The King of Diamonds (21 page)

Trave knew what he had to do. He had to get out of here now and leave Clayton behind, and then trust to luck that no one could get hold of Creswell on the phone before he’d had a chance to talk to Eddie. Picking himself up from the ground, he looked over at Vanessa, trying to make her understand that he was sorry, that he hadn’t meant it to turn out this way, but she refused to meet his eye, and instead reached out and took hold of Osman’s hand.

All right, to hell with you too
, he thought as he turned away, running toward the car. He got in and reached over to lock the passenger door just as Clayton took hold of the handle, and then, throwing the car into gear, he drove in a fast arc round the mermaid fountain in the centre of the courtyard and away down the drive. Overhead there was a clap of rolling thunder, and rain started to fall in heavy drops down from the leaden sky.

Trave had Eddie back in the interview room within five minutes of his return to the police station. He took a young uniformed constable in there too so that there’d be a witness and a written record if he managed to get Eddie to talk.

‘I told you I wanted a solicitor,’ said Eddie defiantly.

‘And you can have one once you’ve heard what I’ve got to say,’ said Trave. ‘You don’t have to say anything if you don’t want to. I’ve just read you your rights.’

Eddie lit a cigarette from the open packet that Trave had left lying on the table and breathed the smoke in deep. He glanced over at Trave and then looked away. He seemed even more nervous than he’d been earlier, Trave noted with satisfaction.

‘All right, so what is it?’ Eddie asked.

‘The visits officer at the gaol picked out Bircher as the man who came to see you four times in the last month, the same John Bircher who’s a friend of Franz Claes, who lives at Blackwater Hall. Does that name mean anything to you, Eddie? Franz Claes?’

‘Maybe.’

‘What do you mean maybe?’

‘Swain mentioned him a couple of times.’

‘And what about Bircher? Did he mention Claes?’

Eddie looked at Trave and said nothing.

‘Bircher, Eddie. The man with the beard. Here, let me refresh your memory.’

Trave already had Bircher’s photograph face-down on the table. Now he turned it over and slid it across to Eddie, who flicked his eyes down to it for a moment before looking away.

‘He’s the one who helped you over the wall, isn’t he, Eddie? Got you a car, got you money? Gave you a place to stay in London? Why, Eddie? Why would he do all that?’

Eddie ground out his cigarette in the ashtray and began chewing his thumb nail. ‘You’ve got nothing,’ he said, spitting out the words. ‘Nothing.’

‘Not yet maybe. But I’m only just beginning. I’ve been in this game long enough to know there’s always evidence if you know where to look. And I know where to look now. I’ll find Bircher, and if he talks, I won’t need you. You’ll be hung out to dry, Eddie. Conspiracy to murder: you’ll be an old man when you get out.’

He was getting to Eddie. Trave could feel it. He was an expert at this: playing his man like a fish, reeling him slowly in. He saw the telltale signs: the beads of nervous sweat forming under the hairline on Eddie’s forehead, the way Eddie chewed his nails and smoked hungrily on yet another cigarette. Not much longer now, provided Eddie knew something, of course. But he had to. Trave had no room left for doubt.

‘You talk, Eddie; you testify against Claes and Bircher, and I’ll protect you,’ said Trave, leaning across the table. ‘Immunity from prosecution, early release, a new start, you name it.’

Trave knew he was going out on a limb. He needed authority to make these kinds of offers, but there was no time for that now. Time was the one thing he didn’t have. And he was close if he could just catch Eddie’s eye. But Eddie had withdrawn into himself – he was bent over, chewing his nails, eyes on the floor. Trave longed to take hold of Eddie and shake the truth out of him, push him up against the wall, make him confess, but he knew he couldn’t. He’d been an honest copper too long to change his ways now.

‘What do you owe them?’ asked Trave insistently. ‘Nothing,’ he said, answering his own question. ‘Think of yourself, Eddie. Don’t be the fall guy.’

