The King of Diamonds

CHAPTER 27

Claes rounded the corner and eased the Bentley back into fourth gear, increasing his speed as the road bent back around the hill toward Blackwater village. The trees that loomed like black ghostly shadows out of the fog now gave way to open fields covered in low-hanging mist, and Claes knew that Vanessa couldn’t be too far ahead.

His anger beat with a quickening pulse inside his brain as he peered forward, searching for the tail lights of her car in the haze. He gripped the steering wheel tight with both hands and imagined gripping her neck the same way, feeling for her windpipe with his thumbs so that he could slowly choke the life out of her as he watched the terror emptying from her eyes. That was the least she deserved for seducing Titus, stealing him away with her woman’s tricks — low-cut dresses and flickering eyelids. Titus deserved to suffer too. Claes wasn’t a fool: he’d already guessed that Titus intended to throw him over once he’d got the Trave woman ensconced as his wife at Blackwater Hall. But Titus could wait. First Claes was going to deal with the woman. He knew that he should have gone after her before now, once he’d realized that she had got Titus bewitched. But instead he’d sat on his hands like a fool and done nothing while she went off to court and told the world about what that bitch, Katya, had said. And now she had something from Katya’s room. What it was he didn’t know, but he’d have to make sure he got it back before the police arrived.

Perhaps he’d make her talk, tease her with the gun and let her babble a bit with stupid pleas for mercy before he killed her. A faraway look came into Claes’s eyes for a moment as he remembered old times in other countries where he’d had the law on his side. But here it was different, he remembered with a jolt. He couldn’t torture her or strangle her or bludgeon her to death. He couldn’t even shoot her. Not with no one to pin the murder on. He’d have to content himself with running her off the road, making it look like she’d got in an accident in the fog. The weather was on his side at least. It’d be easy once he’d caught up with her — child’s play.

Now he was rushing through Blackwater village and could see tail lights up ahead. It had to be her — he could make out the domed roof of her Citroen 2CV, and he sensed she was going as fast as her little car would go. But not fast enough: the Bentley had twice as much horsepower. He only had to apply the slightest pressure to the accelerator and he was practically on her bumper. He imagined her terror as she kept glancing in her rear-view mirror, hoping it wasn’t him, knowing it was. They were approaching the crossroads at the end of the village — the same place where David Swain had hijacked a car five months earlier. Beyond, the road turned sharply westward and the woods began again — just the place to stage a fatal accident far from watching eyes.

Claes had expected Vanessa to slow down at the junction, but he had done the job of terrifying her too well. She shot across the crossroads, and automatically he followed. Too late he realized his mistake. A heavily laden lorry coming up out of the fog from the right just missed Vanessa’s car, but Claes wasn’t so lucky. The collision was immediate and overwhelming as the lorry drove through and over the Bentley. Even if he had been wearing a seat belt, Claes would have stood almost no chance. Without one he died instantly with his last, highly uncharacteristic sensation of astonishment etched across what was left of his pale, twisted face.

Clayton got to the crash site moments later, but he didn’t stay long with the wreckage. Leaving Wale to radio in a report to the police station, he delivered the shocked, white-faced lorry driver into the care of the old married couple who ran the grocery store at the crossroads and then squatted down beside Claes’s corpse, staring for a moment into the dead man’s wide-open eyes. And then, almost as an afterthought, he leant down and felt inside Claes’s pockets. There was nothing on the right side, but in the left jacket pocket he found a snub-nosed, silver-plated revolver. It was a Colt Detective Special — a different gun to the one Claes had had before. Clayton didn’t need to check to know it was loaded.

‘What do you want with that?’ asked Wale, looking down at the gun over Clayton’s shoulder. ‘It’s evidence.’

‘None of your business,’ said Clayton, straightening up and returning to their car. ‘Did you get through to the station?’

‘Yeah,’ said Wale. ‘But don’t think I won’t tell Macrae about that gun,’ he added. ‘Because I will.’

‘Good,’ said Clayton viciously, swinging the car into a violent three-point turn before heading back toward the Hall at breakneck speed.

