hurt, some more than others. They knew where we were.” That was the hardest thing to say. It was the one thing he still had to deal with, and he didn’t know where to begin. How could he have been so wrong about one of his men? And it was like a drop of ink in a glass of water. It stained everything. Who would do such a thing? And why? Greed? Fear? Hatred? Some kind of hideous error?

  Rathbone shook his head. “I suppose you don’t know how…or from who?”

  “Not yet.”

  Beata came back into the room with an armful of clothes. She spoke to Monk. “Go and try these on. See if something fits. If you want a hot bath, please have one. The soup will be another ten minutes at least, and I’ll not serve it until you are ready.”

  He hesitated. It seemed an unnecessary self-indulgence.

  “If you succumb to pneumonia, you are no use to anyone,” she said firmly. “From the look on your face, you’re going to have a lot to do in the next little while. You’ll need to be at your best.”

  He looked at her calm, clear eyes and read in them compassion, but not an ounce of yielding. He smiled and took the clothes.

  Twenty minutes later he was back by the fire in the sitting room, tasting a dish of hot soup. He felt a lot better physically, and he certainly looked it in some of Rathbone’s older clothes, which came close to fitting him, though he was taller and broader in the chest and shoulders. Beata had taken his clothes and promised to return them when they had been dealt with. She had said it with a twisted little smile and sadness in her eyes. The coat, she had said, would probably be a week, at least.

  Rathbone waited until the soup was finished and then looked straight at Monk. “Tell me what happened. I don’t know whether I need to know, but I might.”

  Monk recited everything as well as he could, both his own memory and the accounts of his men.

  “I see,” Rathbone said at last. “Is it possible that the kidnappers also took another hostage?”

  Monk was confused. “What do you mean?”

  “Someone else,” Rathbone explained patiently. “Perhaps someone belonging to one of your men? To assure his cooperation?”

  Monk let his breath out slowly. The thought had not occurred to him. How stupid! How obvious, now that he saw it. It was the one thing that would explain such a betrayal. “I don’t know,” he said slowly. “But I shall find out. Poor devil! That I could understand. But it doesn’t explain why they killed Kate, and so savagely. We are looking for an enemy, either of hers or of Exeter’s. You would think that anyone so bestial would stand out, wouldn’t you? They ought to have red eyes, or huge canine teeth, or some other feature that would mark them as different.”

  Rathbone smiled uneasily, but his eyes held no criticism. “Monk, you know as well as I do that the face of evil is not so easily recognizable. The worst people I’ve ever known look pretty much like anyone else. And they didn’t think they were evil. They had done a thorough job of convincing themselves that they were justified, even that they were the victims of some persecution or other. The raving madman is perfectly easy to recognize. It’s the one who believes he’s good, that all he does is justified, who is hard to see. The one who is in the center of his own universe is the real danger.” He sighed. “Poor Exeter. He must be devastated.”

  “He was. I’ve got to go and see him, see if he has any idea who is behind Kate’s murder, if he can scrape his brain together enough to think at all, that is. I wouldn’t blame him if he drank himself into oblivion.”

  “You have to see him tonight?” Beata asked. “You’re exhausted.”

  “Tomorrow I shall have to start searching for any evidence there is, find out if anybody along the river heard anything, knew anything. And more than that, which of my men betrayed us…whatever his reason. I hate this more than…” He did not finish the sentence; it was irrelevant anyway.

  Half an hour later he forced himself to stand up and take his leave. He went out to look for a cab to take him to Exeter’s house, having got the address from Rathbone. The street was quiet. A hansom passed him at a brisk trot. A carriage turned down a mews entrance toward its own stables, home for the night. He envied them.

  He started to walk, mainly to keep warm. In the main thoroughfare, with more traffic, it would be easier.

  It did not take him long after that to find a hansom, and far too soon he arrived at Exeter’s door. He told the cabby to wait, in case there was no answer. It would not have surprised him, and he certainly would not blame Exeter if he refused to see anyone at all, least of all Monk.

  But a manservant answered the door and let him in as soon as he gave his name. He paid the cabby and went inside. He dreaded this. He had no answers. It had happened to him before, this feeling of not knowing desperately important things, crucial things that people were going to ask him to explain. He was very aware of wearing clothes that did not fit him, the trousers coming to his ankles, not to his boots, the jacket slightly tight across his shoulders. But at least he did not carry the stench of the river with him.

