The King of Diamonds

by Simon Tolkien

  Clayton knitted his brows, looking undecided, but then suddenly laughed out loud, infected by Trave’s mood of recklessness.

  ‘What the hell,’ he said. ‘I’m in.’

  ‘Good,’ said Trave. ‘Have you got something plastic or a piece of wire?’

  Clayton had neither, but the penknife attached to his key chain proved sufficient to get them through both the front door and the door to flat Number 5, which they reached at the top of three steep flights of uncarpeted stairs. Jacob had obviously just pulled the latch shut when he left – the mortice lock further down the door had been left open. Now the two policemen stood in a narrow hallway running the length of the flat with two doors opening on either side. On the right there was a small kitchen with an old stove, a half-empty fridge, and a low shelf on which various packets with labels from a kosher grocery in the centre of town were displayed in a line. And beyond the kitchen on the same side a sparsely furnished bedroom contained only a narrow iron bed made up with sheet, blanket, and pillow tucked tight together with military precision; a small night table; and a heavy mahogany wardrobe in which Jacob’s clothes hung pressed and ready for use on a line of wire hangers. Everything was neat and orderly. It was like a monk’s cell, thought Trave: all that was missing was a cross over the bed, but that of course was hardly likely, given that the occupant was a Zionist Jew.

  The windows on this side of the flat looked across to the back of a row of similar houses in the next street which were illuminated by a few lights here and there, and down below, in the gathering gloom, the policemen could make out the outlines of a few straggly bushes in the house’s disused garden surrounding the shape of what looked like an old Anderson air-raid shelter from World War II that stuck up out of the ground with a humped earthen back like some kind of stranded primeval creature. There was no one in sight and no sound from the floors below.

  Leaving the bedroom, they crossed over to the other side of the corridor, to a tiny bathroom and toilet and, next to it, the living room, by far the largest room in the flat. It was twilight now and the soaring spires of the city churches were visible as silhouetted shadows on the skyline outside the window, but inside the room it was almost dark. Here they were at the front of the house, and they knew they could not risk turning on the light since it would have been visible to Jacob on his return if he chanced to look up from the road down below, but Trave had thought to bring a torch, and now he turned it on, circling the beam of light as they took in their surroundings. There was a rectangular pine table in the centre of the room covered with papers. A single chair was tucked into its side, and over by the window a button-back blue armchair faced a small television. The only other pieces of furniture were a large free-standing bookcase in the far corner stuffed to overflowing with books, files, and magazines and, beside it, a tall metal filing cabinet. But up above, all four walls were entirely covered with photographs, newspaper articles, maps, and diagrams so that the place felt like a miniature war room. It was a sinister place, Clayton thought – full and yet empty all at the same time. He had the sense that the man who lived in this room was driven, dedicated – someone who would stop at nothing to do what he had set out to do.

  Now Trave focused his torch on the faces looking down at them from the photographs on the walls: David Swain peering out from one of the wanted posters that had gone up around the city after Katya’s murder; Eddie Earle in profile – a snapshot inset in an article describing the escape from Oxford Prison; Titus Osman, dressed in a dinner jacket speaking at a charity function the previous month; and, in the centre of the opposite wall, above two photographs of Blackwater Hall, a triptych of blown-up pictures of a man who was unmistakably a younger version of Franz Claes, albeit with no disfiguring scar below his left ear. In the first he was wearing a military uniform, standing on a raised platform in front of a microphone, addressing a crowd. There was a banner above his head emblazoned with big black gothic lettering. It looked like Dutch, and neither Trave nor Clayton could understand a word of it, but at the bottom of the picture ‘Flemish National Union 1938’ was written in neat letters. Trave wondered for a moment at Jacob’s use of English to annotate the picture, but then realized it made sense. Aliza had said that her grandson had inherited her facility with languages, and if Jacob Mendel was going to become Edward Newman, then he would need to immerse himself in his new identity even when he was alone.

