Blood on the Water

by Anne Perry

  He inclined his head a little. “No one man did this. It was a conspiracy of, at the very least, two men. Habib Beshara may have been one of them, but he was not the man who took the dynamite on board the Princess Mary, or the one who ignited it. Whatever he is guilty of, he is now facing God’s judgment for it. Gamal Sabri is the one who set off the dynamite that blew the bow off the Princess Mary and sank it, and all who were on board, to the bottom of the Thames.”

  Brancaster returned to his place.

  Pryor rose to his feet, still pink-faced with anger. He paced back and forth as he spoke, recapitulating the leading testimony of the first trial, painting a picture of the devastated survivors and their grief. He mentioned only the points on which the witnesses had agreed.

  Rathbone, listening intently to every word, realized that what he was actually doing was reminding them of the horror of the event, moving them gently, step by step, to see themselves, their families, and friends as the victims of the nightmare it had been. It was not reason he was appealing to, it was their terror and grief, and he did it well.

  By the time Brancaster stood up again, Rathbone could feel the fear in the courtroom like thunder in the air.

  Brancaster called his first witness. No matter how much it played into Pryor’s hands, he was forced to establish the facts of the case, and that included details about the explosion and the sinking itself. He kept it as technical as possible. Rathbone had warned him that if he did that, he might seem cold, even unsympathetic to the victims, as if this were all an exercise in law, not the stories of the awful deaths of nearly two hundred people.

  Now he folded a blank piece of paper, and passed it forward.

  Pryor saw him. He rose to his feet.

  “My lord! I see that we have in court a very distinguished visitor, Sir Oliver Rathbone, who has just passed a note to my learned friend. I regret having to remind the court of the tragic and rather grubby facts, but Sir Oliver is no longer permitted to practice law. I believe Mr. Brancaster defended him at his own trial here, and cannot therefore be ignorant of that fact.”

  There was an instant, total silence.

  As one man, the jury turned to stare at Rathbone, who felt as if he were a butterfly pinned to a board.

  It was Brancaster who spoke, even before Antrobus could intervene.

  “My lord, Mr. Pryor is within his rights, of course, but I believe he has exceeded even his own boundaries of good taste. The piece of paper he refers to is blank.” He held it up, turning it over so they could all see both sides of it. Brancaster offered it to the usher. “If you wish to examine it, my lord?”

  “No, thank you,” Antrobus declined. “But perhaps you would tell us the purpose of such a note?”

  Brancaster smiled self-deprecatingly. “I imagine, my lord, it is to tell me that my remarks have no substance, which I regret is true. Sir Oliver has from time to time warned me about giving the court more technical detail than it requires, and failing to give them the emotional side of things, which my learned friend Mr. Pryor is so skilled in doing.”

  “Indeed,” Antrobus said with a slight upward curve of his lips. “It is good advice, Mr. Brancaster.”

  “Thank you, my lord. If I may continue?”

  “Please do.”

  Brancaster resumed, this time being sure to speak of the fear that saturated the night of the sinking and to talk about people’s wonderful eagerness to help catch the perpetrator—which perhaps led some of them to be less than accurate, and understandably so. He was detailed but sympathetic. It was a fine performance.

  Nevertheless, Pryor was on his feet after the luncheon adjournment. In covering the evidence yet again, he managed to refer to the note that Rathbone had slipped to Brancaster—not for what was in it, but for the necessity of passing it at all.

  “It seems my learned friend has become a pupil of Sir Oliver, or should I say a puppet? Sir Oliver is accepting his banishment from the courts with an ill grace.”

  Rathbone felt a chill as if he had been robbed of some necessary garment. There was a cruelty in Pryor he had not foreseen. Was it a taste of how bitter this battle would become?

  Antrobus thought for a moment or two, and the look on his face could have been irritation or distaste.

  Most of the jurors seemed to be staring at Rathbone as if they expected him to defend himself, not understanding what was going on and seeing him painted as some kind of villain.

