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“So could the other men!” Hooper said sharply. “Come on!” He grabbed at Monk’s arm and pulled hard. “If they’re part of the kidnapping, they’ll come after us.”
Monk pulled away so sharply Hooper was almost knocked off balance. “We can’t wait. There are only three of them, and this time we’ll take them by surprise. It’s our only chance to get them all!”
Hooper knew it was risky. These men might be armed with knives. In the night, by the docks, they wouldn’t hesitate to kill a police officer, if they were cornered. And that was if they even knew Monk and Hooper were police.
Hooper hesitated only a moment. An elation was growing inside him. Monk may not realize it, but there was no greater trust in another man’s loyalty than to go into such a fight beside him. It did not occur to him until later that Monk had not even for an instant questioned that Hooper might not trust him!
They went quickly and quietly, close together, down the main street, staying near to the curb. It made them visible, if anyone was looking, but staying close to the walls also made an ambush almost impossible.
In a hundred yards, they met a cross street. Right led to a dead end, left toward the river. A quick glance and they chose the left. They passed a timber yard and tried the gates, but they were locked and chained. There were stairs at the end, down into the water, and a narrow ledge leading around a corner and out of sight. The water swirled past them, gathering speed. One misstep would be fatal.
There was no way within sight down to the river.
Monk turned upriver and saw riding lights in the distance. “Too far away,” he said, his voice tight with tension. “Couldn’t have got all the way there in that time.”
Hooper stared ahead across the river. There was a rowing boat a hundred feet away. Then he saw an oar, lying in the water only a few yards from the shore. “There’s no one rowing!”
Monk swung around to look. “Damn! Do you think that’s him in it? Lister?”
“With no oar?” Hooper asked. “If he dropped it, why didn’t he pick it up? He didn’t get far out with only one.”
“Scull? From the stair?”
“In this tide?”
Monk squinted across the water. “Is that even moving?”
“You mean is he dead already?” Hooper asked, his voice grating with the misery of yet another defeat.
Monk turned away. “We’ll have to get another boat and go out after him. Where do you think is the closest place to find one?”
Hooper looked round. He knew this part of the river moderately well. “Next warehouse after this might have one. There’s a passageway over here.” He pointed. It was invisible from where they were standing at the water’s edge, but he knew that the gates into the alley hid a narrow slit between buildings. “Have to look out for an ambush.” He nearly told Monk to keep his hand on his knife, then bit the words back. Monk already knew.
They went quickly and silently across the street, into the passage and along it to the far end. They found a boat, a fast, light shell of a thing, to take a man out to any of the ships at anchor. They unhitched it and Hooper took both oars. The boat was too narrow for two men side by side.
It took them nearly ten minutes to catch up with the drifting boat, now well into the current and being carried upriver on the flood tide. One glance inside, by the light of a bull’s-eye lantern Hooper held high, showed them everything that was of immediate import. Lister was dead. His throat had been cut from side to side and his shoulders and chest were soaked with blood. It was not an injury a man could possibly have inflicted upon himself.
It took another two and a half hours to get the body and the boat ashore. They put Lister’s boat in the custody of the Wapping Police Station and took the body to the police surgeon, although they doubted he would tell them anything that was not already obvious. Lister had been put in the boat alive, and then his throat had been cut with a large and very sharp knife, or possibly an open razor of the type known casually as a cutthroat, although nobody felt like making even a gallows-humor remark about that now. He would have died almost immediately, although from the frozen, almost gargoylelike horror on his face, he’d had time to see it coming and knew exactly what was going to happen.
It was well into the small hours of the morning when Hooper went home. He was cold, tired, and aching all over by the time he took off his clothes, washed until he was clean enough not to spoil his sheets, and finally went to bed.
* * *
—
HOOPER SLEPT FITFULLY AND awoke late and heavy-headed, as if he might have been wearing a hat too tight for him. He washed, shaved, and dressed, then left immediately for Wapping, without even taking a cup of tea. It was his duty to be there, and his personal need. Had they heard anything more? He remembered looking at the body last night, searching the clothes, the pockets, the shoes, anything at all. Had fresh eyes this morning seen anything he or Monk had missed?
It was a sharp morning with clear skies, and the autumn sun was dazzling. It showed the world in too clean a light. The other men looked as exhausted as he did. Someone had brought a pile of ham sandwiches from one of the street peddlers, and there was fresh hot tea in the big enameled pot. Hooper felt a wave of emotion that the old warmth and camaraderie seemed to be there, but he soon realized it was an illusion. They were trying to make it look as if it was the same. It wasn’t: it wouldn’t be until they knew who it was who had betrayed them. And even when they knew, and had dealt with him, the knowledge that it had happened would mean it could always happen again. The safety of absolute loyalty had been a delusion.
Bathurst was busy making more tea, and they shared the sandwiches. Monk arrived a few minutes later, with the police surgeon. Laker and Marbury were sent to examine the rowing boat. Monk said he would go, at a decent hour, and tell Exeter the news. It might give him some small comfort.
“Do you think Lister was killed for the money?” Hooper asked. “And does that mean those who killed him were the other kidnappers? Or just that he was fool enough to show that he had money to spare?”
“I don’t know,” Monk replied, some of the light going out of his face. “As I said, I find it hard to believe he was the brains behind the kidnap. He was…” He did not bother to finish the sentence.
Hooper knew what he meant: Lister had shown a careless, impulsive, spur-of-the-moment reaction to having money, not that of someone who planned meticulously. The kidnapping was planned in advance, piece by piece.
“He might be the man who actually took Mrs. Exeter, sir,” he said.
