William Monk 14 - The Shifting Tide

you.”
             
    As darkness shrouded the river on the evening Rathbone took Margaret to dinner, Monk was standing on the shore at Wapping Stairs waiting for Durban. He heard the boat scraping against the stones and moved forward out of the shadows.
    Durban came up the steps slowly, coughing in the raw night air. For a brief moment he was silhouetted against the water where the riding lights of a moored boat shimmered behind him, then he was in the dark. But Monk had seen him for that moment, and knew from the hunch of his shoulders that he had found nothing.
    “Neither did I,” he said quietly. He voiced the thought that had been in his mind for some time. “Do you think they could have died at sea and simply been put overboard, and that’s why there is no trace?”
    “Of plague?” Durban asked, standing close beside Monk so he did not have to raise his voice. “And the rest of the crew got the ship here?”
    “Why not? Couldn’t four men do it if they had to?”
    “Probably, and they wouldn’t all go at once. But that isn’t the issue. If the men died of an ordinary illness they’d report it. Why not? And Louvain would know.”
    “Yes,” Monk agreed. “But if they died of plague, they wouldn’t. The ship would be barred from landing and Louvain would lose his cargo, and we already know he can’t afford that.”
    “You saw Newbolt and the others,” Durban responded. “Do you think they’d stay on a plague ship out of loyalty to Louvain?”
    “No.” There was no argument; the idea was ludicrous. “So where are they?”
    “Paid off, as Louvain said, and either lucky enough not to have got the plague, or died of it by now,” Durban answered, his voice soft in the darkness and the gentle slurping of the tide against the stones.
    “Gould goes to trial tomorrow,” Monk said. “I believe Hodge died of plague, and someone beat his head in to hide the fact. They didn’t dare put him over the side once they were in port, which means Gould had nothing to do with it. We can’t prove that, and wouldn’t even if we could. We daren’t even suggest it was one of them, or the whole thing could come out. We daren’t give any cause to dig up the body, so we can’t call any medical evidence.”
    Durban did not ask if Monk knew anything from the clinic; they had spent enough time together that he would have heard it in Monk’s voice, in what he didn’t say as well as what he did. He never once offered pity, just a quiet understanding of pain.
    “It wasn’t any of the crew,” he agreed. “If they knew it was plague they’d have been off that ship if they’d had to swim. It must have been Louvain himself. But we’ll not get him to testify to that.”
    “What would be reasonable doubt?” Monk was thinking aloud. “Dead drunk and fell?”
    “It would mean Louvain would have to go back on his word,” Durban warned. “He’d not like that.”
    “He’d not like the alternative either,” Monk said with growing conviction. “I need to make it sufficiently unpleasant so he’ll be glad to say he was mistaken. Hodge was drunk and he fell and hit his head so hard it killed him. There was more blood around Hodge’s than he first realized.”
    “Hodge was a drunkard?” Durban asked dubiously. “They left a known drunkard on watch at night on the river, with the cargo still on board? That’s incompetent.”
    “They’re shorthanded.”
    “Then put your drunkard on during daylight.”
    “Then you’re right, they’re incompetent,” Monk agreed bitterly. “That’s still better than plague-ridden, and that’s Louvain’s choice.”
    “You going to tell him?”
    “Can you think of anything better?”
    “You want me to come?”
    Monk heard the exhaustion in Durban’s voice. “No. Anyway, I’d like to see that bastard alone. I want to be the one to force him to save Gould. It’s not much, but I’d like to.”
    “I understand. But be careful,” Durban warned, and suddenly the edge was back in his tone, the tiredness gone. “Make sure he knows you are not working alone. The River Police know everything. Make absolutely certain he understands that!”
    “You think he’d kill me?” Monk was only mildly surprised, and it was a strange, flat emptiness inside him that he did not really care. He was exhausted with plunging between hope and despair for Hester. Hope was agonizing; sometimes it was almost unbearable to cherish it. Better to accept that this was the end.