  Brancaster was obviously taken by surprise.

  It was Antrobus who spoke. “Mr. Pryor, as you are well aware, grace of manner or judgment is not a requirement in court. Were it necessary, you would not find yourself here either. Sir Oliver may attend the court, and listen, as may anyone else who does not interrupt the proceedings.”

  “Thank you, my lord,” Brancaster said. He hesitated a moment, then took a deep breath, and called his next witness.

  This time Pryor did not interrupt him.

  Brancaster had a slightly different list of witnesses from those at Beshara’s trial, as he had indicated in his opening address. He did not call Monk regarding his witness of the actual explosion and the long night of work afterward; he chose Orme instead, as Rathbone had suggested. Orme was a quiet man, born and bred on the river. He spoke with a soft voice and with the local accent. His anger and his distress found no words, bringing barely a change in the dignity with which he answered Brancaster’s questions. Rathbone had known that, to the jurors, who were unfamiliar with the working life of the river, this would be more authentic than if the testimony had been expressed in Monk’s more educated accent, or with his confidence and his rank behind it.

  It was the following morning before he drew from Orme an account of how the case was taken from them and given to the Metropolitan Police, under Lydiate.

  “Do you remember that, Mr. Orme?”

  “ ’Course I do.” Orme said it quietly, but there was a darkness in his voice, a strain anyone could hear.

  “Do you know why that was?” Brancaster asked.

  Pryor rose to his feet. “Objection, my lord. Mr. Orme, for all his worthiness, is not privy to the command decisions of the senior police officers in charge of—”

  “I apologize, my lord,” Brancaster said with spurious contrition. “Mr. Orme, may I put that a different way? Were you informed of the reason for this decision?”

  “No, sir,” Orme replied. “Didn’t see a reason for it, myself.”

  “And then the case was given back to you?” Brancaster asked. “After Habib Beshara had been tried, found guilty, sentenced, and then reprieved, that is?”

  Orme’s face was a study of disgust. “ ’Cos by that time it were a first-class mess no one wanted to tangle with,” he said heavily.

  There was a murmur of sympathy around the gallery and several jurors clearly felt the same.

  Brancaster proceeded to draw from Orme an account of the evidence he and Monk had gained from witnesses that clearly exonerated Beshara from having placed the dynamite on the Princess Mary, or having been on board the boat himself.

  Pryor appeared to consider questioning Orme, and then decided against it.

  Throughout the rest of that day, and the next, Brancaster questioned more witnesses, always careful to stick to material facts. Where an eyewitness observation was unavoidable, he had at least two separate people speak.

  Pryor attempted to discredit them, but after the third time he appreciated that he was losing more than he gained. The jury might not remember the detail, but they would not forget that he had lost the point.

  By the fourth day a picture had been created of a carefully planned crime involving at least two people, more probably three. It was supported by interlaced facts, details that did not depend upon anyone remembering a face or a walk, exact words or the clothes a person was wearing. Orme had described the boat he and Monk had seen on the night of the sinking. The ferryman, still with a splint on his broken forearm, described exactly the same boat, and his glimpse of the seahors
e emblem. Pryor tried to shake his testimony, but he could not.

  Hooper was called. He told briefly and powerfully how he had seen the boat on the Isle of Dogs, and found Sabri and arrested him. Witnesses were produced who could connect Sabri to the boat, not on one occasion but a score. Pryor failed to discredit Hooper at all.

  Brancaster was careful not to suggest Beshara was a good man, or innocent of any involvement in the sinking, only that he had not been placed on or near the Princess Mary himself, and Sabri had.

  The court was adjourned for the weekend.

  “Not a completely unassailable case,” Rathbone said as he and Brancaster walked out of the Old Bailey and down the shallow steps to the noise and bustle of the street.

  “I know,” Brancaster admitted, turning to go down toward Ludgate Hill. He fitted his step automatically to Rathbone’s. “It could be enough for any other case, but not this. They’ll still take reasonable doubt—it’s easier. Nobody wants to think the justice system is so fragile we could have hanged the wrong man for this. We were all so sure.”

