The King of Diamonds itadc-2

by Simon Tolkien

  ‘My uncle didn’t approve of David, and so I couldn’t see him in the house.’

  ‘Never?’

  ‘I took him there once when my uncle was away.’

  What had happened when Katya had taken her first lover up to the house that one time? Trave wondered. It was an act of defiance on Katya’s part, a way of telling David that she valued their relationship more than her uncle’s wishes. And once inside, once they were upstairs in her bedroom, would she have wanted to do more — to show David things, to share her secrets with him so that he would know she cared? Perhaps. It was a long shot, but worth asking David about, if he could just find a way to talk to him. Except that that wasn’t going to be easy. Prosecution witnesses were not supposed to talk to the defendant during the trial, and even if he could find a way past the court gaolers, David might not be prepared to see him. They hadn’t parted on good terms in the cricket pavilion the previous October, and Trave didn’t know whether David still blamed him for his arrest. He remembered how David had stared at him so intently while he was giving his evidence the day before — now he couldn’t make up his mind whether the stare was benevolent or hostile. But whichever it was, Trave knew he had to try.

  He looked at his watch. It was already twelve o’clock, but he didn’t trust himself to drive after all the alcohol he’d drunk the night before. He rang up the police station, hoping to find Clayton, but was told that Clayton was out with PC Wale. And so without further delay Trave called a taxi to take him to the railway station. If Clayton couldn’t drive him to London, he’d have to take the train.

  It was mid-afternoon when he got to the Old Bailey, and some of the spectators had already gone home, making it possible for Trave to find a seat at the back of the public gallery above Court Number 1. Down below, Eddie Earle was in the witness box. The prosecution’s star witness was still a serving prisoner, but someone, Macrae perhaps, had equipped him with a suit and tie, making him look almost respectable.

  To Trave’s surprise, Eddie seemed to enjoy giving evidence — he clearly had no shame about selling his old cellmate down the river. He was Easy Eddie again, wallowing in the attention of the courtroom, reliving the glory of his escape from Oxford Prison, and the prosecutor had to cut him off several times — or he would have been on the stand for the rest of the week describing his exploits.

  Trave watched as David’s barrister did everything he could to shake Eddie’s credibility when his turn came to cross-examine: he made the obvious point that Eddie was lying to obtain leniency for his escape offence; he read Eddie’s long list of previous convictions to the jury; and he questioned Eddie about his connection to Claes’s friend, John Bircher. But Eddie was somehow able to deflect the attacks with ease. And looking down, Trave could see that what really held the jury’s interest was Eddie’s tale of his late-night conversations with David in their prison cell. Try as he might, David’s barrister couldn’t change the ring of truth with which Eddie described David’s gathering rage against Katya, whom he blamed for all his misfortunes. There was no denying it: Eddie’s evidence showed beyond doubt that the defendant was highly motivated to commit the crime with which he was charged.

  Trave gazed down at Eddie and wished he could turn back the clock to the interview room in Oxford Police Station, to that moment when he’d been so convinced that Eddie had been on the verge of telling him the truth. About Bircher and Claes; about driving David out to Blackwater Hall and giving him the gun loaded with blanks. Before Creswell came in and took him off the case. Trave remembered Macrae smiling at him from behind Creswell’s shoulder in the corridor, just like he was smiling now, watching the noose tightening around David Swain’s neck. Trave knew what was happening in the trial — the evidence that mattered was all one way. It was like the defendant was falling down a deep stone well and the points that his barrister made were no more than the scratches of his flailing hands on the walls as he fell.

  At half past four Eddie finished his evidence and the judge adjourned the case for the day. Trave knew that it was now or never. He watched as the gaolers led David Swain down the stairs from the dock, and then he slipped out the back of the public gallery, ran down five flights of stairs until he got to the basement of the courthouse, and rang the bell beside the big iron door marked Cells. It was a busy time of day with the prisoners being got ready for the vans that would return them to their different prisons for the night, and Trave had to wait nearly five minutes for the door to open, but he knew better than to keep ringing to be let in. He needed the gaolers to be accommodating if he was to have any chance of an interview before David was taken back to Pentonville.

