by Anne Perry
What would Beata believe of her husband?
Henry was waiting, a sad, gentle smile on his face.
“I’ve paid that price once,” Oliver replied. “I think, if I have to, I’ll pay it again. I’m not sure.”
Henry nodded. “I thought so. But you cannot know what you will find. Someone is guilty.”
“I know …”
CHAPTER
16
MONK WAS IMPATIENT WITH how long his wounds took to heal, but it was actually as fast as anyone could expect. Broken bones mend at their own rate, and neither Hester’s care nor his own annoyance could hasten it. Once or twice she reminded him that his constant irritation was actually more likely to make him feel worse.
Hooper was less volatile or, as Hester observed, to Monk’s surprise, he was more stoic. Her remark had the desired effect of making Monk bite back his anger. He gave Orme authority to act in his place, to choose which cases were given priority, and direct his men accordingly.
Monk accepted his physical inactivity and turned his mind wholly toward investigating what other dark and complicated motives might emerge when the trial of Gamal Sabri proved that Beshara was innocent, and his trial had been flawed by serious error, and almost certainly a degree of corruption.
Monk liked Lydiate and understood why he had yielded to the pressure applied to him regarding the case, even if he was forced to agree also that it jeopardized his impartiality. But once you yield to pressure, even with the smallest, most harmless-seeming deviation from the path, have you then made the next step inevitable? When do you refuse: the third step, the fourth? Or is there no longer a way left to escape?
He began with the most unpleasant of the tasks, which was to check all the facts Lydiate had told him of his sister’s marriage, and consequent vulnerability to pressure. The initial inquiries were simple enough; being discreet was another matter. Once he was beyond what was common knowledge, he went to see Runcorn. He chose to meet him in Greenwich Park, rather than at the police station. They walked side by side along the wide gravel paths between the lawns and flowerbeds, under the great magnolia trees, which had long finished their blooming. To the casual eye they were simply two men who had time to spare in the middle of the summer day.
Runcorn looked unhappy. “You think Lydiate’s corrupt?” he said very quietly, although there was no one else within earshot. “Or you’re trying to prove he’s not … just a bit slipshod in this?”
“Both,” Monk said with an attempt at lightness that failed.
Runcorn moved on several paces before he spoke again. “What does a good man do if he’s blackmailed, not for himself but for someone he loves, and who has a right to expect his protection? Do you sacrifice your family to what you see as justice, even if they don’t?” He shook his head. “I know it’s his sister’s stepdaughter, but that is irrelevant to the question. What if it were his wife?” This time he looked at Monk. “What if it were your wife? Or mine? I couldn’t tell Melisande, ‘No, I won’t protect you. My job comes first.’ ” He stopped on the path, challenging, waiting for Monk’s reply.
Monk stopped also. “And she would tell you to pass the case to someone else,” he said. “And accept the consequences. She’s wise enough and brave enough to know that the other choice leads to an even worse ending.”
“That is only half the answer.” Runcorn refused to move. “Would I ask that of her, knowing what she would do? Maybe the only honest thing is simply to make the decision yourself. Isn’t that what true protection is? You make the choice?”
Monk pushed his hands into his pockets, fists slowly clenched. “Perhaps you have to make the wrong choice once or twice to know how much darker it is in the end.”
Runcorn kept up with him. “And you want me to find out if Lydiate took the wrong choice?”
Trust Runcorn to be blunt. “I need to know. I need to know for sure how far he bent the facts. I’ve been over and over the reports, but that isn’t enough,” Monk answered.
Runcorn pulled his mouth into a thin line. “Are you trying to protect him or to expose him?”
“How the hell do I know, until I find out what he did?” Monk demanded. There was far more he wanted to say. He wanted Runcorn to understand the pity he felt for Lydiate, that he did not know himself what he would have done, only that to yield was never the answer. He might have protected him, if he could, but it was no longer an option. Brancaster would tear Lydiate’s case apart anyway. He had no choice.
