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She wished there were some way he could avoid accepting the case. The coldness inside her was fear, and there was no way at all she could think of to protect him.
She even played with the idea of asking him to find whatever solution they wanted, short of blaming an innocent man: to say it was an Egyptian who had escaped, gone back to the Middle East, a conspiracy of some sort, not involving anyone still in England; to say it quickly, before they knew beyond doubt that it was not true.
Then she was ashamed of herself. She might understand any woman who asked a man she loved to do such a thing, but it could only be because she thought his morality would allow it. Monk’s would not. She had known that since their first dark days together after the murder of Joscelyn Grey.
And what could she ever tell Scuff, if he knew she’d done that? Don’t do anything dangerous! If it gets really tough, to hell with the right. Just run away!
Outside the light was fading. The starlings were circling back and settling in the trees.
“What is it?” Monk said quietly.
“Nothing,” she answered. “Just thinking. You’ll … be extremely careful, won’t you? Perhaps …” She was fumbling for words, ideas. “Perhaps it would be a good idea if whatever you do, you do it so many people know? I mean people other than Orme and your own men.”
“Hester, I don’t know who else is complicit in this,” he said patiently. “It stretches a long way! I might be telling the very people I’m trying to catch!”
She clenched her fists in her lap, where he could not see them. “I know that, William! That is precisely what I mean. If they know that there are plenty of other people who know all that you do, there would be no point in hurting you! In fact, it would only make matters worse for them.” She sat motionless, holding her breath for his reaction.
He laughed, but it had a harsh note to it, not of anger but fear. The fact that she knew it too made it impossible for him to deny without putting a barrier between them that neither of them could live with. However much he might wish to protect her, they had experienced too much together for him to pretend now.
“That’s probably good advice,” he conceded. “I’ll keep Orme in the picture, and probably Hooper. I’m beginning to appreciate what a good man he is.
Maybe I’ll speak to Runcorn too.”
“Promise me you will!” she urged. “Especially Runcorn! He’s a … a safety escape.”
“I know. Fancy that, after all these years of hating each other.”
There was a lot she could have said about that, but this was not the time.
“William …”
He was waiting, watching her.
“You don’t know how high up this goes,” she began tentatively. As an army nurse she had more experience than he with the hierarchy of authority, men who felt that a threat to their authority was a threat to their lives, and to question orders was treason. They might break, if the pressure were overwhelming, but could not bend.
“No, I don’t,” he agreed, smiling at her because he understood what she was trying to say, and why there were no words. “And you’re right … a degree of openness is the only safety. It really is a bag of snakes, isn’t it!”
SCUFF STOOD IN THE kitchen doorway, taller now than Hester, an achievement he was immensely pleased about.
“Another cup of tea?” she asked without turning around.
He sat down at the kitchen table, dropping his bag of school books on the floor. “Not yet,” he replied. “Wot’s ’appened?”
She must include him as if he were an adult. In wisdom of the street, he was so more than she. If she in any way excluded him she would not be able to make up for it later.
“One of the people who gave testimony in court about seeing Beshara in a certain place was lying,” she told him. “Or at best he was badly mistaken. That means that now all the evidence needs to be questioned to see what else could be wrong. They call it an ‘unsafe’ verdict.” She wanted to see if he understood.
“ ’E din’t do it, then?” he summed it up.
“We don’t know. But it means it hasn’t been proved that he did. So they are asking that the River Police take the case back and start all over again.”
Scuff’s eyes widened. “Can they do that? Take it from us, mess it all up, then say, ‘ ’Ere y’are, ’ave it back!’ ”
“Yes, it looks as if they can,” she admitted.
“I’d tell them ter—” He remembered who he was speaking to and blushed.
She tried to hide her smile, failing conspicuously. “I’d be tempted to as well,” she agreed. “But that would be like saying that you didn’t think you could do it. And somebody has to. All those people are still dead. It’s not just a matter of finding the guilty ones; it’s clearing the innocent ones as well.”
