Crow slapped him on the shoulder. "We'd better stay together," he said loudly. "Come on!"

Monk leapt up with him. "Someone must have known this was going to happen," he said.

"Sixsmith?" Crow asked, keeping moving.

"Havilland, actually," Monk replied.

Crow stopped abruptly. "Murdered because of it?" There was surprise in his voice, and but for the wavering lights his expression was invisible. "I don't know. If he had sense enough to listen to some of the older toshers, maybe. Some of them knew things that aren't written down anywhere. Just lore passed from father to son."

They were at the edge of the crater, which seemed a fathomless pit. Monk felt his stomach clench, and his body shook even though he tensed every muscle to try to control it.

A little man, broad-shouldered and bow-legged, came towards them. He had a lantern built into his hat, so both his hands were left free. There was too much noise of clattering earth and the thrum of the great machine for him to try to be heard. He waved his arms for them to follow, then turned and led the way down.

Monk lost all count of time, and finally of direction also, even of how deep he was and the distance he would have to go upwards to find clean air or feel the wind on his face. Everything was wet. He could hear water seeping down the walls, dripping, sloshing under his feet, sometimes even the steady flow of a stream: a sort of thin, wet rattle all the time.

Someone had given him a short-handled shovel. He ignored his painful shoulder and worked with Crow to begin with, digging away fallen debris by the dim light of lanterns, trying to reach trapped or crushed men. Then Crow went up again with bodies, and Monk found himself beside a barrel-chested navvy and a tosher with a broken front tooth that made his breath whistle as he heaved and dug.

The light was sporadic. One moment the lantern would be steady, held high to see an arm or a leg, distinguish a human limb from the timbers or a head from the rounded stones of the rubble. At others it rested on the ground while they dug, pulling, hoping, and then realizing there was nothing to find, and moving on, going deeper.

At one point they broke through into a preexisting tunnel and were able to go twenty yards before finding another slide and starting to dig again. It was under this one that they found two bodies. One was still just alive, but even with all they could do to help, the man died as they were trying to move him. His injuries were too gross for him to have stood or walked again, and yet Monk felt a crushing sense of defeat. His mind told him the man was better dead than facing months of agony and the despair of knowing he would remain a cripple, in shattering pain and utterly helpless. But still, death was such a final defeat.

He returned slowly, his body aching, to the heap of waste. He held his lantern high to see if the other man could be brought up for identification and burial, or if it would jeopardize more lives even to try. He picked his way carefully, even though he knew it by now, and bent, holding the light towards where he thought the head was. He pulled away pieces of brick and mortar until he had uncovered the body as far as the middle of the chest. It would probably not be too difficult or dangerous to get the rest of him free. He was so plastered with clay and dust Monk could distinguish very little of his features beyond that he had long hair and a thin, angular face.

There was a rattle of pebbles behind him and the bow-legged tosher appeared at his elbow. Silently they worked together. It took some time but eventually they freed the body and half-carried, half-dragged it along the old sewer floor. They had to pass through one of the small streams dribbling out of the side wall. It was ice-cold and erratic, but at least smelling of earth rather than sewage.

When they at last reached the top, Monk held the light to look at the man. The question of who he might be froze on his lips. The stream they had passed through had cleaned off the mud, and he saw the face clearly.

It had stared at him in the lantern light of another sewer only two and a half days before. The black hair and brows like a slash across his face, and the narrow-bridged nose were etched in his mind forever. With a shaking hand he touched the lip and pushed it back. There were the extraordinary eyeteeth, one even more prominent than the other. What irony! His hiding place had been the cause of his death! The very stream he had killed to conceal had in turn killed him.

"Oo is 'e?"The tosher looked at Monk, frowning. "I seen 'im somewhere afore, an' I can't 'member where it were."

"He's a man who killed other people for money," Monk replied. "The police are looking for him. I need to find Sergeant Orme. Can you send someone to fetch him? It matters very much."

The tosher shrugged. "I'll put out the word," he promised. "Are you goin' ter leave 'im 'ere?"

"I'm going to stay with him, at least until the police can take him away," Monk replied. Suddenly he was aware of the cold, of the numbness of his feet. Would this be in time to make a difference to the trial? It would at least prove that Melisande Ewart had seen a real person. Might that be enough to swing the jury? Or to frighten Argyll?

He waited, crouching in the dark beside the corpse, hearing shouts and seeing lanterns waving in the distance across the rubble. It had started to rain again. The light shone yellow on the faces of the rocks and black pools of water between. The giant machine roared in the mist like some monstrous, half-human creature, still grinding and thumping as more debris was hauled up. Monk was not sure if it was his imagination, but it seemed to be settling deeper into the earth.

It was about half an hour when at last Orme appeared, waving a lantern, Crow on his heels.

"You got 'im?" Orme asked, bending to look at the dead body.

"Yes." Monk had no doubt at all.

Crow stared at him. His face was lit on one side, and shadowed on the other, but his expression was a mask of anger and scalding contempt. "Doesn't look so much dead, does he!" he said quietly. Then he bent down, frowning a little. Experimentally he touched one of the man's hands, then picked it up. His frown deepened and he looked up at Monk. "You think he was killed in the fall?"

"Yes. His legs are crushed. He was probably trapped." He was half ashamed as he said it. "I should feel sorry for anyone caught like that, but all I feel for him is angry we can't make him tell us who paid him. I'd bring him into court, broken legs, broken back, and all."

"Scuff II be all right," Orme said quietly, looking not at Monk but at Crow. "Won't 'e?"

"Yes, I should think so," Crow agreed. "But look at his legs, Mr. Monk."

"What about them? They're both broken."

"See any blood?"

"No. Probably washed off in the water we took him through. I dragged him; he's heavier than you'd think."

Crow looked at the body again, more carefully. Orme and Monk watched, growing more curious and then unaccountably concerned.

"Why does it matter?" Monk said finally.

Crow stood up, his legs stiff, moving awkwardly. "Because he was dead before the slide hit him," he replied. "Dead bodies don't bleed. The only blood staining anything is on his coat, from the bullet hole in his chest. The river didn't wash that out."

Monk found himself shaking even more violently. "You mean he's been murdered? Surely he'd never have shot himself!"

"Not in the back, anyway," Crow replied. "Went in under his left shoulder blade, came out the front. I reckon whoever employed him paid his last account."

Monk swallowed.

"Are you absolutely sure?"

Crow pulled his mouth tight and rolled his eyes very slightly. "Take a look at the bastard yourself, but of course I'm sure! I'm no police surgeon, and don't want to be, but I know a bullet hole when I see one! Heavy caliber, I'd say, but ask the experts."