by Anne Perry
Laker did not answer immediately.
Monk waited.
“You’re back to which one of us did it, aren’t you?” Laker said at last. “If you think that I did, you’re wrong. I don’t know. I’ve learned a lot about the men, but it’s none of my business. Things I don’t want to know. Bathurst’s hard up because he gives everything he can to his mother. But I’d put my life in Bathurst’s hands any day. And Mr. Hooper. I’d be ashamed to think ill of him. He’s one of the best men I’ve ever known. He’d be killed himself before he’d betray the rest of us. Mr. Marbury’s got a bit of temper if you hurt an animal, but he’s decent enough. Share his food, or a mug of beer. A dry coat.”
Laker threw his weight against the oar and Monk had to dig deep to stop the boat from swinging off course.
“So, what are you saying?” Monk asked after a moment or two. “That it has to be Walcott? Just because he doesn’t fit in so easily with the rest of us? Everybody’s got secrets, Laker, vulnerable places, things they value too much to lose.”
“You…you thinking of anything in particular, sir?” The tone of Laker’s voice had changed. There was fear in it. Monk did not know exactly which words had caused it. Was Laker thinking he meant him? Or did he somehow know Monk’s own secret? It was too late to pull back now.
“I know what it’s like to have to face your worst fears, the ones you won’t name, even in the middle of the night,” Monk began again.
Laker pulled steadily on the oars, in silence but for the creak of the boat and the sound of the water.
“There’s one sort,” Monk went on. “Like when Hester was kidnapped, and I thought they would kill her. I know what Exeter was suffering.” The guilt chilled him again. He remembered Kate’s body. How would he have reacted if it had been Hester? He had nightmares even now, dreadful images of Kate’s body turning into Hester’s, of a loss that was far worse than being killed himself.
This could so easily have been him instead of Harry Exeter. Why had the woman Monk loved survived, and Exeter’s wife died horribly? Was it Exeter’s fault somehow, or just his hideously bad luck? Surely it could happen to anyone with money, power of some kind, knowledge that could be used?
When he looked into Exeter’s face he saw himself, the loneliness that robbed the meaning from everything. He felt guilty that he had not been able to save this man who had trusted him.
Laker dug his oar in and pulled at it so savagely it took all of Monk’s strength to keep them steady.
“And I know what it’s like to have your own past threatened, things you know you did and want to hide, dug up and displayed for everyone to see. It’s bad enough your errors show, but the thing you are afraid of the most is how your friends will feel. I know about your cashiering from the army, but nobody else needs to.”
“Thank you, sir.”
They rowed in silence for a space. Finally, it was Laker who broke it. “Are we going to find out who killed that poor girl?” he asked.
“We’re going to prove that Doyle did,” Monk replied. “We need to find who was in it with Lister. I don’t know how many men there are. What do you think?”
They discussed the subject most of the way back. Going over what each of them knew from their experience, there appeared to have been at least four.
“Do you think she was killed before we got there, or sometime after?” Laker asked.
“I don’t know,” Monk said quietly. He had been thinking about that on and off since the night it had happened. “Did they always intend to, or did something happen that made it necessary? What could that be? Other than that she recognized somebody?”
“She knew one of the kidnappers?” Laker said incredulously. “She’s acquainted with that kind of person?”
“If it’s Doyle, perhaps.”
Laker did not answer but dug the oar in deeply again and matched his stroke to Monk’s.
CHAPTER
16
MONK WAS WHITTLING IT down, one by one, all the time fighting against every thought that the traitor could be Hooper. And yet that fear was always at the edge of his mind—the unknown in Hooper, a man he realized he cared for as a friend more than anyone else he knew, apart from Rathbone, perhaps. But there was an unknown in everyone, even himself—especially himself. There had to be another answer, and yet what if there was not? How would he live with it? Hooper had not turned his back on him! Without knowing the details, he had accepted. Not even forgiven. Not judged.
