Dark Assassin

by Anne Perry

  “Must have dug too close to a small river,” Crow shouted back. “London’s riddled with them. All this burrowing and digging around, and some of them have moved course. Only takes a couple of feet, a change from clay to shale, or striking an old culvert, a cellar or something, and the whole thing can turn. Sometimes it just goes around it and back to the—Watch your feet!”

  The last was a shout of warning as Monk’s foot sank into a squelching hole. He pitched forward, only just catching Orme’s arm in time to pull himself upright and haul his foot out. His leg was now coated in sludge up to his knee. Shock robbed him of breath, and he found himself gasping even after he had regained his balance.

  Crow slapped him on the shoulder. “We’d better stay together,” he said loudly. “Come on!”

  Monk leapt up with him. “Someone must have known this was going to happen,” he said.

  “Sixsmith?” Crow asked, keeping moving.

  “Havilland, actually,” Monk replied.

  Crow stopped abruptly. “Murdered because of it?” There was surprise in his voice, and but for the wavering lights his expression was invisible. “I don’t know. If he had sense enough to listen to some of the older toshers, maybe. Some of them knew things that aren’t written down anywhere. Just lore passed from father to son.”

  They were at the edge of the crater, which seemed a fathomless pit. Monk felt his stomach clench, and his body shook even though he tensed every muscle to try to control it.

  A little man, broad-shouldered and bow-legged, came towards them. He had a lantern built into his hat, so both his hands were left free. There was too much noise of clattering earth and the thrum of the great machine for him to try to be heard. He waved his arms for them to follow, then turned and led the way down.

  Monk lost all count of time, and finally of direction also, even of how deep he was and the distance he would have to go upwards to find clean air or feel the wind on his face. Everything was wet. He could hear water seeping down the walls, dripping, sloshing under his feet, sometimes even the steady flow of a stream: a sort of thin, wet rattle all the time.

  Someone had given him a short-handled shovel. He ignored his painful shoulder and worked with Crow to begin with, digging away fallen debris by the dim light of lanterns, trying to reach trapped or crushed men. Then Crow went up again with bodies, and Monk found himself beside a barrel-chested navvy and a tosher with a broken front tooth that made his breath whistle as he heaved and dug.

  The light was sporadic. One moment the lantern would be steady, held high to see an arm or a leg, distinguish a human limb from the timbers or a head from the rounded stones of the rubble. At others it rested on the ground while they dug, pulling, hoping, and then realizing there was nothing to find, and moving on, going deeper.

  At one point they broke through into a preexisting tunnel and were able to go twenty yards before finding another slide and starting to dig again. It was under this one that they found two bodies. One was still just alive, but even with all they could do to help, the man died as they were trying to move him. His injuries were too gross for him to have stood or walked again, and yet Monk felt a crushing sense of defeat. His mind told him the man was better dead than facing months of agony and the despair of knowing he would remain a cripple, in shattering pain and utterly helpless. But still, death was such a final defeat.

  He returned slowly, his body aching, to the heap of waste. He held his lantern high to see if the other man could be brought up for identification and burial, or if it would jeopardize more lives even to try. He picked his way carefully, even though he knew it by now, and bent, holding the light towards where he thought the head was. He pulled away pieces of brick and mortar until he had uncovered the body as far as the middle of the chest. It would probably not be too difficult or dangerous to get the rest of him free. He was so plastered with clay and dust Monk could distinguish very little of his features beyond that he had long hair and a thin, angular face.

  There was a rattle of pebbles behind him and the bow-legged tosher appeared at his elbow. Silently they worked together. It took some time but eventually they freed the body and half-carried, half-dragged it along the old sewer floor. They had to pass through one of the small streams dribbling out of the side wall. It was ice-cold and erratic, but at least smelling of earth rather than sewage.

  When they at last reached the top, Monk held the light to look at the man. The question of who he might be froze on his lips. The stream they had passed through had cleaned off the mud, and he saw the face clearly. It had stared at him in the lantern light of another sewer only two and a half days before. The black hair and brows like a slash across his face, and the narrow-bridged nose were etched in his mind forever. With a shaking hand he touched the lip and pushed it back. There were the extraordinary eyeteeth, one even more prominent than the other. What irony! His hiding place had been the cause of his death! The very stream he had killed to conceal had in turn killed him.

