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“You remember Rob Nairn?” He pronounced the name very carefully.
Monk had no idea who Rob Nairn was. The silence in the office had been intense as McNab watched him. He was trying to keep the emotions out of his face, and failing. Clearly it was something of intense importance, and that Monk had to have known, which meant it was in the past, before the accident.
“He has nothing to do with this.” Monk had spoken because he had to.
But he realized now that it was too late. McNab had seen the moment of blankness in his eyes, and he knew.
Now, as he and Hooper walked away from the wharf to face the long journey back to the city, Monk knew that he would have to think of an explanation for McNab as to how one of his men had been drowned in an incident that should have had nothing to do with Monk.
He had no doubt now that McNab seemed to know him far better than he knew McNab. At the beginning that had seemed reasonable. McNab was colorless. One met him, and the next day, or week, one could barely remember his features. He was apparently thorough at his job, but not dashing, not spectacular, like Monk. He had not solved any cases that stayed in the mind.
Monk, on the other hand, had carved a considerable legend for himself, not all of it good. He was clever, and brave. Evidence also proved that in the past he had been ruthless. That horror, the terrible fear, that he had been the one who had beaten Joscelyn Gray to death, had changed him. He had not been guilty of that. The relief still drenched him, in occasional dreams when the past intruded again to darken the present.
He was a different man now. Certainly he was still clever, still dressed rather better than a man of even his new superior rank usually did. But he had seen his own image in other people’s eyes, and hated it.
He was also happy now in a completeness he had never tasted before, and that made all the difference. But a man who could only aspire to some element of compassion, even when he was happy, was not worth much. The achievement would have been to be spontaneously generous when he had so little that really mattered to him. It was too late for that now. He had Hester—and Scuff. And he had friends: Rathbone, Crow, Hooper, even Runcorn from the past, who was now so different from the man he used to despise.
And of course there had been Orme. If McNab was responsible for Orme’s death, was it because of Monk, and something that he could not remember?
Certainly there was nothing from the last thirteen years to account for the look he had seen in McNab’s face, briefly, and then deliberately hidden again.
As they rode back through the wet, gray streets to the heart of London, he went over and over the incident on the wharf, and in the river. He was wretchedly cold, his wet trousers stuck to him, and his feet were numb in his boots. Hooper must feel the same.
He tried to recall exactly what had happened. They had been waiting for the escaped prisoner to appear, followed by the police or one of McNab’s men. The two had appeared from different sides of the row of buildings. Owen, smaller and faster, had been ahead, racing toward the wharf, when the big man, Pettifer, had come from the other side. They had collided, but had Owen attacked Pettifer, or was it the other way around?
Certainly they had fought, striking out at each other, getting closer and closer to the water. Looking back, Monk saw it could indeed have been Pettifer who was the pursuer and the small man he now knew to be Owen, the fugitive.
God, what a mess!
When Pettifer had panicked he had all but drowned Monk along with himself. If he had done so, Owen would still have escaped. Who the devil could have expected him to swim like that?
The schooner captain, maybe? He had been on deck. Was that chance? Or by design? Had the shouts brought him up from below, to see what was going on? How many men would there be on a boat that size? Not necessarily more than two or three, not for a two-master.
How did he know that? Had he at some time in the past learned more about sail than he recalled? He had grown up on the coast of Northumberland. Old letters he had kept from his sister had told him that. He knew the sea, the smell of it was familiar, the swing and balance of standing in a small boat on the water, the rhythm of the oars. He had taken easily to being on the swift-flowing, tidal Thames.
Where was the schooner now? Did anybody know its name? He should have asked the local police at the wharf. Or perhaps Aaron Clive had noticed it. It was a beautiful ship, and had lain at anchor near his warehouses. It must have passed them on the way up, and down again.
Any seaman at all helps a man in the water. They would have to find the ship, and pursue the issue, for whatever it was worth. Everyone, on water or on land, would be searching for Owen, the explosives expert, the wanted man.
But Pettifer’s death was not Monk’s fault, except in the most indirect way. It was Monk who had struck Pettifer, to save them both. Had he hit him so hard that the blow had killed him? He had not thought he had the strength or the weight, especially in the water with no purchase on the ground. Surely he had only temporarily stunned him, as had been his intention. But then he had drowned—which had not been Monk’s intention at all!
They would not know that until the autopsy, although Crow had implied it was not the blow that had killed him.
He should go to the police surgeon and ask him to be very precise. It was imperative that they be certain.
McNab would have a field day with it if Monk were directly responsible for Pettifer’s death. He would believe it was revenge for Orme. Monk could still feel the weight of Orme’s body in his arms, the blood everywhere, dark red and sticky as it congealed, bright and wet where it was still pumping, and nothing they could do would stop it.
He remembered his own heart beating with panic as they set Orme ashore, men in the water up to their chests, all the helping hands, faces, wretched with pity. Then the long wait in the hospital. Monk had sat with Orme all day and most of the night, hoping, praying. He was exhausted and numb when Orme died. McNab would say Monk was beside himself after the battle and keen to blame anyone else for the fiasco on the gunrunning ship.
But that would still invite people to wonder if McNab had betrayed them to the pirates.
When the cab stopped and they paid the driver, Hooper took the omnibus to the station. Monk went straight to the morgue, and found Hyde just coming out of the room where he performed autopsies. He was drying his hands on a rough, white towel and he looked cold.
“Ha! Was just going to send for you,” he said with satisfaction. “This fellow of yours—Blount? What the devil’s going on with him?”
“Not much,” Monk replied. He was far more concerned with asking Hyde to attend to Pettifer immediately, and if possible give Monk some warning as to what he had found. He needed to know the cause of death was drowning, not an immediate result of the blow Monk had dealt him. Surely it could not have been hard enough to have damaged his skull. Had Monk himself panicked enough to do that?
He had lost the thread of Hyde’s comment.
