Page 49 of Cain His Brother (William Monk 6)

“Well, ye look it.” Archie pulled hard on the oars, leaning his weight into them. “Feel like I was rowing a man to ’is ’anging wi’ a face like that, an’ grippin’ me boat like it’d escape ye if ye let it go.”

Monk realized grimly how he must look, and made an effort to smile. It might well be worse.

“Goin’ ter kill ’im, are ye?” Archie said conversationally. “It’d surely be one way. Then ye’d have a corpse ter pass off. I daresay no one’d know it wasn’t his brother. Alike as two peas, they say.”

Monk laughed abruptly. “I hadn’t thought of it—but it sounds like a good idea … in fact, a brilliant one. Accomplish justice for everyone in one blow. Only trouble is, I don’t know if Angus is dead. He might not be.”

“Angus’d be the brother,” Archie said with wide eyes. “Well, I don’t know either, I’m glad to say. So I’ll not be havin’ to take ye back, because I’ll no be party to murder … even o’ the likes o’ Caleb Stone.”

Monk started to laugh.

“And why’ll that be so funny?” Archie asked crossly. “I may be a rough man and not the gentleman ye seem to be, although God knows, ye look hard enough … but I’ve me standards, same as ye!”

“Maybe better,” Monk granted. “It had just occurred to me you might murder me out here in the middle of this godforsaken waste of water … on Caleb’s account.”

Archie grunted, but his anger appeared to evaporate.

“Oh, aye,” he said quietly. “Well … I could have an’ all.”

He rowed in silence for several minutes. The shadows of the chemical works on the farther shore loomed through the mist, and Archie had to change course with a wrench of the oars to avoid a barge moving out from the dim wharves as the rain drove in their faces.

“Ye’ll be needing a spot o’ help then,” Archie said after several more minutes. “Ye’ll no catch the like o’ Caleb on your own.”

“Possibly,” Monk conceded. “But I’m not trying to take him into custody, only to speak with him.”

“Oh, aye,” Archie said skeptically. “An’ ye suppose he’ll believe that, do ye?”

On the face of it, it was unlikely, and Monk was indisposed to attempt explanation, partly because it was unclear in his mind anyway. He simply had no alternative but to pursue Caleb.

“If you are offering to help, I’m obliged,” he said tartly. “What do you want for it? It won’t be easy, or pleasant. Not necessarily even safe.”

Archie grunted with disgust. “Think I’m a fool? I know what it’ll be a sight better than you do, laddie. I’ll come for the satisfaction o’ it. I dinna need payin’ for every damn thing I do!”

Monk smiled, although in the darkness he was not sure if Archie could see him.

“Thank you,” he said graciously.

Archie grunted.

They came ashore on the mudflats and moored the boat to a post sticking up like a broken tooth, then Archie led the way up the bank to the rough grass, tussock and mud, now heavily shrouded in lessening rain and near darkness. There were lights ahead of them across the fields, if one could call them such, although from the squelch and suck on his boots, Monk thought it was bogland.

“Where are we?” he asked quietly.

“Headin’ for Blackwall Lane,” Archie answered. “Keep quiet. Sound travels, even when ye don’t think it.”

“He’s here?”

“Aye, he came this way not ten minutes before us.”

“Why? What’s here?” Monk struggled to keep up with him, feeling the ground cling to his feet and the freezing rain drift against his face.

“Is it him ye’re after, or summat else?” Archie asked from just ahead of him in the gloom.

“Him. I don’t care what else is going on,” Monk replied.

“Then be quiet, an’ follow me!”

For what seemed like a quarter of an hour, Monk trudged through the darkness, first from marshland to the road, then along harder surface towards the lights of small cottages huddled on the black landscape, marked out only by the dim eye of oil lamps in windows.