  “Oo is ’e?” The tosher looked at Monk, frowning. “I seen ’im somewhere afore, an’ I can’t ’member where it were.”

  “He’s a man who killed other people for money,” Monk replied.

  “The police are looking for him. I need to find Sergeant Orme. Can you send someone to fetch him? It matters very much.”

  The tosher shrugged. “I’ll put out the word,” he promised. “Are you goin’ ter leave ’im ’ere?”

  “I’m going to stay with him, at least until the police can take him away,” Monk replied. Suddenly he was aware of the cold, of the numbness of his feet. Would this be in time to make a difference to the trial? It would at least prove that Melisande Ewart had seen a real person. Might that be enough to swing the jury? Or to frighten Argyll?

  He waited, crouching in the dark beside the corpse, hearing shouts and seeing lanterns waving in the distance across the rubble. It had started to rain again. The light shone yellow on the faces of the rocks and black pools of water between. The giant machine roared in the mist like some monstrous, half-human creature, still grinding and thumping as more debris was hauled up. Monk was not sure if it was his imagination, but it seemed to be settling deeper into the earth.

  It was about half an hour when at last Orme appeared, waving a lantern, Crow on his heels.

  “You got ’im?” Orme asked, bending to look at the dead body.

  “Yes.” Monk had no doubt at all.

  Crow stared at him. His face was lit on one side, and shadowed on the other, but his expression was a mask of anger and scalding contempt.

  “Doesn’t look so much dead, does he!” he said quietly. Then he bent down, frowning a little. Experimentally he touched one of the man’s hands, then picked it up. His frown deepened and he looked up at Monk. “You think he was killed in the fall?”

  “Yes. His legs are crushed. He was probably trapped.” He was half ashamed as he said it. “I should feel sorry for anyone caught like that, but all I feel for him is angry we can’t make him tell us who paid him. I’d bring him into court, broken legs, broken back, and all.”

  “Scuff’ll be all right,” Orme said quietly, looking not at Monk but at Crow. “Won’t ’e?”

  “Yes, I should think so,” Crow agreed. “But look at his legs, Mr. Monk.”

  “What about them? They’re both broken.”

  “See any blood?”

  “No. Probably washed off in the water we took him through. I dragged him; he’s heavier than you’d think.”

  Crow looked at the body again, more carefully. Orme and Monk watched, growing more curious and then unaccountably concerned.

  “Why does it matter?” Monk said finally.

  Crow stood up, his legs stiff, moving awkwardly. “Because he was dead before the slide hit him,” he replied. “Dead bodies don’t bleed. The only blood staining anything is on his coat, from the bullet hole in his chest. The river didn’t wash that out.”

  Monk found himself shaking even more violently. “You mean he’s been
murdered? Surely he’d never have shot himself!”

  “Not in the back, anyway,” Crow replied. “Went in under his left shoulder blade, came out the front. I reckon whoever employed him paid his last account.”

  Monk swallowed.

  “Are you absolutely sure?”

  Crow pulled his mouth tight and rolled his eyes very slightly. “Take a look at the bastard yourself, but of course I’m sure! I’m no police surgeon, and don’t want to be, but I know a bullet hole when I see one! Heavy caliber, I’d say, but ask the experts.”

  Monk straightened up. “Thank you. Will you and Sergeant Orme take him to the morgue and call the police surgeon? I must tell the prosecutor in the Sixsmith case, and Superintendent Runcorn. A man’s life may hang on this.” It was an order, at least as far as Orme was concerned, and a request to Crow.

  Orme relaxed. “Of course,” he said resignedly. “Come on!”

