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“Not all the seaways,” Monk corrected him. “It won’t affect the Atlantic, and that will get more and more important as America grows. But it will still mean a whole lot of change in investment, if the canal is a success.”
“There was talk about a new land route to the east, through Turkey,” Lydiate added, shaking his head. “Or trains from Alexandria to Suez, and then reloading everything again to go by sea. Even if this canal is a success, it will take ships slowly, and only up to a certain size. It’s inevitable. Haven’t they read about Canute?” He smiled with a bitter amusement.
Monk struggled to remember. “Holding back the tide? I saw a drawing of him, sitting on his throne with the sea up to his knees! Unbelievably stupid!”
“No!” Lydiate said sharply, as if this were the trigger to the anger he had been so long holding in. “He was trying to show his people that, great as he was, he could not hold back the tide. That was the whole point of the exercise. Even kings cannot stop the inevitable.”
Monk was considerably sobered. He felt a sudden warmth for this beleaguered man sitting on the bench beside him in the last of the sunlight. Lydiate was fighting against men’s political ambitions, and probably a king’s ransom in invested money. He was dealing with men who demanded miracles, and did not seem to understand the tide in any sense—of the sea, or of history.
“I don’t know whether Beshara was
guilty,” Monk said. “But I do know that the verdict was unsafe. And there’s a very strong chance that sooner or later something is going arise that will prove it. Do some of our political masters know that, and that’s why they won’t hang him?”
Lydiate looked at him curiously, the fine lines of his face etched deeply in the waning sunlight, his eyes very clear. “I hadn’t thought of that. Perhaps because I didn’t want to. Perhaps. The other possibility is just as ugly, come to think of it. I assumed Beshara’s family had got to them. He’s a wayward son, something of a disappointment, but he has brothers and cousins who own a good deal of land around the canal, which means now that they have a lot of money.”
Monk raised his eyebrows. “And do they want him released?”
“That’s a very good question,” Lydiate answered, pulling his mouth into a bitter line.
“Can you prove anything?” Monk asked, turning a little in his seat. The sun was sliding below a cloud bank, spreading color over the water, but in ten minutes or so it would fade, and the wind would turn colder. There were fewer people on the bank already.
“I don’t have the right even to look,” Lydiate replied.
“Motive?” Monk pointed out. “No one gave a motive for Beshara blowing up the Princess Mary, beyond a general hatred of Britain, and that’s as thin as tissue paper. Millions of people the world over must have a pretty mixed view of the British Empire, just as millions admire it or depend on it. It doesn’t make them blow up a pleasure boat with a couple of hundred ordinary people on board.”
“I know,” Lydiate agreed. “Nobody seemed to care very much about finding a more substantial reason.”
Monk said what he was afraid Lydiate was also thinking. “Or else they know damn well what it was, and didn’t want it to come out?”
“I didn’t see that at the time,” Lydiate confessed, staring across the water again. “I thought it was just the weight of public outrage and loss. Damn it, Monk, you saw the bodies! You, of all people, know how bloody awful it was! It was like a battlefield! Only it wasn’t soldiers dead, it was ordinary people, most of them women and children. What kind of a … monster does that?”
“Greedy … frightened … filled with hate for his own lost,” Monk replied. “Think about how many Egyptian lives have been sacrificed, digging this canal.”
Lydiate sighed. “Thousands—but the bloody thing’s French, not English!”
“You’re right,” Monk conceded. “It doesn’t make any sense. But mass murder doesn’t, however you look at it.”
They sat in silence for a few minutes. The sun disappeared, taking the glow with it, and suddenly it was dark and the air chill.
“I’m sorry,” Monk said. “It might make some kind of sense if we had all the facts. It was very carefully planned. It wasn’t a sudden impulse of a lunatic, and we both know that.”
“It’s about all we do know, for certain,” Lydiate said miserably. “How can so many men, and the constituencies they serve, be so wrong? There is so much we assumed, and could be totally mistaken about.” He looked helpless. “What government deals or policies are involved? What’s really in the balance, naturally, or intentionally? What private deals are in place, and with whom? Or is it all something else entirely, and we aren’t even on the right track?”
Monk gave a bitter little smile. “With luck we can give it back to the Home Office and let the minister worry about that.”
Lydiate flinched. “And give it right back to me again!”
“I’m sorry,” Monk said sincerely.
“I know. You had no choice,” Lydiate answered graciously, rising to his feet as if his muscles ached. “I’ll tell him tomorrow morning.”
THE FOLLOWING AFTERNOON MONK was in Wapping; he had tidied up the last reports on the smuggling case and had just left the police station when Hooper strode after him.
“Sir!”
Monk turned round as Hooper caught up with him. He saw from the look in Hooper’s face that the news was not good. He waited in silence to hear it.
“Lord Ossett wants to see you, sir,” Hooper said expressionlessly, his brown eyes meeting Monk’s and waiting.
