Revenge in a Cold River (23 page)

“Was I wrong?”

“I don't think so. Nothing ever indicated it. The jury believed you.”

“Did you?” Monk pressed.

Runcorn nodded. “Yes. I had no doubt. Still haven't. Nairn was a bad one.”

“What are you not telling me?”

“You pushed pretty hard to get the evidence.”

Monk winced. “Did I beat it out of him? Keep him up all night? Shame him, threaten him? What?” He did not want to think of it, but he knew he had been capable of all that.

“I don't know,” Runcorn admitted. “Lots of things were suggested. You questioned him alone, which was foolish, especially with your reputation.”

“There must have been proof. Not just my word. If it was a fight gone too far…”

“It was more than that, Monk. There was a girl. That's what the fight was about. She was dead. Her throat was cut, too. It was pretty horrible. Nairn said the other man did it. It was your evidence that tipped the balance.”

“But was I wrong?” Monk asked, leaning forward, his body clenched tight. “Was there any doubt in the facts? Why would I lie?” Had he really changed so much? The thought of lying to convict a man was repellent, and worse, it was an offense against the law, and against everything that honor stood for. It was too easy to come to the wrong conclusion. All the evidence had said that Monk had killed Joscelyn Gray. He had even thought so himself! It was only Hester and John Evan, his new assistant after the accident, who had believed in him. And yet they were right. He had never harmed Joscelyn Gray, in spite of all that he had done.

But that was after the accident. After the terror and confusion of losing all he knew of himself. What about before?

“What did I do to Nairn?” he asked again. “And what was it to McNab?”

“Nairn was his half brother,” Runcorn answered quietly. “Same mother. Grew up together. McNab went the right way, Nairn the wrong.”

“And he holds me responsible?” Monk said incredulously. “Did Nairn kill the woman, too? Was that what it was about?”

“It was never proved, but the jury took it that way.”

“Did I claim that he did?” Monk insisted.

“No. You didn't say one way or the other. Nairn denied it, and McNab believed him. He begged you to ask for mercy for Nairn. You wouldn't.”

“What happened?” Monk had to ask, although from the misery in Runcorn's face, he already knew the answer.

“They hanged him,” Runcorn said. “After the usual three Sundays. McNab did everything he could, begged and pleaded everywhere, but to no effect.”

“So I wasn't the only one who didn't—”

“You were the officer on the case.” Runcorn cut across him. “The judge might have listened to you, and given him life in prison instead. I'm sorry, but that's the truth.”

“Would that have been better?” Monk thought he might have preferred to be hanged than spend the rest of his life in one of the vast, wretched prisons around England. It was a slow death, inch by inch.

Runcorn stared at Monk, deliberately meeting his eye.

“McNab always believed that in time he would have been proved innocent. Not much point in an appeal if you're dead. Added to which, if they've hanged someone, Her Majesty's judiciary are a lot less willing to consider that they might have made a mistake.”

There was no argument to that. Monk sat in aching silence.

“He wasn't innocent,” Runcorn said at last. “There were other charges we couldn't bring against him, but we knew he was guilty. He had a bad reputation with women. Beaten a few, and got away with it. McNab didn't know, and didn't want to. Couldn't use any of it in the trial, but we knew.”

“I knew?” Monk grasped at the straw.

“Of course.”

Monk had to test the last possibility. If he left it, it would haunt him.

“Did I judge him on the past cases? I mean…could I have tilted the evidence a bit, to make sure he paid this time?” He said it with loathing. It was an arrogant, despicable thing to do. But could the man he had been have excused it to himself? He was not stupid—he had never been that—but he was arrogant enough, convinced of his own rightness.

“No,” Runcorn said with a twisted smile. “You were important, but not enough for a jury to have taken your word without proof. And if you'd been stupid enough to try, the judge at least would have slapped you down. In fact, the defense lawyer would have made mincemeat of you.”

“Are you sure?”

Runcorn nodded slightly. “Certain. Nairn was convicted on the evidence.”