  “It’s not only a matter of not hanging the wrong one,” Rathbone argued. “It’s about hanging the right one. Did you see Camborne in court today?”

  Brancaster drew in a sharp breath. “No, I didn’t. Of course he’ll fight pretty hard not to have Beshara vindicated.” They reached the corner and turned into Ludgate Hill, the sun at their backs. The traffic was heavy in the late afternoon. It was Friday. There was a weariness in the air.

  Rathbone debated with himself whether to raise the subject that was clamoring in his mind. Was it a weakness to mention it now, or cowardly not to? It would have to come, if not today, then on Monday.

  “And York,” he added. “He won’t want to be effectively reversed.”

  Brancaster shot a sideways glance at him.

  Rathbone wondered how much he had guessed, or deduced, about his feelings for York’s wife. Was he as transparent as he felt?

  They walked fifty feet without speaking.

  “They’ve all got reasons,” Brancaster said at last. “Pride, fear, money, advancement, something.”

  “Protecting somebody,” Rathbone added.

  Brancaster kept step with him.

  “So Sabri put the dynamite in the Princess Mary, and he detonated it and then leaped over in time to escape the explosion. Do you think he did it to protect somebody?”

  “It’s possible. And we still don’t know who picked him up,” Rathbone added. “That wasn’t left to chance.”

  “That’s the whole issue, isn’t it?” Brancaster sighed. “Who else was part of it at the time, and—even worse—who else covered it up afterward?”

  “I know,” Rathbone said quietly. They were now on a side street and there was no clatter of traffic to drown their voices.

  “The other thing that is troublesome,” Brancaster went on, “is that we still have no motive. Sheer hatred of Britain can be powerful, but why this particular reaction, and why now? If the jury is going to believe me, then I need to show a reason they can understand.”

  “Not only that,” Rathbone warned him. “You need to have something that speaks to ordinary human passion, not something financial or to do with trade routes and shipping, if that’s what it turns out to be. And I would advise you very seriously not to get into a political train of thought that may end by painting Britain in general as being greedy, exploitative, and destructive of other people’s lives and homes, in order to increase our own profits. It may well be true, but your jury will not wish to accept it.” He glanced sideways at Brancaster as they crossed the road. “You can force them to accept it, if the weight of your evidence is heavy enough, but it will be against their hearts, and they’ll make you pay for it. No one wants their dreams broken. Patriotism is a very powerful force. God only knows how many people, what families down the ages, have given their lives for their country. Don’t try telling them now that they did it for an unworthy cause.”

  Brancaster stopped, his face bleak, mouth pulled tight. He stared at Rathbone. “Why the hell did Sabri do it? Am I going to end up with nothing better than a plea of insanity? Play to their belief in a foreigner having a different and baser morality than ours? That’s not only untrue, it’s …” He struggled for a word. “Degrading myself. I’m not sure I’m prepared to do that, even for a conviction.”

  Rathbone looked back at him. “And what about our justice system that latched on to Habib Beshara because he’s an unpleasant character, and was prepared to twist and distort, overlook or misrepresent the facts, a detail here, a detail there, to convict him? Hang him and get the whole thing out of the way? Are you prepared to take off the garments clothing our system’s less public parts, and expose that for what it is?”

  “How the devil else can I put this right?” Brancaster asked with a note of desperation in his voice.

  “I don’t know,” Rathbone said frankly.

  THE TRIAL RESUMED ON Monday morning. Brancaster knew that if he did not discredit the conviction of Beshara he had no chance of having Sabri found guilty in his place. He and Rathbone had debated the wisdom of a preemptive strike. Would it seem unnecessarily spiteful? Might it even betray a sense of vulnerability in their own arguments to defend them before they were attacked?

  Rathbone looked across at the table where Pryor sat waiting, listening, his pencil ready to take notes. There was a keen doggedness in his face. His heavy jaw was clenched so the muscles showed very slightly in the slant of the light from the windows.

