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“I’m sorry, ma’am,” the policeman said unhappily. “But we’ve got to do this. Don’t make it worse than it is.”
“Do what?” She looked bewildered.
“Arrest Mr. Monk for ’aving drowned Mr. Pettifer, ma’am.”
“Drowned him?” she said incredulously. “Pettifer jumped in the water himself! Commander Monk was trying to rescue him!”
“Was you there, then, ma’am?” he asked politely, but his knowledge that she was not was clear in his face.
She drew in her breath to argue, and then realized the futility of it. It was not this man’s decision, and he had not the power to disobey.
She came down the rest of the stairs and took Monk’s heavy overcoat off the peg in the hall.
“I’ll get dressed and then I’ll go straight to see Oliver,” she said quite calmly.
That was Hester! She would always be calm in the crisis, and then lie awake, reliving it when it was all over, trying to think what she could have done differently.
If this would ever be all over!
Monk put the coat on. “Thank you,” he answered, hoping she understood that it was “thank you” for everything, all the past, and the future.
She smiled at him, meeting his eyes for one intense moment, then turned away.
He followed the policemen out onto the step, then into the road. They did not look at him. Was it decency, to allow him this dreadful moment in some privacy? Or were they embarrassed?
It was bitterly cold with the wind coming up off the water, and the roadway was slick with ice. A carriage was waiting for them. It was much like an ordinary hansom cab, not a Black Maria, the usual closed-sided vehicle for carrying prisoners.
Monk climbed in, one policeman on each side of him, and they moved off, turning west, away from the beginning of the dawn paling in the east. The wide, flat surface of the river was already dotted with ships.
Where were they taking him? This had to be some idiotic mistake! It was perfectly obvious he had tried to save Pettifer. Even thinking at the time that he was Owen, the escaped prisoner, he had still done all he could to get the man out of the water. If he hadn’t clipped him over the side of the head, he could not have saved him. It would simply have meant they both drowned. Everyone who works near the water knows that a drowning man can panic, and take you both down.
Among his own men, who was going to take over at Wapping while he was gone? Hooper? No, of course not—Monk was only going to be away a day or two at the most. This whole thing was farcical! Some young man looking for fame must have jumped to a wrong conclusion and acted without reference to anyone senior. It would probably all be over tomorrow—maybe later today.
He wouldn’t even have to disturb Rathbone with it.
“Why am I supposed to have drowned Pettifer?” he asked.
“I wouldn’t know that, sir,” the taller man answered. “We’re just the arresting officers.”
“I’d never met him, never even heard of him,” Monk went on. “We didn’t know which man was the fugitive and which the officer. In fact, we got it wrong.”
“Maybe that’s why you killed him,” the policeman suggested. “You thought he was the escaping prisoner?”
“Or looking at it the other way,” the shorter man added, “maybe you knew right enough that Pettifer were the customs man, and the one who got away were the fugitive?”
“Why on earth would I do that?” Monk asked angrily.
“Most likely money,” the man answered. “That’s why most people do things they shouldn’t.”
Monk drew in breath to argue, and then knew it was pointless. They were only making noises. Nobody’s mind was going to change. This was a waste of time he could not afford. They were ordinary police who had arrested him, but who was behind it? McNab…surely? Pettifer had been his man, and Owen the second prisoner to escape from his custody. There was no one else involved.
There was no great conspiracy to rob Clive, or anyone else. But he had been sure of that yesterday. It was all to do with Robbie Nairn, and the past.
Monk had been in San Francisco; that now seemed unarguable. God only knew how many other places he had been, how many other enemies he had made who could remember his acts, good or bad, and he did not even know their names, their faces, anything about them at all. He was stumbling around like a blind man, falling over things everyone else could see.
He must stop this! Panic would take away any chance he had to save himself. The truth was that Pettifer had effectively drowned himself, because he had panicked! Monk had done all he could to save him. That was an irony. Was he now going to drown—in the law—because he panicked? Pettifer’s revenge!
If McNab were behind it, it was because of Nairn, whom Monk had not spared. It was irrelevant now as to whether he should have or not. Perhaps he should have tried. There had been a lack of pity in him then that he did not admire now. But there was no going back. The only way anyone could move was forward. He couldn’t change the past, only learn from it.
