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It was impenetrably dark ahead. How long had they been down here?
Trace was still guiding him along, turning slowly in the water, raising his other arm.
Monk lost his balance again. He should have left this to professionals. Except he could not; he must find this himself, hold the proof in his own hands, see everything there was, miss nothing, destroy nothing.
Still holding Monk’s hand, Trace swung his arm around and pointed. Ahead of them was a deeper murk, blocking off even the swirling brown of the water.
Trace started to move again and Monk followed, agonizingly slowly.
Then suddenly his feet were swept from under him and he felt a hard yank on the ropes. Awkwardly he tried to look down at what had caught him. It was the boards of a sunken wreck.
Trace was climbing up onto an angle of the boat.
Monk went after him. The effort to move made his muscles ache. They seemed to be on a deck, slipping slightly as the bow settled deeper into the mud. Moving hand over hand they found the cabin.
It took a long, slow examination, a foot at a time, holding on to each other, to discover what was inside.
It was Trace who found the crates. It was impossible to tell ho
w many there were of them, but moving with infinite slowness they found at least fifty. Far more than Monk had expected. More like the original shipment to Breeland.
But why here at the bottom of the river and not on their way over to America, or to the Mediterranean?
Monk felt Trace’s hand on his shoulder. He could see almost nothing. There was barely sufficient light to tell which way the surface lay.
He reached out for Trace, then drew back his hand, now numb with cold. This was no time to be foolish.
A hand came after him. Then he felt the rest of the body, a shoulder, perhaps a head. It bumped into his helmet and something covered the glass in front of his eyes.
Hair! Loose human hair in the water! Trace was drowning!
Monk reached up and clasped the arm, trying to pull desperately on the rope at the same time. He must get help! What had happened?
There was no resistance on the arm, no weight! God Almighty! It was loose … just an arm, bloated and almost naked! He could dimly make out where his fingers had sunk into the flesh, like squeezing soft fat.
He felt himself gag, and only just controlled himself from retching. The rest of the body was there, almost whole, huge, disintegrating at the touch.
He saw Trace’s light in the gloom, waving around. Another body floated across his vision and disappeared.
It made no sense. Who were they? Why were they dead? He forced himself to govern his revulsion and move slowly after one of them. Deliberately he felt around until he found the head. He shone his light on it, close up, trying not to look at the unrecognizable features. The bullet hole was still there, not easy to see in the white, half-eaten flesh of the forehead, but plain enough in the splintered skull.
It seemed to take endless time swishing around almost helplessly in the current inside the cramped cabin, bumping into each other, into the trapped and hideous corpses, before they ascertained beyond doubt that there were three men, all of whom had been shot dead.
Trace came right up to him, holding Monk by one arm and touching his helmet to Monk’s. When he spoke, incredibly, Monk could hear him almost as normal.
“Shearer!” Trace said distinctly, waving his other arm, with the lantern, in the direction of one of the corpses.
Shearer. Of course! This abomination was why no one had seen Walter Shearer since the night of Alberton’s death. He had been loyal to Alberton after all. He had followed the barge down here, and been shot with these other two. Were they the ones who had actually committed the murders? Why? On whose orders?
He made a sign of acknowledgment, then turned and blundered out of the fearful cabin and stopped abruptly as his air hose tightened and almost broke. Terror stifled his breath. He was covered in cold sweat. Trace! Of course! He would die down here in this filthy water, alone with his murderer. He would never see light again, breathe air, hold Hester in his arms or look at her eyes.
When Monk left home that afternoon, Hester had tried, at first, to busy herself with domestic tasks. Mrs. Patrick arrived at exactly two o’clock, the agreed time. She was a small, thin woman with crisp white hair full of natural curl, and very blue eyes. Hester judged her to be about fifty years old. She had a strong face, albeit a little gaunt, and a brisk manner. She spoke with a slight Scottish burr. Hester could not place it, but she knew it was not Edinburgh. She had too many memories of that city to mistake its tones.
Mrs. Patrick, neat in a white, starched apron, began to clear up the kitchen and consider what other tasks needed doing: clean and black the small stove, put on the laundry, scrub the kitchen floor, clean out the larder and make a note of what needed restocking, take out the rugs, sweep the floors, beat the rugs and return them, hang the laundry out, and do the ironing from the previous day. And of course prepare the dinner.
“What time will Mr. Monk be home?” she enquired while Hester was sitting in the office out of the way, stitching on a shirt button.
“I don’t know,” Hester replied honestly. “He’s gone diving.”