Eddie looked up, and Trave tried to read the conflicting emotions written across his face. Fear was there, but what else? Indecision? Hope? Eddie opened his mouth, about to speak, and closed it again. He was no longer looking at Trave but over Trave’s shoulder toward the door that had just opened. Turning round, Trave saw Creswell in the doorway and behind him, waiting like a vulture, Macrae.

‘I need to see you, Inspector. In my office,’ said the superintendent. It was an order, not a request.

‘I’m coming,’ said Trave, hoping Creswell would give him a minute or two more with Earle. That was all he needed. But it was a vain hope.

‘Now, Bill,’ said Creswell in a voice that brooked no opposition.

Trave looked across the table at Eddie Earle one last time and knew he was beaten. He got up to go and then, just as he was turning away, Eddie shot him a look of hatred. ‘I’m no rat,’ he said, spitting out the words. ‘I told you I’m no rat.’

Trave sat in Creswell’s office, looking utterly deflated. Macrae had tried to come into the room too, but Creswell had at least put a stop to that. The superintendent seemed sad more than angry.

‘Mr Osman called, told me what happened out at Blackwater,’ said Creswell. ‘You’re off this case, Bill. And there may be more trouble. I don’t know. I’ll do my best for you. You can count on me for that. You’re a damned good policeman, and you’ve been put under more strain than anyone should have to cope with. I feel responsible: I should have replaced you on day one.’

‘I insisted.’

‘Yes, you did. But that doesn’t mean I had to listen to you.’ Creswell paused, shaking his head. ‘What a mess! What a bloody awful mess!’

‘Who’s getting the case?’ asked Trave, although he already knew the answer.

‘Hugh Macrae . . .’

‘Christ!’

‘I don’t want to hear it, Bill,’ said Creswell – there was a warning note in his voice. ‘He’ll find Swain . . .’

‘Yeah, and that’s not all he’ll do . . .’

‘Enough!’ said Creswell, banging his desk. ‘I’m in charge of this police station, not you, and I’m not interested in your opinion of Inspector Macrae. You’ve caused enough trouble round here for one day. You should be bloody grateful I’m standing by you. Stay away from this case, you hear me?’

‘I hear you,’ said Trave, bowing his head. ‘And I am sorry, sir, for what it’s worth. I don’t need you to tell me what an idiot I’ve been.’

‘No, you don’t,’ said Creswell, sounding appeased. ‘Go home, Bill. Have a drink; have two drinks. Do whatever it is a workaholic like you does to relax. And then forget this case – like it never happened, all right?’

‘Yes, sir,’ said Trave, getting up.

But Creswell called him back just as he’d reached the door. ‘Clayton’ll work with Macrae,’ he said. ‘For continuity. Once it’s over you can have him back.’

‘Good,’ said Trave, nodding.

‘Good?’

‘Yes, good. Thank you, sir. I’ll go and have that drink now,’ said Trave, closing the door.

He passed Macrae in the corridor on his way out of the station, walking by him like he didn’t exist. Macrae paused for a moment and then went over to the window, and his mouth twisted into a smile as he watched Trave get into his car down below. And then, as Trave drove away, he began softly singing to himself an old Great War soldiers’ song, one of his favourites: ‘Oh, we don’t want to lose you but we think you ought to go . . .’

CHAPTER 14

Adam Clayton was still half in shock about all that had happened when he was called into Inspector Macrae’s office early on Monday morning.

He’d hardly slept for two nights. His exhausted brain was like a broken film projector that he couldn’t switch off, endlessly rerunning the scene of his boss’s self-destruction in the courtyard outside Blackwater Hall. Each scene was worse than the next: Trave shouting at Claes; Osman intervening; Trave punching, missing, falling on his backside like a schoolboy when Clayton pulled him back; the look of scorn and disgust on the face of Trave’s wife; and the mad rush to the car before Trave drove away, leaving Clayton standing there in the rain looking like an idiot.