“But I could have asked for mercy? Why? He killed the woman and then the other man. What could I have said on his behalf?”

“It could have been the other man who killed the woman, and Nairn killed him for it,” Runcorn said.

“But it wasn't,” Monk insisted.

“Probably not.”

“Probably!” Monk's voice rose sharply. “Hell! You can't hang a man on a ‘probably'!”

“The jury believed you on the evidence. Actually so did I.”

“Is there any possibility I was wrong?”

Runcorn sat absolutely still. “Possibility, I suppose so. Reasonable doubt, no, not a reasonable one.”

“But McNab thought so!”

“Only because he didn't know about the other cases.”

“Neither did the jury,” Monk pointed out. “Why did the jury convict?”

“Possibly because they believed you and they didn't believe him. He was an arrogant son of a bitch!”

“So was I, by all accounts!”

Runcorn smiled, a flash of humor in his eyes. “Indeed. But you were the law.” He let it hang in the air with all its responsibility, its power for good or evil. Then he added, “But you were right, he was guilty. McNab just didn't want to believe it. And I daresay he didn't want to admit to himself that he hadn't liked the boy all that much, either. But it's blood, I suppose. And remembering how things had been when they were children. People always do that, when it's too late: remember the child as they used to be.”

Monk considered that before saying anything more. He believed Runcorn, but he had absolutely no recollection of any part of it. But it did sound like the man that all the evidence showed he had been. What had he felt? Anything? Had it all been judgment, and a degree of self-righteousness, exactness of the law? Or had he known far more than the main facts that Runcorn had spoken of? Were there other circumstances, details? Who had the girl been, other than a name? Had he known something about her? Parents, friends, even a child of her own? And the dead young man?

“Who was the girl?” he asked. “Was she a prostitute?”

“Just a girl with no home,” Runcorn replied. “Mother married again and threw her out. She probably did whatever she could to survive.” His voice was edged with pity as he said it, and Monk felt the same emotion engulf him.

Then he was drawn back into the present. What did McNab want now? It was years too late for Nairn. Damaging Monk would not clear his name, if that mattered anyway. Was it simply revenge? Was that why Orme had died?

Or had McNab intended it to be Monk himself? Maybe all he had deliberately brought about was a fiasco, instead of a simple operation to arrest gun smugglers and retrieve the actual guns.

Then there was the whole other issue of Piers Astley's death. That couldn't have anything to do with McNab. He might be using it, even if Monk couldn't see why or how. McNab knew Aaron Clive, at the very least, professionally.

Which raised the question to which he had to find the answer—had he been in San Francisco during the gold rush of '49, even briefly? Could he have known Piers Astley?

He was moving in the dark, tripping over things, possibly even going in circles. He could go on doing this until he fell over and could not get up again. He was being what McNab wanted…passive, too afraid to act. The next thing he would know would be when it was already too late.

He stood up.

“Thank you,” he said quietly, his feelings too deep to find extra and unnecessary words.

“Where are you going?” Runcorn asked anxiously.

Monk gave him a bleak smile. “Not to tackle McNab, don't worry. I'm going to see Fin Gillander. He might know something about the past in San Francisco that will help with Astley's death.”

“And he might make it worse,” Runcorn added. “If he's worked out that you can't remember. And he could have, if you were in San Francisco.”

“If he knows the truth already? Then if he's against me, for whatever reason, he'll do that anyway.”

“Who else knows?”

“For certain? Hester, Oliver Rathbone, and now Hooper.”

“What is Gillander's interest in this? Seems quite a coincidence that his boat was moored so conveniently for Silas Owen's escape.”

“That's something I would like to find out. Along with who killed Blount, and why, what happened to Owen, and exactly how much Pettifer knew about any of it. I have to know if this is a master plan to bring off a big robbery, or if it's all coincidence, and to do with something else entirely…or nothing.”

“Could that be what McNab wants you to do, make a fool of yourself over nothing?” There was a note of real fear in Runcorn's voice.

“Possibly. I'm still not going to let him dictate the action. I'm going to take a chance on Gillander.”

