Revenge in a Cold River Page 7

  He was a different man now. Certainly he was still clever, still dressed rather better than a man of even his new superior rank usually did. But he had seen his own image in other people’s eyes, and hated it.

  He was also happy now in a completeness he had never tasted before, and that made all the difference. But a man who could only aspire to some element of compassion, even when he was happy, was not worth much. The achievement would have been to be spontaneously generous when he had so little that really mattered to him. It was too late for that now. He had Hester—and Scuff. And he had friends: Rathbone, Crow, Hooper, even Runcorn from the past, who was now so different from the man he used to despise.

  And of course there had been Orme. If McNab was responsible for Orme’s death, was it because of Monk, and something that he could not remember?

  Certainly there was nothing from the last thirteen years to account for the look he had seen in McNab’s face, briefly, and then deliberately hidden again.

  As they rode back through the wet, gray streets to the heart of London, he went over and over the incident on the wharf, and in the river. He was wretchedly cold, his wet trousers stuck to him, and his feet were numb in his boots. Hooper must feel the same.

  He tried to recall exactly what had happened. They had been waiting for the escaped prisoner to appear, followed by the police or one of McNab’s men. The two had appeared from different sides of the row of buildings. Owen, smaller and faster, had been ahead, racing toward the wharf, when the big man, Pettifer, had come from the other side. They had collided, but had Owen attacked Pettifer, or was it the other way around?

  Certainly they had fought, striking out at each other, getting closer and closer to the water. Looking back, Monk saw it could indeed have been Pettifer who was the pursuer and the small man he now knew to be Owen, the fugitive.

  God, what a mess!

  When Pettifer had panicked he had all but drowned Monk along with himself. If he had done so, Owen would still have escaped. Who the devil could have expected him to swim like that?

  The schooner captain, maybe? He had been on deck. Was that chance? Or by design? Had the shouts brought him up from below, to see what was going on? How many men would there be on a boat that size? Not necessarily more than two or three, not for a two-master.

  How did he know that? Had he at some time in the past learned more about sail than he recalled? He had grown up on the coast of Northumberland. Old letters he had kept from his sister had told him that. He knew the sea, the smell of it was familiar, the swing and balance of standing in a small boat on the water, the rhythm of the oars. He had taken easily to being on the swift-flowing, tidal Thames.

  Where was the schooner now? Did anybody know its name? He should have asked the local police at the wharf. Or perhaps Aaron Clive had noticed it. It was a beautiful ship, and had lain at anchor near his warehouses. It must have passed them on the way up, and down again.

  Any seaman at all helps a man in the water. They would have to find the ship, and pursue the issue, for whatever it was worth. Everyone, on water or on land, would be searching for Owen, the explosives expert, the wanted man.

  But Pettifer’s death was not Monk’s fault, except in the most indirect way. It was Monk who had struck Pettifer, to save them both. Had he hit him so hard that the blow had killed him? He had not thought he had the strength or the weight, especially in the water with no purchase on the ground. Surely he had only temporarily stunned him, as had been his intention. But then he had drowned—which had not been Monk’s intention at all!

  They would not know that until the autopsy, although Crow had implied it was not the blow that had killed him.

  He should go to the police surgeon and ask him to be very precise. It was imperative that they be certain.

  McNab would have a field day with it if Monk were directly responsible for Pettifer’s death. He would believe it was revenge for Orme. Monk could still feel the weight of Orme’s body in his arms, the blood everywhere, dark red and sticky as it congealed, bright and wet where it was still pumping, and nothing they could do would stop it.

  He remembered his own heart beating with panic as they set Orme ashore, men in the water up to their chests, all the helping hands, faces, wretched with pity. Then the long wait in the hospital. Monk had sat with Orme all day and most of the night, hoping, praying. He was exhausted and numb when Orme died. McNab would say Monk was beside himself after the battle and keen to blame anyone else for the fiasco on the gunrunning ship.

  But that would still invite people to wonder if McNab had betrayed them to the pirates.

