Revenge in a Cold River (26 page)

Monk stepped through the door. It gave an illusion of freedom. For a wild moment he wanted to run. But that was what guilty men did. He stood motionless, waiting. Or maybe that was really what guilty men did, knowing they were already beaten?

The sergeant led the way across the passage to the interview room, and showed them into the small room where lawyers could consult with their clients in something like privacy. As soon as Rathbone was inside, the guard slammed the door shut. Both Rathbone and Monk heard the teeth of the lock fall into place.

“Right.” Rathbone indicated one of the two chairs for Monk to sit down, and then sat in the other himself. The rickety wooden table between them was scarred with initials of long-dead prisoners written in ink, or carved with anything sharp enough to make a mark. It was stupid, damage just for the sake of stating your identity, your separateness from the anonymity of the system.

Suddenly Monk was lost for words. He shouldn't waste the short time they had in such thoughts.

As it was, Rathbone did not wait for him to speak, but began immediately. “The charge is that you murdered Pettifer by striking him over the side of the head and neck so that he was too stunned to save himself from drowning. The evidence for this charge is the words you yourself spoke to two men who came on to the scene and helped you out of the water, and also Pettifer. The marks of your blow were on Pettifer's head, and you told them that was what had happened.”

“It was,” Monk said, the fear solidifying inside him. “But Pettifer was a big man, and powerful. He panicked in the water and when I tried to get him to turn so I could pull him ashore, he started fighting with me. The only way I could get either of us out was to stun him enough that he didn't drown both of us.” He could hear the edge of fear rising in his voice.

“I believe you,” Rathbone said. “It happens often that when people panic in the water they lash out. Unfortunately the only witness to that is Hooper, who is your own man….”

“He's not a liar,” Monk said sharply. “And there are no witnesses that can say differently. The other police officers arrived far too late to have seen anything.”

“I know that, too,” Rathbone said calmly, his face very pale. “The only other witness, who might or might not have seen anything, is Owen, the person who escaped. And he's long gone, probably across the Channel. Or Fin Gillander, the man on the schooner across the river. But unless he was looking through a telescope at the whole thing, he was much too far away to see what happened. There was a man in a boat of some sort who called for help, but he claims he saw nothing.”

“Pettifer and Owen were fighting each other, then when Hooper and I tried to separate them they started fighting us,” Monk said, struggling to keep his voice in control and stop the fear that was rising inside him. “Hooper and Owen fell into the river first, then Pettifer charged at me, missed and went in, and I went in after him. Owen escaped and fled across the river. If it had been anything but slack tide he would have been swept away. I tried to save Pettifer. Actually I thought he was the prisoner, just as Hooper did. Which was why he turned to help me, rather than go after Owen.”

Rathbone was quiet, his voice grim. “I believe you, Monk, but you can't prove it,” he said.

“I'd never seen Pettifer before, or even heard of him. Why should I wish him any harm?” Monk said angrily. “I don't like McNab, whose man he was, but I've never done him any harm. At least…at least not since his brother was hanged.”

Rathbone stared at him.

Monk realized he had not told Rathbone the story, and neither had Hester. She had kept his secret for him to tell it in whatever terms he wished. He did so now in bare facts, including that it was Runcorn who had told him.

“So that's why McNab hates you,” Rathbone said thoughtfully. Then he looked very directly at Monk. “And is that why he rigged the gunrunning arrests and you ended up with a battle in which Orme was killed?”

“Yes. And he did rig it. He even paid Mad Lammond to kill me, but the shot went wide and got Orme. I know it, but I can't prove it. Mad Lammond isn't exactly the ideal witness. And if you think I hate McNab for that, you're right. I do. I want to get him for it, but legally. Had I deliberately killed Pettifer it wouldn't solve anything. And, as I said, I thought the big man was the fugitive, and that McNab's man got away. In the light of that, my killing Pettifer makes even less sense.”

Monk searched Rathbone's face, his steady eyes. There was no relief in them at all. He felt himself go cold.

