Corridors of the Night (20 page)

‘I hope so,’ Monk replied. ‘In fact I’ll see to it!’

‘That’s what I thought,’ Scuff said soberly. ‘D’yer reckon as ’is brother would get real upset about that?’

Monk stared at him, a sudden new thought taking shape in his mind until in seconds it was fully formed.

‘Yes,’ he said decisively. ‘Yes, I do. And since he is part of the whole plan and could be charged with it as well, he will care very much.’

Scuff frowned. ‘Yer said yer asked him already.’

‘He says he doesn’t know where they are, but I’ll take him back over every step of their lives, every place they’ve ever lived, visited or known anyone.’

‘Yer did that before . . .’

‘Either he knows where they are, or if he doesn’t then he’ll be as worried as we are, even if for different reasons. If he hasn’t heard from Hamilton he’ll be terrified by now. His own reputation rests on it, too. I need to remind him of that.’

‘Squeaky’d help,’ Scuff said eagerly. ‘’E can clean up real good! Look like a lawyer, an’ all! And ’e can write papers wot looks real.’

‘Yes . . .’

‘And—’ Scuff started again.

Monk smiled: suddenly it was less difficult. ‘I will. I’ll go to the clinic tomorrow morning and see Squeaky.’

Scuff smiled back, a little shyly. ‘You better be careful. If yer use dodgy paper on anyone, like wot’s bin made by someone like Squeaky, yer can get inter awful trouble. The p’lice’ll get yer . . .’

‘I know.’

‘Specially you,’ Scuff was not going to be stopped. ‘The River P’lice thinks yer flamin’ walk on water, but the reg’lar p’lice don’t like yer much.’

‘I know that too,’ Monk agreed. ‘I’ll be careful. Now I’ll clear up the kitchen, and you go and do your homework.’

Scuff had wisely kept very quiet on the entire subject of homework – indeed, school altogether – and Monk, this once, did not ask.

Monk went to the clinic in Portpool Lane early the next morning. As always, it was busy whatever the hour. He had barely got past the entrance hall when Claudine appeared. For an instant so short it could even have been an illusion, there was hope in her face. Then she knew from Monk’s eyes and from the way he stood, the tension in him, that there was no news.

She came forward, trying desperately to look as if everything were normal.

He saved her from having to think of something to say by speaking first.

‘I’ve got a further idea about searching for them, but I’d like to speak to Squeaky first.’

She relaxed a fraction, with just an easing of her shoulders. She looked him up and down. ‘He’s in his office. I’ll send you in a pot of tea. How about some cake as well? You don’t look as if you had breakfast yet.’ She nodded and turned away without waiting for his answer. She was not going to accept a refusal anyway.

‘Thank you,’ he said with a faint smile. He did not need taking to Squeaky’s office. He had been there countless times before, and he knew that Squeaky lived on the premises.

He knocked on the office door sharply, and then opened it. He caught Squeaky unaware. At any other time it would have raised his always-volatile temper. Now it caught his vulnerability. He looked up from his writing, angry. Then when he recognised Monk, there was that same instant of hope as had been in Claudine’s face. The second it was gone it was overtaken with rage, because he would not let anyone else see his disappointment.

‘What do you want?’ he snapped. ‘You think I haven’t got enough to do?’

Monk wanted to shout at him, even to swear so violently it would ease his own suffocating emotions. But far more important than relieving any anger of his own, he wanted Squeaky’s help.

‘Help,’ Monk answered. ‘Perhaps you could recommend a good forger, if I need one. Good, discreet and cheap. And one who will work for me, in spite of the fact that I am police.’

Squeaky’s face went through a range of incredulity, fury, outraged pride, and ended with hope.

‘You got something particular in mind?’ he asked.

‘Not yet,’ Monk admitted. ‘But I am going back to see Magnus Rand again, and this time I am not going to be asking for help. I intend to make it very clear to him that his brother will be charged with kidnap and murder if any of his prisoners die before we rescue them. It would ruin Magnus’s professional reputation. I think that might matter to him very much indeed.’

