Cain His Brother - Anne Perry [77]
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.
Archie knocked at one door, and when it was opened, spoke for a few moments, but so quietly Monk heard no words. He withdrew and the door closed, leaving them in the bitter night. Archie waited a few minutes until his eyes grew accustomed again, then led the way towards the other side of the neck of land and the far curve of the river.
Monk opened his mouth to ask where they were going, then changed his mind. It was pointless. He pulled his collar even closer, jammed his hat down again and thrust his hands into his coat pockets and trudged on. The raw fog tasted of salt, sewage and the sour water that lies stagnant in fens and pools beyond the tide’s reach. The cold seemed to penetrate the bone.
At last they came to the dry dock at the farthest end and Archie put out his hand in warning.
Monk caught the smell of wood smoke.
Ahead of them was a lean- to made of planking and patched with canvas. Archie pointed to it, and then stepped aside, making for the far end, disappearing into the darkness, almost instantly swallowed up.
Monk took a deep breath, steadying himself. He had no weapon. Then he flung open the wood-and-canvas flap.
Inside was about a dozen square yards of space, bare but for wooden boxes piled against all of the walls except the farther one, where there was another doorway. It was impossible to tell what the boxes contained. There was a pile of rope forming a rough seat and more unraveled hemp for a bed. In the center a fire was burning briskly, sending smoke and flames up a roughly made chimney. It was blessedly warm after the raw night outside, and Monk was aware of it on the front of his body even as he looked at the one man who squatted beside the fire, a coal in his black-gloved hand, clutched like a weapon. He was tall, loosely built, agile, but it was his face that commanded the attention. It was Enid Ravensbrook’s drawing come to life, and yet it was not. The bones were the same, the wide jaw and pointed chin, the strong nose, the high cheekbones, even the green eyes. But the flesh of the face was different, the mouth, the lines from nose to corner of lips. The expression was one of anger and mockery, and at this instant, poised on the edge of violence.