  When the cab stopped and they paid the driver, Hooper took the omnibus to the station. Monk went straight to the morgue, and found Hyde just coming out of the room where he performed autopsies. He was drying his hands on a rough, white towel and he looked cold.

  “Ha! Was just going to send for you,” he said with satisfaction. “This fellow of yours—Blount? What the devil’s going on with him?”

  “Not much,” Monk replied. He was far more concerned with asking Hyde to attend to Pettifer immediately, and if possible give Monk some warning as to what he had found. He needed to know the cause of death was drowning, not an immediate result of the blow Monk had dealt him. Surely it could not have been hard enough to have damaged his skull. Had Monk himself panicked enough to do that?

  He had lost the thread of Hyde’s comment.

  “What? What did you say?” he asked.

  Hyde looked more closely at Monk. “God, man! You look awful. And your trousers and boots are sodden. Where the hell have you been? It’s not that wet outside.” He led the way toward his office and opened the door for Monk to go in. As always, every shelf was crammed with books and there were piles of papers stacked on every surface. But there was a brisk fire burning in the hearth and the air was blessedly warm.

  “Sit down,” Hyde ordered. “You look worse than some of my corpses. What’s happened?”

  “Just had an escaped prisoner and the customs man chasing him fall into the river,” Monk said miserably, moving some papers and sitting down.

  “So of course you naturally jumped in after them,” Hyde concluded with a bleak, twisted smile. “I hope they’re suitably appreciative.” He walked over to a small wall cupboard and opened it with a key on his watch chain. He took out two glasses and a bottle of excellent brandy. He poured a generous helping into each glass and handed one across to Monk.

  Monk was glad of it; he was beginning to feel a little queasy. He took a large mouthful and swallowed it. Its fire burned into his stomach immediately, and then seemed to leak into his blood.

  “Grateful?” Monk examined the word. “Well, the prisoner damn well is. He got clean away. The customs man rather less so. I’m afraid he’s dead. He’s your problem for the time being.”

  Hyde took a deep breath. “Really? What happened? Prisoner kill him?”

  “No. Either the river did, or I did.”

  Hyde took a long, luxurious mouthful of the brandy, rolled it around his mouth, then swallowed it.

  “Stop being so cryptic and explain yourself,” he ordered.

  “He fell into the river and panicked. I had to hit him fairly hard to stop him drowning us both. We got him out onto the wharf, but he died. You know Crow?”

  Hyde’s eyebrows rose. “Of course I know Crow. Lunatic, but he’s actually a more than half-decent doctor. Your lad’s with him, isn’t he?”

  “Yes…”

  “Good decision. Why? Did Crow see this panicky customs man?”

  “Yes. Came just after we got him out of the water.”

  “What did he say?”

  “Not much. Just that he couldn’t save him.”

  “Was he dead when you got him out?”

  “I don’t think so. I saw his eyelids flutter, and it looked as if he coughed up a bit of water. Could be I just wanted him to live.”

  “Got useful information for you?” Hyde asked curiously.

&
nbsp; “No! I just didn’t bloody well want to be responsible for his death!” Monk took another mouthful of the brandy and swallowed it, steadying himself. “I’m sorry. I thought he was the prisoner, but I still did everything I could to save him.”

  “And he turned out to be the customs officer?” Hyde shook his head. “Not your day, was it? I’ll look at him carefully when he gets here. One of McNab’s men, was he?”

  “Of course…”

  “Not doing well, is he, our McNab?” Hyde said it with relish. “His men who lost Blount, wasn’t it? Well, I’ve got more news for you on that. Poor sod was well dead by the time he was shot. An hour or two at the very least. Now why would anyone shoot in the back some poor devil who was already thoroughly dead? A little exercise for you, Monk.”

  Monk realized that Hyde was watching him with far more interest than his casual air would suggest. What was he looking for?

  “You’re sure? He couldn’t have been unconscious in the water, from the shot, but still breathing, so he drowned?”

  “How the hell long do you think it takes an unconscious man to drown, Monk? Minutes. Three or four at most. He was shot long after that.”

  “How do you know?” Monk persisted.

  “If he’d been in the water, shot but alive, he’d have struggled and bled like a stuck pig from a wound like that,” Hyde answered impatiently. “It tore major blood vessels. He’s lost very little blood. I don’t mind you second-guessing me, Monk, but however much you don’t like the answer, that’s it! He was dead when he was shot. No heartbeat, and already sodden with water. In fact, from the state of the wound, I’d say he was in the water three or four hours, pulled out very obviously dead, and then someone shot him in the back. I wouldn’t swear on oath that they never put him back in the water afterward, but I’m sure enough I’d bet everything I have on it.”

  Monk did not answer. His mind was pulling at the tangles of why McNab had sent for him rather than keep to himself the fact that Blount had escaped from their custody, drowned, and then been shot. He would not expose his own men’s errors, to Monk of all people, unless he had a powerful reason.

  In a flash of highly uncomfortable memory, Monk saw the bright, sharp satisfaction in McNab’s eyes as he exposed the wound and said, “Murder’s your job….It’s all yours,” to Monk. He wanted Monk on it. Why?

  And now there was the ghastly fact that Pettifer had been McNab’s man, and he was dead, very possibly from Monk’s attempt to save him. And yet, of course, if Monk had stood on the quayside and let him drown, that would very clearly have been his fault, too.

  All accidental? Or somehow designed?

  No, that was absurd. It could as easily have been Hooper who had gone in to help Pettifer. But then if Hooper were blamed Monk would still be implicated. Hooper was his man—his best man now, with Orme gone—and one to whom Monk owed a personal loyalty.

  Added to which, McNab would hardly have arranged for his own man to be drowned, even if he were able to. Monk was allowing his obsession with McNab to make him lose his balance, and his judgment.

  “Thank you,” he said to Hyde. “When they bring Pettifer in, which should be anytime now, I’d appreciate if you take extra care to ascertain whether he died from drowning, or if from the blow I dealt him to keep him from breaking my neck and drowning us both. If there’s anything uncertain about it, McNab will be on to it and blaming everyone else, starting with me.”

  Hyde nodded, pursing his lips dubiously. “Watch him,” he advised. “He’s always digging, poking around, asking questions. I don’t know what it’s about, but he has a long and deep grudge against you. But I imagine you know that?”

  “Yes…” Monk let the word hang, the idea unfinished. He knew the fact, but he had very little idea what the reason was. To begin with he had assumed general interservice rivalry: the River Police versus Customs. But lately he had been obliged to accept that it was deeper than that, and a good deal more personal. Did it go back further than his memory? Before 1856, and the accident? Should the name Rob Nairn mean anything to him?

  Then why had McNab waited so long to have his revenge? It made no sense—unless he had been afraid of Monk before he knew Monk’s loss of memory? Suddenly he was vulnerable…and a man with no memory of a past that could be anything was not fit to lead the River Police. He could be manipulated, used too easily.

  He thanked Hyde and walked out of the morgue, with its overcleanliness and the smells that masked the odor of death but somehow made it so much worse.

  The street was bitterly cold. The scents of carbolic and lye were replaced by soot and horse manure, and now and then a whiff of drains.

  Then he crossed the road, dodging a brewer’s dray and a hansom. With perhaps a little careful inquiry into a few events in past history, around the time of the accident, McNab had slowly pieced enough of it together to realize how much Monk had forgotten. Like a shark scenting blood, knowing his prey was wounded, McNab was circling closer.

  Was Monk being ridiculous, allowing his own imagination to betray him? Or was it at last warning him of the truth?

  He had no choice but to face McNab over Pettifer’s death and to learn more about Owen. The sooner it was done the better. He would like to know from Hyde the exact cause of Pettifer’s death, but he might not get that for a day or two, and finding Owen could not wait. Or finding the schooner captain, for that matter. Unless, of course, they were both well out into the Atlantic by now.

  —

  MCNAB WAS AT HIS desk in the customs offices when Monk arrived the following day. There were always administrative matters to deal with. Papers multiplied like rats if they were not attended to.

