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“Gonna throw yourself in, are ye?” he said cheerfully. “Wi’ a face like that it wouldn’a surprise me. Ye’ll find it powerful cold. Take yer breath away, it will.”
“It’s bloody cold out here,” Monk said ungraciously.
“In’t nothing compared with the water,” the bargee said, still with a smile. He fished in the pocket of his blue coat and brought out a bottle. “ ’Ave a drop o’ this. It don’t cure much but the cold, but that’s somethin’!”
Monk hesitated. It could be any rotgut, but he was frozen and bitterly angry. He had come so close.
“Not if yer goin’ to jump, mind,” the bargee said, pulling a face. “Waste o’ good rum. Jamaickey, that is. Nothin’ else like it. Ever bin ter Jamaickey?”
“No. No, I haven’t.” It was probably true, and it hardly mattered.
The man held out the bottle again.
Monk took it and put it to his lips. It was rum, a good rum too. He took a swig and felt the fire go down his throat. He passed it back.
“Thank you.”
“Why don’t ye come away from the water an’ have a bite ter eat. I got a pie. Ye can have half.”
Monk knew how precious the pie was, a whole pie. The man’s kindness made him feel suddenly vulnerable again. There was too much that was worth caring about.
“That’s good of you,” he said gently. “But I have to catch up with a man, and I keep just missing him.”
“What sort of a man?” the bargee said doubtfully, although he must have heard the change in Monk’s voice, even if he could not see his expression in the waning light.
“Caleb Stone,” Monk replied. “A violent sort of man, who almost certainly murdered his brother. I don’t suppose I can prove that, not when the body could be anywhere. But I want to know if he’s dead, for the widow’s sake. I don’t give a damn about Caleb.”
“Don’t ye? He murdered his brother, and ye don’t care?” the bargee said with a sideways squint.
“I’d prove it if I could,” Monk admitted. “But I’m hired to prove the brother’s dead, so she can at least have what’s hers and feed his children. I think she’d sooner have that than revenge. Wouldn’t you?”
“Aye,” the bargee agreed. “Aye, I would that. So ye want Caleb?”
“Yes.” Monk stared fixedly at the darkening river. Was it worth trying to get across to the other side now? He had no idea where to start looking, or even if Caleb might have doubled back and by now be safe in some comfortable public house in the Isle of Dogs.
“I’ll take ye,” the bargee offered suddenly. “I know where ’e’s gone. Leastways, I know where ’e’s likely gone. I don’t do wi’ leavin’ bairns without a father. He’s a bad one, Caleb.”
“Thank you,” Monk accepted before the man had time to change his mind. “What’s your name? Mine’s Monk.”
“Oh, aye. Don’t suit ye, less it be one o’ them inquisitor monks what used to burn folks. Mine’s Archie McLeish. Ye’d better come wi’ me. I’ve a boat a few paces along. Not much, cold and wet, but it’ll get us across.” And he turned and ambled off, walking on the sides of his feet with a sway as if the dockside were moving.
Monk caught up with him. “The inquisitors burned people for their beliefs,” he said waspishly. “I don’t give a sod what people believe, only what they do to each other.”
“Ye have the face o’ a man who cares,” Archie replied without looking at him. “I wouldn’a want ye after me. I’d as soon have the de’il himself.” He stopped at the top of a narrow flight of steps leading down to the water where a very small boat was rising gently as the tide rose. “It’s a hard thing to care,” he added.
Monk was about to deny that he cared, but Archie was not listening to him. He had bent his broad back and was loosening the moorings, which seemed to be in an extraordinarily complicated knot.
Monk climbed in and Archie settled to the oars. He pulled out skillfully, twisting the boat around, propelling it and steering it at the same time. The bank and the steps disappeared into the gray rain within yards. The thought crossed Monk’s mind that no one knew where he was. He had accepted the offer without taking the slightest precaution. Archie McLeish could have been paid by Caleb to do precisely this! He must know Monk was after him. Monk could go overboard in the darkness and mist of the river and be swept out with the ebb tide, his body washed up days later, or never. Caleb Stone might be blamed, but no one could prove it. It would be one more accident. Maybe Archie McLeish would even say Monk threw himself in.
He sat gripping the gunwales, determined if it came to that, he would make a damned good fight of it. Archie McLeish would go over with him.
They passed barges moving steadily, dark mounds in the mist, riding lights to port and starboard, hundreds of tons of cargo making them juggernauts on the tide. If they were caught in front of one of those they would be splintered like matchwood. There was no sound but the water, the dismal hoot far off of a foghorn, and now and then someone shouting.
They passed a square-rigger coming down from the Pool of London, its bare spars looming above them in the mist, reminding Monk of a row of gibbets. It was growing perceptibly colder. The raw wind blew through his coat as if it had been cotton shoddy, and touched his bones.
“Afraid o’ Caleb Stone, then, are ye?” Archie McLeish said cheerfully.
“No,” Monk snapped.