  Monk went back to Paradise Road to tell Hester what had happened. No message from anyone else, however sympathetically or precisely delivered, would satisfy her—or Monk’s own need to see her and tell her himself. He was confused and exhausted by the emotional horror of seeing so many people, in agony of body and terror of mind, whom he could not help. He knew those who were dead had been crushed, buried, and suffocated in the darkness, often alone as they felt life slip away from them. Hester could not heal that. No one could. Nor could she erase the memory. But she would understand. Just to see her would ease the knots locked hard inside him.

  It was only now that he realized with amazement that he had not had time, or emotion, to spare, to be afraid for himself! It was a sweet, hot kind of relief. He was not a coward, at least not physically.

  And he needed to see for himself that Scuff was still recovering. It was absurd that he should feel so intensely about it, but something compelled him to see Scuff’s face for himself.

  The moment he opened the door he heard movement upstairs. Before he was halfway along the passage he saw the light go up on the landing and Hester’s figure on the top step. Her hair was unpinned and tangled from sleep, but she was still dressed, although barefooted.

  “William?” she said urgently, her voice sharp with anxiety. She did not ask specific questions, but they were all there implicitly. Their understanding of each other was founded on the battles and the victories of the past.

  He wanted to know about Scuff.

  She answered him before he asked. “He’s getting stronger all the time,” she said, coming silently down the stairs. “A little feverish about midnight, but it passed. It’s going to take a week before he can get up much, and far more than that before he can go back to his own life. But he will.” Her eyes searched his face. She did not ask if the experiences of the night had been terrible; she read the answer in his demeanor and the fact that he did not even try to find words for what he had seen.

  When she reached the bottom of the stairs, he took her in his arms and held her close, hard, wordlessly. In his mind he blessed over and over again whatever benevolence had led him to choose a woman whose beauty was of the soul: brave and vulnerable, funny, angry, and wise—someone to whom he need explain nothing.

  Monk had no time to sleep, only to wash and change clothes and eat some hot breakfast. Of course, he also went up to look for a few moments at Scuff, who was scrubbed clean and sound asleep. The boy was still wearing Hester’s nightgown with the lace edge next to his thin little neck, his left shoulder sitting crookedly over his bandages.

  A few hours later, at half past eight, Monk was at Rathbone’s office, explaining the night’s events. A messenger was dispatched urgently to Run-corn, telling him to contact Melisande Ewart with a request that she be at the Old Bailey along with Runcorn that morning. If she was unwilling, a summons would be issued.

  By ten o’clock the court was in session and Rathbone had asked permission to call Monk to the witness stand. Monk was startled by how stiff he was and how his legs ached as he climbed up. He had to grip the rail to steady himself. Even after a meal and a change of clothes he was exhausted. His shoulder ached, and the violence of the night invaded his mind.

  Rathbone looked up at him anxiously. The barrister was as elegant as always—immaculately dressed, his fair hair smooth—but his eyes were shadowed and his lips pale and pulled a little tight. Because Monk knew him so well, he could see the tension in him. He knew how close he was to being beaten.

  In the front row of the gallery Margaret Ballinger sat, white and unhappy. Her eyes seldom left Rathbone, even though most of the time it was only his back and profile that she could see.

  “Mr. Monk,” Rathbone began, “will you please tell the court where you were last night?”

  Dobie, who apparently had not heard the news, immediately objected.

  “Very well, may I rephrase the question?” Rathbone said tightly, his voice scraping in his throat. “As some of the court may know, my lord, there was a catastrophic cave-in at the Argyll Company’s sewer construction tunnel last night.” He stopped while the public gallery gasped and one or two people cried out. The jurors looked at one another in horror. The clamor subsided only at the judge’s demand for order.

  “Were you called to the scene, Mr. Monk?” Rathbone concluded.

  “Yes.” Monk kept his answers as bare and as direct as possible. He glanced only once at Sixsmith up in the dock. The man’s powerful face was cast forward, his body rigid with tension and totally unmoving.

  “Who called you?” Rathbone asked Monk.

  “Sergeant Orme of the Thames River Police.”

  “Did he say why?”

  “No. I believe he assumed that I would want to be involved since I had been investigating the risk of just such a disaster, because of James Havilland’s fears and his subsequent death. Also, of course, we were doing all we could to help, as were the Metropolitan Police, the fire services, and various doctors, navvies, and any able-bodied men in the area.”

