The King of Diamonds

CHAPTER 12

It was in a basement down an alley off Wardour Street and called itself the Monte Carlo Casino — even had a cracked neon sign outside and a big burly doorman with tattoos on his meaty fingers, but that’s where its pretensions stopped. Down the steep narrow stairs, under the low ceilings, it was dark and cavernous and smoky and nobody asked any questions as long as you had the money to play. And Eddie had the money: a roll of blue and red bank notes bulging in the pocket of his trousers and three tall piles of yellow and blue chips stacked beside his right hand. Without even hesitating, he nodded for another card, and the dealer turned it over — the king of diamonds, the king of jewels, symbol of wealth and power — Eddie’s lucky card. He won again and leaned back in his chair, smiling, stretching his arm around the waist of the girl who was half-standing beside him, half-sitting on his knee, watching him play, drawn like a magnet to his luck.

She felt warm and soft, even more so when he let his hand stray up to where her breast began, pronounced under the low-cut red dress she was wearing. And she didn’t protest, even seemed to like it, folding herself more into his side. He had no curiosity about her as a person at all — he didn’t even know her name, but he liked her animal proximity and the intent way she was watching him — watching him win. Because tonight he was on a roll — he could feel the luck flowing through his veins, empowering him, transforming him from a nobody, a number on a prison governor’s list, into a force to be reckoned with — Easy Eddie, who’d gone through the roof and over the wall of Oxford Prison and ended up here in Soho on a Friday night holding the world in the palm of his hand.

Almost a week had gone by since his escape and Eddie was feeling more secure with every passing day. He’d bought himself a hat and a pair of thick glasses to go with his new suit of clothes, and without shaving he was now halfway to having a full beard. He looked a different person from the man in the police mug shot that had been in the papers a couple of times immediately after the escape, and, anyway, since then David Swain had been getting all the publicity, which was hardly surprising given what he’d got up to within an hour of getting out, whereas Eddie had kept his head down and his hands clean since he’d got to London. It wasn’t his fault that Davy was an idiot, Eddie thought contentedly as he ordered another drink and one for the girl too.

‘I don’t mind if I do,’ she said in a put-on classy voice that didn’t fool Eddie for a minute. He’d been in enough basement gambling dens in his day to know where the hookers and good-time girls came from, but it didn’t put him off. It was where he’d come from too: raised by his crazy grandmother in an evil-smelling flat above a grocery shop on the wrong side of Oxford. And he liked the way this girl looked — blond hair and blue eyes with big lashes and pouting red lips and her dress clinging to her skin like a sheath.

‘How old are you?’ he asked as he watched her sipping from her glass — she’d ordered Babycham, a little girl’s drink.

‘None of your business,’ she said in a ‘don’t ask no questions and I won’t tell you no lies’ kind of voice that made Eddie tighten his hand on her thigh.

‘Go on,’ he said. ‘Tell me.’

‘Twenty-one — like the game,’ she said in a way that made it sound like she was ready for anything. ‘Aren’t you going to ask me my name?’

‘All right. What’s your name?’

‘Audrey,’ she said with a simper. ‘Like the actress.’

‘Like the actress,’ Eddie agreed. It made him want to laugh: this two-bit girl imagining herself like Audrey Hepburn. Eddie knew all her movies, had seen some of them twice or even three times; he even knew some of her lines by heart. Audrey Hepburn was a goddess of the silver screen — up there on Mount Olympus with Elizabeth Taylor and Marilyn Monroe, available for admiration, for staring at, loving even from afar, but never to be seen in the flesh or touched. But this girl, this Audrey, she could be touched, and Eddie suddenly wanted her with a hard need that came on him unawares.

‘I’m hot,’ he said. ‘Let’s get some air.’ And standing up, he felt her eyes watching his hands as he filled the pockets of his jacket with the Monte Carlo chips and then exchanged them for bright new banknotes at the caged window by the door.