  Brancaster called a young policeman by the name of Rivers, who gave an account of his search for witnesses, when the case had been given to Lydiate’s men. He seemed both serious and candid. He was very polite.

  Brancaster treated him gently.

  Rathbone sat fidgeting, aware that it was a mass of detail, and inevitably boring. He saw the attention of the jury begin to wander.

  Pryor yawned and hunched his shoulders, then relaxed them.

  It was more than time that Brancaster elicited something of value. Much longer and it would fall on deaf ears, regardless of its relevance.

  “Can you describe this particular witness, Sergeant Rivers?” Brancaster asked pleasantly.

  Pryor had had enough. “My lord, how can it possibly matter what the witness looked like? I began to fear that Mr. Brancaster is stretching this out to impossible lengths in the hope of boring us to death!”

  Antrobus looked inquiringly at Brancaster.

  “Not at all, my lord,” Brancaster said respectfully. “Were Mr. Pryor to die, we should have to begin all over again, and I, for one, have no wish to do that.”

  There was a titter of amusement around the gallery.

  “Nor I,” Antrobus agreed. “I doubt I should survive that myself. Perhaps you will be good enough to reach your point, on the assumption that you have one?”

  “Yes, my lord,” Brancaster said obediently. “You were going to describe the witness for us, Sergeant Rivers.”

  Rivers looked puzzled. “He was very ordinary, sir. A trifle portly around the middle. A sort of a … blunt kind of face.”

  “Was he dark or fair?” Brancaster asked.

  “I … don’t recall. Medium. Sort of brownish, I think.”

  Pryor waved his arms. “My lord!”

  Brancaster ignored him. “And what sort of age?”

  “Between thirty-five and fifty,” Rivers replied.

  “Clean-shaven, or bearded?” Brancaster persisted.

  “I don’t recall,” Rivers said hotly. “But he was a good witness, clean and well-spoken.”

  Pryor stiffened.

  Brancaster smiled. “But you, a trained police officer, who stood opposite him in the daylight, cannot recall anything specific about him, not the color of his hair, his age except within fifteen years, or whether he was clean-shaven or had a mustache!”

  Now he had the jury’s total attention.

  “I was trying to judge his honesty, not remember his appearance!”
Rivers protested.

  “Of course,” Brancaster agreed. “I imagine your witness was minding his own business rather than trying to recall the face of the man he saw boarding the Princess Mary.” He smiled. “He, too, was an honest man, doing his best to help after an appalling act. And, just like you, Sergeant Rivers, his memory is fuzzy. He does not know the details, because at the time they did not matter. Thank you. That is all I have for you.”

  Pryor hesitated, briefly scanning the jurors’ faces. Then he gave a slight, dismissive wave of his hand and declined to pursue the issue.

  Brancaster called a lighterman who worked strings of barges frequently passing the places of main concern on the last voyage of the Princess Mary. His name was Spiller. He was grizzle-headed and strong, and he climbed the steps up to the witness box with some grace. He looked like a man who was used to keeping his balance on a moving deck.

  Brancaster asked him about his job, the places it took him on the length of the river, and the sort of sights he was accustomed to pass every day. This time the jury was not bored, and Pryor paid attention to each question and answer.

  Brancaster had to be more careful. Rathbone knew that all he expected was to show that Spiller was experienced, observant, and familiar with all the workings of the river and its people. He had noticed few of the things the witnesses against Beshara claimed to have seen. Those he had seen he said happened almost every day, and he attached no significance to them.

  “Did you explain this to the police when they asked you?” Brancaster said curiously.

  “They didn’t ask me,” Spiller replied. There was a gleam of both humor and contempt in his eyes.

  Rathbone saw that this remark was not lost on the jury.

  “But you were there?” Brancaster said, investing his tone with confusion.

  “ ’Course I was,” Spiller answered. “I suppose the police had what they needed already.”