Blood on the Water (28 page)

“Once,” Monk replied. “Briefly, before they took him away and his lawyer refused to allow him to speak. He need not have bothered. Sabri wasn’t saying anything.”

“Your opinion?” Rathbone asked.

“Paid by someone,” Monk said without hesitation. “You don’t get a lawyer of the quality of Pryor without both influence and money.”

“Fame,” Rathbone said simply.

“Defending the man who sank the
Princess Mary
?” Monk’s voice rose with disbelief.

Rathbone smiled bitterly. “Or defending the justice system and showing that they got the right man in the first place. You could gain a lot of friends that way, and comfort a vast number of Londoners who want to feel safe.”

Monk closed his eyes and leaned back a little in his chair, as if suddenly too weary to sit upright.

Rathbone could not afford to let it go yet.

“Any idea who tried to kill Beshara? And for that matter, do you know if Beshara has any connection to Sabri?”

Monk looked tired. There were blue shadows around his eyes. “No. Everything leads to a dead end.”

Rathbone asked the final question. “And is there anything to indicate
whether it has even the most oblique connection to the canal on Suez?”

“Nothing but speculation.” Monk pushed himself upright again. “One man you didn’t mention, and that’s the judge in the first case. His rulings were … eccentric.”

“York,” Rathbone repeated the name to himself. He had known that. Had he deliberately forgotten it? “Do you think that is relevant to this trial now?”

Monk looked straight at him, unblinking. “It could be. I imagine he wasn’t put in it by chance. A different judge might have handled it in other ways.”

“How?” Rathbone tried to steady himself. York’s hatred of him should have nothing to do with this. The fact that he could not get York’s wife, Beata, out of his mind, his memories, his dreams, should have nothing to do with it either.

“Rulings, mainly,” Monk replied. “But also the issue remains that in his summing-up Juniver raised the question of motive again, and York came pretty close to telling the jury that the facts were sufficient. If they believed Beshara guilty, the precise nature of his motives did not matter. It killed the only real point Juniver had.”

“And Sabri’s motive?” Rathbone asked. “Aren’t we in the same position now?”

Monk acknowledged it ruefully. “All we can do is point out that he comes from the region of Suez.”

“What a vast, complex, and hideous case.” Rathbone looked at Monk. “Are you still involved, even though you have arrested Sabri? Can I call on you for some of the information Brancaster will need, if he is to win?”

“He has to win,” Monk answered. “The price of losing is one we can’t afford. It would be the biggest scandal in the justice system this century. We can’t measure what is at stake.”

“Then I need to know all I can about the people who were exercising the pressure, even Lydiate. And, of course, the people in the first trial. How did this all go so terribly wrong?”

A
FTER RATHBONE HAD GONE
, Monk and Hester sat up long into the night talking. No matter how heavy the problem or how tangled, there were ways in which these were Monk’s happiest times. There was a deep pleasure, a peace of the soul, in sharing even the most desperate battles with a woman he loved with whom he shared not just passion, but an abiding friendship.

They were in the parlor where the chairs were comfortable. The door was closed, so the murmur of their voices would not waken Scuff.

“Are you satisfied it was this man, Sabri, who ignited the dynamite and then jumped off the deck before the explosion?” Hester asked gravely. “He was taking a terrible risk, wasn’t he? Most of the people who get into the Thames don’t get out. Even if they don’t drown, the filth in the water poisons them.”

“He must have been paid a very great deal,” Monk reasoned.

She frowned. “Do you think that’s all it was: simple greed? He didn’t do it alone, did he?”

“No. But other than possibly Beshara, we have no idea who else could be involved.”

She gave a deep sigh and her face pinched with a sad understanding. “Then we don’t have much chance, do we?”

“Actually, what I really want,” Monk went on, “is to find the people behind this, who may not know anything about the actual explosion, but compromised our system of justice by lying, suborning lies, overlooking things, all the accumulated concealment that made it so easy for an innocent man to be condemned to death.”

He saw her draw in breath. “I know he wasn’t innocent altogether,” he said quickly. “But that isn’t the point. He would have been hanged just the same if he’d been charming and not involved at all. We got the wrong man! If it could happen to Beshara, then it could happen to anyone! You. Me.” He bit his lip. “Scuff …”

She was pale now, shaken. “All right. I see. Yes. It’s far bigger than
just getting Sabri instead of Beshara. What do you need to do?” She did not say “we,” but he knew she meant it.

“Find out how all these mistakes happened,” he replied. “But more than that, find out who was behind it. Who, at best, allowed it to happen.”

“And at worst?” she asked.

“Who applied the pressure,” he replied. “Who took the case from us and gave it to Lydiate. Find out who is behind Ossett, pressuring him! And how, with what?” He told her what Lydiate had said about his appointment, and the implication that his sister would suffer were he to conduct himself without the required discretion.

She said nothing, but her face reflected her disgust, and the pity he would have expected of her.

“I need to know who was behind that,” he went on. “It was Ossett who spoke to Lydiate, but where did the suggestion come from before that? What has Ossett to gain or lose? So far I see no connection. He has no money in shipping, or in the Middle East; I did check on that. He comes from an excellent family with a history of serving the country in many places, all the way back to Waterloo.”

“Could it be someone else pressuring him?” she asked. “Family? An old debt or obligation?”