“I can’t do anything if I’m caught on the blind side,” Monk added. “Lydiate’s family is as vulnerable as he told me, and nothing has happened to them.”
“Who threatened him?” Runcorn asked.
“Ossett was the one who told him,” Monk said unhappily. “But I had the strong feeling that someone else was pressuring Ossett. It’s almost like something you can feel in the air.” He searched for words that would not sound melodramatic, and failed. “A desperation,” he finished. “You can find the real records without being as obvious as I’d have to be. If Brancaster is any good, he’ll find them. We need to do it before he does.”
Runcorn gritted his teeth but he did not disagree.
BY THE TIME THE trial of Gamal Sabri was a couple of days away, Monk had provided Rathbone, and thus Brancaster, with all the information he could find on Lord Ossett, Sir John Lydiate, and all the lawyers who had conducted the trial of Habib Beshara. There were errors of judgment, vulnerabilities, oversights, occasional contradictions, but nothing that individually amounted to more than anyone might make in a hasty and deeply emotional investigation. And there was no apparent connection to the murder in prison of Beshara, which Monk had also been looking for.
He did, with some difficulty, discover that Gamal Sabri’s legal counsel had been hired by a wealthy Egyptian named Farouk Halwani, currently living in Cairo, and unavailable for comment.
Monk had tried to speak to Fortridge-Smith, but had been evaded, and then outright refused, by his secretary. He had no great hope that he would be able to learn how Beshara had died, still less who might have been responsible. There were so many possibilities he had little expectation of it being useful in the trial of Sabri. Still, it angered him to be refused access.
Accordingly, he went to see Lord Ossett, and was received in his large and very handsome office, with the haunting portrait of himself as a young man.
Monk came straight to the point.
“I’m sorry to disturb you with this, sir, but time is short, and I have done everything I can to persuade Fortridge-Smith to see me, but he refuses. I believe it is imperative that I have all the information possible regarding Habib Beshara before Sabri’s trial begins. We cannot afford to be caught off balance.” He watched Ossett’s face and saw the shadows in it: apprehension, perhaps more. He was increasingly certain that Ossett was distressed to the point of endangering his health. He was struggling within his own mind for an escape from some overwhelming burden. He looked all but exhausted by it.
“I appreciate that the situation is difficult,” Ossett began, his voice rasping a little. “But surely a prison tragedy like the death of Beshara, even if it was intentional and malicious, has no real bearing on convicting Sabri?”
His mouth pinched in an expression of pain rather than revulsion. “Or are you suggesting that the timing of Beshara’s death is not coincidental?” He did not move in his chair, as if he lacked the energy. “Surely you were not hoping that he could be made to testify? The man was a wreck, and very seriously ill. In fact, he may well have died within weeks, if not days, regardless. Fortridge-Smith informed me that to label his death as murder was irresponsible. Some journalist seeking to make headlines for himself.” His expression was quite clearly one of disgust.
Monk was obliged to retreat at least a step or two. “Possibly the journalist was guessing,” he conceded. “And in that case, he is totally irresponsible, and before the trial of Sabri we should give the newspapers the truth.” He kept his face as expre
ssionless as he could. “Who investigated the death?”
Ossett stared at him. “I beg your pardon?”
Monk did not look away. He saw the shadows in Ossett’s eyes, a sudden flicker of anxiety, something that eluded him.
Monk drew in his breath to prompt a reply, and sensed a pain in Ossett, one that Monk didn’t understand. Then it was gone again, masked.
“I don’t know,” Ossett answered. “It must surely be a very narrow circle of possibilities. I admit, I have been too concentrated on the difficulties of this wretched trial of Gamal Sabri to consider Beshara’s death.” He looked back at Monk now, his eyes steady. “Between us all we seem to have brought the justice system to the brink of disrepute. I don’t know if you have thought of the damage we might do if there is no satisfying explanation as to what happened that brought us to condemn the wrong man in such a terrible case. It is the grace of God, and no more, that we did not hang him! No sensible man is now going to feel that his own life is safe should he be charged with a crime. Therefore we must both explain it, and show that it cannot happen again.”
