“Not ’round ’ere,” Jim replied. “Sorry, mate!”
And so it continued down as far as Limehouse and around the curve of the Isle of Dogs, and again across the river at Rotherhithe. He had been certain the ferrymen would know if anyone did, but even the three he asked had never heard either name.
By midafternoon he gave up and went back to Vere Street to see if Rathbone had obtained the necessary permission to go through Daniel Alberton’s accounts.
“There’s no difficulty,” Rathbone said with a frown. He received Monk in his office, looking cool and immaculate as always. Monk, who had been traipsing up and down the dockside all day, was aware of the contrast between them. Rathbone had no shadows in his past that mattered. His smooth, almost arrogant manner came from the fact that he knew himself, better than most men. He was so supremely confident in who he was he felt no need to impress others. It was a quality Monk admired and envied. He had come to understand himself well enough to know that his own moments of cruelty came from self-doubt, his need to show others his importance.
He recalled himself to the present. “Good!”
“What do you expect to find?” Rathbone was looking curious and a trifle anxious.
“Nothing,” Monk replied. “But I need to be certain.”
Rathbone leaned back in his chair. “Why didn’t you ask me to look?”
Monk smiled thinly. “Because you may not want to know the answer.”
Humor flashed for an instant in Rathbone’s eyes. “Oh! Then you had better go alone. Just don’t leave me walking into an ambush in court.”
“I won’t,” Monk promised. “I still think Shearer is the one who actually committed the murders.”
Rathbone’s eyebrows rose. “Alone?”
“No. I think it would have taken more than one, even holding a gun. They were tied up before they were shot. But he could have hired help anywhere. He certainly lived and worked where he would be able to find plenty of men willing to kill a man, for a reasonable price. The price of those guns would be enough to buy nine decent-sized houses. A small percent of the profit would give him sufficient to obtain all kinds of assistance.”
Rathbone’s fastidious face expressed his distaste.
“And I suppose we have no idea where Shearer is now?”
“None at all. Could be anywhere, here or in Europe. Or America, for that matter, except it’s not the best place to be, unless he has designs on making more money in the armaments business.” He debated with himself whether to mention the whole blackmail affair, and his failure to find any trace of Baskin and Company, and decided against it for the moment. It might be easier for Rathbone if he did not know.
“He could well do that,” Rathbone said thoughtfully, leaning back and placing his fingertips together, elbows on the arms of his chair. “He might have bought more guns somewhere with the money from Breeland, if what Breeland says is true. There’s a very murky area in arms dealing, and he would be in a position to know more about it than most.”
It was a thought which had not occurred to Monk; he was annoyed with himself for it. His preoccupation with the past, and its destruction into the present, was costing him the sharp edge of his skill. But it was second nature to conceal it from Rathbone.
“That’s another reason I need to see Alberton’s books,” he said.
Rathbone frowned. “I don’t like this, Monk. I think perhaps I had better know what you find. I can’t afford to be taken by surprise, however much I may dislike what it shows. No one has accused Alberton of anything yet, but I know the prosecution is going to use Horatio Deverill. He’s an ambitious bounder, and they didn’t nickname him ’Devil’ for nothing. He’s unpredictable, no loyalties, few prejudices.”
“Doesn’t his ambition curb his indiscretion?” Monk asked skeptically.
Rathbone’s mouth turned down at the corners. “No. He’s got no chance of a seat in the Lords, and he knows it. His hunger is for fame, to shock, to be noticed. He’s good-looking, and a certain kind of woman finds him attractive.” A quiver of humor touched his lips. “The sort whose lives are comfortable and a trifle boring,” he continued. “And who think danger would give them the excitement their rank and money shield them from. I imagine you are familiar with the type?”
“Do you?” Then, like a wave of heat inside him, Monk knew why Rathbone had smiled. Monk himself carried that sort of danger, and he knew it and had used it often enough. It was a hint of the reckless, the unknown, even a suggestion of pain, another reality they wanted to touch but not be trapped in. Boredom held its own kind of destruction.
He stood up. “Then we had better know everything we can, good or bad,” he said tersely. “If I see anything I don’t understand, I’ll send you a message, and you can find me an accounts clerk.”
“Monk …”
“Only if I need one,” Monk said from the door. He did not intend to tell Rathbone about his merchant banking days, and that he knew very well how to read a balance sheet, and what to look for if he suspected embezzlement or any other kind of dishonesty. He wanted to block the whole of the past, most especially to do with Arrol Dundas, from his mind.
Monk examined the books of Alberton’s business far into the night. Alberton and Casbolt had dealt in a number of commodities, mostly to considerable profit. Casbolt had been extremely knowledgeable as to where to obtain goods at the best price, and Alberton had known where to sell them to the best advantage. They had left a good deal of the shipping to Shearer, and had paid him well for his services. Read in detail, the movement of money showed a trust among the three men stretching back nearly twenty years.
Even with the skills he half remembered and which came back with startling clarity as he read, added, subtracted, Monk found nothing that was less than completely honest.
But he also had no doubt whatever, when he finally closed the last ledger at twenty-five minutes to one, that the guns the pirates’ agents had demanded through blackmail would be worth roughly ?1,875. The guns unaccounted for from the warehouse after Alberton’s death and the robbery had not been paid for through the
