The King of Diamonds (22 page)

‘Turn on your radio. Two o’clock news,’ said an oddly familiar voice.

‘What? Who’s this?’ said Trave, but the line had gone dead, and he couldn’t put his finger on where he’d heard the voice before. It was frustrating, but he stopped thinking about the mystery caller once the voice of Hugh Macrae came on the air.

Trave couldn’t believe what he was hearing. For reasons best known to himself, Macrae had taken it upon himself to tell the entire country that Trave hadn’t done his job properly for personal reasons. Trave felt the same boiling anger that he’d felt outside Osman’s house two days earlier. He ran upstairs and pulled on his suit and tie and then drove at breakneck speed across town to the police station, running two red lights on the way.

The car park was full of reporters and media men leaving the press conference. Several of them recognized Trave and called out to him, asking for a comment, but he pushed past them up the steps without replying and found himself face-to-face with Clayton in the foyer.

‘Did you hear that? Did you hear what he said?’ asked Trave. He was red in the face, breathless with indignation.

‘Yes, I’m sorry,’ said Clayton. He seemed embarrassed by the situation, almost tongue-tied.

‘What the hell’s Macrae playing at?’ asked Trave. ‘Do you know?’

‘I can’t talk about the case,’ said Clayton, looking stricken. ‘I said I wouldn’t.’

‘But I’ve got a right to know . . .’

‘No, you haven’t. You’ve got no right at all,’ said Macrae, coming up behind Clayton’s shoulder and planting himself squarely in front of Trave. ‘You’ve been taken off this case once and for all. I’m sure you can find something else useful to be getting on with . . .’

‘You bastard,’ shouted Trave, clenching his fists, his reason overwhelmed by another surge of fury.

‘What? You’re going to hit me as well now, are you?’ asked Macrae with a sneer. ‘First the star witness and then one of your fellow officers – where’s it going to end, Bill? That’s what I’d like to know.’

Trave couldn’t contain his rage. He hated Macrae just as much as he hated Osman. He wanted to smash them both, pummel them into oblivion.
But not this way
, protested a small, half-smothered voice somewhere inside his brain, and Trave realized suddenly where he was going: he was destroying himself, not his enemies, with his mad anger, and so with a supreme effort he fought to regain his self-control, willing his fists and his teeth to unclench. Breathing deeply, he looked Macrae in the eye. ‘This isn’t over,’ he said quietly. ‘It’s only just begun.’ And then he turned his back on his adversary and walked away toward his office without waiting for a response.

He passed Jonah Wale in the corridor. Noticing the smirk on Wale’s face, Trave realized who his mystery caller had been. He thought of turning back to have it out with the man but then decided against the idea, realizing that he’d only demean himself by such a confrontation. Ten minutes later the switchboard put through a call from a public call box. It was David Swain.

‘Can I trust you? How do I know I can trust you?’ The voice on the other end of the line was rushed, breathless, choked up with fear.

‘Because I don’t think you committed these crimes. There are too many coincidences that just don’t add up,’ said Trave urgently. ‘Listen – I want to help you. That’s why they’ve taken me off the case. But I can’t unless you tell me what happened out at Blackwater. I need to know what happened, David.’

‘I can’t tell you. Not here. It’s a phone box, for Christ’s sake. I’m in the middle of the bloody street. Someone’ll see me, someone’ll . . .’ Swain’s voice rose and broke off, and Trave could sense the young man’s growing panic.

‘All right, all right,’ said Trave soothingly. ‘We can meet. That’ll be better anyway. Anywhere you like. Anywhere . . .’

There was silence on the other end of the line. It sounded like someone was breathing, but Trave couldn’t be sure it wasn’t his own breath: he could feel it coming out of his lungs in gasps. And then, just as Trave was about to give up, Swain spoke again: ‘St Luke’s School, down by the river. Do you know it?’

‘Yes.’

‘There’s a cricket pavilion. I’ll meet you there.’

‘When?’ asked Trave.

‘Tonight, at ten o’clock – no – half past ten. If you’re not alone, you won’t find me, so don’t bother looking . . .’