  McNab looked up from his desk. He had a very pleasant office, with a view over the Pool of London. Even at this time of the year, the light was bright off the water and the black masts of a hundred ships swayed and jostled against the skyline with a constant movement.

  McNab remained seated, something he would not have done six months ago. His square, heavy face was devoid of expression as much as he could make it, but there was still a brightness in his eyes.

  He put down his pen, carefully, so as not to mark his high-quality desk set with ink. The leather looked new.

  “Come to apologize, have you?” he asked, looking up at Monk. He did not invite him to sit.

  Monk pulled out the leather-padded chair opposite the desk and sat anyway, making himself at least outwardly comfortable.

  “Not apologize,” he replied with perfect control of his temper. “The man panicked. He’d have drowned us both. Not uncommon, unfortunately. But my condolences. It’s hard to lose a man.”

  “Am I supposed to be grateful?” McNab asked, raising his sparse eyebrows slightly.

  “You’re supposed to be civil,” Monk replied. “As am I. Is there any word about Owen yet? I assume you are doing all you can to find him? He must have been of some value to you, or you wouldn’t have been questioning him. Had he any connection with Blount?”

  “Thanks to you drowning poor Pettifer,” McNab replied, “Owen got clean away. That damn schooner captain took him downriver. We questioned him, but he said he put Owen off at the next wharf. There’s no proof whether he did or not.”

  “You questioned him?” Monk seized on the one point that mattered, and that betrayed at least part of what McNab implied.

  “Of course I did!” McNab snapped. He seemed about to add something more, then bit it back.

  Monk smiled. “Then he isn’t halfway across the Atlantic. Or in France, either. And you will have searched the schooner?”

  “Of course!”

  “Then it sounds as if he did put Owen off somewhere,” Monk concluded. “Of course, Owen could still be in France by now. What do you know about him?”

  There was the faintest gleam of satisfaction in McNab’s eyes, as if he were savoring something in his mind. “Forgotten, have you?”

  Monk felt a stab of fear, as if suddenly he had been thrown back into
the days just after the accident, when he felt dislike around him, tension in people he could not place, and had no idea why. He dismissed it. McNab was playing games, perhaps in revenge for Pettifer’s death, reminding Monk that he knew his weakness. Pettifer might have been a good man, when he wasn’t terrified. Perhaps he had had a particular fear of drowning. Some people had.

  He looked McNab directly in the eye and saw the gleam fade again.

  “I know his record,” he lied, referring back to Owen. “I want to know what you observed of him. Surely you know more than the list of convictions?” He leaned forward a little. “Is he clever, or lucky? An opportunist or a planner? Does he have friends or is he a loner? What are his weaknesses? Carelessness? Disloyalty, so too many enemies? Is he greedy and doesn’t know when to stop and take his gains and quit? Has he got something he’s afraid of, like Pettifer and the water, for example?”

  Fury lit McNab’s face, making it momentarily ugly rather than merely plain.

  “How like you to ask,” he said very softly. “He’s not afraid of heights, or falling, if that’s what you mean.” He watched Monk with extraordinary intensity, as if daring Monk to look away from him. There was an emotion inside him that was impossible to read, except that it was filled with pain. That much burned through everything else.

  Monk was put off an instant answer.

  McNab waited.

  What could Monk say that would not show he had been disturbed by the sudden moment of savage reality, whatever it had meant? One thing he was now sure of: Whatever lay between himself and McNab, McNab remembered it very clearly, and he did not. He was losing his balance on the edge of the unknown.

  “I want to catch the man,” Monk said calmly. “The more I know of him, the better chance I have. Who is this schooner captain? What do you know of him?”

  “Fin Gillander,” McNab responded. His voice still had a rough edge to it, as if it cost him an effort to reply to such an ordinary question. “American, I think, or sounds like it. Good-looking man, arrogant. Thinks that because he’s got a fast ship he owns the seas. Damn fool, if you ask me. Owen told him he was the police and Pettifer the criminal. At least so he claims. I think he’s a bit of a chancer. I daresay Owen slipped him a few guineas to take him downriver.”