  In the next picture, the one in the centre, Claes was on the far left of a row of official-looking men in suits seated behind a long table facing two other men in skullcaps who were wearing the Star of David on their jackets. Again there was a handwritten inscription underneath – ‘Meeting of Security Police with AJB – Antwerp, July 1942.’ But it was the third picture that was the most striking. Here Claes stood between two other men outside some kind of government building. Claes was still in a suit, but his companions were in German uniform, and underneath Jacob had written in thick capital letters: ‘Asche, Claes, Ehlers – Sipo SD, Brussels – August 1943 – Last Picture?’

  Trave caught Clayton’s eye and whistled softly under his breath, but he didn’t speak, remaining intent on his inspection of the room. Now his torch was shining on a large map of Europe with a series of coloured lines stretching out west and south from tiny Belgium like an octopus’s tentacles. They were obviously escape routes, thought Trave – ones along which people had got away and ones where they had been caught and sent to the transit camp at Mechelen, and then east. Like Jacob’s parents. There was a picture of them with their two sons on the mantelpiece above the gas fire – a framed studio portrait taken when Ethan and Jacob were children. The boys were wearing tweed suits with knee breeches and stood posed on either side of their mother, who was seated, wearing a long ankle-length black dress with her husband standing behind her with his hand on her shoulder. Their expressions were rigid, formal, but the parents’ touch was natural – enough for Trave to know that Avi Mendel and his wife had loved each other once years ago, before they were murdered. Trave closed his eyes thinking of the millions of other victims. It was incomprehensible. Photographs were the only way to begin to understand the horror, he thought, with sudden insight – to make some small sense of the meaningless numbers.

  Clayton had been standing by the window, dividing his attention between following Trave’s torch beam as it travelled across the walls and keeping watch on the pavement down below, which was lit by a nearby street light; but now, as Trave remained immobile, lost in thought, Clayton became impatient and took the torch from Trave’s hand and began to look through the pile of papers on the table in the centre of the room. One by one he turned them over: correspondence; cut-out newspaper reports on Swain’s trial, including several describing its opening at the Old Bailey the previous Wednesday; a handwritten document listing possible prosecution witnesses marked with crossings out and question marks – Clayton noticed that his name and Trave’s had been left unamended; a letter from two months earlier confirming Edward Newman’s membership of a local rifle-shooting club; a tenancy agreement for the flat dating from the previous May, this time in the name of Jacob Mendel . . .

  ‘Something must have happened. Jacob changed his name after he got here,’ said Clayton, showing Trave the document.

  ‘Yes, can’t you guess?’ Trave paused, but Clayton shook his head. ‘He’s our burglar, Adam. The one who broke into Osman’s study last summer and had a boxing match with our Nazi friend over there,’ said Trave, pointing to the pictures of Claes on the opposite wall. ‘There’s a pair of glasses in the bedroom, and I’d bet my house they’ll turn out to be a match for the ones he left behind at Blackwater. I don’t suppose you’ll have much choice but to take him in now, Macrae or no Macrae.’

  Clayton was about to respond, but the words died in his throat. There was the unmistakable sound of a key being fitted in the front door of the flat, and Clayton cursed himself for having abandoned his watch on the pavement down below. Instinctively the two policemen flatte
ned themselves against the wall on either side of the open door to the living room and waited, holding their breath.

  CHAPTER 20

  The light went on in the hall, footsteps approached, and Jacob cried out as Trave seized him from behind, shouting ‘police’ as he did so. But the young man’s reactions were quicker than Trave had anticipated. He twisted his body violently to the left, throwing Trave off balance, and then slammed his right arm back, catching Trave a glancing blow on the side of the face, sufficient to make Trave let go of his jacket. And then he took off, running back down the corridor, pulling open the front door of the flat, and taking the stairs three at a time. Clayton set off in pursuit, but Jacob had a head start and would certainly have got away if he’d taken the time to turn on the upper landing light before he began his mad descent of the stairs. Instead he lost his footing in the dark, two flights down, and fell head over heels down the remaining steps, ending up in a heap on the floor of the entrance hall.

  By the time he regained consciousness, the lights were on and Clayton and Trave were standing over him, barring his way to the door. Slowly he got to his feet, rubbing his head, and gingerly took a few steps towards a suspicious-looking old lady who had emerged from the ground-floor flat at the other end of the hall.

