It had been a fortune! If he had taken it himself, then he would have been an extremely rich man. Surely that was not something he could have forgotten? When he joined the police he had owned nothing but the clothes he stood up in—and a few others besides. Clothes—Dundas had taught him to dress well, very well, and he had never lost the taste for it.

  Glimpses of memory returned of fittings at tailors, Dundas leaning back elegantly and giving instructions, a lift here, an inch in or out there, a little longer in the legs. Yes—that’s right! This cut of shirt is best, Egyptian cotton, that is how to tie a cravat. Smart but vulgar—don’t ever wear one like that! Understated, always understated. A gentleman does not need to draw attention to himself. Discreet but expensive. Quality tells in the long run.

  Monk found himself smiling, against his will, a lump in his throat so high and hard it stopped him from swallowing.

  The legacy was still with him; he spent too much on clothes even now.

  What had happened to the money?

  What had Mrs. Dundas bequeathed at the time of her death?

  That too was easily discovered when he found her will: very little indeed. The annuity died with her. The house was worth a small amount, but some of that went to settle outstanding debts. She had lived to the meager limits of her income.

  If he had been Dundas’s executor, had he disposed of the money somehow? Where? To whom? Above all, why? That question beat in his mind at every turn like the scrape of leather on a bleeding blister.

  He drank hot coffee and was too tense to eat.

  What did it have to do with Baltimore? Perhaps the affairs of Baltimore and Sons would give him some of the answers or lead him to another avenue to follow in his search.

  It took him until the next day to find someone both willing and able to discuss the subject with him: Mr. Carborough, who made a study of the finances of such businesses with a view to investment in them for himself.

  “Good company,” he said enthusiastically, waving a pencil in the air. “Small, but good. Made a nice profit from the land deals, not excessive, and better, of course, from the railways themselves. Headquarters in London now, I believe. Building another nice line to Derby.”

  They were sitting in Carborough’s office overlooking a narrow, busy street down near the docks. The smell of salt drifted up to the half-open window, and the shouts and clangs of traffic, winches and bales being loaded and unloaded.

  “What about Dundas and the land fraud?” Monk asked, keeping his voice casual, as if it were of no personal interest to him.

  Carborough curled his lip. “Stupid to get caught in something as trivial as that,” he said, shaking his head. “Never understood it myself. He was brilliant. One of the best merchant bankers in the city, if not the best. Then he goes and does a foolish thing like changing the grid reference on a survey so they move the course of the track onto his own land, and he makes . . . what?” He shrugged. “A thousand pounds at most. Hardly as if he needed it. And at the time he did it, he’d have expected to get an interest in whatever the company made on the new brakes. He found the money to develop them.”

  “What new brakes?” Monk said quickly.

  Carborough opened his eyes wide.

  “Oh . . . they invented their own system of braking for carriages and goods wagons. Quite a bit cheaper than the standard ones used now. Would have cleaned up a fortune. Don’t know what happened there. They never followed through with it.”

  “Why not?” he asked. The same flicker of memory woke in Monk and died in the same instant.

  “Don’t know that, Mr. Monk,” Carborough replied. “After Dundas’s trial everything seemed to stop for a while. Then he died, you know?” He put the pencil down next to his pad, making it perfectly level. “In prison, poor devil. Maybe the shock of it all was too much. Anyway, after that they concentrated on new lines. Seemed to forget all about brakes. Built their own wagons and so on. Did pretty well out of it. As I said, moved down to London.”

  Monk asked him more questions, but Carborough knew nothing about Dundas personally and had not heard Monk’s name before that he recalled.

  Neither was there any sign of the money that Dundas must have received for his house. It had vanished as completely as if the treasury notes it was paid in had been burned.

