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“If he’d been in the water, shot but alive, he’d have struggled and bled like a stuck pig from a wound like that,” Hyde answered impatiently. “It tore major blood vessels. He’s lost very little blood. I don’t mind you second-guessing me, Monk, but however much you don’t like the answer, that’s it! He was dead when he was shot. No heartbeat, and already sodden with water. In fact, from the state of the wound, I’d say he was in the water three or four hours, pulled out very obviously dead, and then someone shot him in the back. I wouldn’t swear on oath that they never put him back in the water afterward, but I’m sure enough I’d bet everything I have on it.”
Monk did not answer. His mind was pulling at the tangles of why McNab had sent for him rather than keep to himself the fact that Blount had escaped from their custody, drowned, and then been shot. He would not expose his own men’s errors, to Monk of all people, unless he had a powerful reason.
In a flash of highly uncomfortable memory, Monk saw the bright, sharp satisfaction in McNab’s eyes as he exposed the wound and said, “Murder’s your job….It’s all yours,” to Monk. He wanted Monk on it. Why?
And now there was the ghastly fact that Pettifer had been McNab’s man, and he was dead, very possibly from Monk’s attempt to save him. And yet, of course, if Monk had stood on the quayside and let him drown, that would very clearly have been his fault, too.
All accidental? Or somehow designed?
No, that was absurd. It could as easily have been Hooper who had gone in to help Pettifer. But then if Hooper were blamed Monk would still be implicated. Hooper was his man—his best man now, with Orme gone—and one to whom Monk owed a personal loyalty.
Added to which, McNab would hardly have arranged for his own man to be drowned, even if he were able to. Monk was allowing his obsession with McNab to make him lose his balance, and his judgment.
“Thank you,” he said to Hyde. “When they bring Pettifer in, which should be anytime now, I’d appreciate if you take extra care to ascertain whether he died from drowning, or if from the blow I dealt him to keep him from breaking my neck and drowning us both. If there’s anything uncertain about it, McNab will be on to it and blaming everyone else, starting with me.”
Hyde nodded, pursing his lips dubiously. “Watch him,” he advised. “He’s always digging, poking around, asking questions. I don’t know what it’s about, but he has a long and deep grudge against you. But I imagine you know that?”
“Yes…” Monk let the word hang, the idea unfinished. He knew the fact, but he had very little idea what the reason was. To begin with he had assumed general interservice rivalry: the River Police versus Customs. But lately he had been obliged to accept that it was deeper than that, and a good deal more personal. Did it go back further than his memory? Before 1856, and the accident? Should the name Rob Nairn mean anything to him?
Then why had McNab waited so long to have his revenge? It made no sense—unless he had been afraid of Monk before he knew Monk’s loss of memory? Suddenly he was vulnerable…and a man with no memory of a past that could be anything was not fit to lead the River Police. He could be manipulated, used too easily.
He thanked Hyde and walked out of the morgue, with its overcleanliness and the smells that masked the odor of death but somehow made it so much worse.
The street was bitterly cold. The scents of carbolic and lye were replaced by soot and horse manure, and now and then a whiff of drains.
Then he crossed the road, dodging a brewer’s dray and a hansom. With perhaps a little careful inquiry into a few events in past history, around the time of the accident, McNab had slowly pieced enough of it together to realize how much Monk had forgotten. Like a shark scenting blood, knowing his prey was wounded, McNab was circling closer.
Was Monk being ridiculous, allowing his own imagination to betray him? Or was it at last warning him of the truth?
He had no choice but to face McNab over Pettifer’s death and to learn more about Owen. The sooner it was done the better. He would like to know from Hyde the exact cause of Pettifer’s death, but he might not get that for a day or two, and finding Owen could not wait. Or finding the schooner captain, for that matter. Unless, of course, they were both well out into the Atlantic by now.
—
MCNAB WAS AT HIS desk in the customs offices when Monk arrived the following day. There were always administrative matters to deal with. Papers multiplied like rats if they were not attended to.
McNab looked up from his desk. He had a very pleasant office, with a view over the Pool of London. Even at this time of the year, the light was bright off the water and the black masts of a hundred ships swayed and jostled against the skyline with a constant movement.
McNab remained seated, something he would not have done six months ago. His square, heavy face was devoid of expression as much as he could make it, but there was still a brightness in his eyes.
He put down his pen, carefully, so as not to mark his high-quality desk set with ink. The leather looked new.
“Come to apologize, have you?” he asked, looking up at Monk. He did not invite him to sit.
Monk pulled out the leather-padded chair opposite the desk and sat anyway, making himself at least outwardly comfortable.
“Not apologize,” he replied with perfect control of his temper. “The man panicked. He’d have drowned us both. Not uncommon, unfortunately. But my condolences. It’s hard to lose a man.”
“Am I supposed to be grateful?” McNab asked, raising his sparse eyebrows slightly.
“You’re supposed to be civil,” Monk replied. “As am I. Is there any word about Owen yet? I assume you are doing all you can to find him? He must have been of some value to you, or you wouldn’t have been questioning him. Had he any connection with Blount?”
“Thanks to you drowning poor Pettifer,” McNab replied, “Owen got clean away. That damn schooner captain took him downriver. We questioned him, but he said he put Owen off at the next wharf. There’s no proof whether he did or not.”
“You questioned him?” Monk seized on the one point that mattered, and that betrayed at least part of what McNab implied.
“Of course I did!” McNab snapped. He seemed about to add something more, then bit it back.
Monk smiled. “Then he isn’t halfway across the Atlantic. Or in France, either. And you will have searched the schooner?”