“I know that, sir,” Monk said quietly. “And it is just as important that we do not now blame someone who is innocent for that mistake.”
Ossett moved. “Dear God! Don’t even think of such a thing. I don’t want poor Lydiate sacrificed. He’s a decent man …”
“I know,” Monk agreed. “But not a politician and not a policeman.”
Ossett paled. “That’s harsh …”
Monk knew it was harsh, and he loathed saying it, most particularly because it was true. “He is a good administrator, sir, and, above all, an honest man, deserving of the respect his men have for him. They would rightly see it as unjust if you were to remove him from his post over this.”
Ossett looked at him curiously, as if trying to weigh him up, to see the answer to something that had troubled him.
Monk resisted the temptation to overexplain himself, and remained silent.
“Will you win the case?” Ossett changed his line of approach. “Brancaster is good, but he lacks experience. Rathbone would have been better. Making such a fool of himself over the Taft case did a great disservice to the British legal system.” He shook his head very slightly. His shoulders were painfully tight. “It’s full of pitfalls, Monk. Full of them! It’s still possible, if he gets into a tight corner, that Brancaster could rip some of York’s decisions apart.” He sighed. “But it could possibly come to the same thing whoever had presided. Emotions were hot. The whole country was demanding that we condemn someone. And who can blame them? It was an atrocity. The ordinary man in the street wants to believe that we—the police, the government—have some kind of control over what’s happening!”
“And that it won’t happen again,” Monk added.
Ossett looked at him sharply. “For God’s sake, don’t ever whisper such a thing! Don’t think it!”
“We have to think it,” Monk replied. “That’s the only chance we have of seeing that it doesn’t.”
Ossett’s face was haggard. Monk glanced at Ossett’s younger self in the portrait on the wall, but noticed that Ossett avoided looking at it. Did it remind him of a happier time when decisions were simpler? Or had he failed to become the man that young soldier had dreamed of?
“Are you thinking of the sinking of the Princess Mary, or the abominable mess of the investigation and the trial convicting the wrong man?” Ossett asked.
“Both,” Monk replied. “And also the possibility of making it even worse by now failing to convict the right one.”
“Are you sure he is the right man, Monk?”
“Yes, sir. But I need to find out before the trial as much as I can about how Beshara died, and who was responsible. That is something Brancaster at least will ask, and he will only be the first. Every thinking man in England will be asking it before the trial is finished.” It sounded a little like a threat, and he had meant it to.
Ossett’s voice was gravelly when he answered, as if he were finding it difficult to control.
“I will see that Fortridge-Smith answers your questions—today,” he promised. “If he has nothing to hide he won’t mind, and if he has, then you are going to learn what it is!”
“Yes, sir.”
OSSETT WAS AS GOOD as his word. Fortridge-Smith received Monk at a little after four o’clock that afternoon, albeit with an ill grace. They were in his office, a bleak room with shelves on one wall. Books sat in regimented rows, awaiting his interest. A red Turkey rug relieved the dark painted stone floor and muffled the sound of footsteps.
“I don’t know what good you think you can do in raking up the issue again,” he said angrily. “The man was guilty, and he was dying of his wretched disease anyway! He got into a quarrel with someone and they may well have hastened his death, but that’s all. Men quarrel in prison, Monk! It’s not a nice place. It’s not meant to be. There are fights and men get hurt. It’s not good for your health. People die younger in here than they would outside. Nobody starves or freezes, and that’s about the best you can say for it.”
Monk drew in his breath to argue, but Fortridge-Smith continued.
“And as for Beshara, I know that, thanks to you, it appears he didn’t actually put the dynamite on board the Princess Mary, but he was involved in the atrocity, and that makes him a guilty man. He deserved to be here.”
