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“You don’t have to demonstrate how a thing was done to prove that it was,” Camborne pointed out.
“Not exactly right,” Monk corrected him. “If you can prove that something couldn’t have been done, then you can infer that it was not.”
Camborne blinked. “The ship was blown up. I believe you saw it yourself. Scores of men and women were drowned. There is no possible argument that that happened, and that it was deliberate mass murder.” He enunciated the words carefully. “Beshara was closely involved. We don’t know how he escaped before the explosion, but he was on the ship beforehand, and he survived. Presumably he managed to get off when they were close enough to the shore around the Isle of Dogs. It seems the clearest explanation. We may never know exactly, and it doesn’t matter. It would be very satisfactory if we could find and prove who helped him. That may be what is in the minds of the authorities who commuted his sentence.” He smiled bleakly, with little more than a baring of the teeth. “When he gets ill enough, and frightened enough, he may decide that silence is not his best choice.”
“By which time I imagine his coconspirators will be a thousand miles away,” Monk responded drily. “Unless, of course, he has nothing to do with the sinking, but just happens to be Egyptian.”
“For a man who has spent so many years in the police, you are astoundingly naïve,” Camborne said coldly. “I had heard that you had a reputation for being reasonably astute, even ruthless. I can’t imagine how you got it.” Again he leaned forward over the piles of paper on the desk. “Leave it alone, man! Stick to the crimes you understand and the criminals you can catch. If you interfere you may do far more damage than you can begin to understand.”
Monk considered confronting him and asking if that was a threat. However, he thought he saw a flicker of fear as well as anger in Camborne’s eyes, and that was a far greater warning than anything the man could have said.
There was a heavy silence in the room. Footsteps passed in the corridor outside.
Slowly Monk rose to his feet. Camborne did not; he merely craned his neck and stared upward.
“Do you really believe Beshara is guilty?” Monk asked.
“Yes, I do.” There was no hesitation in Camborne, only a flat, evasive anger.
“Alone? Or with others?”
“With others,” Camborne replied. “But he escaped the explosion. Perhaps they were not so lucky. Or again, perhaps he did not mean them to be? Had you thought of that?”
“There’s a lot to think about,” Monk said with a tight smile. He now thought of Camborne not as an ally at all, but as a possible conspirator himself—by his silence, if nothing more. “Thank you for your time,” he added, and went to the door as Camborne declined to reply.
MONK FOUND JUNIVER ALMOST as soon as the court had adjourned. He fell in step behind him on the pavement as he left the Old Bailey.
Juniver looked unhappy. “Miserable business,” he commiserated. “But I don’t know how I can help.” He drew in breath as if to add something, then changed his mind and continued walking briskly to the intersection. They crossed Ludgate Hill and went into one of the small alleys toward a quiet little pub.
Monk kept pace with him all the way to the door. Inside, when Juniver ordered food, Monk ordered some as well.
“All right,” Juniver said wearily, pushing his way through the throng with Monk on his heels. “What is it you think I can tell you? I represented Beshara as far as the law allows. There was nothing more that I could have done for him. I certainly did not know any of the evidence you’ve since brought to light to cast doubt on the eyewitness identifications.”
“Interesting choice of words,” Monk observed.
“What, ‘cast doubt on’?” Juniver said skeptically. “That’s what it is, isn’t it? Doubt? Would you prefer me to add ‘reasonable’?”
Monk smiled. “The words I was thinking of were that you ‘represented Beshara, as far as the law allows.’ I think the usual phrase is ‘to the best of my ability.’ Was it to the best of your ability? Or did you avoid that phrase because it would not have been strictly true?”
Juniver winced.
“The man was guilty, Monk—if not of actually placing the explosives on the Princess Mary, then of obtaining them, or hiring those who did, and probably of helping them escape as well. He was up to his eyes in intrigue of one sort or another. He hated Britain, and everything we’ve done, from raiding Egyptian antiquities to dominating the sea lanes around Africa, and anything else you can think of that’s profitable. We’re arrogant and show off the fact that many of us think we rule the earth by some kind of divine right.”
Monk regarded Juniver with greatly increased interest. He had previously seen him as a good lawyer, and possibly ambitious, but curbed by both discipline and honor from exceeding what he perceived to be justice. Now it seemed as if he had an emotional involvement in politics and the ambivalent values of patriotism. Monk wondered what bigotry and greed lay behind the claim of love for a narrow group, be it family or country. What was it acceptable to buy at the expense of others? Loyalty to one’s own country above everything? “My family before all others”? How far was that from “me first”? “You can have only what I don’t want, or can’t hold”? “Might is right”? “Duty is only whatever I say it is”?
The other hurried diners chattered around them, oblivious of their isolated intensity.
Juniver looked at Monk with curiosity also. He had clearly expected an immediate answer: probably one of anger, even an accusation of disloyalty.
“You disliked the man,” Monk said thoughtfully. “Yet you could see very clearly why he might hate Britain from the various examples of arrogance we have exercised in pretty well all corners of the globe. You defended him because it was your job, but only as far as the law required, because you found the offense with which he was charged to be abominable.”
“Fair,” Juniver replied wryly. “But incomplete. I also honestly believed the man to be guilty.”
“Morally if not legally,” Monk pointed out.
“A distinction without a difference,” Juniver replied. “The law is rather often an inexact art.” He smiled bleakly and ate a slice of his cold pork pie.
Monk ate also. There was more to Juniver’s actions than he had admitted. There was a discomfort in the man as if some internal conflict had been reawakened.