  “Your point is taken, Sir Oliver,” the judge assured him. He turned to Monk. “I would like to know, Inspector, what you found. Was it of the nature that you had been led to fear?”

  “Yes, my lord,” Monk replied. “That, and greater.”

  “Please be more specific.”

  It was the line that Rathbone had intended to take, so Monk was happy to respond. “James Havilland had intimated that he feared a disaster if there was not a great deal more time and care taken in the excavations. He did not record precisely what he feared—or if he did, I did not find it. There are risks of land movement—slippage, subsidence—in any major work. He seemed to fear something further. What seems to have occurred last night was that the diggings went too close to an underground river and the river burst the walls, carrying an enormous weight of earth and rubble with it, and flooding the tunnels.”

  There was too much noise of horror and distress from the gallery and jurors for Monk to continue, and even the judge looked stricken. Obviously the news had not yet reached the daily papers, and few had heard it even by word of mouth.

  “Silence!” the judge ordered, but there was no anger in his voice. He was calling his court to order, but without criticism. “I assume, Mr. Monk, that you are here, in spite of your appalling night, because there is some evidence Sir Oliver feels pertinent to the case, even at this late stage of events?”

  “Yes, my lord.”

  “Very well. Sir Oliver, please ask your questions.”

  “Thank you, my lord,” Rathbone acknowledged. “Mr. Monk, during the course of the night, did you bring to the surface any bodies of the dead or the still living?”

  “Yes.”

  “Were any of them people that you knew?”

  “Yes.”

  “Who were they?”

  “Two navvies that I had spoken with, a tosher—a man who retrieves objects of value from the sewers—and one other man whom I had met once before.” He stopped abruptly, memories of the pistol shot and Scuff falling momentarily choking his breath.
He was so tired that the past and present collided with each other and the courtroom seemed to sway.

  “Where did you meet him before, Mr. Monk?”

  Monk realized that Rathbone had asked him twice. He stiffened his back and shoulders. “In the sewers,” he replied. “When I was looking for the man Mrs. Ewart saw coming out of the mews after James Havilland was shot.”

  “You did not arrest him?” Rathbone sounded surprised.

  “He shot the boy who was guiding me,” Monk replied. “I had to get the lad to the surface.”

  The judge leaned forward. “Is the boy in satisfactory condition, Mr. Monk?”

  “Yes, my lord. We got him medical treatment, took the bullet out. He seems to be recovering. Thank you.”

  “Good. Good.”

  Dobie rose to his feet. “My lord, all this is very moving, but it actually proves nothing at all. This unfortunate man, who appears to be without a name, is dead—conveniently for the prosecution—so he cannot testify to anything at all. He may be no more than some unfortunate indigent who thought to sleep quietly in the Havillands’ stable. Apparently he met his own tragic death when the excavations collapsed and buried him alive. We have no right, and no evidence, to make a villain of him now that he cannot answer for himself.” He smiled, pleased with his point, and looked around the courtroom before he resumed his seat.

  “Sir Oliver?” The judge raised his eyebrows.

  Rathbone smiled. It was a thin, calm gesture that Monk had seen on his lips before, both when he was winning and moving in for the final thrust and when he was losing and playing a last, desperate card.

  “Mr. Monk,” he said smoothly in the utter silence. “Are you certain that this is the same man who shot the boy guiding you in the sewers? Surely the sewers are extremely dark. Isn’t one face, when you are startled and possibly afraid, pretty much like another?”

  Monk gave him a small, bleak smile. “He held a lantern high up, I imagine in order to see us better and maybe take aim.” The moment was etched on his brain as if by a blade. He gripped the rail in front of him. “He had straight black hair and brows, a narrow nose, and highly unusual teeth. His eyeteeth were prominent and longer than the others, especially the left one. When a man is drawing a gun at you, it is a sight you do not forget.” He decided not to say any more. The tension was too stark for decoration with words to be appropriate. No one in the room moved, except one woman who gave a violent shudder.