William Monk 11 - Slaves of Obsession

anymore, except like bright patches of sunlight on a dark landscape.
    “A big barge,” the waterman said thoughtfully. “Yeah, I ’member the Tooley Street murders. Bad thing, that. Pity they in’t got ’oo done it. But then I don’t like guns neither. Guns are fer soldiers an’ armies an’ the like. Only bring trouble anywhere else.”
    “The ones for the Union army seem to have gone by trainto Liverpool,” Monk replied. Not that it mattered now, and certainly not to the waterman.
    “Yeah.” The man wove the unraveled end of the rope into the main length and took out his knife to tidy off the last threads. “Mebbe.”
    “They did,” Monk assured him.
    “You see ’em?” The waterman raised his eyebrows.
    “No … but they got there … to Washington, I mean.”
    The waterman made no comment.
    “But there were others,” Monk went on, narrowing his eyes against the sunlight off the river. They were directly across from the gray-brown stretch of Bugsby’s Marshes and the curve of Blackwall Point, beyond which he could not see. “Something came down on that barge. What I don’t know is where those boxes went, and where the barge went to after it was unloaded.”
    “There’s plenty of illegal stuff goes back and forward around ’ere,” the waterman ventured. “Small stuff, mostly, and farther down towards the Estuary, ’specially beyond the Woolwich Arsenal an’ the docks on this side. Down Gallion’s Reach, or Barking Way and on.”
    “It couldn’t have got that far in the time,” Monk replied.
    “Mebbe it waited somewhere?” The waterman finished his work and surveyed it carefully. He was apparently satisfied, because he set it down and put away his knife and hook. “Margaret Ness, or Cross Ness, p’raps?”
    “Any way I could find out?”
    “Not as I can think of. You could try askin’, if there’s anybody ’round. Wanter go?”
    Monk had nothing else left to try. He accepted, climbing into the boat with practiced balance and sitting easily in the stern.
    Out on the water the air was cooler and the faint breeze on the moving tide carried the smell of salt and fish and mud banks.
    “Go down towards the Blackwall Point,” Monk directed. “Do you think there’s enough cover there to conceal a seagoing ship, one big enough to cross the Atlantic?”
    “Well now, that’s a good question,” the waterman said thoughtfully. “Depends where, like.”
    “Why? What difference does it make?” Monk asked.
    “Well, some places a ship’d stand out like a sore thumb. See it a mile off, masts’d be plain as day. Other places there’s the odd wreck, for example, an’ ’oo’d notice an extra spar or two? For a while, leastways.”
    Monk sat forward eagerly. “Then go past all the places. Let’s see what the draft is and where a ship could lie up,” he urged.
    The waterman obeyed, leaning his weight against the oars and digging them deep. “Not that it’ll prove anything, mind,” he warned. “ ’Less, o’ course, yer find someone ’as seen it. It’s going back, now. Must be two months or more.”
    “I’ll try,” Monk insisted.
    “Right.” The waterman heaved hard and they picked up speed, even against the tide.
    They moved around the wide curve of the Blackwall Reach as far as the Point, Monk staring at the muddy shore with its low reeds, and here and there the occasional driftwood floating, old mooring posts sticking above the tide like rotted teeth. Mudflats shone in the low sun, patches of green weed, and now and then part of a wreck settling lower and lower into the mire.
    Beyond the Blackwall Point were the remains of two or three ancient barges. It was difficult to tell what they had been originally; too little was visible now. It might have been one barge, broken by tides and currents, or it might have been two. Other odd planks and boards had drifted up and stuck at angles in the mud. It was a dismal sight, the falling and decaying of what had once been gracious and useful.
    The waterman rested on his oars, his face creased in a frown.
    “What is it?” Monk asked. “Isn’t this too shallow a lane for an oceangoing ship? It would have to stand far out, or risk going aground. It can’t have been here. What about farther down?”
    The waterman did not answer, seemingly lost in contemplation of the shore.
    Monk grew impatient. “What about farther down?” he repeated. “It’s too shallow here.”
    “Yeah,” the waterman agreed. “Just