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“No,” Hooper answered firmly. “You work the streets, you work the river. You know the people. You know when something don’t smell right, even if you don’t know why. This don’t smell right.” He looked straight at Monk, prepared to defend himself.
“Do you think it was Beshara?” Monk asked.
“Could be, could be not. Too much hurry. He fits well enough, least if you don’t look too close, too long. Everyone wanted it over with.”
“You think they made mistakes?” Monk pressed.
Hooper nodded. “Maybe they got the right man. I’m not saying they didn’t. Just they didn’t get ’im the right way. That’s the trouble with real bad crimes—people look at it an’ don’t see straight.”
“There’s going to be a lot of feeling about not hanging Beshara after all,” Monk said thoughtfully. “I’ve heard some of it already, and it’s early yet.”
Hooper smiled. “There’ll be a lot more.” He shook his head. “We in’t more than halfway through this yet.”
The ferry bumped gently at the bottom of the steps and Monk straightened up and started to go down to it, Hooper on his heels. He did not answer, but he knew Hooper was right.
WHEN MONK WENT INTO the police station at Wapping there was a sudden silence. Half a dozen men stared at him, waiting for his reaction. He had expected that.
“Good morning,” he said cheerfully. “Any word on the brandy smuggling in Bugsby’s Marshes? Mr. Orme?”
“Yes, sir,” Orme answered gravely. “All dealt with, sir. Quiet day, by the look of it. Except that everyone’s hopping mad about that Egyptian. Bit of smashing up of property owned by foreigners, that kind of thing. And of course everybody’s jumpy about it happening again. Pleasure boats losing custom. Should’ve ’anged him when we had the chance. Like before arresting him!”
“We didn’t arrest him,” Monk pointed out bleakly. “The regular police did.”
Orme pulled a face of disgust. “Yes, sir. That’s what they’re complaining about. Walpole, that old tosher down the King’s Arms Stairs, says he was never asked anything, an’ he doesn’t miss a trick. They took the word o’ Nifty Pete instead, skinny little toad, an’ he wouldn’t tell you straight what day it was.” His face was dark with disgust. “He’d tell you it was the prime minister who did it, for a ham sandwich an’ a cup o’ tea. If that was what you wanted to hear.”
“Do you think it wasn’t Beshara?”
Orme shook his head. “No idea, sir. I’ve got to go and see about that boat that Huggins says was stolen.” He said it politely, but his anger made his voice cold, and as he walked away his body was stiff; there was no ease to his gait.
Hester had given Monk a list of the witnesses who had been called, and he studied it that evening for the first time. Perhaps it was foolish of him, since the case was closed. There was no evidence to be added. But for his own peace of mind, he went through it, along with the lists and statements of all the witnesses the police had questioned. He compared their evidence with what he knew of them, and thought about whom he would have asked for the same judgments and observations.
It carried him over into the following day, when the anger at Beshara’s escape from the rope had grown more intense. The newspapers were full of it. He saw posters on walls demanding justice, even slurs daubed in paint, ugly and uneven and filled with rage.
It was nothing to do with him, or with anyone in the Thames River Police, and yet he felt a sense of responsibility, as if he had failed.
As the day wore on, it nagged at the back of his mind. Lydiate was a good man—in all probability an honest one—but investigation needed more than that. It needed knowledge of the area, of the people, and it needed luck. It usually required more time than this also—and that, Lydiate had been denied.
Monk had occasion to be on the dockside where one of the witnesses, a man named Field, had been working at the time he claimed to have seen Beshara. He mentioned it to Landry, a squat, heavily built man whose back was bent from years of lifting heavy sacks and barrels.
“Did you see Beshara?” Monk asked with interest, wondering why Lydiate had chosen to question Field instead. He was far less respected and given to invention.
Landry shook his head, squinting sideways at Monk. “You try carryin’ a few o’ them sacks, an’ see if yer’ve got time ter see yer own mother walking past yer, never mind some foreign feller wi’ a box o’ fancy food up ter ’is face.”
Monk pictured it in his mind. “So Field was lying?” he said bluntly.
“ ’E were sayin’ wot they wanted ’im te
r say,” Landry snapped back. “If yer ask the question the right way, yer get the right answer, don’t yer? ‘Yer din’t see this man, did yer?’ ‘No sir, I didn’t.’ ‘D’yer think you might ’ave seen this one?’ ‘Yeah. I might ’ave.’ ” His voice was heavy with sarcasm. “Field weren’t lyin’, ’e were bein’ ’elpful. We all want ter catch the bastard wot sank the Princess Mary an’ all them people! I wouldn’t ’ang the swine. I’d drown ’im, slow! Down a bit—up a bit. Know wot I mean?”
“Yes,” Monk agreed with feeling. “I saw it happen.”
“I know yer did! So why’d they take the case from yer? That’s wot I’d like ter know.”
“Politics, I dare say,” Monk replied, then realized he would be most unwise to continue the conversation. “Thanks, Landry.”
Landry shook his head and went back to work.
Monk continued on his current robbery investigation. He was trying to trace the passage of the goods both before they were stolen, and then afterward, and that involved speaking to several stevedores, bargees, and ferrymen—some of who had given evidence at the trial. He could not help asking them a few questions about what they had seen.
