Cain His Brother by Anne Perry

Author:Anne Perry
Language: eng
Format: mobi, epub
ISBN: 9780307777171
Publisher: Random House Publishing Group
Published: 2011-05-18T10:00:00+00:00

He read it again. His hands were shaking. It was incredible.

But on second reading it was exactly the same.

“Y’ all right, mister?” the boy said anxiously.

“Yes,” Monk lied. “Yes, thank you.” He fished in his pocket and took out threepence. He would not have her pay more than he.

The boy took it with thanks, then changed his mind, painfully.

“She already gimme.”

“I know.” Monk breathed in, trying to steady himself. “Keep it.”

“Fank yer, guv.” And before his good fortune could vanish, the boy turned and ran down the street, his boots clattering on the cold pavement.

Monk closed the door and went back to his inner room. His landlady had gone. He sat down, the letter still in his hand, although he did not look at it anymore.

It could not possibly refer to last night, or any other time over the last week. She could only mean some acquaintance they had had in the past.

It always came back to the past, and that great void in his memory, the darkness where anything might exist.

She had used the word betrayal. That implied trust. Was he really a man to do such a thing? He had never betrayed anyone since the accident. Honor was one virtue he possessed. He had never broken his word. He would not let himself down by such an act.

Could he have changed so much? Had the blow to his head not only obliterated all the past from his mind, but also altered his nature? Was that possible?

He paced the floor back and forth, trying to think of all the things he had pieced together about himself from before the accident, the fragments that had come back to him, the flashes from his childhood in the north, glimpses of the sea, its violence and its beauty. He recalled his eagerness to learn, fleeting impressions; a face, a sense of injustice and desperation, the man who had been his mentor, and who had been deceived and ruined, and Monk had been unable to help. Nothing he could do had saved him. That was when he had abandoned commerce and dedicated himself to the police.

That was not a man who would betray!

In the police he had risen quickly. He knew from a dozen minor evidences, people’s faces when he met them again, remarks half heard. He had been cruel of tongue, critical, at times ruthless. Runcorn, his old superior, had hated him, and little by little Monk had learned it was not without cause. Monk had contributed to Runcorn’s failures and inadequacies, he had undermined him steadily, even if Runcorn had at least in part brought it upon himself with his petty hatreds and his personal ambitions, which he was prepared to achieve on the backs of others.

Was that a kind of betrayal?

No. It was cruelty, but it was not dishonest. Betrayal was always eventually a kind of deceit.

He knew almost nothing about his relationships with women. The only one of whom he had any recollection was Hermione, whom he had thought he loved, and in that he was the loser.

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