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