  He was lucky. The young gaoler who answered the door seemed entirely satisfied when Trave waved his warrant card and said that he was a police officer come to see Swain — the prisoner on trial in Court Number 1. Trave signed his name in the book and took a seat in a small glass-fronted interview room. Opposite, across the corridor, a man with a scar across his face was gesticulating wildly at a barrister still dressed in his horsehair wig and gown, and through the open door Trave could hear a cacophony of shouts and footsteps and jangling keys. Finally, just as he had been about to give up, David Swain appeared in the doorway.

  ‘You again,’ he said, sitting down heavily in the chair across the table from Trave without shaking his hand. ‘I thought you weren’t allowed to see me, you being a prosecution witness and all. That’s what my mother told me.’

  ‘She’s right. I lied to get in here.’

  ‘What did you say?’

  ‘That I was a police officer.’

  ‘Well, you are that.’

  ‘Not any more. I got fired this morning.’

  ‘I’m sorry. Katya hasn’t done either of us much good, has she?’ said David, looking Trave in the eye for the first time. Trave was relieved to see that there wasn’t hostility in the young man’s expression, just a fathomless suffering in his eyes that had aged him by years in the months since they had last met. ‘God, I’ve had enough of this. Every day it just seems to get worse,’ David went on in a weary voice without waiting for an answer to his question. ‘Eddie’s a professional liar, and yet the jurors were hanging on every word he said. I could see it in their eyes. The trial’s a charade. That’s what it is. Claes and Macrae have got it sewn up between them.’

  ‘What about Osman?’ asked Trave.

  ‘What about him? I don’t know if he’s involved or not. Claes has probably got him duped as well. I wouldn’t put it past him. Claes is the one behind it all, you know. It was him who was there waiting for me each time, not Osman. At the boathouse when Ethan died, outside Katya’s room when I came out. He’s a clever bastard — I’ll say that for him. Too clever for the likes of us, I’m afraid. You should face it, Inspector — we’re all played out. They should have done with the fancy wordplay and hang me tomorrow.’

  ‘No,’ said Trave fiercely. ‘I won’t let them.’

  David looked at Trave for a moment as if he was some kind of lunatic, but then his expression softened. ‘You mean well,’ he said. ‘And you want to help me. I know that. But the trouble is you can’t. You’re out of your league this time, Inspector. Accept it.’

  ‘No, I tell you,’ said Trave, shouting now as he seized hold of David’s hands across the table. ‘There is something — a chance.’

  ‘What chance?’ asked David, pulling his hands away, taken aback by Trave’s sudden outburst, his unnatural excitement.

  ‘Katya wrote a diary. Maybe it still exists; maybe Osman never found it. Did she tell you about it? Did she?’ asked Trave insistently, but David looked blank.

  ‘What about the afternoon she took you up to the house, up to her room — when Osman was away? Did she show you something then?’ demanded Trave, refusing to give up. His eyes bored into David’s, searching for a response, and slowly, as if in answer to a prayer, a light of understanding began to dawn in David’s face.

  ‘Yes, she kissed me,’ he said, speaking rap
idly as if in the grip of a memory that he’d entirely forgotten up until that moment, ‘and she took out a big book from the shelf and opened it — and it was hollow. And there was another book inside with lots of tiny writing, her writing, and she went to a page in the middle and showed me a picture she’d drawn. It was a picture of us, and it was like we were in our own house and we didn’t need to hide all the time, like we had a future…’ David broke off in mid-sentence, putting his head in his hands to hide his pain, and behind his back the door of the interview room opened. It was another gaoler — an older, more senior one this time. ‘Time’s up,’ he said in a voice that brooked no argument. ‘The prison van’s here.’

  ‘What book was it?’ asked Trave as David got up to go. ‘What big book?’

