The Dark Assassin (41 page)

A little man,
broad-shouldered and bow-legged, came towards them. He had a lantern built into
his hat, so both his hands were left free. There was too much noise of
clattering earth and the thrum of the great machine for him to try to be heard.
He waved his arms for them to follow, then turned and led the way down.

Monk lost all
count of time, and finally of direction also, even of how deep he was and the
distance he would have to go upwards to find clean air or feel the wind on his
face. Everything was wet. He could hear water seeping down the walls, dripping,
sloshing under his feet, sometimes even the steady flow of a stream: a sort of
thin, wet rattle all the time.

Someone had
given him a short-handled shovel. He ignored his painful shoulder and worked
with Crow to begin with, digging away fallen debris by the dim light of
lanterns, trying to reach trapped or crushed men. Then Crow went up again with
bodies, and Monk found himself beside a barrel-chested navvy and a tosher with
a broken front tooth that made his breath whistle as he heaved and dug.

The light was
sporadic. One moment the lantern would be steady, held high to see an arm or a
leg, distinguish a human limb from the timbers or a head from the rounded
stones of the rubble. At others it rested on the ground while they dug, pulling,
hoping, and then realizing there was nothing to find, and moving on, going
deeper.

At one point
they broke through into a preexisting tunnel and were able to go twenty yards
before finding another slide and starting to dig again. It was under this one
that they found two bodies. One was still just alive, but even with all they
could do to help, the man died as they were trying to move him. His injuries
were too gross for him to have stood or walked again, and yet Monk felt a
crushing sense of defeat. His mind told him the man was better dead than facing
months of agony and the despair of knowing he would remain a cripple, in
shattering pain and utterly helpless. But still, death was such a final defeat.

He returned
slowly, his body aching, to the heap of waste. He held his lantern high to see
if the other man could be brought up for identification and burial, or if it
would jeopardize more lives even to try. He picked his way carefully, even
though he knew it by now, and bent, holding the light towards where he thought
the head was. He pulled away pieces of brick and mortar until he had uncovered
the body as far as the middle of the chest. It would probably not be too
difficult or dangerous to get the rest of him free. He was so plastered with
clay and dust Monk could distinguish very little of his features beyond that he
had long hair and a thin, angular face.

There was a
rattle of pebbles behind him and the bow-legged tosher appeared at his elbow.
Silently they worked together. It took some time but eventually they freed the
body and half-carried, half-dragged it along the old sewer floor. They had to
pass through one of the small streams dribbling out of the side wall. It was
ice-cold and erratic, but at least smelling of earth rather than sewage.

When they at
last reached the top, Monk held the light to look at the man. The question of
who he might be froze on his lips. The stream they had passed through had
cleaned off the mud, and he saw the face clearly.

It had stared at
him in the lantern light of another sewer only two and a half days before. The
black hair and brows like a slash across his face, and the narrow-bridged nose
were etched in his mind forever. With a shaking hand he touched the lip and
pushed it back. There were the extraordinary eyeteeth, one even more prominent
than the other. What irony! His hiding place had been the cause of his death!
The very stream he had killed to conceal had in turn killed him.

"Oo is
'e?"The tosher looked at Monk, frowning. "I seen 'im somewhere afore,
an' I can't 'member where it were."

"He's a man
who killed other people for money," Monk replied. "The police are
looking for him. I need to find Sergeant Orme. Can you send someone to fetch
him? It matters very much."

The tosher
shrugged. "I'll put out the word," he promised. "Are you goin'
ter leave 'im 'ere?"

"I'm going
to stay with him, at least until the police can take him away," Monk
replied. Suddenly he was aware of the cold, of the numbness of his feet. Would
this be in time to make a difference to the trial? It would at least prove that
Melisande Ewart had seen a real person. Might that be enough to swing the jury?
Or to frighten Argyll?

He waited,
crouching in the dark beside the corpse, hearing shouts and seeing lanterns
waving in the distance across the rubble. It had started to rain again. The
light shone yellow on the faces of the rocks and black pools of water between.
The giant machine roared in the mist like some monstrous, half-human creature,
still grinding and thumping as more debris was hauled up. Monk was not sure if
it was his imagination, but it seemed to be settling deeper into the earth.

It was about
half an hour when at last Orme appeared, waving a lantern, Crow on his heels.

"You got
'im?" Orme asked, bending to look at the dead body.

"Yes."
Monk had no doubt at all.

Crow stared at
him. His face was lit on one side, and shadowed on the other, but his
expression was a mask of anger and scalding contempt. "Doesn't look so
much dead, does he!" he said quietly. Then he bent down, frowning a little.
Experimentally he touched one of the man's hands, then picked it up. His frown
deepened and he looked up at Monk. "You think he was killed in the
fall?"

"Yes. His
legs are crushed. He was probably trapped." He was half ashamed as he said
it. "I should feel sorry for anyone caught like that, but all I feel for
him is angry we can't make him tell us who paid him. I'd bring him into court,
broken legs, broken back, and all."

"Scuff II
be all right," Orme said quietly, looking not at Monk but at Crow.
"Won't 'e?"

"Yes, I
should think so," Crow agreed. "But look at his legs, Mr. Monk."

"What about
them? They're both broken."

"See any
blood?"

"No.
Probably washed off in the water we took him through. I dragged him; he's
heavier than you'd think."

Crow looked at
the body again, more carefully. Orme and Monk watched, growing more curious and
then unaccountably concerned.

"Why does
it matter?" Monk said finally.

Crow stood up,
his legs stiff, moving awkwardly. "Because he was dead before the slide
hit him," he replied. "Dead bodies don't bleed. The only blood
staining anything is on his coat, from the bullet hole in his chest. The river
didn't wash that out."