  The next step was to pursue the Reverend William Colman, who had given such telling evidence against Dundas. It might be an unpleasant encounter, since Colman would certainly remember Monk from the trial. He would be the first person Monk had spoken to who had known him from that time. Dundas and his wife were both dead, and so was Nolan Baltimore. Monk would be coming face-to-face with the reality of who he had been, and finally there would be no escape from whatever Colman remembered of him.

  Had he hated the man then, for his evidence? Had he been offensive to him, tried to discredit him? Had Colman even believed him equally guilty with Dundas, but simply been unable to prove it?

  Colman was still in the ministry, and it was not a difficult matter to find him in Crockford’s, the registry of Anglican priests. By late afternoon Monk was walking up the short path to the vicarage door in a village on the outskirts of Liverpool. He was aware of a fluttering in his stomach and that his hands were clammy and aching from the frequency with which he was clenching them. Deliberately, he forced himself to relax, and pulled the bell knob.

  The door opened surprisingly quickly and a tall man in slightly crumpled clothes and a clerical collar stood staring at him expectantly. He was lean with gray hair and a vigorous, intelligent face. Monk knew with a thrill of memory so sharp it caught his breath that this was Colman—the face he had seen sketched with the protesters against the railway. Immeasurably more vivid than that, it was the face he had seen in his dreams, and desperate, fighting through the wreckage of the burning train.

  In that same instant Colman recognized him, his jaw momentarily slack with amazement.

  “Monk?” He stared more closely. “It is Monk, isn’t it?”

  Monk kept his voice steady with difficulty. “Yes, Mr. Colman. I would appreciate it if you could spare me a little of your time.”

  Colman hesitated only a moment, then he swung the door wide. “Come in. What can I do for you?”

  Monk had already decided that the only way to achieve what he needed was for the complete truth to come out, if indeed it was possible at all. The truth necessarily involved being honest about his loss of memory, and that bits and pieces were now coming back.

  Colman led the way to the room in which he received parishioners and invited him to be seated. He regarded Monk with curiosity, which was most natural. He had not seen him in sixteen years. He must be looking at the changes in him, the character more deeply etched in his face, the tiny differences in texture of skin, the way the lean flesh clothed the bones.

  Monk was acutely aware of Colman’s personality and the force of emotion he had felt in him before—nothing had diminished it. The grief was all still there, the memory of burying the dead, of trying to scrape together some kind of comfort for stricken families.

  Colman was waiting.

  Monk began. It was difficult, and his voice stumbled as he summarized the years between then and now, ending with the story of Baltimore and Sons and the new railway.

  As Colman listened the guardedness was there in his face, the echoes of old anger and shattering grief. They had been on opposite sides of the issue then, and it was clear in his expression, in his careful eyes and slightly pinched lips, and above all in the tightness in his body as he sat, one leg still crossed over the other. His fists were closed, his muscles rigid. They were opponents still. That would never be forgotten.

  “Nolan Baltimore has been murdered,” Monk stated. He saw Colman’s start of surprise, then a gleam of satisfaction, and immediately afterwards guilt for it, even a flush in his cheeks. But he was in no haste to express the usual regrets. There was an honesty in him which prevented it.

  “By a prostitute,” Monk added. “While in the pursuit of somewhat irregular pleasures.”

  Disgust was plain in Colman’s eyes.

  “And that brings you here?” he said in disbelief.

  “Not directly,” Monk replied. “But it does mean we cannot question him about anything to do with what very much appears to be another fraud in Baltimore and Sons, almost exactly like the first.”

  Colman sat upright with a jolt. “Another? But Dundas is dead, poor soul. You, of all people, must know that. Surely your memory cannot be so affected . . . I mean . . .” He stopped.

  Monk rescued him in his embarrassment. “I remember that. But what I don’t recall is how the fraud was discovered . . . not in detail. You see, it seems this time as if a man named Dalgarno is responsible, only the person who was his main accuser is also dead . . . murdered.” He saw the pity in Colman’s face, this time unmixed with anything else. “A woman,” Monk continued. “She was betrothed to him, and because of her privileged position as his fiancée, discovered certain things about the business, overheard conversations, saw papers, which made her realize there was something seriously wrong. She brought it to me. I investigated it as far as I was able, but I could find no fraud. A little questionable profiteering, but that’s all.”

