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Monk was stunned. “Mad Lammond? The bloody river pirate?” Of course he would not stand up in court. The man’s name was an obscenity from London Bridge to the English Channel.
Hooper colored very faintly. “You’ll know the truth,” he said a little less jubilantly. “Knowledge is power, even if you can use it only limitedly. Come with me; he’ll tell you himself.”
Monk stood his ground. “Why the devil should he? Why wouldn’t he just slit our throats?”
“My enemy’s enemy is my friend,” Hooper quoted. “At least sometimes. By Mad Lammond’s reckoning, McNab owes him money, which he isn’t going to pay.”
“Explain yourself,” Monk requested. “What kind of business could McNab and Lammond have together?” He would like to believe it, but he couldn’t.
“Guns,” Hooper answered, as if it should have been obvious.
Monk began to see the glimmer of light. “The pirates that attacked us on the gunrunner’s ship were Mad Lammond and his men?”
“Right!”
“McNab told them of the raid? Why?” Monk was so overwhelmed by the memory of it he had to clear his throat to speak. “So Mad Lammond killed Orme? Why the hell did McNab want that? It’s only me he hates. Was he really prepared to kill anyone to get to me?”
“No,” Hooper said quietly. “It was you they were supposed to kill. The rest of us were incidental. Only they got Orme, and we won the battle. They got no guns, and McNab wouldn’t pay the second half of what he owes Mad Lammond because you were still alive.”
Monk blasphemed, something he rarely did. It was terrible, worse even than he had thought. The guilt was suffocating. Orme had not only died because of the battle; he had died in Monk’s place.
“All over Robbie Nairn…” Monk said quietly. “Revenge is a hideous thing, a kind of madness that rots the heart.”
“Yes,” Hooper said quietly.
“And you believe this? It was Pettifer, acting for McNab? Giving Mad Lammond the information, and money to kill me?”
“And disgrace the River Police in general,” Hooper added. “But we can’t prove it…not yet, anyway.”
“God help us,” Monk said softly, and he meant it.
MONK WAS WOKEN EARLY the following morning, before daylight. It was still pitch-dark outside, and it took a moment before he realized where he was. He had been dreaming of bright sunlight and heavy seas roaring into a rocky coast, crashing in white water.
Hester turned over and sat up, pushing her hair out of her eyes. She was immediately wide awake. Her voice came out of the darkness beside him.
“What is it? What’s happened?”
He climbed out of bed and went to the window, pulling the curtains aside. In the dim glow from streetlights twenty feet away he could see two uniformed police standing on the pavement just outside his front door.
“Police,” he told her. “I’ll turn up the gas on the landing and go down. Something must have happened. I’ll dress first.” There was no time to shave. He dashed cold water over his face and pulled his clothes on. Running his fingers through his hair, he went down the stairs to the front hall. He pulled the bolts back and opened the door.
There were two police in uniform standing on the step, so close to the door now that it was as if they were trying to hide from the street. In the light from the hall they both looked uncomfortable.
“What’s happened?” Monk demanded, thoughts of a fatality filling his mind, some appalling incident, even something like the sinking of the Princess Mary a year ago.
“I’m sorry, sir,” the taller one said quietly. “We’ve come to arrest you for the murder of James Pettifer, off Skelmer’s Wharf. Yer’d be wise to come quietly, sir. We don’t want to waken all the neighbors, do we?”
Monk was absolutely stunned, as if he needed to grasp the doorframe to make the world stay still. It made no sense. It was totally absurd. And yet, staring at the men, he could see they were police. Their uniforms were plainly visible, along with the numbers that identified them. The shorter of the two actually held a warrant in his hand, awkwardly, as if he were not sure what he was supposed to do with it.
And they were right. The last thing Monk wanted was to have the neighbors wakened to come out to see what was happening.
He stepped back a pace or two, still dizzy.
The taller policeman looked nervous, and took the same size step to keep the distance between them, as if he were afraid Monk might slam the door on him.
“I’m going to tell my wife,” Monk meant to snap at him, but his voice was hoarse and the words came out lamely, even a little mumbled.
The policeman looked past him up the stairs to where Hester was coming down slowly, her gown held tightly around her. With her hair loose and falling over her shoulders she looked younger, and more vulnerable.
