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Hester winced.
Rathbone smiled ruefully, but he made no excuses.
“Is Oswald Camborne guilty of overzealousness to the point of ignoring the truth, cutting corners of legal process? He’s an arrogant man with extraordinary ambition, but he is usually very careful indeed not to cross the line of acceptability. And Juniver? He’s honest enough, but did he allow hims
elf to be pressured, and if so, by whom?”
“Camborne?” Monk asked.
Rathbone shook his head. “No. Juniver’s good for a fight. If anyone affected him, it would be someone with a more honorable argument; threat and promises would not work on him. And another thing, have you evidence as to whether this new man, Gamal Sabri, sank the ship on his own account, and if so, for God’s sake why? Or was he paid by someone else? Or has he hostages to fortune of some sort?”
“No family,” Monk replied. “We found no personal connections in England, or in Egypt. We could find no motive except for money.”
“You’ve questioned him?” Rathbone glanced at Monk’s still heavily bandaged chest.
“Once,” Monk replied. “Briefly, before they took him away and his lawyer refused to allow him to speak. He need not have bothered. Sabri wasn’t saying anything.”
“Your opinion?” Rathbone asked.
“Paid by someone,” Monk said without hesitation. “You don’t get a lawyer of the quality of Pryor without both influence and money.”
“Fame,” Rathbone said simply.
“Defending the man who sank the Princess Mary?” Monk’s voice rose with disbelief.
Rathbone smiled bitterly. “Or defending the justice system and showing that they got the right man in the first place. You could gain a lot of friends that way, and comfort a vast number of Londoners who want to feel safe.”
Monk closed his eyes and leaned back a little in his chair, as if suddenly too weary to sit upright.
Rathbone could not afford to let it go yet.
“Any idea who tried to kill Beshara? And for that matter, do you know if Beshara has any connection to Sabri?”
Monk looked tired. There were blue shadows around his eyes. “No. Everything leads to a dead end.”
Rathbone asked the final question. “And is there anything to indicate whether it has even the most oblique connection to the canal on Suez?”
“Nothing but speculation.” Monk pushed himself upright again. “One man you didn’t mention, and that’s the judge in the first case. His rulings were … eccentric.”
“York,” Rathbone repeated the name to himself. He had known that. Had he deliberately forgotten it? “Do you think that is relevant to this trial now?”
Monk looked straight at him, unblinking. “It could be. I imagine he wasn’t put in it by chance. A different judge might have handled it in other ways.”
“How?” Rathbone tried to steady himself. York’s hatred of him should have nothing to do with this. The fact that he could not get York’s wife, Beata, out of his mind, his memories, his dreams, should have nothing to do with it either.
“Rulings, mainly,” Monk replied. “But also the issue remains that in his summing-up Juniver raised the question of motive again, and York came pretty close to telling the jury that the facts were sufficient. If they believed Beshara guilty, the precise nature of his motives did not matter. It killed the only real point Juniver had.”
“And Sabri’s motive?” Rathbone asked. “Aren’t we in the same position now?”
Monk acknowledged it ruefully. “All we can do is point out that he comes from the region of Suez.”
“What a vast, complex, and hideous case.” Rathbone looked at Monk. “Are you still involved, even though you have arrested Sabri? Can I call on you for some of the information Brancaster will need, if he is to win?”
“He has to win,” Monk answered. “The price of losing is one we can’t afford. It would be the biggest scandal in the justice system this century. We can’t measure what is at stake.”
“Then I need to know all I can about the people who were exercising the pressure, even Lydiate. And, of course, the people in the first trial. How did this all go so terribly wrong?”
AFTER RATHBONE HAD GONE, Monk and Hester sat up long into the night talking. No matter how heavy the problem or how tangled, there were ways in which these were Monk’s happiest times. There was a deep pleasure, a peace of the soul, in sharing even the most desperate battles with a woman he loved with whom he shared not just passion, but an abiding friendship.
