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“Sure it’s him?” Hooper asked softly.
“Oh, yes,” Laker replied. “That’s his stride; turns his left foot in.”
“We’ll have to stay close,” Laker observed as they set out after Lister, who was already getting harder to distinguish in the mist. “Damn weather! If he gives us the slip for more than a few minutes, we could end up following someone else half the way to bloody Gravesend!”
Hooper agreed, but did not say so.
For over half an hour they followed Lister along narrow streets, occasionally cutting through alleys and then out again. Hooper wondered whether he was actually going somewhere, or if he knew he was being followed and was amusing himself. Were they being laughed at?
“Where the hell is he going?” Laker grumbled.
Then Hooper put his hand out and grasped Laker’s arm, pulling him to a sudden stop. The figure ahead of them had stopped also. Just beyond them, in the gloom, Hooper could see two more figures, one large, one considerably shorter. They could hear voices now, but not distinguishable words. All around them every surface was wet: the pavement of the dockside, the warehouses to the left, the cranes standing idle, towering into invisibility above them. The gutters were spilling over from the night’s rain; the unloaded kegs and bales piled to the right were waiting for cranes to lift them when the mist cleared; the rooftops disappeared into the fog. And everywhere were the sounds of the river water flowing past them, swirling in eddies where the current was broken by pier stakes or dock steps. And unlike darkness, fog distorted direction. Even the foghorns Hooper could place only because he knew where they were.
Suddenly, there was a scuffle ahead of them, a shout of pain, and then a string of curses. The figures bunched together, swayed, and then one of them slid to the ground and stayed there, motionless.
The two left standing lunged at each other. One swung his arm around, high over his head and then down again. There was a shout of fury and pain; then they locked together.
Hooper charged forward, Laker only a step behind him. They ran across the open space between them and the fighting men. Hooper had his cudgel out, ready to strike the attacker when the fellow was stunned and almost knocked off balance.
Laker was faster, lighter, and he caught up with Lister, who was climbing to his feet awkwardly. Before he was fully upright, another figure appeared out of the mist and struck the standing man with a short, sharp jab, and then another. The man doubled up, gasping as if he had been winded, choking for breath. He subsided slowly, helpless to fight back. The new figure moved swiftly toward Lister, who was still dazed.
Hooper realized what the man was going to do when he saw the flicker of light in his hand, only for a second. It was a large blade. Hooper kicked as hard as he could at the man’s kneecap. It was not where the man was expecting the blow, and he fell back, sideways, with a gasp of pain. Laker swung his cudgel at the larger of the two remaining men and then turned to Lister. But Lister saw his chance and, quick as an eel, he shot between them and slipped into the shadows, instantly invisible.
Laker started after him but took only two steps. He was leaving Hooper with three men. Admittedly two were weakened, but it was still too many. The man on the ground was getting up again.
“Come on!” Laker yelled. Lister had gone, and he was the only one they needed to catch.
The man with the knife hesitated. He was of average height at least and well built, although in the mist none of them could be easily recognized again. And this man would be impossible to identify, because the lower half of his face was muffled.
He stood still for an instant, then struck forward with the knife, missing Laker by a few inches. He turned on his heel and was gone into a deeper shadow cast by a stack of kegs. His footsteps sounded for a moment, then were gone. Fog swirled around him in a momentary drift and then closed again, thicker than before.
The two men who were left looked ready for a further fight. Was it just a dockside robbery gone wrong? Or the attempted murder of Lister? For what? Any number of things, most probably for some of the money he was flashing around. Did they know him?
“Arrest them,” Hooper said, suiting his action to his words and grasping the bigger of the two men.
Laker manacled the other and they walked them to the nearest local police station. But even though they spent the rest of the afternoon questioning them, they learned nothing. Both men swore they followed Lister because of the money he had been spending, intending to rob him. They had not expected his strength or skill in defending himself.
So who was the third man who had turned up, apparently to rescue Lister? Or had he intended to rob him instead? They had no idea. Lister was not there to press charges on all his attackers, and these men under arrest had not had the chance to steal anything.
Hooper acquiesced to the local police, letting them
go.
“What the hell happened to Lister?” Laker said as they left to go back to Wapping. The fog was still thick, and now the wind had risen slightly, drifting round them, one moment wrapping them in a thick blanket, the next opening up views a hundred feet long. Everything dripped. The icy air was heavy with unfallen rain.
“I don’t know,” Hooper admitted. “I don’t know whether the third man was there to help him or hurt him.”
“The more I learn about this, the less I think I know,” Laker admitted.
“I know I wish Harry Exeter had never crossed our paths,” Hooper said with intense feeling. He meant it with an all-pervasive sorrow. It had damaged his friendship with Monk, which mattered to him more and more as he realized the extent of it. It had robbed him of his trust in the men, all of whom but one were totally worthy of any loyalty he could give.
But it had also introduced him to a woman whose inner grace he could not entirely dismiss from his mind. And thinking of her made him realize how much was missing from his life, and would always be missing, because of one action on a merchant ship twenty years ago.
If he had it to do again, knowing what it would cost him, he might not. Yet he still felt it was the only thing he could have done and slept, at ease with himself, disturbed by fear but not by guilt.
Or, with some wisdom, more courage, would he have found another way?
“We all have secrets,” Laker said suddenly. “A man has a right to them.”