  “But she was murdered?” Colman interrupted, leaning forward with urgency.

  “Yes. And Dalgarno is charged with it. But in order to prove his guilt we need to show the fraud beyond question.”

  “I see.” It was clear from his expression that he understood perfectly. “What is it that you want of me?”

  “You were the one who first suspected fraud. Why?”

  Colman frowned. He was clearly fascinated by the concept of such total loss from the mind of something in which Monk had been passionately involved. “You really remember nothing of it?” His voice thickened with emotion; his body became rigid. “You don’t remember my church? In the valley, with the old trees around it? The graveyard?”

  Monk struggled, but nothing came. He was picturing it in his mind, but it was imagination, not memory. He shook his head.

  “It was beautiful,” Colman said, his face tender with sorrow. “An old church. The original was Norman, with a crypt underneath where men were buried nearly a thousand years ago. The graveyard was full of old families, over fifteen or twenty generations. It was the history of the land. History is only people, you know.” He stared at Monk intensely, reaching for the man behind the facade, the passions which could be stirred—and wounded—deeper than the analytical brain. “They sent the railway right through the middle of it.”

  Now something clicked in Monk’s mind, a bishop mild and reasonable, full of regret, but acknowledging progress and the need for work for men, transport, the moving forward of society. There had been a curate, shy and enthusiastic, wanting to keep the old and bring in the new as well, and refusing to see that to have both was impossible.

  And caught between the two of them the Reverend Colman, an enthusiast, a lover of the unbroken chain of history who saw the railways as forces of destruction, shattering the cement of family bonds with the dead, vandalizing the physical monuments that kept the spiritual ties whole. Monk could hear voices raised—shouting, angry and afraid, faces twisted with rage.

  But Colman had done more than protest, he had proved crime. Was this it, the elusive memory at last—the proof? Who would it blame—Baltimore, or Monk himself? He cleared his throat. It felt tight, as if he could not breathe.

  “They destroyed the church?” he asked aloud.

  “Yes. The new line goes right over where it used to be.” Colman did not add anything; the emotion in his voice was sufficient.

  “How did you discover the fraud?” Monk forced himself to sound almost normal. He almost had the truth.

  “Simple,” Colman replied. “Someone told me he watched rabbits on the hill they said they had to go around because it would be too expensive to tunnel through. He was a parishioner of mine, in trouble for poaching. When I asked where he’d been caught, he told me. Rabbits don’t tunnel in granite, Mr. Monk. Navvies can blast through pretty well anything; solid mountains just take longer, and therefore cost more.

  “I found the original survey. When one looked more carefully at the one Baltimore was using, it was falsified. Whoever did it had been too clever to alter the heights or composition—he found a hill that was exactly right somewhere else and altered the grid reference. It was an extremely skilled job.”

  Monk asked the question he had to, but he had to clear his throat again to make his voice come. “Arrol Dundas?”

  “It looked like it,” Colman said with regret, as if he would rather it had been someone else.

  “Did he ever admit to it?”

  “No. Nor did he blame anyone else, but I think that was more a matter of dignity, even morality, than because he had no idea who it might have been.”

  It was a moment before Monk realized the full meaning of what Colman had said. He had begun his own next question, and stopped in the middle of the sentence.

  “You mean you doubted Dundas was guilty?” he said incredulously.

  Colman blinked. “You always maintained he wasn’t. Even after the verdict, you swore he was not the one who had changed the survey, and that his profit was through good speculation but not dishonesty. He simply bought low and sold high.”

  Monk was confused. “Then who forged the survey references? Baltimore? Why would he? He didn’t have any land!”

