Blood on the Water (17 page)

Hall was quiet for several moments, as if thinking this over. Then he nodded for Monk to continue.

“Who picked you up out of the water?” Monk asked.

“Ferryman. ’E might ’ave said ’is name, but what did it matter?”

“Are you sure it was a ferry?”

“Yeah. Why?”

“It might matter. Were you the first person in the boat, apart from the ferryman himself?”

“No. There were one other man in it. ’E were ’elpin’ all ’e could.”

“Do you remember him?”

“No …”

“But a man?”

“Yeah.” His face crumpled. “Weren’t many women as were got out. I … I couldn’t find me ma …” He stopped, his voice choking. “I swam around looking for ’er, calling out … but she were gone …”

Monk could imagine it, the increasing panic as hope faded, the desperate search among the survivors, going from place to place, asking.
Had he ever found her body? He must bring the man back to the present. It seemed uncaring, but it was probably better than the memory he was reliving.

“And the man, what was he wearing? Party clothes? Black suit, fitted jacket, white shirt?” he asked.

Hall frowned, searching his memory, finding the image. “No jacket, least, not like … it was like them jackets waiters wear, waistcoats, to move easy in, just …”

Monk felt a sharp jolt of excitement, recognition of a moment of truth. Could this have been the man he had seen leap off the
Princess Mary
just before the explosion?

“Anything else you remember about him?” He clung to the tiny thread, afraid to pull too hard and have it disintegrate. “Voice, actions? Did the ferryman seem to know him? A name?”

“I … I can’t remember.” Hall shook his head, like a dog coming out of water. “I can’t remember what anyone said.”

“Anything at all that you can think of?” Monk pressed.

“No! No, ’e said something, but I can’t remember. I was so desperate, none of it made sense. I’m sorry …”

Monk reached out and grasped Hall’s hand. He had been there, seen it all.

“What did the police ask you?” he said quietly.

“Police? Nothing really, just if I’d seen anything before the explosion. Where I was, that kind o’ thing. I weren’t any ’elp to them.”

“They didn’t ask anything about after the explosion?”

“No. Nothing. They knew I’d been rescued, and that I’d lost my ma. Nothing else.”

Monk withdrew his hand slowly.

“I think you might have been a great help to me, Mr. Hall,” he said with growing conviction. “I appreciate it, and I grieve for your loss.” Hall nodded, too full of emotion to risk words again, which anyway would have been inadequate to the weight of meaning.

Monk asked others but no one else had more to add to what he
already knew, just confirmation. What stood out, over and over, were the omissions, the questions Lydiate’s men had not asked, and the people they had not spoken to. They had inquired about events leading up to the explosion, and hardly anyone had had more than a few passing observations to offer: anonymous people who played music, waited on them with drinks or at table. Most of the evidence that was of value came from the deckhands. It could have implicated Habib Beshara, or almost anyone else with a darker than average skin.

Crossing the river again at dusk, on the way home, Monk was haunted by his disjointed memories of the screams, the bewilderment, and the look of abiding pain in the faces of survivors. When it came down to reality, what mattered except the lives of those you loved? All that was precious was made up of passions and of love, of belief in a purpose beyond the habits of living from day to day.

The meaning of it all could be taken in a few moments. What would his life be without Hester, and now also without Scuff?

Even memory could be torn from you. He could not remember his accident, all those years ago, or who he had been before that. All he could recollect was waking up in the hospital with no idea even who he was, let alone the life he had built. He had lost both the good and the bad, the dreams and the nightmares. No one knew what lurked in that long silence before he woke up.

He vividly remembered everything since then, the things he wanted to and the things he would prefer not to: mistakes, discoveries about his own nature, including the reasons why some people feared or hated him. Better than that were the good things, and like a strong thread through all of it was Hester, in all her roles. They had fought like cats in a bag at one time, each trying so hard not to be vulnerable, not to care. Always she had been loyal, believing in his worth even when he did not.

Thinking, even for an instant, how he would feel if she had been lost in that dark water was horrifying; it gave him a deep empathy for the grief the survivors and the victims’ families lived with, day and
night. It was not like someone dying from a long illness, when you know to prepare yourself and have the time to do it. This was sudden and brutal, total, like an amputation of part of you.

He came to the further shore, paid the ferryman, and alighted. He walked up the hill in long, swift strides, far faster than usual—eager to be home.

M
ONK CONTINUED WITH THE
search, going through all the reports from Lydiate’s men, comparing each with the others. He found no reference to the man he had seen dive overboard. Did that mean they had not found him? Or that they had, and he was of no importance? Or that they just weren’t aware of his existence?

He read them all again, to be sure of his impressions. There was a pattern of interference from various officials working for a politician, Mr. Quither, who appeared to report directly to Lord Ossett himself. They had steered the police away from the whole subject of shipping. The suggestions had apparently been discreet, but quite firm. A man of Lydiate’s political sensitivity would not have misunderstood. Why had they done that? To protect specific interests—friends, supporters, men who would reward them amply? Or because it was genuinely irrelevant to the sinking? But that raised the question as to how they could know such a thing, unless the government also knew far more about the sinking than they had told the police, or the court.

Comparing police notes with instructions from Lydiate, it was increasingly clear that certain pieces of evidence to do with eyewitness accounts had been buried within irrelevant testimony. Because they were actually irrelevant? Or because such accounts would be inconvenient to officials such as customs and excise men, port authorities, one or two members of the Home Office? One testimony was labeled as interfering with a current investigation into smuggling, a case Monk knew nothing about. He suspected it was fictitious.

