William Monk 17 - Acceptable Loss

it.”
    Rathbone drew in his breath as if to speak, then changed his mind.
    Monk smiled, sitting back a little in the chair. “Did Lord Cardew pay her to say this?” He said aloud what he knew was in Rathbone’s mind. “You could always ask him.”
    “Where is she?” Rathbone did not bother to express his opinion of that remark.
    “I would prefer not to tell you,” Monk replied. “For your safety as well as hers.”
    Rathbone’s eyes widened for a moment, then his face was expressionless again. “Now what will you do about it?” he asked. “Are you happy to mark the case as ‘unsolved’ and move on? Does anyone really want to know who killed Parfitt?”
    “Lord Cardew might,” Monk observed. “A shadow hangs over his son as long as we don’t know. But whether he does or not, I do. Notbecause I give a damn about Parfitt, but I need to find out who was behind him, Oliver.” He did not look away. He knew exactly what Rathbone was thinking, remembering, and what the weight of it would be if Monk were right.
    For several seconds they stared at each other, then Monk rose to his feet. “I’m sorry,” he said very quietly, little more than a whisper. “I can’t let it go.”
    Rathbone did not reply.
    Monk let himself out, passing the clerk in the entrance lobby, and thanking him.
    In spite of the sun, the air outside felt cold.
    M ONK SPENT THE NEXT two days questioning everybody who had anything to do with Mickey Parfitt, or who might have seen anyone on the river or the dockside at either Chiswick or Mortlake the night of Parfitt’s death. ’Orrie, Crumble, and Tosh repeated their stories almost word for word, and he could not shake them. Nothing was changed. It was still possible that Ballinger could physically have killed Parfitt, but without a motive, without proof that they knew each other, it was nothing more than an idea.
    Monk was pacing the path by the side of the river along Corney Reach when he ran into the fisherman.
    “Don’t walk up be’ind a man like that!” the fisherman spat. “I could a taken yer eye out wi’ me rod, yer great fool! Where d’yer grow up, then? In the middle of a desert?” He was a skinny little man with a long nose and a lantern jaw. The cap pulled forward over his eyes hid whatever hair he had left.
    Monk apologized, which was received with ill grace. He was about to move on when, out of sheer habit, he asked the question. “Do you spend a lot of time here?”
    The man squinted at him. “Course I do, yer daft sod. I live up there.” He jerked his head back toward the lane leading out of the town into the fields.
    “Do you have a boat?”
    “Yeah, but it in’t fer ’ire. I don’t want some great lummox crashing about in it who don’t know one end from the other.”
    “I grew up in boats,” Monk said testily. The fact that he had only the briefest flashes of memory about that time was none of the man’s affair. “I’m looking for witnesses, not to go rowing myself.”
    “Witnesses ter wot? I in’t seen nothing. In’t even seen a bleedin’ fish terday.”
    “Not today. The day before Mickey Parfitt’s body was pulled out of the river.”
    The man narrowed his eyes. “Seen, like wot?”
    “People coming and going, other than the ferrymen. Anyone you know behaving differently from usual. Anyone in a hurry, frightened, quarreling, running away.”
    The man shook his head.
    “Jeez! Yer don’t want much, do yer? All I saw were Tosh racin’ up ter Mickey on the dockside, yellin’ at ’im ter wait. Then ’e pulls a piece o’ paper out of ’is pocket an’ gives it to ’im. Mickey reads it, swears summink ’orrible, grabs a pencil from Tosh, an’ writes summink on it, then ’e gives it back to ’im. Arter that ’e calls the ferryman and tells ’im ’e’s changed ’is mind. ’E rushes away lookin’ all excited, an’ far as I know, nobody gone after ’im, nobody ’it ’im nor strangled ’im nor threw ’im in the river.”
    Monk felt a sharp flicker of excitement stir inside him. “But Mickey changed his mind about where he was going?” he urged.
    “I jus’ said that, yer damn fool! In’t yer listenin’?” the man snapped.
    “What time was this, roughly?”
    “About ’alf past ten.”
    “Thank you. I’m most obliged. What is your name, if I need to speak to you again?” He nearly added, in case he needed him to testify, then thought better of it. He would send Orme for him, and allow no