She held his arm up the steps, uncertain of her footing in her high heels, and then reached down for his hand as they came out into the night. He still hadn’t told her his name.

They walked up Wardour Street past a line of people queueing outside a dimly lit cinema to see a late-night screening of Alfred Hitchcock’s Psycho — ‘the most frightening film ever’ screamed a poster by the door — and on past shops with blacked-out windows, crowded Chinese restaurants, and girls in doorways calling out to passers-by. The cold air made Eddie’s head swirl after the heat of the casino, and he stopped at an off-licence and bought a bottle of Bell’s whisky.

‘Where are we going?’ asked the girl.

‘Home,’ said Eddie, and he squeezed her hand as he guided her across the road and down a side street to the dark, nondescript tenement house where he’d been staying for the last week.

But she stopped outside on the pavement, refusing to go any further.

‘I need the money first,’ she said, looking him in the eye for the first time. And he saw how she looked different now out under the streetlights — not flirtatious, fluttering her eyelashes, hoping to pass for Audrey Hepburn, but shrewd and calculating — a lot older than twenty-one.

‘What money?’ he said. ‘I thought we were friends.’

‘Yeah, we’re friends,’ she said quietly, not bothering to conceal her East End accent any more. ‘But I need the money first. That’s all.’

‘How much?’ he asked, feeling flat all of a sudden, like all the air had gone out of him. He wasn’t an idiot — he’d known who she was and what they were doing, but he’d wanted the illusion too, at least until it was over. Was that so much to ask?

‘Twenty pounds,’ she said. And he reached into his pocket and counted off the money, not caring that it was more than she was worth, and then turned round, preceding her through the door and up the dimly lit stairs. And the girl followed in her high-heeled shoes, holding on to the bannister for support.

He couldn’t. However hard he tried, he couldn’t. Maybe the trying was why he couldn’t or maybe it was the alcohol or the way she’d turned the whole thing into a sordid business transaction, lying on the bed and staring out the window while he tried and tried. He remembered how he’d felt in the casino — like he had the world in the palm of his hand, like he was the fucking king of diamonds. And now here he was — failing at what every other man could do, in a seedy lodging house with a girl who didn’t care whether he lived or died. She was just like all the others. Except worse maybe — she hadn’t even asked him his name: he could read the indifference in her stupid, over-made-up eyes.

Eventually he gave up, pulled back, and poured himself another glass of whisky from the half-empty bottle on the bedside table. He drank it with his back to her, sitting on the side of the bed, listening to the sound of her washing in the sink, putting on her clothes, getting ready to go. And leave him. Just like they always did. Every last one of them. Always the same.

‘Fuck you,’ he said, turning round to look at her standing by the bed, balancing on one foot as she bent down to put on her shoes. ‘Fuck you, Audrey.’

‘Not much chance of that, pal,’ she shot back. And he could hear the contempt in her voice, see the derision in her eyes. And suddenly something inside of him broke. He’d fucking well show her he was a man. If he couldn’t show her one way, he’d show her another, and picking up the whisky bottle in a tight grip, he smashed it down on the side of her head.

She saw the blow coming at the last moment. Not in time to get out of the way, but in time to put her arm up to protect her eyes. And she didn’t fall but ran out of the door screaming, while he sat back heavily on the bed with the remains of the broken bottle in his hand and one of her high-heeled shoes lying on the floor at his feet.

They kept him in West End Central overnight, charged him with the assault, and then sent him back to Oxford in a police car, wedged between two huge uniformed officers in the back seat who said nothing all journey, just gazed straight ahead like they were a couple of stood-down robots. But Eddie enjoyed the ride, notwithstanding his cramped conditions. There was an escort car up in front with its sirens blaring and its lights flashing, clearing them a way through the traffic, and he felt important again, like he’d felt in the Monte Carlo Casino the previous evening when he’d been winning all those blackjack hands, before he got railroaded by that stupid girl. A spasm of hatred contorted Eddie’s face for a moment as he remembered the look on her face before he smashed her with the bottle. The fucking bitch had got exactly what she deserved, even if it had meant getting nabbed.

