Blood on the Water (13 page)

“I
WASNAE THERE
!” M
C
F
EE
complained bitterly, glaring at Monk. “That’s down river o’ me, you daft …” He bit his tongue. Whatever his thoughts on the mental inadequacies of the River Police, it was not wise to antagonize them. “The tide was going out … sir.”

Monk ignored Orme’s flash of irritation, and affected interest. They were standing on the steps at Charlton Wharf, just short of Woolwich Reach. They had caught the whip-thin Scotsman with a couple of kegs of single malt whisky, and no papers to explain them. They looked extraordinarily like part of a shipment that was missing from a warehouse a mile and a half farther up the river.

Orme waited.

“I know what you’re thinkin’,” McFee began again. “They barrels was like this, but I got this one from Old Wilkin at Bugsby’s Marshes, right legal. An’ I can prove it! Ask Jimmy Kent. He was with me.”

“When was that?” Monk said quickly. Jimmy Kent had only recently gone into the Coldbath Fields Prison for a short stretch.

“Ha! You think I cannae count, eh?” McFee said triumphantly. “I know exactly what day that was, ’cos the
Princess Mary
got sunk that night—see!”

“And Jimmy Kent was with you when you bought those?” Monk asked.

“That’s right!” McFee nodded vigorously. “Up at Blackfriars.” His lips thinned in a crooked smile. “And you know where to find that poor sod!”

“I do indeed,” Monk nodded. “But he wasn’t at Blackfriars on the evening before the
Princess Mary
sunk. You picked the wrong man—or the wrong night, McFee. He swore in court that he was at the Surrey Docks. He was one of the witnesses who saw Habib Beshara coming ashore before the
Princess Mary
went down.”

McFee paled but he did not retreat.

“Then he’s a liar! I was there! You ask …” He looked from Monk to Orme, and back again, then swore solidly for a full minute without repeating himself.

Orme arrested him, curling his lip with distaste.

A
N HOUR LATER
M
ONK
and Orme were back at Wapping taking a hot cup of tea and a cold beef sandwich each. The room was over-warm and the air stuffy. Someone had left the door open to remedy it, and the slight breeze was ruffling papers on the nearest desk.

Orme was deep in thought, ignoring the sound of river traffic, the drift of accordion music, the odd shout of a bargee, the constant hiss and slurp of water.

“He’s a nasty little swine,” he said suddenly, turning to look at Monk. “But what if he was telling the truth?”

“McFee?” Monk said incredulously.

Orme swallowed a mouthful of tea. “Yes …”

Monk thought for a moment. “Then Jimmy Kent was lying.” He recalled what he could of Kent. Not much of it was to his credit.

Orme sat still, his blunt face set in stubborn concentration.

“Why would Jimmy lie?” Monk pursued the train of thought.

“If he wasn’t where he said, then he was somewhere else.” Orme held his finger up to stop Monk arguing. “Somewhere worse—stands to reason.”

“With McFee at Blackfriars?” Monk shook his head. “Fiddling a barrel or two of whisky? We couldn’t have proved it. Jimmy’s sharper than that.”

“Yes. So what was he doing?” Orme raised his eyebrows and stared at Monk.

“Fiddling the whole shipment,” Monk concluded.

“Right!” Orme agreed. He watched Monk closely.

Hooper was leaning against the wall, his ankles crossed, listening.

Monk gave it words. “Which means he lied when he testified. If he saw Beshara at all, it wasn’t when he said it was!”

“And if it was somewhere else, but still Beshara,” Orme pointed out, “then Beshara wasn’t where anyone said he was!”

“Yes,” Monk said slowly. “Yes. I wonder how many said what they thought we wanted them to say—”

“Not us!” Orme interrupted, a shadow across his face. “Lydiate’s men …”

“Police,” Monk explained. “The authorities, the State. We all wanted it tidied up as soon as possible. Deal with it and forget it. Punish someone, then move on. It’s natural. The government would have pushed us, too, had we been on the case.”

Orme said nothing. It pained him, but he was a fair man. He could not argue.

“I wonder how many of them could tell one man from another in a hurry, just a glimpse of a face. Could you, Orme?” Monk pursued it. “If they were people you didn’t know,” he added.