To give Osman credit, he’d made it a lot less awkward afterwards than it might have been. He’d calmed everyone down; thanked Clayton profusely for his intervention; and even shown some sympathy for Trave, calling him ‘the poor inspector’ or something like that; and then finally insisted that Claes drive Clayton back into Oxford. Osman had opened the back door of the Bentley for him, and so he’d ended up sitting behind Claes in the back seat, looking like he was some millionaire magnate being chauffeured around town until they arrived at the police station and he returned to being a humble detective constable again.

Trave had been in Creswell’s office when Clayton had got back; and then, unlike Macrae, he’d missed Trave’s sudden rushed departure after his interview with the superintendent was over. However, it didn’t take long for the station’s gossip mill to start to grind, and by the time the day was over, everyone seemed to know that Trave had been taken off the Blackwater case and been replaced by Inspector Macrae. And, whether he liked it or not, Clayton had a new boss.

‘Good morning, lad,’ said Macrae, waving him to a seat behind an empty desk opposite his own. ‘That’ll be your place. Used to be Jonah’s, but he’s kindly agreed to let you have it, haven’t you, Jonah?’

Police Constable Joseph Wale, sitting silently on a chair in the corner, nodded curtly. He was a big man and the chair seemed too small for him, making Clayton wonder if it might break under Wale’s weight if he stayed sitting on it too long. Wale was a recent addition to the Oxford force. Rumour had it that he’d been a not-very-successful professional boxer in London who’d joined the police after he’d been knocked out one too many times and found that he couldn’t get any more fights. It had soon become apparent that Wale was a loner. As far as Clayton knew, he hadn’t made any friends since his arrival – except Macrae, who had taken an immediate and unexplained shine to the new recruit, given him the nickname Jonah (which Wale surprisingly didn’t seem to resent), and adopted him as his unofficial assistant.

‘Jonah would be the first to admit that paperwork’s not his strongest suit, wouldn’t you, Jonah?’ asked Macrae, glancing cheerfully over at Wale, who gave another brief nod. Clayton thought he had never seen Macrae looking happier: he was wearing a garish white flower in the buttonhole of his jet-black suit jacket – Clayton wondered what it was; it looked like a weird hybrid of a rose and a snowdrop.

‘So record-keeping’ll be your department, Constable,’ Macrae continued, turning back to Clayton. ‘But don’t worry – Jonah has a lot of other talents, some of them quite unexpected. I think you’ll find he turns out to be a very valuable member of our team.’

‘I’m sure I shall,’ said Clayton, who had no idea what Macrae was talking about.

‘Good. Now, before we begin, Constable, a word of caution. If it was up to me, Bill Trave would have been suspended for what he did the day before yesterday. He’s brought the whole of the Oxford police force into disrepute.’ Macrae paused, looking Clayton in the eye. Clayton flushed and was about to rise to the challenge, feeling a sudden instinctive rush of loyalty to his old boss, but then thought better of the idea and bit back his response. Macrae was watching Clayton carefully and now smiled icily, leaving Clayton with the uncomfortable impression that the inspector had read his mind.

‘But it’s not up to me,’ Macrae went on in the same steely voice. ‘And Inspector Trave lives to fight another day. But he has been taken off this case, removed from it once and for all. And what that means is that you’re not to talk to him about it. Your loyalty’s to me now, Constable. Do we understand one another?’

Clayton felt the eyes of not just Macrae but also the silent Wale on him. He resented the aspersions on his professionalism implied in Macrae’s words, and it angered him that Macrae should have raised his concerns in front of a junior officer like Wale, but at the same time it was true that Trave had made an unholy mess of the Osman case. The investigation needed to follow the evidence, not spurious coincidences, and that meant focusing on David Swain. Trave hadn’t been prepared to do that, and it was right that he had been replaced. Clayton knew that his personal antipathy toward Macrae shouldn’t get in the way of doing his job. Catching Swain was the priority. Macrae had a reputation for getting results, and he was entitled to rely on Clayton’s support for achieving them.

