William Monk 18 - A Sunless Sea

Runcorn did not interrupt until he was finished.
    Runcorn nodded. He did not ask if Monk believed it.
    “We’d better see if anyone knows where Zenia came from,” he said practically. “Trouble is, asking too many people. Better it doesn’t get back to Lambourn’s enemies that we’re still looking.”
    Monk assumed for a moment that Runcorn was thinking of his own safety. Then a glance at his face, a memory of him in the firelight looking at Melisande, made him ashamed of the thought.
    “Has anyone said anything to you?” he asked. He should have expected it, after the attack in the street, especially given what Rathbone had said about Sinden Bawtry being in court, and his conviction that Pendock was deliberately blocking him at every turn.
    Runcorn gave a slight shrug. “Obliquely,” he said, treating it lightly, although Monk heard the slight rasp in his voice. “Not only a warning, more a thank-you in advance, for acting with discretion.”
    Monk wondered if he should tell Runcorn that he would understand if he did not wish to pursue the matter. His career might be jeopardized. He remembered how much that had mattered to him in the past, how all the times the next step upward had been the goal.
    “We’ll have to be careful.” Runcorn’s voice cut across his thoughts. “Check Zenia, not Lambourn. It would have been easier to check Lambourn’s career and see who he might have been close to and who died about fifteen years ago, but they’d spot that. Zenia’s not a common name. Be a lot harder if she were Mary or Betty.” He smiled lopsidedly. “Wonder if Gadney’s her maiden name, or married. D’you know?”
    “We’ll check Gadney for deaths around fifteen years ago,” Monk replied with a sudden lift of enthusiasm. It would be good to work with Runcorn again, as he knew they had at the beginning of their careers. Runcorn would remember it. He wished he could. Perhaps he would have flashes of recall, as he’d had at the beginning of his amnesia, sudden jolts when something was desperately familiar, and for an instant he could see it clearly.
    “Then we’d better start now.” Runcorn picked up his jacket again. “It could take awhile. How many more days does Rathbone think we have?”
    “A week, maybe,” Monk replied. “He’ll drag it out as long as he can.” Neither of them needed to say that once the verdict was in it would be all but impossible to get the case reopened. Evidence would no longer sway a jury. It would have to be an error in law, or some new fact so irrefutable that no one could deny it, before they would overturn the court’s decision. Time was their enemy, along with the vested interests of money and reputation.
    Obligatory civil records of births, deaths, and marriages had begun in 1838, twenty-six years ago. But to begin with there had been omissions, and there was always the possibility that an event had not taken place in the county. People made mistakes, misread a name or a number, mistook a 5 for an 8, or even a 3, and that altered everything. And, of course, people lied, especially about their age.
    They left Runcorn’s office in Blackheath and went back across the river. As they sat hunched up in the ferry, their faces were stung with fine pellets of ice as the sleet drove westward off the water.
    At Wapping they went ashore and took a cab west again. They rode in an oddly comfortable silence. There was no need to make conversation. Each was quietly consumed in thoughts of the case, and how much might rest on it.
    They were conducted into the vast, silent storerooms of the registry office, and Monk began looking for a death in the name of Gadney, although neither of them had any idea what the man’s Christian name might be, or even the year of the death. He started fifteen years earlier and moved forward.
    Runcorn began at that time and worked back.
    They searched until both were bleary-eyed and dry-mouthed, then stopped for something to take away the taste of dust and paper in the air.
    “Nothing,” Runcorn said, failing to keep the disappointment out of his voice.
    “We need to think again,” Monk admitted, returning the last heavy book to its place on the shelf. “Let’s do it in a pub with a decent lunch. I feel as if I can taste that ink.”
    “Maybe Gadney’s her maiden name, not her husband’s,” Monk said a quarter of an hour later as they ate thick slices of fresh bread with crumbling Caerphilly cheese and pickles. They were both