The King of Diamonds (39 page)

Keeping his gun trained on Osman, Jacob crossed the room and looked quickly down into the courtyard through the shattered window. The fog had cleared a little, and in the lights he could just about make out the faces of the figures down below: the young detective who’d held him in his flat with Trave was the one who had shouted, and a few yards away on the other side of the fountain was a big burly man in police uniform whom Jacob didn’t recognize. Beyond them, two figures, who could only be Jana Claes and the maid who’d answered the door, were running away up the drive.

‘Fuck!’ Backing away from the window, Jacob vented his anger with a series of expletives, and then he noticed how Osman had risen up to his full height again, puffing out his chest like he had nothing left to fear, like he was back to being Titus Osman, the king of diamonds again. He laughed mirthlessly at Osman’s lack of understanding, realizing suddenly that the police were an opportunity for him, not Osman. They could be witnesses to Osman’s confession. Jacob was grateful for their arrival.

‘Get over by the window,’ he ordered, pressing the cold, hard muzzle of the gun against the back of Osman’s head to force him forward. Down below the two policemen were looking up at them through the mist.

‘Now tell them,’ ordered Jacob in a steely voice. ‘Tell them what you did. Tell them about my parents, about how you betrayed them to the Nazis, about how you sent them to Auschwitz on the cattle train. Tell them about my brother, about how you and Claes put a knife in his back. Tell them about Katya. Tell them, Titus. I’ll kill you if you don’t. I swear I will.’

But Osman wasn’t listening. He thought of jumping, but it was too far and he was too frightened. ‘Help me,’ he shouted, not at Clayton but at the burly man standing behind him. ‘That’s what I pay you for.’

Below, Wale backed away towards the police car without responding, leaving it to Clayton to do the talking. ‘Let him go,’ Clayton shouted up at Jacob. ‘Claes is dead. Isn’t that enough?’

But Jacob wasn’t listening. All his attention was focused on the trembling man in front of him. ‘Confess,’ he demanded, thrusting the gun into the small of Osman’s back. ‘Confess and I’ll let you go.’

‘No,’ said Osman. ‘I’m an innocent man.’ He shouted out the words so that everyone could hear them: Jana and the servants on the other side of the courtyard; the policemen down below; and even Osman’s cat, who’d emerged from under the bed and now stood watching the man who was hurting her master over by the window, forcing him to cry out in pain. Suddenly Cara arched her back and launched herself through the air, hanging on to Jacob’s shoulder with her claws as she sank her teeth into his neck, and, shocked to the core by this utterly unexpected attack from behind, Jacob dropped the gun.

Osman was onto the opportunity in an instant. Displaying an entirely unexpected athleticism for a man of his age, he dived to the ground, seized the gun in his hand, and rolled away towards the door.

Jacob staggered back into the room, struggling to get a firm grip on the cat as she continued her assault, scratching at his face and neck. Finally he succeeded in getting both his hands around her squirming body and threw her against the far wall, from where she fell to the floor with a shriek and then disappeared back under her master’s bed.

Jacob couldn’t see for a moment. Blood was spurting out from a line of cuts on his forehead, and he put up his hand to wipe it away. When he opened his eyes he found himself looking straight down the barrel of his own gun.

‘Don’t move. Don’t speak,’ said Osman. They were over by the bed, out of view of the people in the courtyard down below.

‘So you want to hear my confession, do you?’ he asked. His voice was a whisper. His head was inches from Jacob’s; it was almost as if he was kissing Jacob with his words, feeling for his fear with the gun. ‘You want to be my priest? You want to give me absolution for my sins?’

Jacob looked at his adversary, saying nothing, waiting to hear the truth. Behind him the soft winter breeze blew into the white silk curtains through the remains of the broken window, and down below Adam Clayton took Franz Claes’s gun out of his pocket, looked at it a moment, steeling his courage to the sticking place, and then went up the steps and entered the house through the wide-open front door.

‘There’s a line I can hardly read here,’ said Trave. His forehead was furrowed with concentration as he held Katya’s little diary up to the light. ‘It’s smudged like she spilt something on the page, or maybe she was crying.’

‘It doesn’t matter,’ said Vanessa, nearly beside herself with impatience. ‘Get on with it, Bill. Put me out of my misery, for Christ’s sake.’

And Trave began to read again, slowly deciphering Katya’s scribbled words:

‘They were waiting to get David Swain out of gaol; that’s what they were waiting for,’ said Trave, looking up. ‘So that they could set him up with the murder.’

But Vanessa wasn’t listening. Her face had crumpled up, and her body shook with terrible sobs. Titus was a murderer and she was his accomplice. That was the truth. If she had gone to the police with what Katya had told her the girl would still be alive. She’d been Katya’s last chance, and yet she had done nothing, just left Katya to her fate.

Titus had lied to her about everything – even perhaps about the existence of his dead wife and child, and she had believed him because she had wanted to; because she was flattered by his attention and wanted to be the new Mrs Osman, living the good life out at Blackwater Hall. Vanessa looked down at her hand and pulled Osman’s beautiful diamond ring from her finger and threw it away into a corner of the room. But it didn’t help; it didn’t change anything. The ring was still there, glittering by the skirting board, an indestructible symbol of her complicity, and she knew that she’d never stop feeling ashamed of herself until she was dead and buried and couldn’t feel anything any more.