  ‘I don’t remember. It was a long time ago. Like it was in another lifetime, like it happened to someone else,’ said David sadly as he held out his wrists for the gaoler to put on the handcuffs.

  Trave sensed the return of David’s despair and wanted desperately to say something encouraging, but the words died in his mouth. It was just so damned hard to maintain hope when the cards were all stacked the other way, and he felt his heart sink as he watched David shuffle away down the corridor like a beaten man.

  Just as he reached the top of the stairs leading up from the cells, Trave came face-to-face with Macrae.

  ‘What were you doing down there? Have you been up to something you shouldn’t?’ asked Macrae with a smirk on his face.

  Trave thought of punching his enemy but knew that he’d be playing into Macrae’s hands if he did, and so contented himself with simply barging Macrae out of the way with his shoulder as he headed across the foyer toward the exit.

  ‘Sorry to hear about your job,’ Macrae shouted after Trave as soon as he’d recovered his balance, but Trave showed no sign he’d heard the taunt as he headed out the door into the cold darkness of the late afternoon.

  CHAPTER 24

  Macrae arrived first. He left Wale in the car, checked his coat, and followed the maitre d’ to a table in the corner set for two. He liked this place — the reflections in the big mirrors on the high white walls, the shine of the silver, the deference of the waiters in their tailcoats. The restaurant made him feel that he mattered, that he had weight in the world.

  Methodical as always, he read the menu in its entirety, his thin lips moving silently as he enunciated the foreign words, savouring each one as he went about making his choice. And so he didn’t notice Osman until his host was in the act of sitting down opposite him at the table.

  ‘Well? What did Arne say?’ asked Osman expectantly once the waiter had poured them each a glass of wine from an expensive-looking bottle that had followed Osman to the table.

  Macrae sipped it with interest before he answered with a question of his own: ‘Couldn’t you get her to change her mind?’

  ‘No, I already told you that,’ said Osman impatiently. ‘There’s no point in even trying. It’ll just make it worse. Bloody Trave — he’s got right under her skin with his mind games.’

  ‘Well, it won’t matter,’ said Macrae, patting his mouth delicately with his napkin. ‘Sir Laurence understands that you have a perfectly good explanation for your niece’s hysterical outburst. The fact is she was irrationally angry with you because you were preventing her from going back to the life of self-abuse from which you’d rescued her before. You can give evidence of that after Mrs Trave has said her piece; and then, as you know, we’ve got documentary proof of Miss Osman’s drug use and low-life associations, which we can also put in front of the jury. Sir Laurence says all this is a hiccup — nothing more than that.’

  ‘A what?’

  ‘I know. Not the word I’d have used either,’ said Macrae, raising his eyebrows in amusement. ‘But the point is you’ve got nothing to worry about. Swain’ll swing just like he deserves to, you’ll get the girl, and Trave’ll drink himself to death thinking about it.’

  ‘That’s the part that appeals to you, isn’t it?’ said Osman with a contemptuous look.

  ‘Yes, I’m not ashamed of it,’ said Macrae evenly. ‘We’re trying to see justice done. That’s the difference between us and Trave. He’s a self-righteous prig, and he deserves exactly what’s coming to him.’

  ‘Because he was in your way up the greasy ladder, I suppose?’

  ‘Not as much as he’s in yours,’ said Macrae with a dry smile. Turning to the hovering waiter, Macrae made his order, but Osman waved the man away. He didn’t know what it was about Macrae that irritated him so much or why he should feel so demeaned by their association. It was enough that he did, and he had no intention of prolonging their meeting any longer than he had to.

  ‘What about Jacob?’ he asked, pouring himself another drink from the bottle but purposefully leaving Macrae’s glass empty.

  ‘He’s gone to ground, but we’ll find him.’

  ‘You’d better. Before he finds me. He’s got a gun, remember.’

