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She stood up, brushed herself down and set off at a run to reach the street.
It had all been about money, not guns, and because of Judith. The American war had nothing to do with it at all. The guns had been sold twice, and paid for at least once and a half. Casbolt had employed Shearer, and someone else who had committed the actual murders, carefully making sure he was accounted for that night. Then, as Monk had guessed, the following night they had all met up down the river at Bugsby’s Marshes to pay and be paid.
She ran out into the middle of the road, waving her arms and shouting out, her voice high and shrill, verging on hysteria.
A carriage slowed to a stop to avoid striking her. A hansom pulled up with a screech and a curse.
She called up to the driver. “I need to get to the Bermondsey police station. My husband’s life depends on it … please!”
There was an elderly man already inside. He looked momentarily alarmed, then seeing the anguish in her face and every aspect of her body, he acquiesced with startling generosity, offering his hand to help her.
“Come in, my dear. Driver, as the lady wishes, with all possible speed!”
The coachman hesitated only long enough to make certain Hester was safely inside, then he swung the whip wide and high, and urged the horses forward.
Monk gasped, then the hose fell loose. Air surged back around his face. There was a touch on his shoulder and he tried to swing around, but he was too slow, achingly clumsy.
Trace was beside him, shaking his head, holding the air hose, smiling.
Monk was ashamed of his thoughts, of his panic, but above all weak with relief. He was grinning idiotically at Trace through the filthy water and the thick glass.
He raised his hand in thanks.
Trace waved back, still shaking his head, then pointing to the nearest of the piled crates.
Monk took out his knife and together they prized the lid off. There were guns there. He could feel their outlines.
Trace held up his lamp, close, only inches above them. Now it was possible to see that they were old models, flintlocks mostly, many of them useless, without firing pins, a far cry from the latest Enfields Breeland had purchased. They were little more than sham.
Laboriously they unpacked the top layer. Underneath was only bricks and ballast.
They tried a second case, and a third. They were all the same; a few guns on top, then just weight.
Now at last Monk understood almost all of it. The real guns had never been at Tooley Street. They had been stored somewhere else, and taken to Euston and loaded onto the freight wagons on the train before Shearer even got there the night of the murders. He had merely accepted Breeland’s money. Where he had been the rest of that night, they would probably never know.
These cast-off guns laid over bricks and ballast had been stolen by the wretched men whose bodies floated in this ghastly cabin below the Thames. They had hidden the barge, disguised among the wrecks on the shore of Bugsby’s Marshes, until the following night, then floated it again to keep a rendezvous they thought was to deliver their goods and receive payment for murder. Instead, along with Shearer, they had met their own deaths. If he looked again he would find all the times fitted.
He put his hand on Trace’s arm to signal they should leave. They had seen all there was. They moved slowly away. And was it all simply greed, a matter of selling the guns twice and thus having more money? Admittedly, a vast amount more.
He lurched through the gloom, fumbling his way, awash in clouds of mud, pulled by tides as the flow increased, and they were trying to fight against it. It seemed an endless journey. His legs ached from the weight of his boots. He was imprisoned behind the glass plate, breathing pumped air. He struggled to remember what they had told him to do. Use the outlet valve. Get more buoyancy. That was better. Life and sunlight were only a few fathoms away, but like another world.
Trace was beside him, moving more rapidly, surer-footed. He was waving his light, guiding and urging Monk forward. Then suddenly Trace dropped his light. Monk saw his hands scrabble at where his throat would be beneath the helmet; his face appeared contorted behind the glass, as though he were gasping, choking for air.
Then his ropes tightened, and he was dragged backwards and up, disappearing into the murk, leaving Monk completely alone.
Where was the boat? He strained upwards, looking for its shadow through the cloud of sand that swirled around him, and did not see it.
Then at last the steps were there. He grasped them, hauling himself up, desperate to reach the top, the light, to get out of the cold, clammy, imprisoning suit. It seemed to take forever. He was leaden-weighted. There was no help from the ropes. They had stopped pulling him. He had to climb on his own. The effort was overwhelming.
At last his head broke the surface and instinctively he gasped, drawing in only more pumped air. Hands reached out to help him aboard, and as the water drained off him and the attendant removed the front glass from his helmet, he recognized Robert Casbolt. Then a shot rang out, and another, and another. The attendant crumpled forward, his chest scarlet, and slid into the water.
The other two men lay sprawled beside the pumping equipment, one partly on his back next to Trace, staring sightlessly upward, a dark hole in his head, the third doubled over the after thwart, blood on his hair. Philo Trace was slumped in the bottom of
the boat, eyes closed, barely conscious, his helmet beside him.
Casbolt was holding a gun, its muzzle pointed towards Monk.
“You found something down there that showed you it was Trace,” he said with a sad little shake of his head. “But you weren’t quick enough for him. He shot you. He nearly got away with it, too. If your wife hadn’t come to me with the truth, and I raced here to try to rescue you, then he would have succeeded! Tragically, I was just too late.…” He swallowed hard. “I really am sorry. All I wanted was Judith … back again, as it used to be. And enough money to look after her. That was all I ever wanted.” He raised the gun a little higher.