“It could. But what about all the others? Why did they twist, misinform? There’s no one answer I can find that explains them all.”

“Perhaps there isn’t one,” she said, thinking slowly as she found the words. “Maybe they each had different reasons? Sometimes we make mistakes, and then are afraid to admit them, and just dig ourselves further in. Sometimes we fear other people’s opinions.”

“So, based on pride and error, we hang an innocent man,” Monk said grimly, appalled at his own words. “And now we have either to unravel the whole thing, or compound it and make it worse. I can give the ordinary witnesses to Orme and Hooper, but I have to look at people like Ossett myself.”

“And the lawyers,” Hester added. “They may have started out simply taking the briefs they were given, and doing what they thought
best, with possibly a little ambition or self-interest thrown in. But what about now, when it’s questioned and all the little details are thrown in? What about the things they overlooked, or chose to ignore, the small instances of selfishness that add up to a major error, when they’re all piled on top of each other?”

“I know. I’ll start with Lydiate. I’ll go and see him tomorrow. If I can get him to help, it will be a place to start. But it’s the River Police’s case now, and he can wash his hands of it if he wants to.”

“No, he can’t,” she said quickly. “Not if he wants to keep the respect he needs in order to do his job. Unless he’s a complete coward, he’ll help. I’m far more afraid you’ll get little from the lawyers. But Oliver will help Brancaster. He’s longing for a good, tough fight.” There was laughter on her mouth and sadness in her eyes. “He’ll have a hard one here, all the struggle he wants …”

“I know,” Monk agreed. “I’ll do whatever I can. I’ve got some idea of how much it matters.”

She smiled at him, and stifled a yawn.

L
YDIATE RECEIVED
M
ONK THE
following morning as if he had been expecting him; in fact he was more than prepared. He looked tired, rather like a man with an aching tooth who finally faces the dentist.

“Yes,” he agreed when Monk put the situation to him. “Of course. The truth, whatever it is, will have to come out in court. There’ll never be an end to it if it doesn’t. I don’t know how deep it goes.” That was an admission, and he said it with shame. But along with that pain Monk saw a rising anger in him. He had been manipulated, and he was beginning to realize just how deeply.

“It’s going to be difficult,” he said, facing Monk across his very handsome desk, which was much more ornate than Monk’s, but almost as untidy. “Many of the people concerned are very powerful and they are going to resent any of their actions being questioned.”

“Of course,” Monk nodded. “And the more dubious they are, the more crucial to the investigation, and the more they will resent it. I’m
sorry. I wish it wasn’t necessary, but it is. It goes to the core of justice for anyone.”

“I understand that!” There was a momentary sharpness to Lydiate’s voice. “To allow a guilty man to escape is to connive at his crimes, but to cause an innocent man to be hanged is an offence against humanity … for all I know, against God. It can’t be overlooked.”

“No one could have put it more succinctly,” Monk said with a degree of respect. “But they will come up with excuses. Public pressure. Public good. Diplomatic necessity. Things too important and secret to be revealed—where in reality it is fear, greed, loyalty, or sheer stupidity. One mistake to cover another.”

Lydiate looked at him levelly. “You might be well advised to allow some people to hide behind excuses. And don’t look at me like that. If you are to succeed, you need to learn a little diplomacy. Or, if you prefer, the art of being devious.”

Monk shut his eyes for a moment, then opened them and smiled. “I appreciate your advice,” he said honestly, and wondered what on earth had happened to him that he was suddenly so tactful. Then he knew that it was not only an acknowledgment of the truth, but that he also liked Lydiate. He knew that in his place he, too, might have bent to pressure, if the price of it were the safety of those he loved. It was possible. He, too, had hostages to fortune.

CHAPTER
 

R
ATHBONE STOOD IN THE
center of the sitting-room floor in his new apartment. It was elegant: exactly his own taste; no one else was catered for. Yet it felt unfamiliar and almost unused. There were all the books and artifacts he had collected in more than a quarter of a century of independent life, and yet it was not home. Would time make it so, eventually? Perhaps after he had entertained guests here, returned after a full day doing something that mattered. Or might he always feel rootless now? Was failure so relentless, so deep?

That was what was missing: purpose. Before going away with his father, he had been looking for something to do rather than trying to make the day long enough for all that mattered most, and still feeling he carried things over and had to hurry the next day.

Purpose. Perhaps it was the next best thing to happiness. Empty time was a dark hole in which monsters lived and too easily came to the surface.

But this apartment was a new start. He had no profession, which was inescapable. It was a fair price to pay for what he had done, but that did not take away the void inside him.

It was also free of any reminder of Margaret, and that was a relief. His marriage was the thing in which he had signally failed, but his freedom was good. Only now did he realize that in acknowledging the end of his marriage, he had also escaped from the need to lie to himself about its possibilities. It had been hard work to deceive himself, and in the end the battle was always lost. Admitting defeat hurt, even when he knew he was wrong.

He should be used to that now. No longer could or should he always win. His endeavors should be in the service of truth, with perhaps a degree of mitigation.

He smiled to himself, walked over to the window, and drew the curtains. He was happy to gaze at the trees in full leaf, and the clipped grass of the square. They were not quite the same as the garden of his previous home, but he had no time to stroll around it anyway, and no inclination whatever to work in it.