‘Don’t worry. It’ll just be me . . .’ Trave began but then broke off. The line had gone dead, and he knew he was talking to thin air.

Trave’s hand was shaking as he replaced the receiver. Unanswered questions cascaded through his mind. Why had Swain called him? What did he want? And why now? It had to be because of the press conference, because of what Macrae had said. Trave smiled suddenly, struck by a wonderful thought: What if it was Macrae’s big mouth that was going to give Trave the break he’d been waiting for for so long? Swain might know something that would blow the case apart, and, if so, Trave would have Macrae to thank for giving him the opportunity to hear it.

There were hours yet before he was due to meet Swain, and Trave tried to distract himself by tackling the mound of paperwork that had grown rapidly all over his desk during the previous week, but his heart wasn’t in the task, and he gave up after half an hour and picked up his coat to go home. He drove out of the car park almost on automatic pilot and so didn’t notice the nondescript Mini that slipped out after him and followed him home.

St Luke’s was an old private secondary school founded in the second half of the nineteenth century by an evangelical philanthropist who had made an enormous fortune manufacturing steel couplings for steam locomotives. Trave passed a statue of the man dressed incongruously in a Roman toga standing in the centre of the entrance courtyard with the legend
FUNDATOR
carved in capital letters on the plinth underneath, and then turned right through an archway that took him out onto the playing fields that ran in a swathe of green down to the river. He’d been to the school twice several years earlier, both times to interview a teacher who’d been a witness to a hit-and-run on the Banbury Road, but the place had been very different then, full of the shouts of schoolboys running to and fro in their black-and-grey uniforms. Now it was half-term and the school was deserted, with no lights visible in any of the windows.

Guided by the moonlight, Trave picked a path past the wooden goalposts and nets that rose up like ghostly shapes in the semi-darkness, dividing one football pitch from the next. In the distance he could make out the weathercock on the top of the school cricket pavilion. Trave remembered the weathercock from his previous visit: it was a representation of Old Father Time, a miniature Grim Reaper complete with sickle. To Trave’s left a tall yew hedge divided the playing fields from a small side road, and he grimaced in momentary irritation when he noticed a gate halfway along, realizing that he could have saved himself a lot of trouble by parking his car on the other side and accessing the playing fields that way.

A hundred yards further on Trave stopped in front of the pavilion. The cricket season was now over, but the scores of the last match of the summer were still displayed on the façade – Batsman 1, Batsman 2 – meaningless white numbers on a black background, which Trave could barely make out in the moonlight. Beyond, the grass sloped down gently to a row of poplar trees lining the riverbank.

The door of the pavilion was open, but Trave didn’t go in. He’d been too revved up all day since Swain’s phone call to properly think through the implications of this clandestine meeting. He’d rushed headlong towards it, and now, standing on the brink, he suddenly hesitated, realizing the extent of the risk he was taking. Creswell wouldn’t be able to save him this time if it came out that he’d arranged a meeting with an escaped prisoner, the main suspect in a murder inquiry. And he wondered too what he stood to gain by taking the risk. What could Swain tell him that he didn’t already guess? But he’d never know if he didn’t ask. It was too late now to turn back, and, throwing caution to the winds, Trave walked up to the door and went inside.

Immediately he found himself in almost pitch darkness, and instinctively he put out his hand, feeling for an invisible light switch.

‘Don’t,’ said a disembodied voice somewhere to Trave’s right. ‘Keep your hands by your side. I’ve got a gun, remember.’

‘What, are you going to shoot me?’ asked Trave, suddenly angry. ‘I’m the only friend you’ve got, you idiot.’

‘All right, all right, I’m sorry,’ said David. ‘I’m scared. That’s all.’ A match flared, illuminating the young man’s face for a moment as he lit a cigarette. He looked terrible – haggard, worn out, a shadow of the person that Trave had visited in Brixton Prison the previous year.

He was sitting in the corner on a bench consisting of the top of a set of two-tiered footlockers that ran the length of the room. Trave felt his way along the wall and sat down beside him.

‘I used to go to school here, you know,’ said David, now invisible again apart from the red glow of his cigarette.