“Be careful!” Runcorn warned.

“I will.” Monk turned at the door. “Thank you.”

M
ONK STAYED ON THE
south side of the river and took a hansom all the way up to the bank where Gillander's schooner was moored. If he were somewhere else, Monk would have to wait for him. He had no way of tracking him down. He spent the considerable time of the journey through the wet, jostling streets putting together all the facts he knew for certain regarding the affair, starting with McNab calling for him to take over the inquiry into Blount's death.

The shooting did not amount to murder, since Blount was already dead, but what on earth was the purpose of it? And for that matter, was his death by drowning accidental, or was that actually the real murder? Blount had been a master forger, available for hire. McNab said his men had been questioning him about who had hired him most recently, and achieved nothing by it, except a chance for him to escape. Or to be rescued by possibly whoever had killed him.

Had Blount been ready to betray his employer? Or had he actually done so, and McNab had declined to tell Monk? That was a possibility.

And there was the whole episode with Owen and Pettifer. Hooper had found out a little more, but it was mostly to do with Pettifer's reputation as McNab's right-hand man. The association seemed to go back several years. Monk had seen Pettifer only when he was in panic and drowning. It was impossible to form any opinion of a man in those circumstances. Hooper said that in his job obviously he had been efficient, decisive, even ruthless, and certainly he had been clever.

It seemed to be only the most extraordinary mischance that Owen had escaped, and Pettifer drowned. It was the whole case that McNab was pursuing that was Monk's excuse for finding Gillander now. But the truth about Monk's past in San Francisco was the real reason, and that was what made him tense as he stood on the shore and hailed the
Summer Wind,
moored a few yards out where the river was deep enough.

He had to call three times before Gillander showed up on deck. His face lit with a smile as soon as he recognized Monk. He came down the steps and loosed the rowing boat immediately. In a dozen long, easy strokes at the oar, he was up against the steps.

“Want to come aboard?” he asked cheerfully. “Hot cup of tea, strong enough to bend the spoon? Sugar? Rum?”

Monk accepted and climbed down to take his place in the stern. He had been planning all during the ride in the hansom what he was going to say, and now the words sounded artificial in his mind. He could not afford that. He waited until they were on board, the rowing boat lashed tight and both of them in the cabin with the hatch barely open. Gillander stood in the tiny galley with the kettle boiling and made strong tea with sugar and rum, then brought Monk his mug before sitting down opposite him.

“Did you sail her all the way from California?” he asked.

“Yes. Pretty good weather most of the time,” Gillander replied.

“How many crew?”

“Three of us,” Gillander told him. “Needs two, but always good to have a man spare, in case you hit a really bad patch, or someone gets hurt.”

“I imagine it's never hard to find a man willing to work his passage,” Monk observed. There was a memory just beyond his reach: bright sun, heavy seas, white water curling on the wave tops. And wind, always wind, sometimes hard and heavy, making the canvas of the sails above crack as they came round. It was a sound like no other.

Where did he remember it from? The North Sea?

Gillander was looking at him, waiting.

“You told me you've known Aaron Clive since the gold rush days. Did you go looking for gold, too?” Monk asked.

“Me? Can you see me up to my knees in the river, shaking a pan around to see what landed up in it?” Gillander laughed. “I prefer the sea, most of the time. It was a good chance for adventure, see new places, get out of the Mediterranean, where I'd made a few friends, and a few enemies. I thought if I were lucky I'd own my own ship one day. And I did.” He was watching Monk steadily. “Why? What does it have to do with a plan to rob Clive?” He took a long swig of his tea and rum. “Anyone would be a fool to try! A few tried it. Nobody did twice.”

Was that a warning?

“Are they in jail?” Monk asked. “Or dead?”

Gillander let out his breath slowly. “Mostly dead,” he replied. “They were hard times…but you know that. It was twenty years ago, but you can't have forgotten.”

Monk froze. The seconds ticked by. He had to say something. “A lot of water under the bridge since then.”