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‘Yes, sir,’ the man at the desk replied. ‘That’ll be the second door on the right, one floor up, sir.’
Monk and Orme followed the man’s directions up the stairs and knocked on the door with McNab’s name on it. Perhaps that should have told him something. He had never bothered to have a plate on his own door. Everyone who mattered knew where to find him.
McNab obliged him to wait several moments before he answered. He was a stocky man, a little less than Monk’s height, but with a powerful body that strained his uniform into awkward shapes across the shoulders. His hair was thinning and he had it carefully combed.
There seemed for an instant something familiar about him, then Monk dismissed it as being merely that he resembled many others, a type often found in the police, or the army.
Monk introduced himself again, and then Orme.
‘I know who you are,’ McNab replied. There was no pleasure in his voice, no sense of an old colleague met with again. Usually it was Orme who made this connection with the senior Excise officer. Their relationship was not comfortable, but it was easy with use. And yet Monk must surely have met him in the past, in all his years in the Metropolitan Police.
Monk felt a twinge of warning, and ignored it. He could not afford to quarrel with this man. On the river, in particular, they had too many cases in common. He drew in his breath to state his reason for having come.
McNab pre-empted him.
‘I know all about your gunrunning ship,’ he said aggressively. ‘Should by rights be our case. Smuggling is Customs and Excise, as you well know! But this one’ll hit the news, if it’s done right.’ A slight touch of amusement was in his face. ‘Or wrong. They’ll make a meal of that, too.’
It was a long time since Monk had met an old enemy who knew him, but of whom he had no recollection. What was it with McNab? Had they been rivals? Enemies? Had Monk wronged him in some way? He knew enough to know he was not proud of everything in his past, and there were so many ghosts whose faces he did not see clearly, just an impression here and there, a familiar turn of phrase, a reference that struck a chord, and then was lost again.
He was right back in that open, vulnerable place he had been when he first started trying to make his way, blindly; with a past he did not know.
‘Then we had better get it right,’ Monk replied, keeping his temper with difficulty. ‘I am informing you of our plans, as a professional courtesy, and hoping that you will be able to assist us with another boat, and just three or four armed men.
These gunrunners have a lot to lose and if they have a good watch out, the battle could be fierce.’
Now McNab’s smile was overly hard.
‘Indeed it could, Mr Monk,’ he agreed. ‘You’d better tell me exactly what you have planned, or we could end up shooting each other! And wouldn’t that be a sad end to such an . . . interesting career.’ He met Monk’s eyes with a brittle smile.
Now Monk had no doubt that he and McNab had known each other before his accident, and perhaps McNab’s dislike of him was founded in genuine wrongs. That was unalterable now, but what must be faced was the possibility that McNab would take out his dislike of Monk on his men as well. It looked very much as if this was his chance for a long-delayed revenge.
Monk would not let his men pay for offences they were no part of, if indeed they existed. And this was far too important and potentially dangerous an operation to allow room for anyone’s personal feelings, justified or not.
‘Then let’s make damn sure it works, Mr McNab,’ Monk said softly. ‘I can’t think you want those guns on the street any more than I do.’
McNab evaded a reply. ‘So let me have the details, if you please?’ He looked at Orme.
Stiffly, Orme obliged.
When Monk got home that night it was far later than he had intended, and he was so tired he had difficulty concentrating. He had partial memories of McNab, but he could not determine if they were recent or not. It was just McNab’s face, angry, his eyes filled with loathing. Had that been real? Or was it tricks of the shadows, and half-recalled emotion?
Hester and Scuff had already eaten, and Monk had bought a ham sandwich from a pedlar along the river-bank. Hester made him a cup of tea and he ate a slice of cake with it. She started to say something to him, but she stopped again, just smiling at him and touching him lightly on the cheek.
‘Go to bed,’ she said gently. ‘It can wait.’
Chapter Five
MONK WAS on the river early, well before dawn the next morning. A clear sky was just paling in the east and the shadows were still long melting into one another. At a glance the boat where he sat would have seemed like any other returning from a long night’s patrol, until one noticed that there were three men in it, not the usual two, one for each oar, and another crouched in the stern. They were closely followed by a second heavy, two-man boat also with a third man in the stern. They were picking their way towards the three-masted schooner anchored out in the stream. It was one of the many still laden with cargo, waiting its turn to off-load at one of the docks.
It was Orme who sat in the stern of the first boat, facing Monk, his grizzled face turned downstream, watching the distance close between them and their quarry. The riding lights of the schooner marked its position clearly, but as the darkness faded in the east its masts were black against the horizon and its fat, wide-bellied shape was easy to see.
Monk and Bathurst moved in comfortable unison, guiding the boat through the quickly running tide. The other boat slid just as easily twenty yards away, Laker and Hooper at the oars. If all went according to plan, they would board just as the light was breaking and the dock was visible. They were coming from the west, in the last of the night shadows. If McNab were right, she was carrying smuggled cargo. If it had been brandy or tobacco, Monk would have been happy to leave it to McNab and the rest of the Excise men, but this was a gunrunner, a different thing altogether. A thousand rifles like the one he had seen in the Wapping Station, with ammunition, could start a small war on the streets of London. They could even provoke street battles for their possession the moment they landed.
The River Police were almost in the lee of the schooner now. Monk could feel the difference in the drag on the oar as they were sheltered from the swifter-moving current. He nodded at Bathurst and saw him shorten his stroke so the boat would not swing round.
Monk raised his arm in signal. Orme stood, his balance perfect; the rock of the boat, the movement of wind and tide were second nature to him. He swung the grappling iron and let it fly. It landed, caught the rail, and he pulled it taut.
At the bow of the other boat, Laker did the same and secured the rope.