Up ahead, around the turn in the road, Vanessa was entirely unaware of what had happened back at the crossroads. All she knew was that there had been lights blazing into her car from behind and then from the right, and suddenly they were all gone. Now she was alone in the mist, careering along a deserted road with the car’s accelerator pedal pinned to the floor beneath her foot. If it had been Claes behind her, she didn’t know what had happened to him, but she wasn’t going to go back and find out. Instead she leant forward in her seat, yearning for her first glimpse of the spires of Oxford.

She was sure she didn’t want to go back to her flat. That was where Claes would come looking for her. Instead she realized that her unconscious mind had already made a decision about her destination: she was heading back to her old home in North Oxford, the one she’d left behind for a new life two years earlier. It was Bill who had sent her into the jaws of death to look for this diary, so let him be the first one to see whether the risk had been worth taking.

She parked the car with a screech of the brakes and then, clutching the diary in one hand, she rang the doorbell over and over again until her husband answered. And, once inside the house, she fell rather than sat on the old sofa in the living room. She was shaking uncontrollably, and she spoke in a rush with her words tumbling over one another as she told her husband all that had happened.

Trave felt dreadful, sick with remorse. He wrapped a blanket around Vanessa and poured her a glass of brandy and wondered how on earth he could have put the person he loved most in all the world into such terrible danger. It was worse than what Jacob had done to Katya — much worse because Trave had the benefit of hindsight. He tried to apologize, but Vanessa waved his inadequate words away. She felt at sea in a storm of emotions — remembered fear; something that bore a strange resemblance to happiness about being back in her old home, or perhaps it was just relief; and above all, a consuming curiosity about what was contained in the little red book that she had taken such a terrible risk to obtain.

With a trembling hand she extracted Katya’s diary from inside Alice in Wonderland and handed it to her husband. ‘You read it,’ she told him. ‘Start at the beginning and tell me what she wrote.’ And she laid her head back against the sofa cushions and closed her eyes, preparing to listen.

Trave soon found that the first half of the diary had been written years before. Alongside the entries there were pencil sketches of the boathouse and the Hall and of David and later Ethan, and a particularly good one of Osman sitting at his desk with a benevolent smile on his face and a half-smoked cigar burning between his fingers. Then, after Ethan’s death, there were several pages of rapid writing in which Katya had recorded her intense distress, and after that the diary was silent for more than two years until it began again the previous August.

Trave found it hard at first to decipher Katya’s tiny, spidery writing, but gradually he got used to it, and his voice quickened as he read:

August 17th, 1960:

I think it’s time to start writing in this diary again; time to start keeping a record. I’ve neglected it far too long, just like I’ve neglected myself. It’s time for turning a new leaf, beginning a new page…

I saw Ethan’s brother, Jacob, yesterday. We sat in a cafe in St Clement’s and he told me things about Franz that made me want to be sick. He showed me pictures of Franz with those Nazi pigs and it was like I was in two places at once — in Belgium with those poor people being rounded up and sent off in cattle trucks and here in Oxford drinking sweet coffee in the sunshine. And I thought of how I lived with Franz all those years when I was a girl and I felt unclean, like I could never wash the shame of it away. Not ever.

And suddenly I knew it wasn’t David who had killed Ethan; it was Franz. I don’t know why I knew. I just did. It was like I was Saint Paul on the road to Damascus. The scales were lifted from my eyes and I could see. I was in the same place, the same cafe, and the earth was going round the sun, but the earth was different and the sun was too. Everything was changed.

But then Jacob made it worse. He said my uncle was involved with Franz, that they had killed his parents and other Jews for their diamonds, and that they’d killed Ethan too when he found out about Franz. He told me that they’d set up David to take the blame. And I didn’t believe him; I couldn’t believe him; I didn’t want to. Titus is my uncle. He brought me up; gave me a home. Without him I would have nothing. But then Jacob told me about a letter that Ethan had sent him from Munich just before his death saying he’d discovered something vitally important, and I remembered how Titus had got me to leave with Jana to go shopping before Ethan came back. Was he trying to get me out of the way? Is he part of a conspiracy? