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“In the police, only Superintendent Runcorn of the Metropolitan Police, my old commander. He’s in the Blackheath area now.”
He would be highly unlikely to keep his position, if it were known. But Hooper would know that.
Sitting on the bank, rocking slightly, as if the river were breathing beneath them, Monk felt as vulnerable as if a firing squad were standing aiming at him. Only every gun was loaded, not just the one unknown.
“So there could be any reason why McNab hates you?” Hooper said softly.
“Yes,” Monk agreed. “It could even be justified….”
“Or not,” Hooper argued. “A good man would have faced you with it.”
“He may have,” Monk pointed out. “Or it could have been so obvious no one could have misunderstood. I don’t know.”
Hooper took a deep breath, then bit his lip. “Does he know that you can’t remember?”
“I think so.” Monk swallowed, and then his mouth was dry. “He’s made a few oblique remarks and he smiles far too often.”
Hooper looked at him steadily. “Then we assume he does.”
Monk heard the word we, not you. Did Hooper mean it? Was he even conscious of having used it? Then he realized that of course Hooper would be thinking of the safety of the whole force, not just the survival of Monk himself, and he felt a loneliness so wide and deep he could drown in it.
“We’d better give away nothing,” Hooper went on. “But assume the worst. At least now we know he’s after you, so don’t trust anything he says or does. Don’t believe anything without proof.” He stared at the water beyond Monk, all the time gently moving the oar to keep the boat from drifting out into the current again. “I wonder how much he set up, deliberately, and how much was just a damn clever use of circumstances. With your permission, sir, I’d like to look further into these escapes. Were they really as clumsy as they look? Is McNab capable of setting up his own man Pettifer? Maybe we should know more about him.”
Monk followed Hooper’s idea instantly. “You mean, was Pettifer loyal, or might he have turned on McNab and become a liability? A lieutenant who knew too much?”
Hooper nodded with a tight smile. “Wouldn’t do to take McNab for a fool, sir.”
Monk looked across at Hooper, intensely grateful for his quiet loyalty, not necessarily to Monk himself, but to the value he placed on mercy.
“Better get on with it,” Monk agreed. “I need to know as much about McNab as he does about me.”
“Or more,” Hooper said, leaning forward to pull on the oar again, as soon as Monk was ready.
—
BACK IN THE WAPPING Station in the warmth of his office, Monk was still chilled. The hot woodstove could have been an open window.
He searched his mind again to remember anything McNab had said that indicated a previous relationship between them, good or bad. Nothing specific came back to him, except the moment he had seen that flash of knowledge in McNab’s eyes, and knew he understood. Everything was about smuggling, arguments over jurisdiction, what information should have been shared, and had not been. Who had said what, and to whom.
But McNab had known him in a past he could not recall. Of course he had. That was inescapable now.
It was a fact that must be faced, because the cost of not doing so could be greater than any unpleasantness now. Yet he must not precipitate the result that he feared, betraying his weakness to McNab by the very act of raising the subject.
He spent the rest of the afternoon going over all he could find on other prison breaks in the past six months, whether involving the river, smuggling, or major thefts with connections either to Blount or to Owen. The results were an unpleasant shock. There were two other major criminals who had gotten away without trace, both possessed of unusual skills. Possibly they were also pieces of the same puzzle at last falling together.
Tomorrow morning, early, he would see McNab.
—
HE WENT HOME LATE, and he did not tell Hester about it. She was tired after a long day at the Portpool Lane Clinic, overwhelmed by victims of the cold weather and life on the streets. He set his own concerns aside, hoping to have an excuse to forget them, above all to avoid discussing with her the fear that ached deep inside him that the man he used to be had somehow made McNab’s belief of him justified.
He wanted to hear news of Scuff. He would like to have heard only that he was doing well, learning medicine from Crow, being of use and enjoying it, and that Crow was pleased with him as a protégé. But if he thought it was less than the truth, he would be either worrying at it, or looking for the pain beyond the words.
They ate quietly, then sat beside the fire in the parlor. It was a room warm in every way: the soft colors of their well-used furniture, the familiar pictures on the walls, the few ornaments of more sentimental value than monetary—a hand-stitched motto, a copper vase he had given her years ago, a painting of trees in water.
He looked across at her and saw the weariness in her face. Perhaps she was not beautiful, at least not in the traditional way. There was a strength in her that many men would have found uncomfortable, even challenging. She was in her early forties now, and maturity suited her well. But he imagined that even as a child, she would have been challenging, eager to learn and never accepting less than what she took to be the truth.
He smiled as he remembered some of their early confrontations. He had thought her aggressive, sharp-tongued, quick-minded, and unfeminine. But then he had been used to agreement from women, or at least some submission that had passed itself off as agreement. She had found that contemptible, in the women who were so lacking in either courage or self-respect, but even more so in a man who wanted something so worthless. He, too, must consider himself worthless if his vanity had to be catered to in such a fashion. And she had said so.