  “Nor money in the bank from it afterwards,” Colman agreed. “I don’t know the answer. If it wasn’t Dundas, then the real money probably came in bribery somewhere, but no one will ever prove it.”

  “Why would anyone else falsify the surveys?” Monk pressed.

  Colman frowned, weighing his answer before he gave it, and then his words were picked with great care. “The railway cut through the middle of my church, and that was all I could think of at the time.” His eyes filled with sudden tears. “And then the crash . . . the children . . .” He stopped. There was no way to express it, and perhaps he saw some recognition of horror in Monk, and words became unnecessary.

  Monk’s recollection of him was growing sharper. He had wanted to like him before; it was his testimony against Dundas that had made it impossible. Now all that had receded into history for both of them and there was no issue to be fought anymore.

  Colman blinked and smiled in apology. “I am afraid I am not much help in gaining the evidence you need to prove Dalgarno’s guilt for murdering the young woman, or whether Baltimore was the one practicing the fraud. But if I understood you correctly, he was already dead himself by the time she was killed.”

  “Yes, by two or three weeks,” Monk agreed.

  “Then possibly Dalgarno was in the fraud with Baltimore, and once Baltimore was dead he would take all the profits to himself?” Colman suggested.

  “Or share them with the son, Jarvis Baltimore,” Monk amended. “It seems likely, especially since Dalgarno is now courting the daughter, Livia, according to my wife’s observation.”

  Colman’s eyes widened. “Your wife is acquainted with the Baltimores?”

  Monk did not bother to hide his smile, or the bubble of pride springing up inside him, high and bright, and with a pain like a dagger for what he could lose. “No. She is running a house of refuge and medical treatment for prostitutes in Coldbath Square, and Livia Baltimore went to her for help, and in considerable anger and distress, after her father’s murder. Hester learned some information and went to call on her. She nursed in the Crimea. There is not much that deters her once she is convinced she is right.”

  Colman shook his head, but his eyes were shining. “I hope she does not have to enlighten Miss Baltimore as to the true nature of her father,” he said. “I think he may well have tried the same fraud a second time. But I don’t know how you will prove it to a jury without evidence of profit. He escaped the first time because it was plain he had no financial gain from it, and Dundas did.”

  “Dundas died with very little,” Monk pointed out, old sadness and anger washing over him in a tidal wave.

  Colman became suddenly very solemn also. “I heard that, although it was extraordinary. He was an excellent banker, quite brilliant. But you can’t have forgotten that, surely?”

  “I had. But not now. Where did the money go?”

  Colman stared at Monk somberly.

  “I have no idea. No one had. And shortly after that the crash put all such things out of everyone’s thoughts.” Suddenly his face was pinched and the color went from his cheeks again. “It was the closest thing to hell I think this life could offer. I shall remember the screams as long as I live. The smell of burnt hair still brings me out in a sweat and I feel sick. But you know that. You were there.”

  He looked ill. Monk lowered his eyes. He knew what Colman meant. He had tasted something of it in his own nightmare. It was strange, an almost irrelevant reality, to hear Colman say that Monk had been there; he knew it far more urgently and terribly from the nightmare of his hidden mind.

  “What caused it?” he said aloud.

  Colman looked up slowly. “They never found out. But it wasn’t the new track. That was perfectly good. At least . . . as far as anyone could tell.” The last vestige of blood drained out of his face and his body stiffened. “Oh, no! You don’t think it’s going to happen again? Please God—no! Is that what you’re afraid of?”

  “It is what Katrina Harcus was afraid of,” Monk replied. “But I’ve searched everything I can; I’ve walked the track myself and I can’t see anything wrong with it at all. Tell me, Mr. Colman—how can I prove this fraud? It’s happened again—and I still can’t see it!”

  Colman looked at him with intense pity. “I don’t know. Do you think if I did I would have stayed silent all these years? Whoever it hurt, I would have spoken. I simply don’t know!”