‘About bleedin’ time!’ Squeaky said fiercely. ‘What d’you want from me? I can do it all, and you bleedin’ know that! How about a really nice, short and savage newspaper draft showing what would happen to him, eh? “Today disgraced doctor, Hamilton Rand, was hanged at Newgate for his hideous murder of innocent children, who he bled to death in his terrible experiments”.’ He looked at Monk with his eyebrows raised. ‘Should make him think again.’

Monk noticed that Squeaky would not say the words that Rand killed Hester, even to emphasise his point. Monk did not say anything. He would have done the same.

‘It’s a good idea,’ he agreed. ‘Make it as good as you can, but quickly. It doesn’t have to be perfect, just to look good enough to make him understand what would happen. It will be far more powerful than simply telling him and leaving him to imagine it. Thank you.’

‘I’ll have it in half an hour,’ Squeaky promised. ‘Now let’s think exactly what to say.’

There was a knock on the door.

‘Come in,’ Squeaky said loudly. ‘But you’d better have a good reason.’

The handle turned slowly and the door swung open to reveal Worm. There was a small tray with a teapot, milk jug and a plate and cup sitting on the ground. He could not hold it and knock at the same time. He bent to pick it up, and carried it a little unsteadily across the room to put it on the desk in front of Monk.

‘I s’pose that’s a good reason,’ Squeaky said grudgingly.

Worm was used to him and took no notice at all. Instead he looked hopefully at Monk.

‘Thank you,’ Monk said to him, also ignoring Squeaky. ‘We are planning how to get Hester back. I hope you are staying here all the time so you can look after Claudine?’ He fixed Worm with a steady gaze.

Worm nodded gravely. ‘Yeah, I am. All the time.’

‘Thank you,’ Monk accepted. ‘And thank you for the tea.’

‘She says ter drink it while it’s ’ot,’ Worm added. ‘Cold tea don’t do no good.’ He looked at the plate. ‘Cake’s good any time.’

Monk looked at the piece of fruitcake. He broke it into halves and offered one piece to Worm.

Worm gulped. ‘It’s yours.’

‘You may have half of it,’ Monk told him.

Worm was a little boy – he had resisted once; that was enough. He took the cake and ate it in two mouthfuls.

Monk watched him go out of the door, and ate the rest himself. Then he sipped the tea. It was certainly still very hot.

‘Let’s begin,’ he said to Squeaky.

Once he had the article in his hand, Monk left the clinic and caught a hansom directly to the river, then he took a ferry to the Greenwich wharf. By then he had the article he and Squeaky had compiled so clearly in his mind he could have recited it. It was short, vivid, even garish, but the relish in the fall of Hamilton Rand and his execution by the rope was realistic, and brutal. Such newspapers as
The Times
would not have printed such a thing – they would have been far more restrained, even philosophical – but even so, it would be read by the people whose opinions both Magnus and Hamilton Rand cared about. It would be published by the papers that caught the eye in the street, quoted on billboards, and seen by one’s neighbours, whether they wished to or not.

Monk paid the ferryman, then climbed the steps and walked the short distance to the hospital. The warm sun shone at his back, the light was brilliant on the water, and the sound of distant voices came to him on the breeze. This bank was his home. If he looked up the hill he could see some of the trees, billowing like green clouds, that he could see from the windows of his own house. He had been happier here than any other place in his life.

Actually, considering that more than half his life was lost in amnesia that was a rash statement. Yet he had no doubt whatever that it was true. If he had lived anywhere else as he lived here, then surely some echo of it would remain? Small things would remind him: the perfume of grass, the sound of a woman’s laughter, a familiar footstep, the curve of a cheek, or throat, the colour of her hair . . .

He would do whatever was necessary to make Magnus Rand tell him where his brother was. He would dredge up any memory, ignite any fear . . .

He marched up to the hospital entrance and went in, looking neither to left or right. Someone called out to him and he ignored them. He knew where Rand’s office was and he would either find him there, or wait for him. This was not to be done in public, for many reasons. If he did it in front of Rand’s colleagues who respected him, possibly even liked him, certainly owed him some duty of loyalty, then they would all side with him, maybe even to forcibly removing Monk.

Also, if they were in front of those about whose opinion he cared, Rand would have an almost insuperable reason not to yield any information at all.