‘You can count on me, sir,’ said Clayton.

‘Thank you, Constable,’ said Macrae, looking pleased. ‘Now fill me and Jonah in on what’s been happening. You’ll find we’re good listeners.’

Macrae wasn’t exaggerating. Wale remained characteristically silent throughout Clayton’s briefing, and Macrae only asked one or two questions. Curiously, he seemed most interested in the fact that Trave had visited Swain twice in Brixton Prison the previous year.

‘So Trave doesn’t just think Swain is innocent of the Mendel murder, he’s also gone and told him so?’

‘I don’t know if he actually said that,’ said Clayton. ‘He told me he wanted to see if Swain could shed any light on the note or the other aspects of the case that he was worried about, but Swain couldn’t.’

‘And he went twice. You’re sure of that?’

‘Yes.’

‘Interesting.’ Macrae stroked his chin with his long, thin forefinger for a moment, thinking, and then nodded as if he’d come to a decision. ‘Thank you, Constable,’ he said. ‘You’ve been most helpful. And now . . .’

‘Now, sir?’ asked Clayton when Macrae didn’t finish his sentence.

‘Now, let’s have a press conference,’ Macrae said, snapping his fingers with sudden energy. ‘Two o’clock this afternoon sounds good. And get as much media as you can over here. Jonah’ll help you with the phoning. He’s good at that.’

David lay on his bed listening to the radio. It was his ninth straight day inside the shabby hotel at Number 10 Parnell Avenue, and he didn’t know how much longer he could stand it. The physical pain in his shoulder had largely disappeared now that the wound caused by Claes’s bullet had almost entirely healed, but the mental anguish that he was suffering now was fast becoming unbearable. Every minute of every hour he sat waiting for a knock on the door or the sudden shout from a police megaphone. His body was rigid and his mind was exhausted with the waiting. It was worse, far worse, than the prison. O’Brien might have been a religious maniac, and Eddie was a treacherous, lying bastard, but at least they were human beings he could talk to, and there was a life of sorts outside the cell – in the canteen or the exercise yard or the rec room. Here the fear intensified when he went outside. Hunger and claustrophobia had driven him out to the convenience store at the end of the road three times since he’d moved in. He’d worn his jacket collar turned up around his face, and he hadn’t shaved since his escape, but still the last time he’d been in there he could have sworn that the little Indian man behind the counter had been about to recognize him. David’s hand had been shaking as he took his change, and it had been all he could do to stop himself from running away down the street.

Now he was trying to make his meagre supplies last, but it was hard without a fridge or a cooker. A diet of stale sandwiches and cold sausage rolls was beginning to take its toll: every day he thought with greater longing of the breakfast that his mother had cooked for him on the morning after his escape, and he was even becoming nostalgic for the stodgy food they served in the prison canteen, but for the present his fear remained stronger than his hunger, and he wasn’t prepared to risk a café or a restaurant.

He’d been lucky up to now. He knew that. He’d driven away from his mother’s house in a panic, without any kind of plan, knowing he couldn’t stay in the car too long: every policeman in Oxford would be looking for it once Ben had phoned the police with the registration number. And so he’d driven frantically through the Oxford suburbs looking for a place where he could lay low for a while, but he’d seen nothing suitable until he made a random turning off Botley Road onto an entirely unmemorable street called Parnell Avenue and came to an abrupt halt outside the Bella Vista Hotel. The house was not ‘bella’ and it certainly had no ‘vista’. It was run-down and in bad need of a coat of paint, and the view across the road was of a builder’s yard bordered by a piece of waste ground. But it was perfect for what he needed, and inside, the half-asleep man behind the reception desk didn’t even ask him for
ID
once David had taken out his roll of banknotes and volunteered to pay two weeks in advance.