Monk found
himself shaking even more violently. "You mean he's been murdered? Surely
he'd never have shot himself!"

"Not in the
back, anyway," Crow replied. "Went in under his left shoulder blade,
came out the front. I reckon whoever employed him paid his last account."

Monk swallowed.

"Are you
absolutely sure?"

Crow pulled his
mouth tight and rolled his eyes very slightly. "Take a look at the bastard
yourself, but of course I'm sure! I'm no police surgeon, and don't want to be,
but I know a bullet hole when I see one! Heavy caliber, I'd say, but ask the
experts."

Monk
straightened up. "Thank you. Will you and Sergeant Orme take him to the
morgue and call the police surgeon? I must tell the prosecutor in the Sixsmith
case, and Superintendent Runcorn. A man's life may hang on this." It was
an order, at least as far as Orme was concerned, and a request to Crow.

Orme relaxed.
"Of course," he said resignedly. "Come on.'"

Monk went back
to Paradise Road to tell Hester what had happened. No message from anyone else,
however sympathetically or precisely delivered, would satisfy her-or Monk's own
need to see her and tell her himself. He was confused and exhausted by the
emotional horror of seeing so many people, in agony of body and terror of mind,
whom he could not help. He knew those who were dead had been crushed, buried,
and suffocated in the darkness, often alone as they felt life slip away from
them. Hester could not heal that. No one could. Nor could she erase the memory.
But she would understand. Just to see her would ease the knots locked hard
inside him.

It was only now
that he realized with amazement that he had not had time, or emotion, to spare,
to be afraid for himself! It was a sweet, hot kind of relief. He was not a
coward, at least not physically.

And he needed to
see for himself that Scuff was still recovering. It was absurd that he should
feel so intensely about it, but something compelled him to see Scuffs face for
himself.

The moment he
opened the door he heard movement upstairs. Before he was halfway along the
passage he saw the light go up on the landing and Hester's figure on the top
step. Her hair was unpinned and tangled from sleep, but she was still dressed,
although barefooted.

"William?"
she said urgently, her voice sharp with anxiety. She did not ask specific
questions, but they were all there implicitly. Their understanding of each other
was founded on the battles and the victories of the past.

He wanted to
know about Scuff.

She answered him
before he asked. "He's getting stronger all the time," she said,
coming silently down the stairs. "A little feverish about midnight, but it
passed. It's going to take a week before he can get up much, and far more than
that before he can go back to his own life. But he will." Her eyes
searched his face. She did not ask if the experiences of the night had been
terrible; she read the answer in his demeanor and the fact that he did not even
try to find words for what he had seen.

When she reached
the bottom of the stairs, he took her in his arms and held her close, hard,
wordlessly. In his mind he blessed over and over again whatever benevolence had
led him to choose a woman whose beauty was of the soul: brave and vulnerable,
funny, angry, and wise-someone to whom he need explain nothing.

Monk had no time
to sleep, only to wash and change clothes and eat some hot breakfast. Of
course, he also went up to look for a few moments at Scuff, who was scrubbed
clean and sound asleep. The boy was still wearing Hester's nightgown with the
lace edge next to his thin little neck, his left shoulder sitting crookedly
over his bandages.

A few hours
later, at half past eight, Monk was at Rathbone's office, explaining the
night's events. A messenger was dispatched urgently to Runcorn, telling him to
contact Melisande Ewart with a request that she be at the Old Bailey along with
Runcorn that morning. If she was unwilling, a summons would be issued.

By ten o'clock
the court was in session and Rathbone had asked permission to call Monk to the
witness stand. Monk was startled by how stiff he was and how his legs ached as
he climbed up. He had to grip the rail to steady himself. Even after a meal and
a change of clothes he was exhausted. His shoulder ached, and the violence of
the night invaded his mind.

Rathbone looked
up at him anxiously. The barrister was as elegant as always-immaculately
dressed, his fair hair smooth-but his eyes were shadowed and his lips pale and
pulled a little tight. Because Monk knew him so well, he could see the tension
in him. He knew how close he was to being beaten.

In the front row
of the gallery Margaret Ballinger sat, white and unhappy. Her eyes seldom left
Rathbone, even though most of the time it was only his back and profile that
she could see.

"Mr.
Monk," Rathbone began, "will you please tell the court where you were
last night?"

Dobie, who
apparently had not heard the news, immediately objected.

"Very well,
may I rephrase the question?" Rathbone said tightly, his voice scraping in
his throat. "As some of the court may know, my lord, there was a
catastrophic cave-in at the Argyll Company's sewer construction tunnel last
night." He stopped while the public gallery gasped and one or two people
cried out. The jurors looked at one another in horror. The clamor subsided only
at the judge's demand for order.

"Were you
called to the scene, Mr. Monk?" Rathbone concluded.

"Yes."
Monk kept his answers as bare and as direct as possible. He glanced only once
at Sixsmith up in the dock. The man's powerful face was cast forward, his body
rigid with tension and totally unmoving.

"Who called
you?" Rathbone asked Monk.

"Sergeant
Orme of the Thames River Police."

"Did he say
why?"

"No. I
believe he assumed that I would want to be involved since I had been
investigating the risk of just such a disaster, because of James Havilland's
fears and his subsequent death. Also, of course, we were doing all we could to
help, as were the Metropolitan Police, the fire services, and various doctors,
navvies, and any able-bodied men in the area."

"Your point
is taken, Sir Oliver," the judge assured him. He turned to Monk. "I
would like to know, Inspector, what you found. Was it of the nature that you
had been led to fear?"

"Yes, my
lord," Monk replied. "That, and greater."