  He was shown into a study where a fire was roaring in the grate. Exeter stood in front of it, slightly to the side, leaning against the mantel as if unaware of its heat. Perhaps he would never feel warm right through again. He might burn his skin and not warm the bone. His face was gray, and the glass of whisky half drunk in his hand did not seem to have brought any blood to his veins. He attempted to smile and failed. It was like a leer on a death mask. It made Monk feel worse.

  “Have you news?” Exeter asked, clearing his throat before he spoke.

  “No,” Monk admitted. “Except that there is no other conclusion than that one of my own men betrayed us. Even if someone knew beforehand, we made last-minute changes. They knew exactly where to expect us.”

  Exeter nodded slowly, as if it was only just making sense to him.

  “I have no idea who, or why,” Monk went on. “Unless the man also had someone being held hostage, and they would kill them if he did not betray us.” It made sense, but it was no excuse.

  Exeter’s eyes widened a fraction. “I can’t imagine anything that would make me consent to that,” he said hoarsely.

  Monk thought he could. If it had been Hester, would he have gone ahead? He could not bear even to think of it. “One life for another?”

  Exeter shuddered. “I suppose I can’t blame him,” he said quietly. “If they had said to me, ‘Kate’s life if you do your duty,’ I might have betrayed anyone at all—but not her. Let it be, Monk. If that’s what it is, the poor devil will suffer enough. Perhaps it was somebody’s child? Could you deliberately let your child die, to save some woman you did not even know?”

  Monk knew that he could not answer that. He knew all the men had families of some sort, except Hooper. There was no one mentioned in his papers and he had never spoken of anyone. Monk identified with that, both the freedom and the loneliness.

  There was a heavy silence in the room for several seconds.

  “Somebody might know something that will help,” Monk said. “There’ll be word on the river. People might have friends, and more importantly to us, they’ll have enemies. I’ll find them. Not that it’s much comfort to you. I’m not pretending it is.”

  Exeter gave something like a sob. “No,” he whispered. “Right now, I don’t give a damn if you find him or not. Later I will. Later, I’ll put the rope around his neck and pull the trapdoor myself.”

  Monk could only agree.

  Slowly Exeter looked up. “Talk to me about something—anyt
hing. Do you like working on the water? Do you like being a policeman? If you like the challenge, I can understand that…”

  Monk sensed Exeter’s intense loneliness. He would be torn between wanting privacy, not to be questioned or probed in his grief, and yet needing human contact as well.

  “Yes, I like working on the river,” he answered. “I find that now I’m used to it, I like the effort of rowing. I like the moods of the river and sense of space.”

  Exeter looked as if he were, at least for the moment, actually listening. “Ever been to sea?” he asked.

  Monk answered without hesitation. “Yes.” It was something he knew from evidence in a case not long ago, and from flashes of memory: bright, hard sunlight and the heave of the deck beneath him as the ship fought the open water.

  Exeter’s face quickened with interest. “Where?”

  “Barbary Coast,” Monk smiled. “Gold Rush days, ’48, ’49.”

  “Round the Horn,” Exeter said, as if the words were an incantation.

  Monk could only remember a few glimpses of that: the storm, the immense seas like rolling mountains, the vast rock face of Tierra del Fuego rising in the distance. The endless violence of the wind and water. Pitting yourself against an elemental force no man had ever conquered, only survived, and then not all.

  “Me, too,” Exeter said softly. “If you’ve sailed round the Horn, you are a man—whatever you were before.” He put out his hand and Monk took it and gripped it hard. He did not add words. They only weakened a meaning that was beyond the reach of those who had not experienced it. He met Exeter’s eyes, and nodded.

  CHAPTER

  5

  HOOPER WOKE UP THE next morning, stiff and still tired. His head ached and felt heavy. It was an effort to move his legs, and both shoulders were stiff, the right more than the left. His fingers would hardly move, they were so swollen. Memory of the previous day returned with a chill he felt through his entire body. His bare feet were ice cold even on the rag rug as he swung them out of bed and stood up. He was used to physical discomfort. Long years at sea had taught him to disregard it. He knew today that part of it was due to his reluctance to face the tragedy of this case and begin the long task of trying to untangle it. He washed and shaved in cold water and dressed in his regular, nondescript working clothes, both warm and comfortable.