Rathbone’s eyes widened for a moment, then his face was expressionless again. “Now what will you do about it?” he asked. “Are you happy to mark the case as ‘unsolved’ and move on? Does anyone really want to know who killed Parfitt?”

“Lord Cardew might,” Monk observed. “A shadow hangs over his son as long as we don’t know. But whether he does or not, I do. Not because I give a damn about Parfitt, but I need to find out who was behind him, Oliver.” He did not look away. He knew exactly what Rathbone was thinking, remembering, and what the weight of it would be if Monk were right.

For several seconds they stared at each other, then Monk rose to his feet. “I’m sorry,” he said very quietly, little more than a whisper. “I can’t let it go.”

Rathbone did not reply.

Monk let himself out, passing the clerk in the entrance lobby, and thanking him.

In spite of the sun, the air outside felt cold.

MONK SPENT THE NEXT two days questioning everybody who had anything to do with Mickey Parfitt, or who might have seen anyone on the river or the dockside at either Chiswick or Mortlake the night of Parfitt’s death. ’Orrie, Crumble, and Tosh repeated their stories almost word for word, and he could not shake them. Nothing was changed. It was still possible that Ballinger could physically have killed Parfitt, but without a motive, without proof that they knew each other, it was nothing more than an idea.

Monk was pacing the path by the side of the river along Corney Reach when he ran into the fisherman.

“Don’t walk up be’ind a man like that!” the fisherman spat. “I could a taken yer eye out wi’ me rod, yer great fool! Where d’yer grow up, then? In the middle of a desert?” He was a skinny little man with a long nose and a lantern jaw. The cap pulled forward over his eyes hid whatever hair he had left.

Monk apologized, which was received with ill grace. He was about to move on when, out of sheer habit, he asked the question. “Do you spend a lot of time here?”

The man squinted at him. “Course I do, yer daft sod. I live up there.” He jerked his head back toward the lane leading out of the town into the fields.

“Do you have a boat?”

“Yeah, but it in’t fer ’ire. I don’t want some great lummox crashing about in it who don’t know one end from the other.”

“I grew up in boats,” Monk said testily. The fact that he had only the briefest flashes of memory about that time was none of the man’s affair. “I’m looking for witnesses, not to go rowing myself.”

“Witnesses ter wot? I in’t seen nothing. In’t even seen a bleedin’ fish terday.”