  ‘It’s all right, Mrs Harris,’ he said, speaking in fluent English. ‘Nothing to worry about – just a silly accident, that’s all.’

  The old lady looked unimpressed by the explanation. She peered distrustfully at the strangers by the door, and then retreated back inside her flat, closing the door. A moment later there was the sound of a key turning in the lock.

  ‘What the hell do you want?’ asked Jacob furiously, turning back to face the two policemen.

  ‘To talk to you. About Blackwater Hall and your brother, Ethan Mendel,’ said Trave calmly.

  ‘I don’t know what you’re talking about. I’m Edward Newman. My name’s on the doorbell out there, if you can be bothered to look.’

  ‘Please don’t waste our time,’ said Trave evenly. ‘You’re Jacob Mendel. I recognize you from when you gave evidence at the Old Bailey two and a half years ago. And you probably know who I am too, judging from the interest you’ve been taking in Mr Swain’s new trial.’

  There was the glint of recognition in Jacob’s eyes, but Jacob said nothing, continuing to glower at Trave and Clayton as if trying to work out a strategy for a second escape attempt.

  ‘We can talk down here,’ said Trave, ‘or upstairs. Personally I’d prefer upstairs. But it’s up to you.’

  Jacob appeared to hesitate, and then, to Clayton’s surprise, he turned and began slowly climbing the stairs, keeping hold of the banister for support. The policemen followed at a cautious distance behind, and then, once they were back in the living room, Jacob pulled out the chair and sat down heavily at the table with his hands folded in front of him, watching silently as Trave turned on the light and then went over to the armchair by the window. Clayton took up position in the doorway on Jacob’s other side, barring his route of escape.

  ‘I went to Antwerp to see your grandmother,’ said Trave, opening the conversation. ‘She’s worried about you, wants to know where you are.’

  ‘Well, you can tell her you found me and that I’m all right,’ said Jacob with finality, as if there was nothing more to say.

  ‘Why don’t you tell her yourself? She’s an old lady and she loves you – she told me you’re her last living relative.’

  ‘She’s old and she’s blind,’ Jacob burst out angrily. ‘Wilfully blind – she believes in Titus Osman and all his lies. Just like Ethan did, and I don’t want to hear any more of that.’

  ‘Well, you won’t from me,’ said Trave quietly. ‘I’ve lost my job over Osman, but I think you already know that, don’t you?’ he added, pointing up at a newsapaper cutting sellotaped to the wall, describing David Swain’s arrest and Trave’s suspension from duty. ‘We’re on the same side, you and I. Why do you say Ethan believed in Osman?’

  ‘Because he had to have done. He wrote me that letter from Munich about finding out something vital and then flew back to England and went straight to see Osman. He wouldn’t have done that if he didn’t believe in Osman, would he? He’d found out something that affected Osman – that’s why he wanted to talk to him, but it wasn’t something that shook his faith in the bastard. If it had, he’d be alive today,’ said Jacob bitterly. He spoke in a rush, as if relieved to finally have an outlet for the thoughts that had obsessed him for so long.

  ‘And you think that that something he found out was about Franz Claes?’ asked Trave, looking over at Claes’s photographs on the wall.

  ‘Yes. Who else? Claes was Osman’s contact in the secret police. That’s how Osman got Jews out, or got them caught.’

  ‘All right, so what you’re saying is that Ethan found out something incriminating about Claes and told Osman, who killed Ethan because of it and then set up David Swain to take the blame? Is that right?’ asked Trave, speaking slowly as he put the pieces together.

  ‘Yes, exactly right. It’s the truth,’ said Jacob passionately. ‘I know it is. I just can’t prove it – that’s all. Claes is the key. I can show he was involved in Belgian fascist politics before the war; that he was invalided out of the Belgian army after the German invasion and went to work for the interior ministry; that he had dealings with the AJB, the Jewish Council; and that he was involved with the secret police . . .’

  ‘Sipo SD?’ asked Trave, pointing over at the photograph of Claes with the two men in German uniforms.