“No,” Orme conceded. “But I wouldn’t swear to it …” He stopped.

Monk smiled.

“Maybe I would,” Orme said very quietly. “Maybe I’d get surer of it the more times I said it, and the more I thought of all of them that had
gone down. An’ maybe I’d think the police grateful to me, and off my back forever asking me what I know.”

“And maybe,” Monk added, “if I had a lot of business I’d sooner that the police weren’t poking into too much, I’d look to be in their favor for a while.”

“You going to Lydiate?” Orme asked. No one would like the investigation being opened up again, after people had begun to forget it and move on with life. Beshara was a man with a reputation for dealing and bribing. He was not an innocent, simply in the wrong place at the wrong time. Even if he wasn’t guilty of sinking the
Princess Mary
, he was guilty of other things for which he had not paid.

“I have to,” Monk replied. “To Lydiate, anyway. It’ll come out, sooner or later.”

Orme nodded and gave a downward twisted smile. There was no need for him to add anything. Their thoughts were the same.

M
ONK DID NOT WANT
to tell Lydiate in his office. He would allow the man time to accept it alone, or reject it, and possibly dispute it. He invited him to one of the small pubs along the river where there were seats overlooking the water. Everyone else there would be too busy watching the boats or listening to the occasional song to bother overhearing two men talking over a pint of ale and a pie.

Lydiate arrived after Monk. He was casually dressed, attempting to blend in, but he still looked like a gentleman. His careful grooming, and the grace with which he walked, would always give him away.

He came over carrying a tankard of ale and sat down next to Monk on the bench. It was only when he was closer, in the lower, more direct evening light off the water, that Monk noticed how tired he was. The fine lines on his face seemed to drag down, and there was little color in his skin. The experience of the
Princess Mary
case had weighed heavily on him. He had had to be closer to the reality of it, the massive loss, than his position usually required of him. This was going to be bitter.

“Put away a petty thief yesterday,” Monk began. There was no
kindness in stringing it out, beginning with pleasantries. “But while I was doing so, he inadvertently gave me some information about another man involved in the robbery. That was odd, because the other man had a perfect alibi. I checked it very carefully.”

Lydiate was studying his face, waiting.

Monk looked at him. “He was with one of the witnesses who saw Habib Beshara at the time he was supposed to be putting the dynamite on board the
Princess Mary
.”

“But …” Lydiate began, and then sighed. “I suppose there’s no doubt?”

“Not that I can see. It raises the whole question of how many others were saying what they thought we wanted them to.”

“He fitted perfectly,” Lydiate said, more to himself than to Monk. “He was an unpleasant man, and for sale. He’d committed many other small acts for money, which he knew were going to end in brawls, or worse. But admittedly, this was far more serious. He had a record of dislike of the British, small acts of vandalism.” He took a sip of his ale, then put it down, as if it tasted sour to him. “This was far more serious than anything else we’ve know him to do, but it wasn’t out of character.” He looked at Monk. “Everyone was so keen to help. We weeded out a hundred or more who only wanted the limelight, or thought they knew something and were nowhere near. Lord Ossett’s people called every day.”

He did not need to add more than that. Monk could imagine the pressure. He had experienced it himself, in other cases, albeit to a lesser degree. He was familiar with the constant calls, the demands for results.

He looked at Lydiate and saw the weariness in him. Had those who demanded answers any idea what they were asking? Or the danger of error when there was such hunger for quick solutions? It was juggling the possibility, even the probability, of lies. First one, then another to explain the first, then more and more to prove the ones you had already built on.

“It’s political,” Lydiate said suddenly, anger and pain in his voice.
“This damned canal is going to change so much! Everybody with money invested in shipping, import and export, travel, is trying to foresee what differences it’ll make, and guard themselves against loss. For decades, ever since Trafalgar, we’ve been lords of all the major seaways in the world.” He shrugged very slightly, his expression rueful. “Now suddenly there are shortcuts! The Mediterranean is the center of the world again and we’re on the edge. We can be bypassed, and fortunes are going to be made and lost!”

“Not all the seaways,” Monk corrected him. “It won’t affect the Atlantic, and that will get more and more important as America grows. But it will still mean a whole lot of change in investment, if the canal is a success.”