Similarly, with very careful reading of what was left of the guest list, the numbers of survivors and dead did not tally with the list. The
guest list had been difficult to get hold of, and then suddenly it had reappeared from being mislaid. Had it been altered, names erased, because some people who should not have been there were listed originally? But why would someone have to hide being on a pleasure boat? Perhaps if they had lied about their whereabouts, or were keeping company with the wrong people?

Some people had not been questioned at all, let alone investigated. Or had they been discreetly not mentioned because their presence was found to be irrelevant?

Or maybe this was merely the degree of error one might expect in a highly emotional case pushed to the limit for quick results, castigated by the press, interfered with by politicians.

The atrocity had been monumental. The shock waves had spread throughout the country, and no doubt to neighboring countries, particularly France. Perhaps it was inevitable that a government minister like Lord Ossett should have kept his finger on the pulse of the investigation. He had to have feared the possibility of something like it happening again.

Nevertheless, cumulatively all these directions and enquiries had failed to encompass all the evidence and come up with an accurate picture. There seemed to have been considerable misinterpretation, due to ignorance of the river and its people. And there had been a foreseeable prejudice against the regular police by those who resented them usurping what they viewed as a Thames River Police job. They were only small lies, withholding of information, but together they added up to larger error.

Above all, what was striking was the general weakness of the accounts by eyewitnesses. They were swayed so easily by horror, fear, loss, pressure, or simply the wish to please those who were questioning them. Not to mention some clearly desired attention, hoped for reward, or saw the tragedy as an opportunity to take a little revenge here and there.

W
HEN HE HAD COMPLETED
his review and compared his conclusions with those of Orme and Hooper—who largely agreed with him—Monk went to see Lydiate at his home.

It was a very pleasant house in Mayfair, a highly fashionable area. It was set in a Georgian terrace with elegant façades and rows of white columns in a gentle arc between the pavement and the steps up to the front doors. Monk found number 72, and pulled the shining brass lever for the bell.

A few moments later a butler answered and welcomed him in. Monk followed the servant across the marble floor and to the door of a comfortable, book-lined study.

Lydiate rose from the desk, told the butler to leave the decanter of whisky and glasses. The man inclined his head and withdrew, closing the door behind him.

“Please sit down.” Lydiate indicated the other beautifully upholstered captain’s chair with its polished woodwork and leather seat. He looked tired, as he had the last time Monk had seen him, and no more at ease, in spite of being in his own home.

He offered Monk whisky, which Monk declined. Lydiate’s tension was palpable; he wasn’t hostile, but rather more like a patient waiting for bad news from his doctor.

Was the quick blow more or less merciful than careful explanations? This would not be easy for either of them.

“We’ve been over all the reports,” Monk began. “Thank you for giving me access to them. I don’t believe that any of my men have seen anything in them that your men didn’t.”

None of the tension in Lydiate relaxed. In fact, if anything, it increased. There was a tiny muscle twitching in his temple.

It was time for honesty.

“It was the omissions that were interesting, the people you chose not to speak to, or were instructed not to.”

“Such as whom?” Lydiate was not defensive so much as confused.

“Some of the survivors …”

Lydiate bit his lip. “That was a cruelty I was advised against, and I
admit I was happy to obey. The few we did speak to could tell us absolutely nothing useful. It was brutal to ask them to relive such a nightmare.” There was pain in his face, and a soft note of disappointment in his voice.

“Investigation is often painful,” Monk said in reply. “Most of it is also useless, but sometimes memory returns and something comes up.”

“Such as what?” Lydiate sounded dubious.

“When I was going over it again, thinking about it one evening as I crossed the river from Wapping back home, I remembered a moment before the explosion. I saw a figure leaping off the
Princess Mary
into the water. He was there against the light only for an instant, then the whole bow went up in flames and I forgot about him.”

Lydiate leaned forward a little. “A figure. A man jumping before the explosion?”

“Yes.”

“Why would anyone leap off before? Are you certain you are not transposing the events in your memory?”

“Yes, because I saw him against the evening sky, not against flames. If he was responsible for the explosion, then he was escaping—”

“Into the water? Hardly!” Lydiate interrupted.

“There was a small boat in the water, near the ship,” Monk explained. “Later, I was interviewing a survivor, one of the first off. He was picked up by a ferry, near the ship, and there was another passenger in it already, soaking wet, but dressed as a waiter or servant, not a guest.”

Lydiate sat back with a long sigh. “Not Beshara,” he said softly. “He was caught having been at the dockside, and not dressed as you describe. He only went into the ship at Westminster when they boarded. He got off again somewhere around Limehouse, judging by the longest possible time for a fuse.”

“Eyewitness’s testimony,” Monk pointed out. “Which we now know might not be entirely accurate. Did you find anything that could be considered a decent motive since we last spoke?” Monk pressed.

“No,” Lydiate shrugged as if it were an old wound aching again.

Monk would like to have let him off the hook, but he could not afford to. “I saw a lot of direction from government ministers,” he said. “Do they normally interfere with police investigation this much?”

“It was a spectacular case,” Lydiate pointed out, a touch of defensiveness in his tone. “It was imperative we clear it as swiftly as possible, for several reasons. Justice demanded it. Public safety was at issue. And for reasons of international diplomacy we needed to be seen to have solved the whole thing and dealt with the perpetrators.”

“Because there were important people on board?” Monk said. “Some of them foreign?”