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BY LATE AFTERNOON MONK was tired and felt he had accomplished little. He went home early, so that he could eat something before going down to the Greenwich stairs to meet Bella Franken at half-past seven.
At quarter-past he set out, closing the front door behind him and walking in the crisp evening air. The wind had fallen a bit, and it was really quite pleasant. Still, it would be cold on the pier and he would not allow her to get chilled waiting for him.
It took him ten minutes going down the hill, and it was twenty-five past when he reached the stairs to the water. There were a couple of people waiting for the next ferry, a man with his coat collar turned up, pacing back and forth, and a woman with a shawl around her head, which hid most of her face. They acknowledged each other with a nod, but no one spoke.
Seven or eight minutes later, a ferry arrived. A man in work clothes got off, but there was no sign of Bella Franken. The man and the woman who had been waiting got on board. The ferryman looked at Monk.
“No, thank you,” Monk declined. “I’m waiting for someone.”
“Right you are, sir.” He gave a salute, then took up the oars and pulled away. For a few yards, the pier lights lit the water off his oars and made the slight ripple of his passage bright; then he was gone, beyond the pool of light. And it fell silent again, except for the flutter of the wind moving a piece of rubbish across the open boards of the wharf and the whisper of the tide past the edges of the pier.
Quarter to eight. Where was Bella?
He wondered what she wished to tell him, or to show him. Was it more pages from a ledger that read differently from the one he had seen, or would she just explain the figures he already had? Doyle was deceiving him about something, he felt sure about th
at.
He was growing cold standing still. He began to pace back and forth, from one end of the pier to the other.
Was Doyle a go-between or an arranger for the kidnappers, a man who knew who was vulnerable? Did he know who had the ability, with his help, to lay his hands on the greatest amount of money? And who loved his wife enough not to put up a fight, to just pay it, without a struggle, to get her back? There would not be so many men in that category. For a start, few men ever had the wealth of Harry Exeter, and of those who had, much of it lay in property and investment that could not be liquidated immediately, whatever the need.
Was Doyle a willing participant? Or was he blackmailed in some way to do that? He gambled. Was it a far deeper problem than Hooper had been able to discover? If he slept with women of the street, who cared? So did many others. It was not a big enough matter to blackmail him to betray a client in such a way.
For a moment, Monk thought of other past cases, where people had done appalling things under pressure of blackmail. He and Oliver Rathbone had fought some of the worst imaginable.
Eight o’clock! Where was Bella Franken? Had something prevented her from coming? Even if she had found it difficult to catch a ferry, she should have been here by now! He would give her another fifteen minutes, then leave.
Without fully realizing it, he was watching the water, seeing the light reflected from riding lights on the ships at anchor, seeing the small boats moving, coming to the south bank or going back toward the north. Where was she?
He walked back toward the step again and looked down. The tide had risen, one step fewer visible from the water line to the top. There was more flotsam drifting by, bumping the stones. It looked like cloth, a bag of something thrown away.
Suddenly his stomach knotted, and for a moment he thought he was going to be sick. He saw the rest of it as it turned in the water. It was a body—a woman’s body, fully clothed in dark fabric, a boot on the one foot he could see. Her face was only a pale blur, just beneath the water.
He scrambled down the steps, heedless of slipping or getting himself soaked, and reached the water line just as the current carried her almost out of his reach. It was strong and, beyond the steps, deep. He lunged forward for her, as if she might still be alive, although everything in him knew she was not.
He felt the bottom of her skirt and pulled. She swung around, held on to by him and carried by the current. There was no point in calling for help; there was no one else on the pier. Clinging on to her, he was carried off the steps into the deep water himself. His coat hampered his movement, and he felt the stakes of the pier scrape against his shoulder and bruise his arm. He had no footing at all. The water was deep under him.
Where were the next steps, where he could hope to get a foothold, or a handhold? The river was strong and ice cold, and he was soaked through already. What an immensely stupid thing to do. He didn’t even know for sure that it was Bella! But he did know. He was certain, even as he clung on to her, winding his hands into the fabric of her dress so the strength of the water would not rip her away from him. Why? He couldn’t help her now.
Suddenly he was aware of a darkness beside him, and then something wooden hitting his shoulders.
“?’Ere! Grab that, mate!” a voice shouted at him.
The wood hit him on the shoulder again. It was an oar. A ferryman was offering him an oar to hold on to. He grabbed it hard with one hand, keeping the other on Bella’s body in case the river took her away again. He pulled and felt the oar drawing him toward the side of the boat.
“Hold on, mate!” the voice called out again. “I’ll take the girl first. You hang on to the gunwale.”
He felt Bella move as the man struggled to lift her out. It seemed to take him forever. Monk’s hands were growing colder and weaker; he could not hold on to Bella any longer, and he felt her slip away.
Then an arm came and gripped him. He used what strength he had left to heave himself over the gunnel and roll onto the hard boards of the floor inside the ferry boat, gasping.
The ferryman let him be and put his shoulder into getting the boat to the nearest steps and then moored.
Monk was dazed. He sat up slowly, taking a moment or two to make his arms and legs work. He was shaking with cold.
The ferryman was shouting, bellowing for help. “?’Ere, mate. Stand yourself up and get onto the dry, will yer? Else you’ll get froze to death. I’m sorry, the lady’s gone. Reckon there was nothing you could ever ’ave done anyway.” He looked at someone beyond Monk. “Come on, yer great nelly! Come and get her up the steps, then! I’m not letting him die of cold, after I took that much trouble to get him out o’ the water!”
Monk was hardly aware of the arms helping him up. There seemed to be at least two others, apart from the ferryman.
