He’d never been so close to Macrae before, and Clayton felt an instinctive repulsion that he couldn’t quite explain to himself. It wasn’t that the man was ugly or smelt bad. Quite the opposite in fact: Inspector Macrae was a good-looking man in the prime of life, dressed in a far more expensive suit than Trave had ever worn. He wore his hair carefully combed back en brosse from his high, unwrinkled forehead and, to the extent that he smelt of anything, it was expensive Italian aftershave. But there was something weird about the way his waxy skin was pulled so tightly across the bones of his face like it was a mask with only his small, watchful grey eyes seeming to hint at the true personality underneath; and his hands were strange too – long, scrupulously clean nails on the end of tapering fingers and thumbs that Macrae kept perpetually in motion, moulding, stroking, kneading invisible shapes. An artist’s hands or a strangler’s, Clayton thought. Not a policeman’s.
‘An interesting case, this Blackwater murder, from what I’ve been hearing,’ said Macrae, looking not at Clayton but beyond him into the middle distance.
‘Yes,’ said Clayton non-commitally. He was not deceived by Macrae’s languid manner – the inspector clearly had an agenda of some kind.
‘Two press conferences already I see, so it’s quite high-profile.’
‘Yes, I suppose so.’
‘Well, it’s got all the ingredients, hasn’t it? A beautiful girl gunned down in a country house owned by a rich foreigner, a dangerous armed suspect on the run who’s killed before and may well do so again. What more could you ask for? A bit more exciting than your average, run-of-the-mill hit-and-run, eh, Constable?’
Clayton nodded, waiting to see where Macrae was going.
‘And I suppose Trave’s the natural choice given that he was in charge last time there was trouble over there.’ Macrae paused and then went on musingly: ‘But there’s talk, you know, that he’s got something of a personal interest in the case – something about his wife and Mr Osman. Have you heard about any of this? Rumours, station gossip – I don’t pay much attention, of course, but I wonder if it’s something that might affect his approach.’
Clayton shook his head, keeping his eyes resolutely on the floor. He knew what Macrae was after now. A case like this with a lot of news interest followed by a quick, dramatic arrest could do wonders for an ambitious inspector’s career.
‘Adversely affect his approach,’ Macrae said softly, leaning closer and forcing Clayton to look him in the eye. ‘What do you think, Constable?’
‘I don’t know, sir. We’re doing the best we can,’ said Clayton stolidly. He might have some private concerns about his boss’s having a conflict of interest, but that sure as hell didn’t mean he was going to share his anxieties with a snake like Macrae.
‘We certainly are doing our best,’ said Trave brightly from the doorway, appearing as if from nowhere. ‘And while we really appreciate your interest, Hugh, we can’t stay to chat. We’ve got work to do, haven’t we, Adam? Come on.’
Clayton hadn’t obeyed an order with such alacrity in a long time. He practically ran out of the break room, leaving Macrae with an angry look on his face and a scarlet flush that was beginning to suffuse his pale cheeks. Clayton had no idea how much his boss had heard of what Macrae was saying, but Trave’s timing had been perfect, and he certainly seemed to be in a far better mood than he’d been since the case broke. The frostiness of the previous two days seemed to have been consigned to the past.
‘So what’s new?’ asked Trave once he’d hung up his jacket and sat down, adjusting himself to his favourite position, with his chair teetering on its back legs and his feet lightly resting on the edge of his desk. Clayton had never once seen him lose his balance.
‘Ballistics report is as you expected,’ said Clayton, picking up the top file from his desk. ‘The bullets in the door and the wall at the end of the corridor match Claes’s gun; the one that killed Miss Osman doesn’t. It’s a standard bullet apparently – could be fired from most types of handgun.’ Trave nodded, looking unsurprised. ‘And the rest of the fingerprint evidence has come back,’ Clayton went on. ‘There are matches to Swain’s prints on the desk in the study and on the reading lamp . . .’
‘What about on the photograph?’ asked Trave.
‘The one beside the reading lamp?’
‘Yes, the one of Katya.’
