Free Revenge in a Cold River by Anne Perry

began again, moving easily, putting his weight behind it. He was a tall man, Monk’s height, and his face reflected his emotions like a glass.
    Scuff crouched beside him, watching intently, ready to help the moment he was asked.
    No one spoke.
    Finally Crow gave up and sat back on his haunches.
    “Sorry,” he said quietly. “He’s gone. The cold and too much water. What happened?” He looked at Monk, not Clive.
    Monk should not have been surprised, and yet the fact that he had struggled to save the man and felt the violent, surging life in him, made his death shocking, even though he was a fugitive from the law.
    Monk cleared his throat. “He is an escaped prisoner. The policeman or customs officer chasing him caught up with him here on the dockside. The policeman tried to take him down. Hooper and I attempted to separate them but there was a struggle between us and each of them and they both went into the water. Hooper went in with the policeman, and I went in after this man. Hooper kept the policeman up long enough, but it looked as if he could swim pretty well. Slack tide, so the current didn’t carry him down. This one panicked. Thrashing around all over the place. I tried to get him out.” Monk realized only now how hard the man had hit back. His head was still ringing from the blows.
    “Did you have to strike him?” Crow asked, as if it were the most ordinary question. Perhaps it was.
    “Yes…a couple of times. Or he’d have drowned us both.”
    “Happens quite often,” Crow said bleakly. “Our own worst enemy. There isn’t anything I can do to help him. He drowned, but it was his panic that killed him.” He climbed to his feet and looked at Monk with some pity. They had known each other for many years, and more than once faced desperate situations together. “Sorry,” he added. Then he turned to Scuff and put one arm around his shoulder. He did not say anything. Scuff wanted to be a doctor. He would have to get used to death, and Crow would not embarrass him by treating him as a child.
    Scuff stood a little straighter, his chin up, and stared for a long moment at Monk, then gave a half smile.
    “Sorry, sir,” he said with barely a tremor in his voice. “There in’t nothing more as we can do for ’im.” His grammar slipped back to his old mudlark days in moments of tension and all Hester’s schooling of him vanished.
    Monk wished he could protect Scuff from this, but he knew better. “Had to try,” he said gravely. “Thank you for coming.”
    Crow seemed to be on the edge of a smile, but kept it from showing. “And the other man, the policeman?” he asked.
    “He made it to the schooner over there,” Monk answered. “He got out up the rope, so I daresay the skipper, if that’s who it was on deck, will give him a stiff tot of rum and some dry clothes, then set him off somewhere.”
    “What schooner?” Crow looked puzzled.
    Monk turned round to point it out, and saw only an empty stretch of water where the tide had turned and was beginning to ebb. The ship’s leaving had been fast, and silent. Or perhaps on the wharf they had been so absorbed in trying to save the big man that they had heard nothing anyway.
    “Maybe he took him downriver to the nearest doctor,” Clive suggested. “Or if he was all right, to anywhere that he could go ashore and make it back to his station. He’ll be spitting fire at having lost his man. You’ll have to tell the police that he’s dead. That’ll be some comfort.” He smiled and offered Monk his hand. There was a warmth to the gesture, even in this miserable circumstance.
    Monk took it and held it hard for a moment before thanking him and letting go.
    He and Hooper walked back toward the road. They would have to inform whoever was pursuing the prisoner that he was dead. Presumably they would want the corpse just the same. Somebody had to bury him. It was certainly not Crow’s responsibility, or Clive’s.
    As they reached the street they saw a