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Runcorn pulled his mouth into a thin line. “Are you trying to protect him or to expose him?”
“How the hell do I know, until I find out what he did?” Monk demanded. There was far more he wanted to say. He wanted Runcorn to understand the pity he felt for Lydiate, that he did not know himself what he would have done, only that to yield was never the answer. He might have protected him, if he could, but it was no longer an option. Brancaster would tear Lydiate’s case apart anyway. He had no choice.
“I can’t do anything if I’m caught on the blind side,” Monk added. “Lydiate’s family is as vulnerable as he told me, and nothing has happened to them.”
“Who threatened him?” Runcorn asked.
“Ossett was the one who told him,” Monk said unhappily. “But I had the strong feeling that someone else was pressuring Ossett. It’s almost like something you can feel in the air.” He searched for words that would not sound melodramatic, and failed. “A desperation,” he finished. “You can find the real records without being as obvious as I’d have to be. If Brancaster is any good, he’ll find them. We need to do it before he does.”
Runcorn gritted his teeth but he did not disagree.
BY THE TIME THE trial of Gamal Sabri was a couple of days away, Monk had provided Rathbone, and thus Brancaster, with all the information he could find on Lord Ossett, Sir John Lydiate, and all the lawyers who had conducted the trial of Habib Beshara. There were errors of judgment, vulnerabilities, oversights, occasional contradictions, but nothing that individually amounted to more than anyone might make in a hasty and deeply emotional investigation. And there was no apparent connection to the murder in prison of Beshara, which Monk had also been looking for.
He did, with some difficulty, discover that Gamal Sabri’s legal counsel had been hired by a wealthy Egyptian named Farouk Halwani, currently living in Cairo, and unavailable for comment.
Monk had tried to speak to Fortridge-Smith, but had been evaded, and then outright refused, by his secretary. He had no great hope that he would be able to learn how Beshara had died, still less who might have been responsible. There were so many possibilities he had little expectation of it being useful in the trial of Sabri. Still, it angered him to be refused access.
Accordingly, he went to see Lord Ossett, and was received in his large and very handsome office, with the haunting portrait of himself as a young man.
Monk came straight to the point.
“I’m sorry to disturb you with this, sir, but time is short, and I have done everything I can to persuade Fortridge-Smith to see me, but he refuses. I believe it is imperative that I have all the information possible regarding Habib Beshara before Sabri’s trial begins. We cannot afford to be caught off balance.” He watched Ossett’s face and saw the shadows in it: apprehension, perhaps more. He was increasingly certain that Ossett was distressed to the point of endangering his health. He was struggling within his own mind for an escape from some overwhelming burden. He looked all but exhausted by it.
“I appreciate that the situation is difficult,” Ossett began, his voice rasping a little. “But surely a prison tragedy like the death of Beshara, even if it was intentional and malicious, has no real bearing on convicting Sabri?”
His mouth pinched in an expression of pain rather than revulsion. “Or are you suggesting that the timing of Beshara’s death is not coincidental?” He did not move in his chair, as if he lacked the energy. “Surely you were not hoping that he could be made to testify? The man was a wreck, and very seriously ill. In fact, he may well have died within weeks, if not days, regardless. Fortridge-Smith informed me that to label his death as murder was irresponsible. Some journalist seeking to make headlines for himself.” His expression was quite clearly one of disgust.
Monk was obliged to retreat at least a step or two. “Possibly the journalist was guessing,” he conceded. “And in that case, he is totally irresponsible, and before the trial of Sabri we should give the newspapers the truth.” He kept his face as expre
ssionless as he could. “Who investigated the death?”
Ossett stared at him. “I beg your pardon?”
Monk did not look away. He saw the shadows in Ossett’s eyes, a sudden flicker of anxiety, something that eluded him.
Monk drew in his breath to prompt a reply, and sensed a pain in Ossett, one that Monk didn’t understand. Then it was gone again, masked.
“I don’t know,” Ossett answered. “It must surely be a very narrow circle of possibilities. I admit, I have been too concentrated on the difficulties of this wretched trial of Gamal Sabri to consider Beshara’s death.” He looked back at Monk now, his eyes steady. “Between us all we seem to have brought the justice system to the brink of disrepute. I don’t know if you have thought of the damage we might do if there is no satisfying explanation as to what happened that brought us to condemn the wrong man in such a terrible case. It is the grace of God, and no more, that we did not hang him! No sensible man is now going to feel that his own life is safe should he be charged with a crime. Therefore we must both explain it, and show that it cannot happen again.”
“I know that, sir,” Monk said quietly. “And it is just as important that we do not now blame someone who is innocent for that mistake.”
Ossett moved. “Dear God! Don’t even think of such a thing. I don’t want poor Lydiate sacrificed. He’s a decent man …”
“I know,” Monk agreed. “But not a politician and not a policeman.”
Ossett paled. “That’s harsh …”
Monk knew it was harsh, and he loathed saying it, most particularly because it was true. “He is a good administrator, sir, and, above all, an honest man, deserving of the respect his men have for him. They would rightly see it as unjust if you were to remove him from his post over this.”
Ossett looked at him curiously, as if trying to weigh him up, to see the answer to something that had troubled him.
Monk resisted the temptation to overexplain himself, and remained silent.
“Will you win the case?” Ossett changed his line of approach. “Brancaster is good, but he lacks experience. Rathbone would have been better. Making such a fool of himself over the Taft case did a great disservice to the British legal system.” He shook his head very slightly. His shoulders were painfully tight. “It’s full of pitfalls, Monk. Full of them! It’s still possible, if he gets into a tight corner, that Brancaster could rip some of York’s decisions apart.” He sighed. “But it could possibly come to the same thing whoever had presided. Emotions were hot. The whole country was demanding that we condemn someone. And who can blame them? It was an atrocity. The ordinary man in the street wants to believe that we—the police, the government—have some kind of control over what’s happening!”
“And that it won’t happen again,” Monk added.
Ossett looked at him sharply. “For God’s sake, don’t ever whisper such a thing! Don’t think it!”