Monk controlled his anger with difficulty. He could feel it welling up inside him and he wanted to argue, to point out the difference between personal judgment and the law. The whole principle of private vengeance was against everything the law was supposed to embody. But his common sense told him Fortridge-Smith was not listening, either intellectually or emotionally. Monk’s anger would only make it worse.
“For the upcoming trial of Sabri, who is also guilty,” Monk said lightly, and so very levelly that he was clearly governing himself not to speak his mind, which Fortridge-Smith had to know, “I need to speak to the people in charge of the prison infirmary at the time of Beshara’s death. I may be called to testify.”
“To what, for heaven’s sake?” Fortridge-Smith said sharply. “The way Beshara died, long after the explosion, has nothing to do with Sabri’s guilt!”
“Don’t be naïve,” Monk snapped back. “Since when did a defense lawyer’s questions have to have immediate relevance to the crime?”
“Then don’t answer them!” Fortridge-Smith retorted.
Monk’s eyebrows shot up. “And leave them to realize not only that I don’t know, but that I don’t care enough to have found out? That would hand the defense the perfect opening to suggest that Beshara was guilty after all. Or alternatively, that he knew something so important that he had to be silenced. And we, the authorities, connived at it.” He watched Fortridge-Smith’s eyes as the skin tightened across his cheeks. “Or worse, that we actually did it ourselves,” he went on. “To save our embarrassment at the complete mess we made of the first trial, and everything since.” He could not keep his contempt hidden. “And that would not please our lords and masters.”
The blood surged up Fortridge-Smith’s face, but he was cornered. He had to reply to that last challenge, and he knew it.
“Then go and speak to whomever you like,” he said bitterly. “I’ll have one of the guards accompany you. And don’t get rash and lose him, Mr. Monk. As you have observed for yourself, this is a violent place. The prisoners here are not good people. I might very well be able to find out who killed you, and even prove it, but it would be little use to you … or your family.”
Monk felt a moment’s sharp, tight fear. It knotted his stomach and ran through his veins with heat, and then cold.
“I’m obliged,” he said with less panache than he would have liked. “Lord Ossett will be too.”
“Indeed,” Fortridge-Smith said, almost without expression.
A senior guard was sent for. As soon as he appeared he conducted Monk to the prison infirmary, where Monk interviewed the nurses—all men,
naturally—and the part-time doctor who had been hired since Crow, having found out as much as he could, had left. Monk gave no indication of having heard of Crow, much less known him.
As soon as he entered the high-ceilinged room, the smells of lye and carbolic, mixed with that of human waste, seized Monk’s stomach and twisted it so hard he found it difficult not to retch. There were ten beds ranged along two walls facing each other. Eight of them were occupied by men in various stages of pain or resignation. Many were bandaged; two clearly had broken bones; others were feverish, flushed, sweating, and moving uneasily on the hard mattresses.
There were two nurses on duty, presently occupied in cleaning or tidying, rolling bandages, emptying slops.
After Monk had acknowledged them, introduced himself, and explained why he was here, he asked them who had been on duty immediately before Habib Beshara had been found dead.
The answer was that it was Elphick, the larger of the two, and another man called Stockton. Monk told them that he needed to speak with them, one at a time, in a closed room where they were guaranteed not to be overheard. The guard whom Fortridge-Smith had ordered to be with him for his safety would wait outside.
Elphick was a tall, wiry man with a nervous habit of drumming his fingers on the top of the table between them. It was irritating. Monk had to discipline himself not to order the man to stop, as it would be a bad start to what was almost certainly the only chance he would have to speak with him alone.
He began with something to which he knew the answer.
“What was wrong with Beshara?”
Elphick pulled a face of disgust. “Slow thing. Called something gravis …”
“Myasthenia gravis?” Monk suggested.
“Yeah, that’s right. Least that’s what they said.” He looked up at Monk with sudden directness. “Don’t kill yer, though. Sometimes ’e were like normal, others ’e could ’ardly lift ’isself off ’is backside. ’E weren’t putting it on, for all that. Why should ’e? Don’t make no difference to us.”