The Dark Assassin (32 page)

"He's got
the ivory," Monk said. It made the victory hollow. Farnham would consider
it too high a price to pay for the evening's triumph, and he would not let Monk
forget it.

"We'll get
'im up," Orme assured him quietly.

"Up? How?
We can't go down there. A diver would be lost in minutes. It's mud!"

"Grapples,"
Orme answered. "Get 'em this tide, we'll find 'im. 'E's got it in 'is
pocket. It'll be safe enough." He looked Monk up and down with concern.
"You got a nasty cut, sir. Best get it attended to. You know a
doctor?"

Now that he
thought about it, Monk was aware that his arm hurt with a steady, pounding ache
and that his sleeve was soaked with blood. Damn! It was an extremely good coat.
Or it had been.

"Yes,"
he said absently. It would be the sensible thing to do. "But what about
the Fat Man? That ooze could pull him down pretty far."

"Don't worry,
sir. I'll get a crew with grapples straightaway. I know what that carving's
worth." He gave a grin so wide his teeth gleamed in the moonlight.
"An' it'd be nice to pull the old bastard up an' show 'im off. Better'n
just tellin' folk."

"Be
careful," Monk warned. "Sodden wet and covered in mud, he'll weigh
half a ton!"

"Oh, at
least!" Orme started to laugh. It was a rich, happy sound, a little high,
as if he was now realizing how close they had all come to defeat, and he still
did not know how badly any of the rest of his own men had been injured, or even
whether any had been killed.

Then Monk
remembered Clacton. Did Orme know that he had deliberately held back? If he
did, would he do anything about it? Would he expect Monk to? Even as the
thought came to him, Monk half made up his mind to face Clacton, not as a
betrayer but as a coward. It might be the better way.

He held out his
left hand. "A good night," he said warmly.

"Yes,
sir," Orme agreed, taking it with his own left. "Very good. Better'n
I thought."

"Thank
you." It was not a formality; he meant it.

Orme caught the
inflection. "Yer welcome, sir. We done good. But yer'd best get that arm
seen to. It's a nasty one."

Monk obeyed and
got into the waiting boat, a little awkwardly. His arm was stiffening already.

It was nearly an
hour later, on the north bank again and close to midnight, when he finally sat
on a wooden chair in the small back room of a young doctor known as Crow. Monk
had met him through Scuff when Durban was alive and they were working on the
Louvain case.

Crow shook his
head. He had a high forehead and black hair that he wore long and cut straight
around. His smile was wide and bright, showing remarkably good teeth.

"So you got
'em," he said, examining the gash in Monk's arm while Monk studiously
looked away from it, concentrating his anger on the wreck of his jacket.

"Yes,"
Monk agreed, gritting his teeth. "And the Fat Man."

"You'll be
clever if you get to jail him," Crow said, pulling a face.

"Very,"
Monk agreed, wincing. "He's dead."

"Dead?"
Without meaning to, Crow pulled on the thread with which he was stitching
Monk's arm. "Sorry," he apologized. "Really? Are you sure? The
Fat Man?"

"Absolutely."
Monk clenched his teeth tighter. "He fell through a rotted pier on Jacob's
Island. Went straight down into the slime and never came back up."

Crow sighed with
profound satisfaction. "How very fitting. I'll tell Scuff. He'll be glad
at least you got that sorted. Hold still, this is going to hurt."

Monk gasped and
felt a wave of nausea engulf him for several moments as the pain blotted out
everything else. Then there was a sharp, acrid sting in his nose that brought
tears to his eyes. "What the hell is that?" he demanded.

"Smelling
salts," Crow replied. "You look a bit green."

"Smelling
salts?" Monk was incredulous.

Crow grinned,
all teeth and good humor. "That's right. Good stuff. So you got the Fat
Man. That'll help your reputation no end. Nobody ever did that before."

"Our
reputation was rather in need of help," Monk said, his eyes still
stinging. "Somebody's been spreading the word that we were not only
incompetent but very probably corrupt as well. I'd dearly like to know who that
was. I don't suppose you've any idea?" He looked at Crow as steadily as
his groggy condition would permit.

Crow shrugged
and turned his mouth down at the corners. "You want the truth?"

"Of course
I do!" Monk said tartly, but with a touch of fear. "Who was it? I
can't survive blind."

"Actually,
it wasn't so much the whole River Police as you personally," Crow
answered. "Everybody that matters knows it was never Mr. Durban. And Mr.
Orme s pretty good."

"Me?"
Monk felt dizzy again, and the wound in his arm throbbed violently. It was hard
to believe it was only a cut-nothing to worry about, Crow had insisted. It
would heal up nicely if he gave it a chance.

"You've got
enemies, Mr. Monk. You've upset somebody with a lot of power."

"Obviously!"
Monk snapped. He clenched his fist, then wished he hadn't.

Crow gave him a
sudden, dazzling smile. "But you've got friends as well. Mr. Orme made
sure you all stood together."

"Crow
...," Monk began.

Crow blinked,
and the smile remained. "You look after Mr. Orme; he's a good one. Loyal.
Worth a lot, loyalty. I'll get a cab to take you home. You'll only fall on your
face, and you don't want to have to explain that- you a hero an' all."

Monk glared at
him, but actually he was grateful-for the ministration, for the cab, but above
all for knowing of Orme's loyalty. He made up his mind that from now on he
would try harder to deserve it.

But who had
spread the word that he was corrupt personally? Argyll again?

NINE

It was well into
February when Aston Sixsmith came to trial. He had been free on bail since
shortly after his arrest, having been charged only with bribery.