Clayton turned a page, running his finger down the list of items. ‘No, nothing. Just Osman’s prints – they took them for elimination.’
‘Interesting. Carry on.’
‘Well, upstairs you already know about. Swain’s prints are on the candlestick and the door of Katya’s room.’
‘On the handle?’
‘Yes. And the door itself.’
‘So he was there. Well, that’s not exactly a surprise, is it? We knew that already, but it’s curious he didn’t wear gloves, wouldn’t you say?’
‘Perhaps he couldn’t get hold of them in the prison.’
‘Maybe. But he got himself a gun, didn’t he? A little bit more difficult to lay your hands on inside than a pair of gloves I’d say.’
Clayton nodded, picking up another pile of reports. ‘Clothes,’ he said, looking at the top one. ‘They’ve matched the torn piece of clothing that we found in the rose bushes outside the study window to a standard-issue prison shirt.’
‘So what?’ said Trave dismissively. ‘It doesn’t add anything, does it? Like I said, we already know Swain was there. Have you seen the autopsy report?’
‘No.’
‘Not as bad as the autopsy itself,’ said Trave with a grimace. ‘I thought I’d spare you that.’
‘Thank you,’ said Clayton, and he meant it. He’d always had a queasy stomach, and he still hadn’t got used to attending post-mortems. He still remembered with shame the first one he’d been to with Trave when he’d had to run out of the room to stop himself being sick.
‘Anyway,’ said Trave. ‘It didn’t help us. She ate a small amount of supper – chicken and peas – about four hours before she died, and then got killed with a single shot to the head at about twelve thirty, give or take fifteen minutes either way. There’s no evidence she took drugs in the forty-eight hours before her death or that she was sedated.’
‘What about the needle marks on her arm?’ asked Clayton. ‘Did you find out anything about them?’
‘Yes, sources say she was a drug addict for most of last year and the first half of this, although I doubt she was injecting all that time. Anyway that means there’s no way of knowing whether Jana Claes is telling the truth about only sedating the girl on two occasions,’ said Trave, sounding disappointed.
‘But Osman was telling us the truth then, wasn’t he? About why he brought her home for her own good?’ asked Clayton. It hadn’t escaped his attention how Trave appeared to be downplaying Katya’s drug use as if it was an inconsequential detail rather than important corroboration of the history of events that Osman had given them when they’d questioned him after the murder.
‘Yes, I suppose he was,’ said Trave, looking irritated. It was clearly a reluctant concession.
‘The crime-scene guys found nothing of significance in Katya’s room,’ Clayton went on after a moment, glancing down at the last report he had in his hand.
‘Yes, someone had been doing some spring cleaning out of season in there, I’d say,’ said Trave with a hollow laugh. ‘Well, none of that seems to have taken us much further,’ he added with a sigh. ‘I better tell you what I’ve dug up. The woman at the telephone exchange says there were two calls to Blackwater Hall that evening, both from the same public call box in the centre of town. Came through at 12.20 and 12.21. Both times the phone rang six times; both times nobody answered. Interesting, eh? I went out to Blackwater and asked Osman about the calls, and he says he doesn’t know anything about them – says he must’ve been asleep, and there are no phone extensions upstairs. He’s right about that – I checked.’
‘What about Claes a
nd his sister?’
‘Jana says she was asleep too, but Franz is a different story. You remember he said he was still awake when he first heard Swain in the corridor outside his room and that his door was slightly open, so he could hardly say he didn’t hear the phone. But he told me each time he went to go downstairs the phone stopped ringing and so he went back to bed. And then when I asked him why he hadn’t told us about the calls the bastard said it was because I didn’t ask him. Can you believe it? Anyway that’s not all. It turns out there’s been trouble out at the Hall already this summer – an attempted burglary back in July. Yes, exactly,’ said Trave, responding to Clayton’s look of surprise. ‘Another piece of information our friends out there decided to keep to themselves. Harrison, one of the uniforms, came and told me about it yesterday. There was an emergency call in the afternoon from a woman with a thick foreign accent – obviously Jana, so Harrison went out there and the burglar was gone. Claes said he’d caught him in Osman’s study and punched him a couple of times before the bloke hit him back and got away through the window. The burglar was wearing gloves, unlike our friend, Swain, and so it went down as an unsolved.’
