Free Blood on the Water by Anne Perry

relief, and yet it was not absolute. No formality of a trial, no certainty or pain or fear of an execution could drive out of his mind the memories of the night of the drownings, or the corpses floating inside the hollow of the sunken ship.

CHAPTER
 
4
    A S THE DAYS PASSED leading up to the opening of the trial of Habib Beshara, Monk busied himself even more diligently on the river. He continued stretching his imagination and will to make his force excel, in order to keep up the reputation and morale of his men. The Thames River Police was the oldest force in the country, possibly in the world. It was even older than the “Peelers,” and it deserved every word of praise it had gained over the years. The government’s choice to take the
Princess Mary
case from them might have been politically expedient, but it was still an insult that was deeply felt.
    There was plenty to do. There had been a major robbery from one of the waterside warehouses along the Blackwall Reach, and several minor thefts from docksides, lighters, and other vulnerable places. There was always smuggling, often of brandy, especially farther down by Bugsby’s Marshes, beyond Greenwich, where small boats came and went under cover of darkness.
    There were drunken fights, most of which inflicted little injury and were easily settled, but there were bad ones as well. A knife could make it lethal. One moment a fight could be wild, but with only a punch here and there landing; the next someone was bleeding to death and it was murder.
    Added to that, every few days a piece of wreckage from the
Princess Mary
washed up, bits of wood carved and elegant, made for pleasure, not utility.
    Monk stood in the sun beside the water now, hearing it slurp on the steps below him as the tide rose slowly, each ripple a little higher. He held a carved leg and part of a strut in his hand. It had been turned on a router, making it smooth, showing off the grain. It had once been part of something useful.
    There was no reason to stand here holding it. It was not evidence of anything. Everyone already knew what had happened. He just felt that if he threw it back into the water he was abandoning it, clogging up the river with more detritus. It was too small to salvage, good only to burn in someone’s fire. And yet it had been beautifully made. Somebody had taken time and care with it.
    He put it down on the dockside. Someone would find and make use it. He did not want to burn it on his own fire. Right at this moment, as the trial was starting, he was glad the government had given the case to someone else. It would be Lydiate, and not he, who would have to give evidence and relive the whole thing, witness by witness. Lydiate had not seen the disaster and Monk had, but the salvage crew would be the ones testifying. No one had sent for Monk, probably because they would then have to explain why the case had been taken from him—a fact that would undoubtedly be exploited by Beshara’s defense.
    He turned and walked with his back to the sun, feeling its midsummer heat on his shoulders.
    If Rathbone were here, and still able to practice, would he have taken the case for the defense? Or would he have wanted to prosecute? It was all irrelevant; they were none of them involved. Maybe that wasnot entirely bad. Rathbone had been promising his father for years that they would spend some time traveling together. One case or another had always intruded. He might have gone on delaying until it was too late. Then his grief would be with him always.
    And, in an oblique way, Monk was feeling a new sense of loyalty to his own men. They had served in the River Police long before he came to it. They were as good as any police in the world, better than most, and they deserved recognition of that, not this cavalier bypassing as if they were less than the regular police. Few of them had said anything, but he saw it in their eyes and heard it in the silences. There was an edge of bitterness to the usual