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“We have to think it,” Monk replied. “That’s the only chance we have of seeing that it doesn’t.”
Ossett’s face was haggard. Monk glanced at Ossett’s younger self in the portrait on the wall, but noticed that Ossett avoided looking at it. Did it remind him of a happier time when decisions were simpler? Or had he failed to become the man that young soldier had dreamed of?
“Are you thinking of the sinking of the Princess Mary, or the abominable mess of the investigation and the trial convicting the wrong man?” Ossett asked.
“Both,” Monk replied. “And also the possibility of making it even worse by now failing to convict the right one.”
“Are you sure he is the right man, Monk?”
“Yes, sir. But I need to find out before the trial as much as I can about how Beshara died, and who was responsible. That is something Brancaster at least will ask, and he will only be the first. Every thinking man in England will be asking it before the trial is finished.” It sounded a little like a threat, and he had meant it to.
Ossett’s voice was gravelly when he answered, as if he were finding it difficult to control.
“I will see that Fortridge-Smith answers your questions—today,” he promised. “If he has nothing to hide he won’t mind, and if he has, then you are going to learn what it is!”
“Yes, sir.”
OSSETT WAS AS GOOD as his word. Fortridge-Smith received Monk at a little after four o’clock that afternoon, albeit with an ill grace. They were in his office, a bleak room with shelves on one wall. Books sat in regimented rows, awaiting his interest. A red Turkey rug relieved the dark painted stone floor and muffled the sound of footsteps.
“I don’t know what good you think you can do in raking up the issue again,” he said angrily. “The man was guilty, and he was dying of his wretched disease anyway! He got into a quarrel with someone and they may well have hastened his death, but that’s all. Men quarrel in prison, Monk! It’s not a nice place. It’s not meant to be. There are fights and men get hurt. It’s not good for your health. People die younger in here than they would outside. Nobody starves or freezes, and that’s about the best you can say for it.”
Monk drew in his breath to argue, but Fortridge-Smith continued.
“And as for Beshara, I know that, thanks to you, it appears he didn’t actually put the dynamite on board the Princess Mary, but he was involved in the atrocity, and that makes him a guilty man. He deserved to be here.”
Monk controlled his anger with difficulty. He could feel it welling up inside him and he wanted to argue, to point out the difference between personal judgment and the law. The whole principle of private vengeance was against everything the law was supposed to embody. But his common sense told him Fortridge-Smith was not listening, either intellectually or emotionally. Monk’s anger would only make it worse.
“For the upcoming trial of Sabri, who is also guilty,” Monk said lightly, and so very levelly that he was clearly governing himself not to speak his mind, which Fortridge-Smith had to know, “I need to speak to the people in charge of the prison infirmary at the time of Beshara’s death. I may be called to testify.”
“To what, for heaven’s sake?” Fortridge-Smith said sharply. “The way Beshara died, long after the explosion, has nothing to do with Sabri’s guilt!”
“Don’t be naïve,” Monk snapped back. “Since when did a defense lawyer’s questions have to have immediate relevance to the crime?”
“Then don’t answer them!” Fortridge-Smith retorted.
Monk’s eyebrows shot up. “And leave them to realize not only that I don’t know, but that I don’t care enough to have found out? That would hand the defense the perfect opening to suggest that Beshara was guilty after all. Or alternatively, that he knew something so important that he had to be silenced. And we, the authorities, connived at it.” He watched Fortridge-Smith’s eyes as the skin tightened across his cheeks. “Or worse, that we actually did it ourselves,” he went on. “To save our embarrassment at the complete mess we made of the first trial, and everything since.” He could not keep his contempt hidden. “And that would not please our lords and masters.”
The blood surged up Fortridge-Smith’s face, but he was cornered. He had to reply to that last challenge, and he knew it.
“Then go and speak to whomever you like,” he said bitterly. “I’ll have one of the guards accompany you. And don’t get rash and lose him, Mr. Monk. As you have observed for yourself, this is a violent place. The prisoners here are not good people. I might very well be able to find out who killed you, and even prove it, but it would be little use to you … or your family.”
Monk felt a moment’s sharp, tight fear. It knotted his stomach and ran through his veins with heat, and then cold.
“I’m obliged,” he said with less panache than he would have liked. “Lord Ossett will be too.”
“Indeed,” Fortridge-Smith said, almost without expression.
A senior guard was sent for. As soon as he appeared he conducted Monk to the prison infirmary, where Monk interviewed the nurses—all men,
naturally—and the part-time doctor who had been hired since Crow, having found out as much as he could, had left. Monk gave no indication of having heard of Crow, much less known him.
As soon as he entered the high-ceilinged room, the smells of lye and carbolic, mixed with that of human waste, seized Monk’s stomach and twisted it so hard he found it difficult not to retch. There were ten beds ranged along two walls facing each other. Eight of them were occupied by men in various stages of pain or resignation. Many were bandaged; two clearly had broken bones; others were feverish, flushed, sweating, and moving uneasily on the hard mattresses.
There were two nurses on duty, presently occupied in cleaning or tidying, rolling bandages, emptying slops.
After Monk had acknowledged them, introduced himself, and explained why he was here, he asked them who had been on duty immediately before Habib Beshara had been found dead.
The answer was that it was Elphick, the larger of the two, and another man called Stockton. Monk told them that he needed to speak with them, one at a time, in a closed room where they were guaranteed not to be overheard. The guard whom Fortridge-Smith had ordered to be with him for his safety would wait outside.