Magnus was standing staring at the bookcase, obviously searching for a particular title. He swung around as Monk came in. He did not bother to hide his annoyance.

‘I have already told you, Mr Monk, I have no idea where my brother is. Not that I would necessarily tell you if I did. Your wife is an excellent nurse. She has rare experience in certain areas that are useful to us, and if she chose to go with him, and has not informed you, then that is her own concern. Such things happen. And finally, Mr Monk, I do not know you very well, but if you are as overbearing with her as you are with me, then I could understand her choice.’ He looked across at Monk with defiance in his face, as if he had won some kind of victory within himself.

For an instant Monk was furious, then a wave of incredulity swept over him. That was so unlike Hester. But did every man think that he knew his wife so well he could understand everything about her, when actually he knew only the thinnest of outer layers, and all the hurt of her was hidden? Perhaps because he did not wish to see it? Might it reveal more of him than he wished to know?

Did Magnus Rand really believe what he was saying to Monk? Or was it a prepared defence?

Monk smiled thinly. ‘Of course, if that were so, Dr Rand, I might be the last one to realise it. But your brother also took with him three children who are not old enough to make any decisions as to where they wish to go. The youngest is barely four years old. That is kidnap, Dr Rand.’

Rand smiled without warmth, but there was still that sense that he was comfortable in himself, a belief of having the perfect defence.

‘Unwanted children, Mr Monk. Tragically, the river-banks are littered with them. Homeless, hungry, desperately vulnerable to unspeakable forms of abuse . . .’

‘Exactly,’ Monk agreed. ‘Even to being taken and kept so they can be drained of their blood to perform medical experiments on sick old men who want to live, no matter what cost to others.’

Rand was a little paler. ‘That is the way you see it, Mr Monk, because it would give you the right to come in here and demand information that would justify going after your wife. The law would see it as rescuing abandoned children from starvation and sleeping in the streets, and giving them good food, clean beds and safety from attack by predators who might molest them sexually, or force them into manual labour. The medical side they would see as treating their malnutrition, and taking blood occasionally in the performance of an experiment that might save countless lives in the future. My brother will go down in history as one of the great innovators in the science of medicine.’ There was a faint flush of pride in his face as he said it, and deep satisfaction.

Monk put his hands in his pockets and felt the paper that Squeaky had prepared. He was reluctant to use it, but if he did, he had one chance before it lost its power. He must lay the foundation carefully. If he wasted it he had nothing else left.

‘The children were not homeless,’ he said levelly. ‘Their parents were desperate, and sold them to you in order to have money to feed the youngest ones. They had no idea what you were going to do with them.’ He saw the sudden doubt in Rand’s face. ‘Do you care so much about your brother’s fame in history?’ He could hear his own heart beating as he waited for the answer.

This time Rand hesitated. He seemed to have retreated within himself and to be remembering, or weighing some decision.

Monk longed to interrupt him and press home his advantage, but this was too important to make the slightest error. Hester’s life could hang on the balance of his judgement now. Almost certainly it did! His throat was so tight that when he swallowed he all but choked.

‘Yes,’ Rand said at last. ‘Of course I care that he succeeds, and that he is recognised for the brilliance and dedication he has given his life to. How could I not? You have no idea what it has cost him, or you wouldn’t ask.’

‘What did it cost him more than most people?’ Monk asked.

Rand put his elbows on the desk and leaned his head forward into his hands, scraping his hair back with his fingers.

‘Hamilton was the best of us,’ he said quietly. ‘At least intellectually, perhaps in all ways. I never really knew Edward. He died while I was still an infant. All I can remember was the dim room, the curtains always half drawn to keep in the warmth in the winter, and the bright sun out in the summer. He was five years older than I was, but he always looked small, very thin, and very pale. He smiled at me, but he didn’t speak very much.’

Monk drew in his breath to ask who Edward was, then changed his mind. He decided to let Rand tell the story, rather than break the thread of memory and the sensation of pain by interruption.

‘Of course I had no idea how ill he was,’ Rand went on. ‘But Hamilton knew. He was older, ten years older than I. Edward was about eight when he died. I can remember the grief. It was summer, but it was as if the whole house was permanently in a cold, grey cloud. No one laughed for a long time. It can’t have been years, but it seemed like it.