“You showed less mercy to McNab's brother than he thought you should have, for which he hates you,” Rathbone said slowly. “You know that because Runcorn told you, but you can't argue it yourself, or explain why no mercy was due. In fact you can't remember it at all. I think we would be better not to refer to it. But, on the other hand, McNab may give that to the prosecution, if he knows you have no memory. Best to steer clear of it altogether.”

Monk wanted to argue, but he could see the reasoning. He was fighting the whole battle for his survival with his hands tied behind his back.

Rathbone continued: “McNab started taking his revenge with the gun battle on the river, but can you prove that?”

“I might be able to….Hooper's working on getting some kind of proof.” He sounded desperate, a rope made of straw.

“Then the question arises, why did McNab wait so long to have his revenge? His brother was hanged almost sixteen years ago.”

“I…don't know…”

“Yes, you do, Monk.” Rathbone's face was filled with an extraordinary grief. “He realized you had no memory. Something happened that stopped him being afraid of you, and suddenly he knew you were vulnerable…and exactly how. He began his plan for a perfect and complete revenge.”

Monk felt a dense, heavy wave of despair close over him. For a moment he could barely breathe. McNab would see him hanged for having killed Pettifer. It had an exquisite symmetry to it.

“But it makes no sense. Why would I kill Pettifer? I didn't even know who he was!” He could hear the hysteria rising in his voice now.

“I know you didn't,” Rathbone said. “But can you prove that? They will say that you did. And the only witness that you have is Hooper, who is your right-hand man now, and far more than that, your friend. The very most he can say is that he doesn't believe that you knew Pettifer. It takes only one witness, lying or not, to convince a jury that you did.”

Monk felt the cold deepen inside himself. Rathbone was right. He struggled to find any argument against what he said, and there was none.

“And there's more than that,” Rathbone continued. “If McNab's man really was responsible for the gun smugglers' arrest going wrong, and you can prove it—”

“We must!” Monk interrupted.

“What if it proves that Pettifer was one of the main actors in that?” Rathbone asked. “And he's not alive to deny it, or to say that it was McNab's idea. Or even that McNab ordered him to do it.”

Monk did not need to hear the rest of the thought. It was obvious. McNab would hang all the blame on Pettifer, and the rest of his men would either not know the truth, or if they were implicated, would be only too glad to use Pettifer as a scapegoat.

“I see,” he said. “I killed Pettifer in revenge for Orme. Unless I can prove somehow that it was McNab himself who paid Mad Lammond.”

“Even if you can, you can't prove that you didn't know it before you killed Pettifer,” Rathbone pointed out.

“I didn't kill him! He drowned because he panicked!”

“That's academic to the court, Monk. You clipped him over the side of the head.”

Monk swallowed. “Did the police surgeon say that the blow killed him? I thought he said Pettifer drowned.”

“He did drown.” Rathbone's face was pale. “But he drowned almost certainly because he lost consciousness.”

“So what should I have done? Let him drown by himself? I was trying to rescue him, but he was too hysterical to let me.”

“I know that. But we have to be prepared for the prosecution to say that you believed McNab's man, specifically Pettifer, to be responsible for the fiasco of the gunrunning arrest, and therefore, obliquely, for Orme's death. You wanted revenge, and this was your chance to take it. If they're clever, they may even provide a chain of evidence to link Pettifer to the betrayal, and in one stroke, acquit McNab of it, and give you an overwhelming motive to kill Pettifer. Some people would even understand it. But however morally or emotionally justified it seems, it is still murder.”

“I meant to rescue him,” Monk said again, but his voice was hollow.

“I know that,” Rathbone agreed. “But I have to find a way to prove it.”

“Pettifer killed Blount.” Monk was searching frantically for anything at all that would add weight to what he was saying.

“Who is Blount?” Rathbone asked.

“The first prisoner to escape McNab's custody, a week or two before Owen. He was drowned, then shot in the back afterward. I don't know why, but it looks now as if it were to draw me into the case.”

“Proof? A witness?”

“No one you'd believe. Although I have a corroborating witness: Fin Gillander.”

Rathbone's eyes widened slightly. “I'm not sure how much that's going to help. What was he doing assisting you in the case?”

