Blood on the Water (18 page)

“Precisely.”

“And constant interference was considered the best course of action?” He allowed his disbelief to ring sharply in his voice.

“They were distressed,” Lydiate protested. “Everyone was.”

“All the more reason to keep a cool head. I presume you told him as much?”

“Lord Ossett?” Lydiate’s eyebrows rose sharply.

“You’re in command of the police.” Monk made no allowances.

“I don’t think you quite grasp the situation—” Lydiate began.

“Then help me!” Monk cut across him. “Whoever sank the
Princess Mary
and drowned nearly two hundred people is still out there and, for all we know, ready and willing to do it again! Unless you know something about who it was that you are not telling me?”

Lydiate went white.

Monk moved forward instinctively, to catch him were he to faint.

Lydiate righted himself with an effort. He did not apologize, but the shame of it was in his face.

“I had little choice in the course of my investigation. These were powerful suggestions—”

“Pressure!” Monk said for him.

“Yes, I suppose so.” He looked down. “I thought it was just a judgment call, an encouragement to guide me, make me aware of the desperate importance of dealing with the tragedy quickly and firmly.”

“Did you need pressure to do that?” Monk could not afford to let him off the hook.

“I would have done it differently, left to myself,” Lydiate said quietly.

“What pressure did they bring to bear?” Monk replied. “Your job? Your home? Your fitness for leadership?”

Lydiate gave him a look of disgust. “Do you think I would have changed my direction of enquiry for any of those reasons? Would you?”

Monk found the answer died on his tongue. He should not have asked.

“My sister,” Lydiate replied slowly, forcing the painful words out softly. “She is married to a man who is peculiarly vulnerable: not just to disgrace but to a grief he could not bear, because it would be compounded with guilt. His daughter by his first wife has committed an indiscretion that, if revealed, would cause her ruin. It was not a crime! A … a desperate error of judgment.” He swallowed. “If I allowed that to happen my loss would be compounded by guilt also. I understand that very well. I was not compassionate to my sister when she needed me in the past; too busy with my career. Too full of judgment. I will not make that mistake again.” He faced Monk now, quietly defiant; ready to take whatever blame was given.

Monk felt a monumental anger, not against Lydiate but against the person who had known this and deliberately given the case to a man that he could manipulate in this way. Now it was all very clear why the matter had been taken from the River Police.

What would he have done himself, if the threat had been to Hester? Please God, he would never have to find out! However, this did not alter the fact that he still had to pursue every aspect of the sinking of the
Princess Mary
, including the motive for it, wherever it led. The passion and confusion, the fiasco of Beshara’s arrest, trial, sentence, and now the attempt on his life, had made it imperative. Did whoever was behind this need him silenced, and was willing to reach out, even into prison, in order to make certain of it?

“Why was Beshara reprieved?” Monk asked Lydiate.

“I don’t know,” Lydiate admitted miserably. “I was told it was to do with his illness, which seems absurd, since it is apparently incurable. I assumed it was some kind of concession to the Egyptian embassy.”

“Or that the government wanted to know who else was involved,” Monk pointed out. “And wanted to know who paid him!”

“I believed that the motive was hate, revenge for something that happened in Egypt,” Lydiate answered.

Looking at him, Monk knew that Lydiate really believed what he was saying. And why shouldn’t he? Monk had originally thought such a motive made sense as well, but he also hadn’t accepted it without question. That explained why the case was given to Lydiate—he was a man who was clearly vulnerable to such subtle and corrosive persuasion.

“And what do you believe now?” he asked as gently as he could.

“I have no idea,” Lydiate confessed. “I would go back to the beginning, without presupposition.”

Monk said nothing. He was working blindly, and with the whole case already contaminated.

When Lydiate offered him whisky again, he accepted.

CHAPTER
 

S
CUFF DID NOT HAVE
any clear plan in mind when he bypassed the road toward school and turned in the direction of the river instead. He knew only that now the regular police had messed up the case of the
Princess Mary
, and got the wrong person almost killed, and still stuck in prison, and had given the whole thing back to Monk. He was left with having to sort out the problem—if he could!

It was warm already. The sun glittered bright and hard on the water, making him squint a little.

Of course there was no way Monk could keep the police’s mistakes concealed. He had to go back to the very beginning and untangle all the knots. How was he supposed to do that? It wasn’t just a matter of witnesses telling lies; it was people saying something over and over until they believed it, and then getting all angry and scared when someone suggested it wasn’t true.

Now it was too late, and nobody remembered what they’d really seen or done anyway, even if they wanted to tell the truth. People would make fun of them, laugh at them, and most likely never let them forget it. Who wanted that? Scuff had experienced it and it was horrible. Much easier to insist you were right, regardless of anything anyone else said. Just stick it out! Who could prove you wrong weeks afterward?

Better than being labeled a fool who didn’t know what was right in front of your own eyes!

He reached the steps. The tide was high and slapping over the concrete, making it slippery. He climbed onto the ferry carefully and paid for his passage across the river. He needed to be on the north bank, because the
Princess Mary
had gone down nearer to it, and, as far as he knew, most of the stops had been on that side. Then he walked steadily along the dockside downstream toward the Isle of Dogs.

He found one little urchin who was inquisitive, and probably hungry.

“Find anything good?” Scuff asked him casually.

