Slaves of Obsession - Anne Perry [160]
He raised his hand in thanks.
Trace waved back, still shaking his head, then pointing to the nearest of the piled crates.
Monk took out his knife and together they prized the lid off. There were guns there. He could feel their outlines.
Trace held up his lamp, close, only inches above them. Now it was possible to see that they were old models, flintlocks mostly, many of them useless, without firing pins, a far cry from the latest Enfields Breeland had purchased. They were little more than sham.
Laboriously they unpacked the top layer. Underneath was only bricks and ballast.
They tried a second case, and a third. They were all the same; a few guns on top, then just weight.
Now at last Monk understood almost all of it. The real guns had never been at Tooley Street. They had been stored somewhere else, and taken to Euston and loaded onto the freight wagons on the train before Shearer even got there the night of the murders. He had merely accepted Breeland’s money. Where he had been the rest of that night, they would probably never know.
These cast-off guns laid over bricks and ballast had been stolen by the wretched men whose bodies floated in this ghastly cabin below the Thames. They had hidden the barge, disguised among the wrecks on the shore of Bugsby’s Marshes, until the following night, then floated it again to keep a rendezvous they thought was to deliver their goods and receive payment for murder. Instead, along with Shearer, they had met their own deaths. If he looked again he would find all the times fitted.
He put his hand on Trace’s arm to signal they should leave. They had seen all there was. They moved slowly away. And was it all simply greed, a matter of selling the guns twice and thus having more money? Admittedly, a vast amount more.
He lurched through the gloom, fumbling his way, awash in clouds of mud, pulled by tides as the flow increased, and they were trying to fight against it. It seemed an endless journey. His legs ached from the weight of his boots. He was imprisoned behind the glass plate, breathing pumped air. He struggled to remember what they had told him to do. Use the outlet valve. Get more buoyancy. That was better. Life and sunlight were only a few fathoms away, but like another world.
Trace was beside him, moving more rapidly, surer-footed. He was waving his light, guiding and urging Monk forward. Then suddenly Trace dropped his light. Monk saw his hands scrabble at where his throat would be beneath the helmet; his face appeared contorted behind the glass, as though he were gasping, choking for air.
Then his ropes tightened, and he was dragged backwards and up, disappearing into the murk, leaving Monk completely alone.
Where was the boat? He strained upwards, looking for its shadow through the cloud of sand that swirled around him, and did not see it.
Then at last the steps were there. He grasped them, hauling himself up, desperate to reach the top, the light, to get out of the cold, clammy, imprisoning suit. It seemed to take forever. He was leaden-weighted. There was no help from the ropes. They had stopped pulling him. He had to climb on his own. The effort was overwhelming.
At last his head broke the surface and instinctively he gasped, drawing in only more pumped air. Hands reached out to help him aboard, and as the water drained off him and the attendant removed the front glass from his helmet, he recognized Robert Casbolt. Then a shot rang out, and another, and another. The attendant crumpled forward, his chest scarlet, and slid into the water.
The other two men lay sprawled beside the pumping equipment, one partly on his back next to Trace, staring sightlessly upward, a dark hole in his head, the third doubled over the after thwart, blood on his hair. Philo Trace was slumped in the bottom of the boat, eyes closed, barely conscious, his helmet beside him.
Casbolt was holding a gun, its muzzle pointed towards Monk.
“You found something down there