Upstairs he’d sat in his room and waited for nightfall, and then, under cover of darkness, he’d driven the Ford Anglia over to the railway station and abandoned it in the car park yards from where Eddie and he had got into the red Triumph the night before, overdosing on adrenaline. And then he’d walked back to the hotel through the deserted side streets. And he’d been there ever since, lying on his bed looking at the wall, eating stale sandwiches, listening to the radio that came with the room.

Two days ago he’d heard on the news about Eddie’s arrest in London. That had shaken him. He’d be next. He knew that, unless he could come up with a plan. But he couldn’t, however hard he tried. He still had the gun. His mother had told him to get rid of it, but he’d hung on to it. He couldn’t face them taking him alive because he knew what they would do to him in the end. David was under no illusions: he knew what would happen. He’d be charged, he’d be tried, and he’d be convicted just like before, but this time they wouldn’t send him to prison for the rest of his days. No, they’d truss him up like a turkey and hang him from a gallows, break his neck with the snap of a noose. It was the punishment prescribed by law for killing with a gun, and David knew he’d get no mercy because this was his second time around. For a second murder he’d definitely swing.

The rope: David had nightmares about it every night, waking up in the small hours, screaming for air with his hands outstretched, pushing away invisible black-masked strangers; and then, turning on the light, clutching his racing heart, he’d catch sight of Robbie the Robot on the night table gazing back at him out of his protuberant android eyes and remember where he was.

David thought about his half-brother often. It gave him a strange but intense comfort to know that the little boy with the oversized glasses and the utterly serious view of the world was out there only a few miles away, arranging his toys and creatures in the room that had once been David’s own. David thought that the moment at the end when Max had come out of the house holding Robbie the Robot in his outstretched hands was one of the best in his whole sorry life. But then he also wondered whether he would have any more moments like that. He wondered when his luck was going to finally run out.

The quiz programme that he’d been half-listening to came to an end, and now Frank Sinatra was singing: ‘New York, New York . . .’ David changed stations, irrationally irritated. He’d always wanted to go to New York and climb the skyscrapers, and now he was about as likely to go there as the moon. But Radio Luxembourg was no better – more stupid music. David twisted the tuning knob again and went rigid. A man with a cold, Scottish-sounding voice had just spoken his name.

‘David Swain . . . a change in direction . . . taken over the investigation from Inspector Trave, who had for personal reasons formed the mistaken impression that Mr Swain was innocent . . . we will redouble our efforts to find Swain . . . appeal to the public for their help . . .’

David only caught the words in snatches. His head was suddenly full of a great rushing wind and he swallowed hard, thinking he was going to be sick.

The noose was tightening. He could feel it. It wouldn’t be long now unless . . . unless maybe this policeman, Trave, the one with the sad eyes who thought he might be innocent, could help him . . .

Trave had taken Creswell’s advice the previous evening: he’d gone home and had a couple of drinks; and then, when that didn’t help, he’d had several more, sitting morosely in his living room armchair in front of an unlit fire, feeling sorry for himself as he mechanically turned the pages of dusty photograph albums, looking at old pictures of Vanessa and his dead son. Eventually, soon after he’d reached the halfway point in the whisky bottle, he’d fallen asleep in his clothes and had then woken up in the first light of dawn, feeling like death. But it wasn’t in his character to give in to adverse circumstances for very long. He’d always been one of those who carry on struggling until they reach the finish line even though the race is already over. He remembered at school how he’d had so much trouble learning to swim that his parents had despaired of him, but he’d carried on flailing and failing on his own until the day finally came when he’d been able to stay afloat.

And so he fortified himself with two cups of strong black coffee and took a brisk walk around the deserted golf course at the end of the road, filling his lungs with the cold sharp air of the early morning before returning home to work for hours in the garden in the autumn sunshine – weeding the flower beds, mulching the roses, raking the leaves from off the lawn – until he felt almost human again. He slept well on Sunday night and took the day off on Monday to complete his recovery. And he’d just come in from the garden and was sitting down to a late lunch in his shirt sleeves when the telephone rang.