He went over everything he knew about Marbury. He even went to see his previous commanding officer in the police, who expressed a profound regard for him.
“Why did you let him go?” Monk felt compelled to ask. They were sitting quietly in a public house in Shoreditch, well to the north of the river.
“Had to,” Reilly said with a sad smile. “He’d have had my job, else. I’m not ready to retire yet. Few more years before I can afford that.”
“So, he’s after mine!” Monk said with surprise.
“Doubt it. But he was due for a promotion, and I’d no place to put him. Couple of men ahead of him, and I’d find myself nudged into oblivion if I didn’t get rid of one of them. Marbury, I could do it fairly. Knew he’d be in the right place with you. Bit more active. Doesn’t sit behind a desk and tell other men what to do.” He gave a sharp little laugh. “Never got over losing his son. Wife took it even harder.”
That explained the loneliness Monk saw in Marbury, and perhaps his love of dogs. A man could touch a dog with affection, talk to it often, and not be thought odd.
“Why are you asking?” Reilly asked. “He giving you any trouble?”
Monk had already made up his mind to be honest. It was past the time when he could afford to be making elaborate evasions. “Not with him. Don’t know who it is. Got to learn a bit more about all of them.”
Reilly drew in his breath and then let it out again. He waited a few moments before he spoke. “If it’s a question of dishonesty, it’s not Marbury. He’s straight. If it’s drink, it’s not him either. If it’s goods or money missing, it’s definitely not him. I trust him with everything I have—not that that’s so much.”
“But…?” Monk prompted him after he had been silent too long.
Reilly sighed. “It’s his temper I’m not so sure about. If someone hurt a woman or an animal, Marbury could have forgot himself and beaten the hell out of them.”
Monk couldn’t keep the smile of relief off his face. It wasn’t only that he instinctively liked Marbury, but he was relieved to have his own judgment vindicated. It hadn’t happened often enough lately, and self-doubt was crippling him. He could feel it like an increasing ache inside him.
“I’ve seen flashes of it,” he said to Reilly. “It’s not that, it’s…a betrayal.”
“Then it’s not Marbury. I’ll swear to that,” Reilly answered him.
Monk smiled again. He believed Reilly—as much as he had believed his own instincts, until that night on Jacob’s Island. He would have sworn he knew his own men, all of them, in one way or another, but Hooper in particular.
Then it had to be Walcott! There was no one else left.
It was easier to ask questions about Walcott. Of all the men involved in the Jacob’s Island rescue, Walcott was the one he liked least. But when he set out the next day, it was with a sense of guilt, nonetheless. There was nothing to point to Walcott, only that there was no one else left.
Once Monk knew it was Walcott, even before he knew why, it would at least remove the suspicion from everyone else. But would anything blot out the fact that they had suspected each other?
He spent all day at it, speaking to men who had worked with Walcott, to a few Walcott had arrested. He spoke to the landlord at his regular pub and found that Walcott was notorious for his ability at street fighting. He was a small, neat man, swift-moving with a hard left punch
, which some said was vicious. But he never showed anger or seemed to lose his temper. It all came out of nowhere, often without warning. So far as anyone knew, he had never killed anybody, although in really nasty brawls he had once or twice come close, usually when someone had attacked with a knife. He did not like knife fighters. Monk shared that feeling with him. There was something primitively vicious about a knife.
Walcott’s love of music hall songs, especially sentimental or funny ones, was already known to Monk. An ordinary ballad did not interest him. However, all of this was incidental. It proved nothing, except that there was more depth to him than Monk had known. Had the other men been aware of, perhaps even shared some of his taste in songs?
What did matter was that on every occasion when he was unaccounted for by Monk’s own men, he was entertaining people at a beer hall, and every second of his time was vouched for.
It was not Walcott.
Tired and with very mixed feelings, Monk went to the Greenwich Police Station looking for Runcorn.
Monk had been there only fifteen minutes when Runcorn came in, looking tired but smiling widely.