But Eddie’s anger was passing. He had a talent for living in the present and he hadn’t really expected to stay on the run forever. He hadn’t told David, but he knew that almost all escapers got caught again within a few days. He’d done well to last a week, and he looked forward to the new respect he’d have back at the gaol for his daring escape — it was almost worth the extra time they’d tack on to his sentence, if they did add any on, that is. Maybe he could make a deal — he was pretty sure the police would be interested in what he had to tell them about Davy Swain and their late-night chats about that Katya girl, even if it was that self-righteous copper, Trave, who was in charge of the investigation — he was the one who’d busted Eddie the last time, put him away for fencing stolen goods. Self-righteous or not, coppers were like everyone else — they knew which side their bread was buttered on.

And it was Trave who met them at the back door of the police station dressed in a suit that was even more creased and crumpled than the one Eddie was wearing. He looked like he hadn’t had any sleep, and he looked angry. Not self-righteous but angry. Like a man on a mission. It worried Eddie, but he wasn’t going to let it show. ‘I want my hat,’ he said, hanging back, insisting on his rights. ‘It’s mine. They took it off me in the car.’

At a nod from Trave one of the burly policemen retrieved the hat from the front seat, and Trave shoved it down hard on Eddie’s head so that it covered his eyes.

‘Welcome back, Eddie,’ he said, leading the way inside. ‘We’ve got some talking to do, you and I.’

But Trave waited to start the interview until Adam Clayton had got back from the prison. It was Clayton’s second visit there in three days, but this time he was no more successful than the first. He’d drawn a blank with all the mug shots.

‘The prison officer who checked in Earle’s friend’s no fool. I think he’d recognize him if he had the chance — I just haven’t been able to show him the right photograph. That’s all,’ said Clayton ruefully. ‘Maybe Earle’ll help us.’

‘I wouldn’t hold your breath,’ said Trave. ‘Easy Eddie’s got a big mouth when it comes to talking about himself, but I don’t see him selling his friends down the river just because we ask him to and say please.’

And so it proved, although it wasn’t for want of trying. Trave controlled his irritation and instead plied Eddie with cigarettes and coffee in the station’s only unchipped mug, and soon Eddie was singing about his daring escape — in fact once he got started they couldn’t shut him up, and Clayton’s hand started to ache as he wrote down how Eddie worked out how to use the scaffolding in the rec room and made papier-mache for the dummies in their beds, how he measured the sheets and used the broken chair as a grappling hook to get over the inner wall. But then, just when he’d got to the vital point in his story, Eddie shut up tight as a clamshell. However hard Trave pressed him, he wouldn’t say who’d helped him and David Swain over the outer wall, wouldn’t say if it was the same man who visited him at the prison, wouldn’t say who that was either, until in the end Trave lost patience.

‘Do you know how much trouble you’re in?’ asked Trave, leaning across the table into Eddie’s cigarette smoke. ‘You took Swain out to Blackwater Hall, you and your bearded friend, didn’t you?’

‘No, I told you. We split up.’

‘There wasn’t time for you to split up. You drove him out there in the getaway car, and you gave him that gun. That’s what happened, isn’t it?’

‘No.’

‘And you know what that makes you, Eddie, don’t you? An accomplice to murder.’

‘I didn’t know nothing…’ Eddie stopped in mid-sentence and swallowed hard. He took another cigarette from the packet on the table and lit it from the one he already had. Clayton noticed how his hands were shaking.

‘You knew,’ said Trave. ‘You’ve already told us how Swain kept you up at night going on and on about Katya Osman and how much he hated her…’

‘That don’t make me no accomplice,’ said Eddie, interrupting.