“There was talk about a new land route to the east, through Turkey,” Lydiate added, shaking his head. “Or trains from Alexandria to Suez, and then reloading everything again to go by sea. Even if this canal is a success, it will take ships slowly, and only up to a certain size. It’s inevitable. Haven’t they read about Canute?” He smiled with a bitter amusement.

Monk struggled to remember. “Holding back the tide? I saw a drawing of him, sitting on his throne with the sea up to his knees! Unbelievably stupid!”

“No!” Lydiate said sharply, as if this were the trigger to the anger he had been so long holding in. “He was trying to show his people that, great as he was, he could
not
hold back the tide. That was the whole point of the exercise. Even kings cannot stop the inevitable.”

Monk was considerably sobered. He felt a sudden warmth for this beleaguered man sitting on the bench beside him in the last of the sunlight. Lydiate was fighting against men’s political ambitions, and probably a king’s ransom in invested money. He was dealing with men who demanded miracles, and did not seem to understand the tide in any sense—of the sea, or of history.

“I don’t know whether Beshara was guilty,” Monk said. “But I do know that the verdict was unsafe. And there’s a very strong chance that sooner or later something is going arise that will prove it. Do some
of our political masters know that, and that’s why they won’t hang him?”

Lydiate looked at him curiously, the fine lines of his face etched deeply in the waning sunlight, his eyes very clear. “I hadn’t thought of that. Perhaps because I didn’t want to. Perhaps. The other possibility is just as ugly, come to think of it. I assumed Beshara’s family had got to them. He’s a wayward son, something of a disappointment, but he has brothers and cousins who own a good deal of land around the canal, which means now that they have a lot of money.”

Monk raised his eyebrows. “And do they want him released?”

“That’s a very good question,” Lydiate answered, pulling his mouth into a bitter line.

“Can you prove anything?” Monk asked, turning a little in his seat. The sun was sliding below a cloud bank, spreading color over the water, but in ten minutes or so it would fade, and the wind would turn colder. There were fewer people on the bank already.

“I don’t have the right even to look,” Lydiate replied.

“Motive?” Monk pointed out. “No one gave a motive for Beshara blowing up the
Princess Mary
, beyond a general hatred of Britain, and that’s as thin as tissue paper. Millions of people the world over must have a pretty mixed view of the British Empire, just as millions admire it or depend on it. It doesn’t make them blow up a pleasure boat with a couple of hundred ordinary people on board.”

“I know,” Lydiate agreed. “Nobody seemed to care very much about finding a more substantial reason.”

Monk said what he was afraid Lydiate was also thinking. “Or else they know damn well what it was, and didn’t want it to come out?”

“I didn’t see that at the time,” Lydiate confessed, staring across the water again. “I thought it was just the weight of public outrage and loss. Damn it, Monk, you saw the bodies! You, of all people, know how bloody awful it was! It was like a battlefield! Only it wasn’t soldiers dead, it was ordinary people, most of them women and children. What kind of a … monster does that?”

“Greedy … frightened … filled with hate for his own lost,” Monk
replied. “Think about how many Egyptian lives have been sacrificed, digging this canal.”

Lydiate sighed. “Thousands—but the bloody thing’s French, not English!”

“You’re right,” Monk conceded. “It doesn’t make any sense. But mass murder doesn’t, however you look at it.”

They sat in silence for a few minutes. The sun disappeared, taking the glow with it, and suddenly it was dark and the air chill.

“I’m sorry,” Monk said. “It might make some kind of sense if we had all the facts. It was very carefully planned. It wasn’t a sudden impulse of a lunatic, and we both know that.”

“It’s about all we do know, for certain,” Lydiate said miserably. “How can so many men, and the constituencies they serve, be so wrong? There is so much we assumed, and could be totally mistaken about.” He looked helpless. “What government deals or policies are involved? What’s really in the balance, naturally, or intentionally? What private deals are in place, and with whom? Or is it all something else entirely, and we aren’t even on the right track?”

Monk gave a bitter little smile. “With luck we can give it back to the Home Office and let the minister worry about that.”

Lydiate flinched. “And give it right back to me again!”

“I’m sorry,” Monk said sincerely.

“I know. You had no choice,” Lydiate answered graciously, rising to his feet as if his muscles ached. “I’ll tell him tomorrow morning.”