Acceptable Loss - Anne Perry [14]
He went through the pattern of the evening once again, then thanked Crumble and left.
IT WAS AFTER SIX by the time Monk and Orme finally found themselves upstream toward Mortlake. They had borrowed a police boat and now rowed across from the north bank to the south. Finally they were approaching the large vessel moored close to the trees in a quiet, easily overlooked place, sheltered from the wake of passing barges and unseen from the road.
The north bank opposite was marshy and completely deserted—a place no one would be likely to wander. There were no paths in it, no place to tie a boat and no reason to.
They rowed across the bright water. The early evening sun was low on the western horizon, already filling the sky with color. It was not yet a year since Monk had taken this job, but even in that time the strength of his arms and chest had increased enormously. He hardly felt the pull of the oars, and he was so accustomed to working with Orme that they fell into rhythm without a word.
He knew that Parfitt had been murdered, most probably on this boat that lay motionless on the silent river ahead of them. Still, the movement, the creak of the oarlocks, the whisper of water passing, the faint drip from the oars, had a kind of timeless calm that eased the knots inside him. He found he was smiling.
They pulled up alongside the boat and shipped their oars. Orme stood and caught the rope ladder that lay over the surprisingly high side. They tied their own ropes to it, and then climbed up.
The boat was larger than it had looked from the shore. It was a good fifty feet long, and about twenty wide at its broadest point. Given the height of it, there would be two decks above the waterline, and perhaps another below, then the bilges. What did Mickey Parfitt use something this size for, moored away up here beyond the docks? Certainly not cargo. There were no masts for sails, and no towpaths on the shore.
Monk glanced at Orme.
Orme’s face was turned away, but Monk saw the hard lines of his jaw, the muscles knotted, his shoulders tight.
“We’d better go below,” Monk said quietly. They had brought crowbars in case it proved necessary to break open the hatches.
He wondered what had happened on this boat. Had someone crept aboard in the dark, rowing out just as they had, climbing on board silently, creeping soundlessly across the wooden planking and taking Mickey Parfitt by surprise? Or was it someone he had expected, someone he had assumed to be a friend, and then he had suddenly, horribly, found that he was wrong?
Orme was bending over the hatch.
“We’ll have to break it,” he said, frowning. “He must’ve been killed on deck.”
“Or he never got this far,” Monk replied.
Orme looked up at him. “You mean it could have nothing to do with this? Why would ’Orrie tell that story about bringing him here if he didn’t? If he’s got the guts to lie at all, surely he’d say he knew nothing about it?”
Monk took one of the crowbars and levered it into the lock in the hatch. “Maybe other people know he took Parfitt out. He might have been seen on the dockside.”
“At eleven at night?” Orme said skeptically. He slid his own crowbar into place and leaned hard on it, but the heavy metal hasp of the lock did not budge.
Monk put his weight behind his crowbar too, working in unison with Orme.
On the fourth attempt the wood splintered. On the fifth it gave, tearing the other end of the lock off and pulling the screws out.
“What the hell has he got in here that’s so valuable?” Orme said in amazement. “Smuggling? Brandy, tobacco? Must be a hell of a lot of it. Unless whoever killed him took it?”
Monk did not reply. He hoped that was what it was. “I think ’Orrie’s afraid of Tosh, don’t you?”
Orme straightened his back, pulling the hatch open. “You mean Tosh told him what to say? That would mean Tosh has a fair idea of what really happened.”
The sky was darkening around them, the light draining out of the air. There was no sound but the faint ripple of the water.
“Or else he’s protecting someone else,” Monk suggested.