‘It does if you helped him. And if you want to help yourself now, you’ll tell me who put you up to this.’

‘Nobody did. I got out because I wanted to get out. I’ve done it before, you know.’

‘Not when you’re coming to the end of your sentence you haven’t, and not with help from outside. What made this time different, Eddie?’

‘Nothing made it different. I don’t like prisons. That’s all.’

‘All right, I’ll tell you what made it different. David Swain — that’s who. You didn’t need to take him along — in fact it doubled your chances of getting caught.’

‘I needed someone to be a lookout; to hold on to the ropes…’

‘No, you didn’t. You’ve already told us all about your heroics, remember — the planning, the split-second timing. And you know what — Swain didn’t get a mention. He was the invisible man. Except he was the reason you got the outside help — the rope ladders and the car and the money. Where did you get all this money, Eddie?’ asked Trave, producing a large see-through plastic evidence bag stuffed full of banknotes. ‘There’s over a thousand pounds here.’

‘Gambling. You can ask that girl. That’s why she went home with me. Because she could see how much I’d won.’

‘Home. Yes, I wondered about that. What were you doing in someone’s house, I wonder? A friend of a friend, was it?’

‘It was a bedsit. They’re safer than a hotel. People don’t ask questions.’

‘I’m sure they don’t, but whose bedsit? That’s what I’m asking.’

‘And I’m not saying. I’m not ratting on my friends. I told you that already,’ said Eddie defiantly.

‘He doesn’t need to,’ said Clayton, speaking for the first time. ‘It’s in the report from the London police. The whole house is divided up into bedsits, and they talked to a couple of the tenants. Landlord’s a John Birch. Usually collects the rent in person on the first day of the month. Doesn’t have a forwarding address…’

‘Birch or Bircher?’ asked Trave, interrupting. Clayton picked up on the sudden expectancy in his boss’s voice — he’d seen how Trave had gripped the edge of the table with his hand when he heard the name.

‘I don’t know. It could be either. Here, you can look yourself,’ said Clayton, handing Trave the document that he’d been reading from. ‘The report’s obviously been written up in a hurry.’

Trave glanced down at the page and then fixed Eddie with a hard stare. Clayton noticed how the cigarette had started to shake again in Eddie’s hand and how the colour had gone out of his cheeks.

‘Who’s Bircher?’ asked Trave.

‘I don’t know. Never heard of him.’

‘How did you find that house?’

‘A friend told me about it.’

‘A friend. What friend?’

‘I’m not saying. Like I told you: I’m no rat.’

‘Tell that to the old ladies you’ve conned out of their life savings,’ said Trave angrily. ‘Tell that to the poor girl you hit with that bottle last night.’

‘She had it coming,’ said Eddie with a sneer.

‘What? Because she has to earn her living going home with people like you? You didn’t think she’d go to the police because of who she was. That was your big mistake, wasn’t it?’

‘I don’t have to listen to this,’ said Eddie. ‘I’ve changed my mind. I want a lawyer, and until I get one I’m saying nothing.’

‘Interview suspended at twelve thirty-one,’ said Trave smoothly, looking at his watch. ‘You can have your solicitor, Eddie, but we’re not finished. I can tell you that much.’

‘Come on,’ said Trave, looking back at Clayton over his shoulder as he picked up his coat and went out the door of their office. ‘We’ve got work to do.’

‘Where are we going?’ asked Clayton, half-running down the corridor to keep up with Trave.

‘Where do you think? Archives first — to get Bircher’s picture — and then down to see your friend at the prison. I hope he’s not gone off duty by the time we get there.’

They were in luck. Bircher was on parole and so his file was live. He’d been released on licence the previous year after doing three years of a five-year stretch for running the rent-boy ring that Claes had got caught up with. He’d kept girls in another house too apparently — quite an operation. He’d stayed out of trouble since getting out, which seemed to be something of an achievement, given that he had a string of previous convictions going back to when he was eighteen a quarter of a century earlier — most for pimping, a few for low-level fraud. He was living at an address in Oxford according to the parole record — there was no mention of the tenement house in London. And pinned to the front of the file were his arrest photographs — front on and in profile. Average height, average build, average-looking except for a thick black beard.