‘You want to know why I betrayed your parents?’ asked Osman, staring into Jacob’s eyes.

‘Because they were Jews?’

‘No; they could have been Hindus for all I cared. Guess again.’

‘For their diamonds?’

‘Yes,’ said Osman. ‘You know the answer. Of course you do, but you don’t understand it. Look, look, where you threw them on the floor.’ Osman gestured with the gun down at the gemstones glittering like tiny stars all over the pale blue carpet at their feet.

‘They’re bits of rock. That’s all. They’re not alive,’ said Jacob. ‘Not like your victims were.’

‘Yes,’ said Osman. ‘You’re right. They’re not like flesh and blood; they don’t decay; they don’t rot. Diamonds are forever.’

Osman smiled, and Jacob knew suddenly what was going to happen next. He thought of shouting but knew instinctively that he wouldn’t get the words out of his mouth before the bullet entered his head. Osman would be able to say it was in self-defence – everyone down below in the courtyard had already seen Jacob at the window threatening the owner of the house with a gun.

‘Do people mean nothing to you?’ Jacob asked, playing for time. ‘Katya was
your
flesh and blood. She was almost like your daughter . . .’

‘She was a fool. That’s what she was. Just like you. She couldn’t help herself: she had to peep through the keyhole; she had to go where she was forbidden – and for that there’s a price to pay; there’s always a price to pay. And you know what that price is, don’t you, Jacob?’ asked Osman. His voice was gentle, almost sad, but the gun was steady in his hand.

Jacob knew what was coming. He closed his eyes, shutting out Osman’s hateful face, waiting to hear the gun’s explosion in his ears – the last sound that he would ever hear, but instead he heard a familiar voice shouting ‘Stop’ somewhere to his left. He opened his eyes and saw Adam Clayton standing in the doorway, holding Claes’s gun shaking in his hands.

And then everything happened in a whirl of motion that neither Clayton nor Jacob could really unravel afterward. Jacob threw his body against Osman as Osman turned and fired at Clayton, missing the policeman by a hair’s breadth. And in response, without thinking, Clayton squeezed the trigger of Claes’s gun and killed Titus Osman with a bullet that passed through his heart and flew out through the already-broken window of the bedroom, embedding itself in a high branch of one of the tall pine trees at the top of Osman’s drive. It was the first time that Clayton had ever fired a gun, and afterwards he hoped it would be the last.

‘Give me the diary, Bill,’ said Vanessa, holding out her hand. ‘I need to see what happened in the end.’

At first Trave resisted. He was frightened for Vanessa, frightened of what the last entries in the dead girl’s diary might do to her peace of mind now that she knew who Osman really was and what he had done. In his moment of vindication Trave felt no sense of triumph at all. He just wished that none of it had ever happened, but, as he’d realized long ago, that was his lot in life. Like all murder detectives he always arrived too late.

Reluctantly he handed the diary over. Vanessa had more right to it than he did after what she had gone through to get it. He sensed that she wanted to be alone, and so he went upstairs to phone Creswell. Osman and Claes and Claes’s sister needed to be arrested before anyone else got hurt.

He put his hand on his wife’s shoulder briefly as he passed behind the sofa, feeling that he had never loved her as much as he did at that moment and yet had never been more powerless to make her happy.

Once the door closed, Vanessa turned the pages quickly, looking for the entry for September 15th, the day of her encounter with Katya in the drawing room. She soon found it:

Will Vanessa help me? Did she listen to me? Or was all I did in vain?

And the last entry in the book was undated – a one-line scrawl:

What’s the bloody point?

Vanessa closed the book and looked up at her husband standing wide-eyed in the doorway.

‘What is it?’ she asked, getting to her feet. ‘What’s happened?’

‘Claes is dead,’ he said. ‘He was hit by a lorry in Blackwater village. It must have been when he was chasing you. Died instantly apparently. Are you all right, Vanessa?’ he asked, noticing how his wife’s face had gone white with shock. She shuddered uncontrollably several times and then exhaled deeply.

‘Yes,’ she said, swallowing. ‘It’s a surprise. That’s all. He’d have killed me if he’d caught me. I know he would. And I never thought I’d hear myself say this about another human being, but I’m glad he’s dead. He was evil, Bill, wicked through and through. It wasn’t just Katya and Ethan whom he murdered, you know. There were many more in the war – Jews he helped send to the gas chambers without a second thought.’

‘How do you know?’

‘He worked with Adolf Eichmann. I’m not sure in what way, but I know he did. Titus got angry with him at lunch today and said something about what the Israelis should do to Eichmann. It was deliberate, and Franz looked crazy suddenly, like he was going to kill Titus or something. I think that’s why they murdered Ethan, you know – because of what he found out in West Germany about Franz. That’s what Jacob told Katya and I think he was right.’