Monk skipped over the next paragraphs, which were accounts of the attempts at rescue and the transport of the injured and dead to the nearest places of help. After that there followed the grief and horror of relatives, and promises of the fullest possible investigation.

But even searching with stiff fingers and dazed mind through all the succeeding weeks, into months, he found no satisfactory explanation as to what had caused the crash. In the end it was attributed to human error on the part of the goods train driver. He was not alive to defend himself, and no one had discovered any other cause. Certainly the torn and twisted track appeared to have been damaged by the crash itself, and there was no suggestion by anyone that it had been at fault previously to that. The earlier goods train along it carrying timber had had no difficulty at all and arrived at its destination safely and on time.

As he had already heard from the clerk days ago, there was nothing wrong with the track—there was no connection whatever with the fraud, or with Arrol Dundas, or therefore with Monk.

With overwhelming relief he kept telling himself that over and over again. He would go back to London and assure Katrina Harcus that there was no reason whatever to fear a crash on the new line. Baltimore and Sons had never been implicated in the Liverpool crash, and Baltimore himself had been exonerated of fraud in the trial of Dundas.

Which did not mean he had been innocent.

But if land fraud was what was happening now, on the same scale as before, then it was not unreasonable to believe it was Nolan Baltimore who was involved this time as well, rather than Michael Dalgarno. Monk could at least tell that to Katrina.

Although even as he said that to himself, he knew she would want more than hope, she would need proof—just as he did.

He went back to the station and caught the evening train to London. Perhaps because he had been reading most of the day, and had slept little and poorly on the previous night, in spite of the wooden seats and the awkward, upright position, the rhythmic movement of the train and the sound of the wheels over the track lulled him to sleep. He drifted into a darkness in which he was even more conscious of the noise; it seemed to fill the air and to be all around him, growing louder. His body was tense, his face tingling as if cold air were streaming past him, and yet he could see sparks red in the night, like chips of fire.