‘Gotcha,’ said Trave under his breath as he signed for the file.

It didn’t take long for the visits officer to identify Bircher as the man who’d visited Eddie Earle on four different occasions in the month before Earle escaped, but Trave wasn’t satisfied. He insisted on seeing the prison governor and wouldn’t take no for an answer, until, half an hour later, the two policemen found themselves seated on uncomfortable hard-backed chairs in the governor’s second-floor office. Opposite them the governor, an unfriendly, balding little man, sat bolt upright with his hands palm down and immobile on the desk in front of him, looking like he was about to have his photograph taken. Behind his head, a picture of the young Queen in a pearl-white dress adorned with a blue regal sash gazed down at them, while to her right a large laminated sign ordered inmates not to smoke and to stand in the presence of the governor. Above the door a wall clock ticked loudly, measuring out the time with thick black hands.

The one window in the office looked directly down onto the concrete exercise yard in the centre of the prison, bleak and deserted in the gathering gloom of the autumn afternoon, and beyond that, above a long brick building lined with tiny barred windows, Clayton glimpsed the top of the high perimeter wall. He wondered if that was the way Earle and Swain had gone when they escaped, and was struck with admiration for a moment at their audacity in finding a way out of this hellish place.

‘What is it you want to ask me about, Inspector?’ asked the governor, looking up at the clock behind his visitors’ heads. ‘I do my rounds at two o’clock and I’m a punctual man, so please be brief.’

There was a nasal, clipped quality to the governor’s voice that stopped just short of outright rudeness. Clayton put it down to the governor’s wanting to avoid having to answer any more questions about the escape — it wasn’t hard to imagine that he’d already taken a lot of flak over what had happened, and he didn’t look like someone who’d welcome being in the line of fire. But Trave wasn’t in the least deterred — Clayton couldn’t remember ever seeing his boss this fired up before.

‘I want to ask you about David Swain and Edward Earle, the two prisoners who escaped last weekend,’ said Trave. ‘I want to know who put them in a cell together. Whose decision was it?’

‘It was nobody’s decision,’ the governor shot back without hesitating. ‘It was standard administration. Swain’s cellmate was sent to the punishment block because he was caught fighting, and so Earle replaced him. It’s not our practice to keep cells in single occupation, Inspector. Space is at a premium here.’

‘But why Earle? Why put a known escaper in with a maximum-security prisoner?’

‘There are a lot of high-security prisoners here. Earle had to go somewhere.’

‘Why? Why couldn’t he stay where he was? Why not put a new arrival with Swain?’

‘Because we didn’t. That’s why. We move prisoners around. It’s our policy. I don’t know what you’re implying, Inspector, but…’

‘I’m not implying anything,’ said Trave interrupting. ‘Two men have escaped from your prison. One of them is a convicted murderer who’s still on the run, and I need to know how they came to be put together. That’s all.’

‘And I’ve told you how,’ said the governor, rising from his chair. ‘Now, if you’ll excuse me…’

But Trave stayed anchored to his seat, ignoring the governor’s attempt to terminate the interview.

‘How many visits are convicted prisoners allowed each month?’ he asked.

‘Two,’ said the governor, reluctantly resuming his seat. ‘Two every four weeks.’

‘So why did Earle receive four last month?’

‘I don’t know,’ said the governor, sounding genuinely surprised. ‘It’s the first I’ve heard of it. If it’s true, there must have been some kind of mix-up.’ Clayton noticed how the governor’s cheeks had become suffused with a deep red flush and wondered whether this arose from embarrassment or anger or a combination of the two.

