William Monk 11 - Slaves of Obsession

two fifty-pound leads were fastened to his chest and back. He gasped at the sudden increase in weight.
    He was handed a waterproof lantern with a candle in it.
    His suit began to inflate slightly as the air expanded it. Now he appreciated why it needed to be so large on him.
    Trace was already below him in the water, almost submerged.
    The river closed over his head and in moments he was blinded by gloom. The only contact with Trace and the surface was by rope, and he tried to unscramble what the men had told him: Stay calm. Don’t panic. Remember, you are not on your own. Pull on the rope if you’re in trouble. We’ll get you up.
    The pressure built up in his eardrums. He swallowed to clear it.
    Gradually his sight cleared a little as his eyes became accustomed to the gloom. He could make out the form of Trace, coming towards him, taking Monk by the hand.
    With leaden feet just touching the muddy bottom, Monk followed after him.
    He lost all sense of time. He was amazed how difficult it was to keep his balance. The tide was far more powerful than he had foreseen, pulling one way and another at him as current eddied and swirled, sometimes going one way at chest height, the opposite way at his thighs and knees. More than once he found himself falling and regained his footing with difficulty. And all the time he was acutely aware that only one thin hose of pumped air supported his life, one thin set of ropes could pull him back to the surface.
    The ground sloped up beneath his giant boots. They were on the mud bank. It was hard work trying to climb up it. He was sweating as he went, but his hands and feet were cold. The murky water swirled around his head, a brown, blinding mass.
    The dim figure of Trace was still just ahead of him, close enough to hold his hand, but was no more than a deepening of the gloom.
    Time seemed endless. He longed for light. This was all an idiotic idea. What had made him think the barge had been sunk, simply because he could find no trace of its going back upstream again? And if it were down here, what did that prove? Only that fraud had been the intention all along. Would it prove by whom? Or who had murdered Alberton?
    It was impenetrably dark ahead. How long had they been down here?
    Trace was still guiding him along, turning slowly in the water, raising his other arm.
    Monk lost his balance again. He should have left this to professionals. Except he could not; he must find this himself, hold the proof in his own hands, see everything there was, miss nothing, destroy nothing.
    Still holding Monk’s hand, Trace swung his arm around and pointed. Ahead of them was a deeper murk, blocking off even the swirling brown of the water.
    Trace started to move again and Monk followed, agonizingly slowly.
    Then suddenly his feet were swept from under him and he felt a hard yank on the ropes. Awkwardly he tried to look down at what had caught him. It was the boards of a sunken wreck.
    Trace was climbing up onto an angle of the boat.
    Monk went after him. The effort to move made his muscles ache. They seemed to be on a deck, slipping slightly as the bow settled deeper into the mud. Moving hand over hand they found the cabin.
    It took a long, slow examination, a foot at a time, holding on to each other, to discover what was inside.
    It was Trace who found the crates. It was impossible to tell how many there were of them, but moving with infinite slowness they found at least fifty. Far more than Monk had expected. More like the original shipment to Breeland.
    But why here at the bottom of the river and not on their way over to America, or to the Mediterranean?
    Monk felt Trace’s hand on his shoulder. He could see almost nothing. There was barely sufficient light to tell which way the surface lay.
    He reached out for Trace, then drew back his hand, now numb with cold. This was no time to be foolish.
    A hand came after him. Then he felt the rest of the body, a shoulder, perhaps a head. It bumped into his helmet and something covered the glass in front of his eyes.
    Hair! Loose human hair in the water! Trace was drowning!
    Monk reached up and clasped the arm, trying to pull desperately on the rope at the same time. He must get help! What had happened?
    There was no resistance on the arm, no weight! God Almighty! It was loose … just an arm, bloated and almost naked! He could dimly make out where his fingers had sunk into the flesh, like squeezing soft fat.
    He felt himself gag, and only just