The urchin sized him up, and did not know quite what to make of him. “Wot yer lookin’ fer, mister?”

“Mister!” Scuff felt instantly taller, and at the same time alienated. “Mister?” What did the boy think he was? Some kind of stranger here?

Use it. The child was being practical, surviving. Without thinking about it Scuff put his hand in his pocket and felt to see how much money he had. It was mostly pennies, but he also had a threepenny bit and two or three sixpences. Sixpence was too much to give anyone! But for a really good piece of information he might share a cup of tea and even a sticky bun.

He must be inventive, quickly.

“You got anything off the
Princess Mary
?”

The urchin looked at him as if he had crawled out of the mud. His small, dirt-stained face was a picture of disgust.

“Not for you, I in’t. Why? Wot’s it worth?”

Scuff changed tack instantly. “If you’d lost anyone on it you wouldn’t need to ask that,” he said tartly. “I’d get anything I could for me uncle Bert, but it would just hurt the more if it weren’t Aunt Lou’s at all, an’ he knew it.”

“Yer aunt Lou got drownded?” The urchin’s expression was unreadable. It could well have been his version of embarrassment.

Scuff did not hesitate. “Yeah. Why? You know people who fished stuff out o’ the river what might ’ave come from them?”

“I could see,” the urchin said more carefully.

“Like what?”

The boy gave a shrug. “Combs, pins, bits o’ cloth, but they in’t much. What’s it worth?”

“Help me find a few things, ask a few questions, an’ it’s worth a cup o’ tea and a sandwich,” Scuff answered, watching the child’s face. “Were you here?” he went on. “Did you see it blow up?”

The urchin considered, looked Scuff up and down, and made his decision. “No, but I can take you to someone ’oo were! But it’ll cost yer an ’ot meat pie.” He was pushing his luck, and they both knew it.

Scuff weighed his choices. His decision must be quick, or he would look weak. On the riverbank the weak did not survive.

“We’ll have a pie for lunch,” he gave his verdict. “You’ll get half of it. If what you find is any good, you can have a whole one, and pudding an’ custard for dessert.”

“Done,” the urchin said instantly.

“What’s your name?” Scuff asked him.

“Warren, but they call me Worm.”

“All right, Worm. Start being useful. And don’t think you can play me for a fool. When I was your size, I was on the river just like you are, so I know all about mudlarking.”

Worm looked at him with total disbelief.

Scuff glanced down at Worm’s feet. “You got better boots than I had,” Scuff observed. “You can’t be as daft as you’re acting.”

Worm shrugged. “I’m all right. C’mon then.”

T
HEY SPENT MOST OF
the day searching for information about the imaginary Aunt Lou, and mementos that did not exist. But along the way Scuff began to learn the things he had wanted to know about what had changed recently: who was afraid of whom, who was richer, who owed money, who had found things and sold them, because they had information about where they’d fetch up that other people didn’t. He had names now, specific debts paid off, people who had gone to ground, even if not yet the reason why.

Scuff treated Worm to a jolly good pie for supper, and the pudding with custard.

Early the next morning they began again. Worm was now fully expecting to be well fed, and Scuff had been forced to borrow money from Hester. He had managed to avoid telling her what he needed it for, but he didn’t think that would last long.

By the middle of the day Scuff had stopped trying to base it all on Aunt Lou’s lost bracelet or pendant, and Worm knew perfectly well that they were trying to get information about the disaster itself.

“Yer reckon as it weren’t the feller as they’ve got in prison, then?” he said, skipping a couple of steps to keep up with Scuff’s longer strides.

“Yeah, I reckon not,” Scuff agreed, actually rather relieved it wasn’t the accused, even if he didn’t know how to explain it further. A good explanation eluded him; his mind was so burning with the truth.

Worm was quiet for several minutes as they climbed up a long row of steps and across the uneven planks of a wharf. Scuff did not look down at the tide through the missing slats, but he could hear it suck and squelch beneath them.

“Why’d you care?” Worm said at length as they went back up onto the stone dock again and passed a horse and cart standing patiently waiting to be loaded. Scuff wondered if horses were as bored as they looked. “ ’E were a bad one anyway. Even I know that.”

“I don’t care about ’is being a bad one,” Scuff said with deep conviction. “You shouldn’t ’ang someone for something as they didn’t do.
’Ow’d you take it if they done you for something you didn’t do?” The moment he had said it he wondered if perhaps it was a bad question.

“I’d be cross as hell,” Worm admitted. “Unless it were about right for summink I ’ad done? Mebbe!”

“An’ what if it wasn’t?”

“That in’t fair.” This time there was no doubt in Worm’s voice.

“And who gets to decide?” Scuff went on.

Worm thought about it for some time. “I guess it in’t right,” he conceded at length.

“And what else?” Scuff added. “What about the feller what did do it? He needs putting away.”

“ ’Anging?” Worm said thoughtfully. “Ye’re daft, you are. They’ll never get ’im now.”

Scuff could think of no suitable reply to that, not one that would impress this dirty, hungry, opinionated little urchin.

“I think I’m gonner be daft too,” Worm said at last, matching his step to Scuff’s. “Where are we goin’ ter next?”

“To find out how Wally Scammell got to pay off all his debts just after the
Princess Mary
went down.