“He pulled Owen out of the water. Owen told him he was McNab's man, and Gillander believed him.”

“So Gillander took you down the river to find evidence?”

“Yes…” Another pitfall was looming up: the fact that Gillander could remember Monk from the gold rush, and Monk could remember nothing. “I'm…I'm not sure if you want to put him on the stand.”

“I've thought of that,” Rathbone said in agreement. “And I daresay McNab has also.”

Monk felt as if the walls were closing in on him, not only metaphorically but physically. There was less air. The fear of it almost stopped him breathing. Of course. If Rathbone called Gillander, then it would be child's play for the prosecution to get from him that he had known Monk in San Francisco, and that Monk could not remember anything about it. He could say anything he wanted about Monk's character, temper, his abilities, how he earned a living, honest or not. Monk couldn't rebut any of it. It could be true, for all he knew. He was as trapped as if his ankles were manacled to the floor.

“What are you going to say?” he asked Rathbone.

“I don't know yet,” Rathbone said. “I need more evidence. We're handicapped because your enemies know so much more than you do.”

“I don't even know who they are! I'm…lost!”

Rathbone put his hand on Monk's arm. “Well, you know who your friends are. And you have friends, Monk. Never forget that.”

“Perhaps I don't deserve them. I really don't know if I am involved in Piers Astley's death or not. This could be justice finally catching up with me.”

Rathbone sighed. “Well, you'd better tell me all you know, or have deduced.”

As briefly as he could, Monk did so, including Hooper's encounter with Mad Lammond, for whatever that was worth.

Rathbone did not interrupt him until he was finished.

“And you don't remember Astley at all?” He looked bewildered. He was putting as good a face on it as he could, but he was overwhelmed.

“I might have killed him,” Monk said miserably.

“It's not this court's jurisdiction,” Rathbone pointed out, but his voice was flat. “They have no proof, and even if they had, California is five thousand miles away, and Astley died nearly twenty years ago.”

“But if I had killed him, then it might be the real motive for all of this,” Monk pointed out. “A long-delayed revenge. McNab's brother's death is almost as long ago.”

For several moments Rathbone did not answer. He looked thin and pale.

“If I killed Astley, it could have been over almost anything,” Monk said. “A debt one of us owed, and didn't pay, a gold claim, a woman, a perceived insult. I had a quick temper, Gillander told me. And I was something of a chancer. The more I learn about myself, the less I like the man I was then.”

“There's nothing you can do from here,” Rathbone told him. “Except remember, if possible. Anything, any detail at all, and how it tied up with other things.” He stood up. “Don't give up, Monk. We've been in some hard places before, and come out of them.”

How easy to say. How trite!

And yet looking up at Rathbone's face, Monk saw in him a compassion he had not seen before. His own experiences had softened him, and at the same time put a steel into his soul. If it was humanly possible, he would win.

T
HE REST OF THE
day passed in total misery for Monk. He tried to assemble the facts he knew for certain, and make sense of them. But there were just too few. Almost everything was capable of more than one interpretation. And all the time he grew colder. Food was brought to him but he could barely force himself to eat it, although he knew he needed to keep up not only his physical strength but his mental concentration as well. His stomach seemed to be clenched in a knot. The only thing he could take easily was the strong, stewed black tea, far too sweet. It was disgusting, but it warmed him and kept him reasonably alert.

He was not yet tried and convicted of anything, so the law allowed him one visitor, apart from Rathbone. Well after dark, at last Hester came. She was treated with bare civility, no more. She was warned that she could not have long.

Monk was too pleased to see her to allow his anger at the police's attitude to darken the moment. Just the sight of her face was like light in the darkness.

She knew there were only minutes, and she wasted none of them. Whatever her emotions, no matter what she suffered, Hester was always practical. Her nursing training never left her. It was woven into her nature. She gave him the quickest kiss, on the cheek. That instance's warmth brought the smell of her skin, and the tickle of a stray hair. Then she sat down in the chair Rathbone had occupied what seemed like an age ago. She looked extremely pale, but she spoke steadily. Her voice was perfectly level, as though she were reassuring a patient who was mortally wounded.