“Glad you’re here,” he said, looking at Monk. “I think we’ve almost got it. A few details to fill in, but got the core of it all right.” He sat down heavily in the chair behind his desk, sighing as he did so. “Horrible, but inevitable. I will never understand some men.”
“Doyle.” Monk said. “I didn’t know for sure but he seemed central to the whole Kate Exeter business. And whatever he did, I can’t forgive him for having Kate Exeter killed. What in hell’s name did he have to do that for? I suppose she saw him and worked it out, and so he had Lister kill her. Have you told Exeter himself yet? Can I do that…I’d like to.”
Runcorn looked unhappy, even a little confused. “Sorry…”
“What? You’ve told him already? You don’t need to look so guilty. You’re the one who solved it. You’ve a right to tell him.” Monk tried to sound generous about it, as if he didn’t mind. He had wanted to keep his word, or at least be the one to tell Exeter that this part of it was over. But that was small-minded. Runcorn deserved this. Anyway, it was not over. He still had to face Hooper. That was going to be the very worst.
Runcorn was staring at him now. “You can see Exeter if you want,” he began.
“What do you mean, see him?” Monk asked. “Is he ill?” Another thought struck him. “Did he beat the truth out of Doyle? I can hardly blame him.”
“No. Monk, it was Exeter who did it…all!”
Monk was stunned. “What are you talking about? That makes no sense! Besides, he couldn’t have. He was with us when Kate was killed!”
“Was he? Right with you, where you could see him?”
“Couldn’t see anybody in that gloom,” Monk responded tartly. “But he was there. I know he didn’t pass me.”
“Couldn’t he have gone round you, down another side passage?”
“You’d have to know that place damn well to do that. He didn’t know it at all!”
“How do you know that?”
“He said so. That was why he needed us…”
“That’s as may be, but he was behind it,” Runcorn insisted. “The money was the thing. He may very well have meant them to get her back—heroically rescued by him—and the money passed over. They double-crossed him and killed her. Perhaps she saw Doyle and knew it was—”
“No!”
“Fisk was the man who got it tied up,” Runcorn went on, speaking over Monk, insisting on saying what he meant and finishing it. “Lister knew it was Exeter, which is probably why he had to be killed. He would have blackmailed Exeter; perhaps he even tried it.”
“No!” Monk insisted. “Why? What for?”
“The money—”
“That’s rubbish! It was his money.”
“No, it wasn’t,” Runcorn insisted. “It was Katherine’s inheritance. A lot of his money is only on paper. You need a clever accountant to see it, but the bank’s books are thoroughly fiddled. Doyle was probably in on it, and Miss Franken discovered it. That was why she had to be killed.”
“By Doyle, for heaven’s sake. Not by Exeter!”
“Yes, by Exeter. Doyle hadn’t the stomach for it. He’s greedy and quite capable of fiddling the books, but he’s essentially a coward.”
Monk was bewildered. He remembered Exeter’s grief, his horror and utter misery afterward as sharply as if it were a thing that could be inhaled, filling his own body. “I don’t believe it. Who got this evidence? You?”
“Mostly Fisk. He’s a good man, reliable and honest.”
“Which is he?”
“You remember him. You said he was staring at Hooper…”
It came back to Monk in a flood of memory. Now it was like a dark tide, drowning everything. If he had been wrong about Exeter, that was an unusual error of judgment on his part. But if he was wrong about Hooper, too, that was more than a crack in the surface; it was a flaw through the heart of all his decisions, his trust, everything he thought he knew.
“Monk,” Runcorn spoke softly, “Fisk’s a good man. He’s not wrong in this. I gave him the books to look at and he took them to a fellow he knows, a first-class cheat and embezzler. There isn’t a trick he doesn’t know. Fisk showed him this, and then Fisk showed me. Once you see it, it’s as plain as day. Exeter came out of this a rich man.”
