Page 72 of Blood on the Water (William Monk 19)

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.”

“Was he having a bad spell when he died?” Monk asked.

“Yeah, pretty much.”

“So it wouldn’t have taken much to overpower him?”

Elphick shrugged. “We gotter know ’ow ter do that anyway.”

“Why wait until now to kill him?” Monk asked without warning.

Elphick looked surprised. “Geez! I dunno! Nasty sod, but no worse than usual.”

Monk persisted for another ten minutes and learned nothing he considered useful.

Stockton was different. He described in some detail how he found Beshara dead, and said he had no idea how it had happened. There had been two other prisoners in the infirmary at the time. One had been asleep all night, and both claimed not to have seen or heard anything. Both of them had been released since then and disappeared back into the underworld from which they came. Might even have gone to sea, for all he knew.

“Did you look into it at the time?” Monk asked, keeping his tone light, as if it were something quite casual.

“Yeah, o’ course we did,” Stockton said indignantly. “Reckon ’e must ’ave choked, or something. ’E were a nasty swine anyway, and we all knew as ’e’d bin part o’ the sinking o’ that ship, whether ’e actually done it personal like or not. No one were sorry ’e’d gone.” He met Monk’s eyes without evasion.

“So one of the prisoners in the infirmary killed him?” Monk asked.

“If ’e were killed, then it must ’ave bin,” Stockton said reasonably. He stayed looking straight into Monk’s eyes a second too long.

“And of course they’ve gone,” Monk said. “Disappeared.”

“ ’S’right,” Stockton nodded. “Pity, mebbe. But there’s no ’elp for it now. Save yer the price of a rope.”

“You were the one who found him? When you came back on duty?”

“ ’S’right.”

“Was he cold?”

“Yeah.”

“Were there marks of a fight on the body?”

Stockton breathed out slowly. “No, ’e looked like ’e could ’a gone in ’is sleep.”

“No struggle. So he wasn’t expecting it?”

Stockton hesitated. “I were a bit shook up … finding ’im dead, like.”

Monk measured his words. “Do you think one of the other prisoners might have been paid to kill him? It seems certain from what you say that it was someone he knew. Both the other prisoners, perhaps? Odd that one woke and the other didn’t, don’t you think?”

“Maybe ’e’d ’ad a bit o’ medicine?” Stockton moved very slightly on his seat.