  ‘Yes. Ernst Ehlers, the man on the right, was in charge of the Gestapo in Belgium, and the other one, Kurt Asche, was head of its anti-Jewish department, but Claes was always behind them in the shadows. I don’t know what he did. And what I’ve got on him isn’t enough. I’m not sure that it’s even a crime; it’s certainly not enough of a secret to kill people for. No, the information Ethan discovered was in West Germany, not Belgium, and in Germany I’ve found nothing. But it’s there. I know it is,’ said Jacob, making no effort to conceal his frustration.

  ‘Why?’ asked Trave. ‘Why are you so certain?’

  ‘Because Claes disappeared in late 1943 – just after my parents got arrested at the French border, in fact, although I don’t know if there’s a connection. And then there’s no trace of him until he turns up here a couple of years after the war, living the good life with Titus Osman. But that’s not all. He’s a man without a beginning as well. There’s no record of him or his sister in Belgium before 1931, when he joined the army – no birth certificate, nothing. He came from somewhere else – where I don’t know. Maybe he went back to wherever it was in 1943.’

  ‘To Germany?’

  ‘Yes, maybe. But there’s no trace of him there or anywhere else in Europe that I can find. And in Belgium I’ve been to every office and read every document that I can lay my hands on, but I need authority to go further, and it doesn’t make it any easier that there’s no appetite for investigating the occupation in my country. They want to look forward, not back. I think it’s because a lot of them collaborated with the Nazis. Belgian police helped with the round-ups, you know. Just like in France.’

  Jacob’s bitterness was obvious, and Clayton, watching from over by the door, thought that Jacob was the first real fanatic that he’d ever met. Silent at first, Jacob now couldn’t stop talking – it was like a dam had burst, releasing the rage and frustration that had built up inside him through the long, lonely months he’d spent in this room cutting up newspapers and feeding his obsession with Titus Osman, who was almost certainly an entirely innocent man. If Claes had committed the murders in order to conceal his criminal past, then there was no reason he hadn’t acted alone or with his peculiar sister. Jacob was even more obsessed with Osman than Trave, thought Clayton. He remembered the shooting-club document he’d seen on the table earlier and wondered uneasily if Jacob had a gun.

  ‘What were you doing out at Blackwater today?’
Clayton asked, speaking for the first time. ‘I saw you in the woods watching the house.’

  Jacob swung round to look at Clayton, and the hostility was back in his eyes.

  ‘I was looking,’ he said. ‘That’s all.’

  ‘But you broke in there last summer, didn’t you, and had a fight with Claes? Is that why you changed your name? In case he came looking for you? Or the police did?’

  Jacob glowered at Clayton and then turned back to Trave. ‘Who’s he?’ he demanded angrily. ‘Does he work for that man who’s taken over from you – Macrae?’

  ‘He’s with me,’ said Trave. ‘And there’s no point pretending it wasn’t you. Your glasses in the bedroom match the ones Claes knocked off your nose. You broke into Blackwater Hall because you wanted to find evidence against Osman, didn’t you? I’d probably have done the same in your shoes.’

  Jacob looked defiant, saying nothing.

  ‘So what did you do when breaking in didn’t work?’ Trave pressed. ‘What did you do next?’

  ‘I talked to Katya,’ said Jacob flatly.

  ‘Yes,’ said Trave quietly. ‘I thought you might have done.’ He put his hand up to his face and turned away, looking out through the window into the darkness. The image of Katya dead pushed up at him from where it always lay, frozen just beneath the surface of his consciousness with all the other horrors that he tried to keep shut out of his conscious mind. Again he saw her long blonde hair trailing across the pillow, her sunken cheeks, her beautiful, empty eyes. She’d died because she’d found something out, because Jacob Mendel had asked her to look, because he hadn’t had the courage to go in there again himself. A wave of hatred for Jacob shook Trave for a moment, but then with an effort of will he pushed it away, clearing his mind of emotion.

  ‘I wish I hadn’t,’ said Jacob, sensing the accusation in Trave’s silence. ‘God knows I feel responsible for what happened to her. And to Swain – I’ve sent his lawyers copies of everything I’ve got on Claes, but I don’t know if it’ll make any difference . . .’