‘It is true,’ said Trave, pushing his advantage. ‘Your visits officer just confirmed it to us. He showed us the book.’

‘Well it won’t happen again. I can assure you of that.’

‘I’m sure it won’t, except that it sounds a bit like locking the stable door after the horse has bolted. Have you any idea what harm these mix-ups of yours have caused?’ asked Trave, leaning forward suddenly across the desk and giving his anger free rein. ‘If they are mix-ups… I haven’t even started looking into how Swain and Earle got out of your so-called maximum-security prison…’

‘What do you mean by that?’ asked the governor, whose plump hands had now curled into tight fists as he retreated back into his chair in the face of Trave’s attack.

‘What do you think I mean?’ Trave shot back, returning the governor’s hostile stare.

The governor opened his mouth to respond but then thought better of it, breathing deeply in an effort to regain his self-control.

‘I don’t know why you have chosen to be so offensive, Inspector,’ he said at last in a self-consciously dignified voice as he got up from his chair and went over to the door. ‘But it is not conduct that I will tolerate in my office. Please make an appointment if you have any further questions. Or even better, put them in writing.’ He now had the door open and stood waiting for them to leave.

Outside Trave wrinkled his nose in disgust. ‘Prig,’ he said, spitting out the word like it was a bad taste. ‘Another one who knows more than he’s saying.’

Clayton followed his boss to the car, wondering where they were going next. He soon found out: instead of returning to the police station, Trave drove out of town on the Cowley Road, pressing his foot down on the gas as they weaved in and out of the busy afternoon traffic.

‘Shouldn’t we have another go at Eddie first, now we’ve got the ID on Bircher?’ Clayton suggested, holding on to the dashboard to prevent himself flying forwards as Trave came to a sudden halt at a red light, narrowly missing a car coming from the right.

‘No, let him stew for a bit,’ said Trave in a tone that brooked no opposition. ‘Claes is the connection — it’s him we need to talk to now.’

‘Connection? So you really think Claes used Bircher to spring Swain out of gaol just so as to set him up for Katya’s murder?’ asked Clayton doubtfully.

‘Maybe,’ said Trave, sounding the opposite of doubtful. ‘And maybe Claes wasn’t acting on his own either.’

‘You mean Osman was in on it too?’

Trave nodded.

‘But why would they go to all this trouble to frame Swain?’ asked Clayton. ‘Katya was sick, mentally unbalanced. They could easily have faked a suicide.’

‘Sure, but that would’ve given me the opportunity to go straight for Osman’s jugular, wouldn’t it? He’s got too much to hide to risk that, whereas this way Swain’s the focus of the investigation. And if I start asking any awkward questions out at Blackwater, all Osman’s got to do is have a chat with the chief constable and I’m off the case.’

Trave glanced over at his companion, catching the look of disbelief on his face. ‘Osman did it to prove he could do it. That’s what I think,’ he said quietly. ‘It’s the same reason he does everything. To show he can.’

Clayton bit his lip and said nothing. He didn’t agree at all with his boss’s handle on the case, and he didn’t like the hard set of Trave’s jaw, the white-knuckled grip with which he held the steering wheel, the angry edge to his voice. As far as Clayton could see, there was precious little evidence against Claes and none whatsoever against Osman. Trave wanting him to be a murderer didn’t make him one. All the evidence pointed toward David Swain, and this surprise visit to Blackwater Hall felt like at best a wild-goose chase, at worst a serious mistake. But Trave was the man in charge — it was his call where they went next and when. Clayton had infuriated his boss once already by questioning his methods, and he wasn’t going to do it a second time unless he had to. Clayton was independent-minded, which was why Trave liked him as an assistant, but he was no mutineer.

And so he kept his peace and hoped for the best as Trave made a sharp left turn and headed up the road toward Blackwater Church, where it stood silver-stoned and serene at the top of the hill, looking down on the lush green landscape all around.