“Or Doyle did!” Monk insisted, refusing to believe that the man whose suffering he had seen so instinctively was a sham.
“Granted, he came out richer than he went in, but the big gain was Exeter’s,” Runcorn insisted.
“I don’t believe he did it, certainly not that he had any part in Kate’s death. Fisk’s wrong.” Monk stood up. “I’ll go and see Exeter tomorrow. I’ll get Rathbone to defend him. Tonight, I want to see Hooper.”
Runcorn stood up as well. “If you have unfinished business with him, you’d better. I’m sorry, I know you trusted him.” There was intense pity in his face. “It’s the worst thing I can think of, to have trusted someone and been betrayed. That’s what you’re thinking, isn’t it?”
“It was one of my men,” Monk could hardly get the words through his aching throat. “And we’ve excluded all the others.” He had to face it at last. There would be an explanation: someone else’s life, maybe, a price Hooper could not pay. Monk refused to think what it could be.
“There’s something he’s not telling me. It’s in the air like a fog between us. Someone must have blackmailed him. That’s what’s been crushing him all this time. I need to know what it is. Good God, Runcorn, do you think I don’t know what it’s like to have the past weighing on you till you can hardly breathe? Does he think I don’t know that? Why didn’t he tell me? I would have helped. He doesn’t trust me. He knows all about me…everything I know—not that that’s much, but the emptiness still weighs like a lead coat. Couldn’t he have trusted me?”
“You trusted him because you had no choice,” Runcorn pointed out. There was no flinching or evasion in his eyes, but no blame either.
“Well, he’s got no choice now!” Monk said. He was so torn with emotion that he almost stumbled out the door, and went into the street without speaking again.
* * *
—
HE FOUND HOOPER IN Wapping Street, looking cold and white-faced. “Come to my office,” Monk ordered. “And close the door.”
Hooper followed him in and did as he was told. He did not sit. Monk chose to stand as well.
“Runcorn has arrested Exeter,” Monk stated simply.
“For what?” Hooper asked. “Why?”
“Apparently Fisk took the bookkeeping pages to an embezzler he knew, who said that Doyle snatched up some of the ransom, but Exeter took the bulk of it, by a long way.”
“That doesn’t make any sense.” Hooper looked totally bew
ildered. He must have known from Monk’s face to expect something hard and ugly, but this took him completely by surprise. “Why on earth steal your wife’s inheritance, which will be yours anyway, and then give your bank manager part of it? Whatever for?”
“You don’t know?” Monk said.
“Me? Of course I don’t know!” Hooper’s voice was fraying audibly. “Do you?”
“No, I don’t. But Runcorn said Exeter came out of it very well. Richer than he went in.”
Hooper was silent.
“That’s one thing I intend to ask Fisk, when I see him,” Monk went on. “Is he somehow framing Exeter for this?”
“Who? Fisk?”
“Yes, Fisk. What do you know about him, Hooper? And don’t tell me you don’t know anything. Fisk knows you, anyway.”
Hooper stood still. He seemed incredibly familiar to Monk, as if he had known him as long as he could remember. They had faced all sorts of victories and defeats together, hardships and pleasures. He remembered sharing a single ham sandwich after a long night on the river. He had first seen the real beauty of wild birds when Hooper had pointed to a pair of swans flying high over the estuary in a stainless sky. Monk thought of them as lonely. Hooper had seen the certainty in them, the knowledge of where they were going.
And yet he was also a stranger, a stranger in pain. But there was no way to avoid it now. He had come this far. He must go all the way.
Monk waited.
Hooper faced him. “I used to be a seaman.”
“I know.” Monk sat down.
Hooper sat slowly in the other chair, awkwardly, as if he were too stiff to bend easily. “I came ashore about twenty years ago.”
“Does this have to do with Fisk?”
“Yes. Though not a great deal. He was a seaman also.”
“On the same ship, I presume?”
“Yes.”
“Go on…”