‘Did he take anything?’
‘Osman says not.’
‘What’s the description?’
‘Well built, six foot, Caucasian male in his early twenties, clean-shaven with short dark hair, wearing jeans and a dark blue jersey – could be anyone, could be you apart from the clothing. Oh, and the glasses: he left them behind apparently. They fell off when Claes punched him. Harrison checked them out – they’re a German make, but the burglar didn’t say anything, so there’s no way of knowing where he’s from.’
‘He got in the same way as Swain?’
‘Yes, through the study window, although it was open at the time – the burglar probably thought no one was home because Osman’s Bentley was out being serviced and the gates had been left open for some reason. I agree – the house is isolated and it’s an obvious target, and this burglary’s probably got nothing to do with the murder. But still, it’s interesting – something else that doesn’t add up, like that note I told you about – the one Swain got before the first murder. Here, I made a copy,’ said Trave, opening the top drawer of his desk and handing Clayton a piece of paper. ‘The original’s in London locked up with the other trial exhibits, but this is on the same kind of writing paper. And it’s definitely Ethan Mendel who wrote it. We did a comparison.’
The sheet of thin, light-blue paper was about five inches by four and looked like it had come from a standard-size, unlined letter-writing pad, but almost all of the top third had been torn off in a strip running diagonally from high on the right side of the sheet to lower on the left. The paper was wrinkled as if from frequent handling, and the ink had begun to fade a little, but Clayton clearly recognized the handwriting as Trave’s, even though Trave had sloped his letters to imitate the original.
I need to see you.
Meet me at the boathouse at five.
Ethan.
Clayton read the note twice, turned it over, and saw that there was nothing written on the other side. He handed it back to Trave with a puzzled look on his face.
‘What do you make of it?’ asked Trave.
‘Written in a hurry . . .’
‘Why do you say that?’
‘The handwriting’s rushed. The paper’s torn . . .’
‘Yes, but look carefully: the sheet of paper’s taken from the top edge of the writing pad; it’s not torn across the middle like you’d do if you just needed a scrap. It’s from a Basildon Bond writing pad – like this one,’ said Trave, taking an unused pad out of his drawer. ‘And look – each sheet comes off really easily from the top as you get to it in the pad. It’s more difficult to tear it than it is to pull it off whole. You try.’
Clayton had to agree. The perforation made it hard to tear a sheet – any pressure and the whole sheet came away in his hand. You could only get a torn sheet like the one the note was written on by covering the top of the sheet with one hand and then tearing with the other, and even then it was awkward.
‘What about if you tear out one of the sheets from the middle of the pad?’ Clayton asked, experimenting with one.
‘I’ve tried that – you can’t keep any of the very top of the page because of the sheets on top. It tears lower down. Look.’
Trave was right. The whole top edge of the sheet had stayed inside the pad.
‘All right, so either Ethan tore it from the top deliberately, which I agree is unlikely, or he used a piece of paper that had already been taken out of the pad. In fact, he must have done it that way,’ said Clayton, warming to his theme. ‘He wouldn’t have taken the note with him since he was hoping to find Swain at home, but then, when Swain didn’t answer, Ethan took this piece of paper that he already had out of his pocket and used it to write the note. That’s what happened,’ said Clayton, looking entirely satisfied with his explanation.
‘But why would he then tear a strip of paper off the top?’ asked Trave, unconvinced.
‘I don’t know. Maybe he started the note one way and then changed his mind.’
‘Or maybe someone else changed his mind for him,’ said Trave.
Clayton knitted his brows, thinking. He had to agree – the note was certainly odd. Like Trave had said before: Why would Ethan leave an urgent note for a person he didn’t know, a person who hated him, immediately after he’d just got back from a trip to Europe? But then again that was life: not everything was always going to make perfect sense, and the note didn’t change the fact that Swain had been caught almost red-handed standing over the body of the man whom, by his own admission, he hated above all others in the world. Just like he’d been in Katya’s bedroom with a gun two nights ago and she’d ended up with a bullet in her head. Clayton knew it was Swain they should be concentrating on, and yet they hadn’t talked about the hunt for him once since Trave had come in. Perhaps Trave was coming to that or perhaps he wasn’t. Perhaps Macrae was right – maybe Trave wasn’t the right person to be running this particular murder enquiry.