‘No, I didn’t,’ said Trave. St Luke’s wasn’t the kind of place that he would have pictured as Swain’s alma mater.

‘Too upmarket for a kid like me, eh?’ said David, catching the note of surprise in Trave’s response. ‘Well, you’re right. I never fitted in here. They could tell I wasn’t one of them from the day I arrived. I used to hide out in here when it got really bad, unless they were playing cricket, of course. Then there was nowhere to go. Cricket’s such a stupid game . . .’ David broke off, his bitterness filling the room.

‘David,’ said Trave, reaching out and touching the young man’s arm in an effort to connect. ‘You’ve got to tell me what happened. Like I told you, I can’t help you unless you tell me everything.’

‘If you can help me! I’m an innocent man – white as the bloody Christmas snow, and that hasn’t helped me any these last two years.’

This was going to be more difficult than he’d thought, Trave realized. Swain was clearly at the end of his tether.

‘Here, have a drink of this,’ said Trave, taking a small hip flask out of his pocket and holding it out toward David. ‘It’s brandy. It’ll help.’

Trave felt David’s trembling hand on his for a moment as the young man reached for the flask, and then he heard David cough violently as he swallowed the alcohol.

‘Thanks,’ said David, keeping hold of the flask.

‘No problem. Right, let’s start at the beginning – tell me what happened from when you and Earle got out of the prison. There was a man with a beard, right?’

‘How do you know that?’

‘It doesn’t matter. Where did he take you?’

But David didn’t get to say where Bircher had driven them. There was the sound of a car approaching at speed across the grass outside – it had to have come in through the gate in the hedge that Trave had noticed earlier. It screeched to a halt, and then suddenly the pavilion was full of white light from the car’s headlights, and David had dropped the hip flask and the cigarette and was reaching in his pocket for the gun. Trave saw the silver barrel at the last moment and lunged forward to grab hold of it, but David sensed him coming and got to his feet, pulling away. He took a step toward the door, raising the gun in readiness to shoot, and then fell suddenly forward, tripping on Trave’s hip flask where it lay on the floor. As if in slow motion, Trave watched the gun fly out of David’s hand and hit a footlocker on the right. He saw Swain recover his footing and bend down, reaching for the gun, and at that moment, knowing he had no time, Trave threw himself onto the ground like he was bellyflopping into water, covering the gun with his body. Surprised, David lost his balance and fell over Trave’s prone body, ending up sprawled out at right angles to Trave on the floor.

Trave was the first to recover. Everything hurt, but at least he could move his limbs. He pulled the gun out from under his chest and got slowly to his feet.

‘We know you’re in there. Come out with your hands up. You too, Trave.’ It was Macrae outside, shouting at them through a megaphone. Trave could hear the conceited triumph in the Scotsman’s voice despite the amplified distortion of his mouthpiece. Trave felt like he was going to be sick.

‘Bastard,’ said David, looking up at Trave from the floor. ‘I should never have trusted you.’

‘And I should never have come,’ said Trave bitterly. ‘This was just as much a trap for me as for you. God, what a fool I’ve been.’

‘One minute,’ shouted Macrae. ‘And then we’re coming in.’

‘They’ll shoot us,’ said David. ‘Maybe it’s better that way.’

‘For you maybe,’ said Trave brutally. But Swain was right: Macrae might try to murder them if he could find an excuse. It was unlikely, but it was still possible.

‘Adam Clayton, are you there?’ shouted Trave, keeping out of sight behind the door. ‘Are you there, Adam?’

There was silence and then the noise of people talking outside. Trave couldn’t make out the words. And then a nervous, familiar voice came over the megaphone: ‘This is Clayton. What do you want?’

‘I’ve got Swain’s gun,’ shouted Trave. ‘I’m going to throw it out. Once you’ve got it, we’re coming out too.’

Trave lobbed the revolver underhand out into the light and waited until he heard the sound of someone picking it up. And then he went over to Swain and took him by the arm. ‘Come on,’ he said. ‘It’s better this way.’

Surprisingly Swain didn’t resist. ‘What does it matter? I’m dead meat anyway,’ he said, and Trave thought he’d never heard such resignation in a man’s voice.