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“Yes.” Monk had no doubt at all.
Crow stared at him. His face was lit on one side, and shadowed on the other, but his expression was a mask of anger and scalding contempt.
“Doesn’t look so much dead, does he!” he said quietly. Then he bent down, frowning a little. Experimentally he touched one of the man’s hands, then picked it up. His frown deepened and he looked up at Monk. “You think he was killed in the fall?”
“Yes. His legs are crushed. He was probably trapped.” He was half ashamed as he said it. “I should feel sorry for anyone caught like that, but all I feel for him is angry we can’t make him tell us who paid him. I’d bring him into court, broken legs, broken back, and all.”
“Scuff’ll be all right,” Orme said quietly, looking not at Monk but at Crow. “Won’t ’e?”
“Yes, I should think so,” Crow agreed. “But look at his legs, Mr. Monk.”
“What about them? They’re both broken.”
“See any blood?”
“No. Probably washed off in the water we took him through. I dragged him; he’s heavier than you’d think.”
Crow looked at the body again, more carefully. Orme and Monk watched, growing more curious and then unaccountably concerned.
“Why does it matter?” Monk said finally.
Crow stood up, his legs stiff, moving awkwardly. “Because he was dead before the slide hit him,” he replied. “Dead bodies don’t bleed. The only blood staining anything is on his coat, from the bullet hole in his chest. The river didn’t wash that out.”
Monk found himself shaking even more violently. “You mean he’s been
murdered? Surely he’d never have shot himself!”
“Not in the back, anyway,” Crow replied. “Went in under his left shoulder blade, came out the front. I reckon whoever employed him paid his last account.”
Monk swallowed.
“Are you absolutely sure?”
Crow pulled his mouth tight and rolled his eyes very slightly. “Take a look at the bastard yourself, but of course I’m sure! I’m no police surgeon, and don’t want to be, but I know a bullet hole when I see one! Heavy caliber, I’d say, but ask the experts.”
Monk straightened up. “Thank you. Will you and Sergeant Orme take him to the morgue and call the police surgeon? I must tell the prosecutor in the Sixsmith case, and Superintendent Runcorn. A man’s life may hang on this.” It was an order, at least as far as Orme was concerned, and a request to Crow.
Orme relaxed. “Of course,” he said resignedly. “Come on!”
Monk went back to Paradise Road to tell Hester what had happened. No message from anyone else, however sympathetically or precisely delivered, would satisfy her—or Monk’s own need to see her and tell her himself. He was confused and exhausted by the emotional horror of seeing so many people, in agony of body and terror of mind, whom he could not help. He knew those who were dead had been crushed, buried, and suffocated in the darkness, often alone as they felt life slip away from them. Hester could not heal that. No one could. Nor could she erase the memory. But she would understand. Just to see her would ease the knots locked hard inside him.
It was only now that he realized with amazement that he had not had time, or emotion, to spare, to be afraid for himself! It was a sweet, hot kind of relief. He was not a coward, at least not physically.
And he needed to see for himself that Scuff was still recovering. It was absurd that he should feel so intensely about it, but something compelled him to see Scuff’s face for himself.
The moment he opened the door he heard movement upstairs. Before he was halfway along the passage he saw the light go up on the landing and Hester’s figure on the top step. Her hair was unpinned and tangled from sleep, but she was still dressed, although barefooted.
“William?” she said urgently, her voice sharp with anxiety. She did not ask specific questions, but they were all there implicitly. Their understanding of each other was founded on the battles and the victories of the past.
He wanted to know about Scuff.
She answered him before he asked. “He’s getting stronger all the time,” she said, coming silently down the stairs. “A little feverish about midnight, but it passed. It’s going to take a week before he can get up much, and far more than that before he can go back to his own life. But he will.” Her eyes searched his face. She did not ask if the experiences of the night had been terrible; she read the answer in his demeanor and the fact that he did not even try to find words for what he had seen.
When she reached the bottom of the stairs, he took her in his arms and held her close, hard, wordlessly. In his mind he blessed over and over again whatever benevolence had led him to choose a woman whose beauty was of the soul: brave and vulnerable, funny, angry, and wise—someone to whom he need explain nothing.
Monk had no time to sleep, only to wash and change clothes and eat some hot breakfast. Of course, he also went up to look for a few moments at Scuff, who was scrubbed clean and sound asleep. The boy was still wearing Hester’s nightgown with the lace edge next to his thin little neck, his left shoulder sitting crookedly over his bandages.
A few hours later, at half past eight, Monk was at Rathbone’s office, explaining the night’s events. A messenger was dispatched urgently to Run-corn, telling him to contact Melisande Ewart with a request that she be at the Old Bailey along with Runcorn that morning. If she was unwilling, a summons would be issued.