"But you
are going to be able to prove Argyll's complicity, aren't you?" Monk said
to Rathbone the evening before testimony began. Monk's wound was healing well,
and they were comfortable before a brisk fire in Rathbone's house. Rain was
beating against the windows, and the gutters were awash. They still had not
found the actual assassin, in spite of every effort, and River Police duties
had consumed most of Monk's time since the death of the Fat Man. It had been a
hideous job catching grapples into the corpse and hauling it up through the
jagged hole in the pier. But the carving had been retrieved-to Monk's intense
relief, and to mixed emotions in Farnham's case. If it had been lost, Farnham
would have blamed Monk, not himself.

As it was, Monk
was now more firmly entrenched in his new position than was entirely
comfortable for him, and Clacton was inexplicably subdued. He obviously loathed
Monk, but something compelled him to treat his new commander with respect. Monk
had yet to learn what this new element was.

"Argyll's
guilty of murder," Monk insisted to Rathbone. "And more important
than that, there is still the danger of the disaster in the tunnels that
Havilland feared."

"But you
can't tell me what it is!" Rathbone pointed out. "They are using the
same engines as before, and nothing has happened."

"I
know," Monk admitted. "I've searched everything I can find, but no
one will talk to me. All the navvies are afraid for their jobs. They'd rather
face a possible cave-in sometime in the future than certain starvation
now."

"I'll do
what I can," Rathbone promised. "But I have no idea yet how to
disentangle the guilty Argyll from the relatively innocent Sixsmith. Not to
mention Argyll's wife, who is no doubt afraid to face the truth about him, not
to mention public disgrace and the loss of her home. Plus there's the M.P.,
Applegate, who gave Argyll the contract, and the totally innocent navvies who
operate the machines. And there's also Superintendent Runcorn who conducted the
original enquiry into Havilland's death. He will be blamed for having called it
suicide and closing the case. Are you prepared for all of them to go down as
well, tarred with the same brush? Guilty by association!"

"No,"
Monk said flatly. "No, I'm not." The thought was so ugly it twisted
inside him.

"Well, it
might be a choice between having them all, to be sure of getting the guilty
one, or letting them all go, to be sure of saving the innocent," Rathbone
told him.

"If it
comes to that, then I'll let them go," Monk said harshly. "But not
without damn well trying!"

Rathbone looked
at him sadly. "Accusation without proof will damn the innocent and let the
guilty go free."

Monk had no
argument. What Rathbone said was true, and he understood it. "We're too
late to back out now."

"I could
drop the charge against Sixsmith."

Driven by
something more than anger at Argyll or the need to win, Monk said aloud,
"We have to do everything we can to find out if Havilland was afraid of a
real disaster, or just of tunneling in the dark. And if Mary learned it, too,
and was killed for it, then we can't walk away." He knew as he said it
that that was not entirely what was impelling him. It was Mary Havilland's
white face smeared with river water that haunted his mind. Even if all those
other elements were solved, it would never be enough until her name was cleared
and she and her father were buried as they would have wished. But Rathbone did
not need to know that. It was a private wound, deep inside him, inextricably
wound into his love for Hester.

Rathbone was
looking at him. "I've investigated the Argylls' engines. They're pretty
much the same as everyone else's. Better, because they've been modified with
great skill and considerable invention, but no more dangerous."

"There's
something!" Monk insisted.

"Then bring
it to me," Rathbone said simply.

In the Old
Bailey the next morning, after the jury was appointed and the opening addresses
were delivered, Oliver Rathbone began the case for the prosecution. His first
witness was Runcorn.

Monk sat in the
public gallery, with Hester beside him. Neither of them was a witness, so it
was permissible for them to attend. He glanced at her grave face. It was pale,
and he knew she was thinking of Mary Havilland. He imagined what she must be
remembering of her own grief, and the sense of helplessness and guilt because
she had not been there for her father and mother. With such events, Monk knew,
there was always the belief, however foolish, that there was something one
could have said or done that would have made a difference. But he had not seen
anger in her, or heard her blame her brother, James, for not somehow preventing
it. She had never lashed out at him that Monk knew of. How did she keep at bay
the bitterness and the sense of futility?

Then a sudden
thought struck him. How incredibly stupid he was not to have seen it before!
Was her need to throw herself into fighting pain, injustice, and helplessness
her way of making the past bearable? Was her readiness to forgive born of her
own understanding of what it was to fail? She worked with all her strength at
Portpool Lane not only to meet a fraction of the women's needs but to answer
her own as well. Anything short of her whole heart in the battle could never be
enough for her. He was guarding her from the danger without because he was
afraid for himself-afraid of what losing her would mean. He was thinking of his
own sleepless nights, his imagination of her danger. All the time he was increasing
the danger within.

Impulsively he
reached across and put his hand over hers, holding her softly. After a moment
her fingers responded. He knew what that moment meant. It was the loss of
something inside her, which he had taken away. He would have to put it back as
soon as he could, however afraid he was for her or for himself without her.

Right now
Runcorn was climbing the twisting steps to the high, exposed witness stand. He
looked uncomfortable, in spite of the fact that he must have testified in court
countless times over the years. He was neatly dressed, even excessively
soberly, as if for church, his collar starched and too tight. He answered all
Rathbone's questions precisely, adding nothing. His voice was
uncharacteristically touched with grief, as if he too was thinking not of James
Havilland but of Mary.

Rathbone thanked
him and sat down.

Runcorn turned a
bleak face towards Mr. Dobie, counsel for the defense, who rose to his feet,
straightened his robes, and walked forward into the well of the court. He
looked up at the high witness stand with its steps and squinted a little at
Runcorn, as if uncertain exactly what he saw. He was a young man with a soft
face and a cloud of curly dark hair.