  ‘I remember,’ said Macrae, sounding unperturbed. ‘Do you think it was him or Trave who sent Swain’s lawyers the stuff about your brother-in-law?’

  ‘I don’t know. Both of them maybe. I’m not a clairvoyant,’ said Osman, making no effort to conceal his irritation as he got up from the table. ‘Just find Mendel, okay? Before he does any more damage.’

  Without waiting for an answer, Osman extracted an envelope from the inside pocket of his jacket, dropped it on the table, and then walked away without a word of farewell. Outside, he almost ran into the burly figure of Jonah Wale, who was standing on the pavement. Wale said hello, but Osman barely nodded in response as he got into his Bentley, letting out a sigh of relief as Franz Claes put the car in gear and drove away.

  Macrae watched Osman’s departure through the window and then picked up the envelope and glanced with satisfaction at its contents before turning his attention to the pate de foie gras that he had ordered to precede the coq au vin. It gave him pleasure to know that Jonah was watching him through the window as he ate.

  Three and a half miles away ex-Inspector Trave was eating too — a cold dinner cobbled together from the remains of the two previous nights’ dinners, washed down with a glass of water from the tap. He ate mechanically, registering neither pleasure nor displeasure as he chewed and swallowed the food. His thoughts were elsewhere, focused obsessively on Katya’s missing diary. The last few days had been exhilarating: chasing down the elusive memory in his mind, finding the line about the diary in the transcript of the girl’s evidence, and getting the information about the hiding place from Swain of all people, right under Macrae’s nose. He’d acted on a hunch and been proved correct, but that didn’t mean the diary still existed. Trave knew from personal experience that happy endings were few and far between in real life. If the diary contained anything of note, Osman had almost certainly found it when he and his lackeys spring-cleaned Katya’s bedroom after her murder, or before when he caught his niece looking through his things. Because that’s what must have happened, Trave thought. She must have found something out, or Osman wouldn’t have needed to have her killed. It was an article of faith for Trave now that Osman was responsible for his niece’s death. He couldn’t conceive of any other explanation, and it mattered to him not one jot that the only person who shared his view was Jacob Mendel, who was now in hiding somewhere, a fugitive from justice.

  The diary had probably been destroyed. Going in search of it was probably a wild-goose chase. But a probability was not a certainty. There was a chance it was still there, sitting inside a hollowed-out book in Katya’s book-case, waiting to be discovered. There had been big books as well as small books on the shelves in Katya’s bedroom — hardbacks as well as paperbacks. Trave was sure he remembered them under the framed picture of her parents at the seaside that the doctor had asked him about. But was the right book there? Waiting?

  There was only one way to find out and that was to look, but Trave knew it was hopeless for him to even conside
r going out to the house himself. He had no power to search openly, and Osman and Claes would be doubly on the watch for burglars after Jacob’s antics three days earlier. No, the only person with a chance of getting in and out of Katya’s room undetected was Vanessa.

  Trave felt sick every time he thought of asking his wife to look for the diary, and yet he couldn’t leave the idea alone. He remembered the cold hatred he’d felt for Jacob when the young man admitted to persuading Katya to search for evidence, and now here he was contemplating asking his wife to do the same. Except that Vanessa didn’t need to be caught. A few minutes would be all it would take. Surely to God she could find an excuse to go upstairs for just a couple of minutes. The risk was minimal if she kept her wits about her.

  He had to know one way or the other, Trave realized. And so he had to ask her. It was that simple. He’d already made his decision. For better or worse.

  Vanessa didn’t answer her phone when he called her in the morning, and so he went over to her flat to find her. It was in a little street behind Keble College that he’d never been to before. She’d given him the address when she first moved there so that he could forward her mail, but this was the first time that he’d ever visited it. There was no one home, and so he wandered the streets aimlessly, wondering what he would find to do to fill his days now that he was officially an ex-policeman. He made a pint of beer and a cheese sandwich in the Gardeners’ Arms last half the afternoon and found Vanessa just returned from London when he knocked on her door again at half past three.