Clayton shuddered involuntarily, thinking of Macrae, and suddenly there Macrae was again, framed in the doorway with a smug smile drawn across his pale face.
‘Sorry to interrupt your little tête-à-tête, Bill,’ he said, not looking as if he was sorry at all. ‘But Creswell wants to see you in his office – now.’
‘Thanks, Hugh. Be right along,’ said Trave, raising his hand in friendly acknowledgement. ‘Toad,’ he added under his breath once Macrae had gone, as he put on his jacket and straightened his tie.
‘Did you know Inspector Macrae before he came here?’ asked Clayton curiously. Macrae’s earlier reference to Trave’s work methods had not escaped his attention.
‘In a manner of speaking,’ said Trave ambiguously. And he left the room before Clayton could ask him any more about the station’s new inspector.
* * *
Looking up for a moment, Detective Superintendent Creswell waved Trave to the seat opposite his desk and then went back to the letter he was writing. Trave wasn’t offended: he knew Creswell wasn’t intending to be rude; it was simply that the superintendent was a methodical, orderly man who liked to finish one task before he started another. As Creswell’s pen moved steadily across the page, Trave glanced around the room, taking in the hat and coat hanging on a stand behind the door; the framed certificates and awards charting Creswell’s steady rise up the ladder of promotion; a photograph of the superintendent in dress uniform standing next to the Queen Mother when she’d visited the station five years before; and, on the desk, a studio portrait of Mrs Creswell, a statuesque, philanthropic lady popularly known as ‘the dragon’, who insisted on having her husband home by six o’clock every night and 5.30 on Fridays. Creswell had been a thorough but unimaginative detective for most of his life, and now he was an excellent administrator who trusted his officers to get on with their work and didn’t interfere unless he had
to. And when he thought about it, which wasn’t very often, Trave was sorry that Creswell would soon be retiring since it seemed highly unlikely that he would get a more decent, supportive boss than the one he had at present.
‘I’m sorry, Bill,’ said Creswell, looking up. ‘Endless paperwork – that’s all my life seems to be these days. Makes me nostalgic for my detective days – out on the job, asking awkward questions, making breakthroughs.’
Trave smiled. He thought it improbable that the superintendent had any wish to go back in time and start getting his hands dirty with criminals and lowlifes again, but he appreciated the friendly intent behind his boss’s words.
‘You wanted to see me about something?’ he asked.
‘Yes, this Osman case. You’d better fill me in on what’s been happening.’
‘No breakthroughs yet, I’m afraid. But we’re working hard. We’re following up every lead, and we’ve got Swain’s photograph out everywhere – it shouldn’t be too long before we pick him up.’
‘Where do you think he’s hiding?’
‘Well, he’s not with Earle because he was alone when he went to his mother’s. My guess is he’s not too far. We found his stepfather’s car at the railway station, but he already tried to trick us that he took the train to London on the morning after the murder, and I don’t see him running the risk of public transport now after all the press coverage. He’s not stupid.’
‘Maybe not, but he’s certainly dangerous, waving this gun of his around, threatening to shoot people. The switchboard’s jammed with terrified old ladies convinced he’s hiding in their garden sheds. It’s unbelievable that two of them could escape like that. I don’t know what kind of outfit the governor thinks he’s running over there – Oxford’s supposed to be a high-security prison.’
‘They had help, sir. How much I don’t know yet, but someone definitely threw rope ladders over the outside wall, and there was a getaway car. There are no descriptions because it was dark and they were too quick, but Earle had quite a few visits in the last month and there might be a connection. The prison says that Earle’s visitor was the same man each time. You have to show ID at the gate, and he gave them his driver’s licence. Had the name Macmillan on it apparently.’
The King of Diamonds Page 16
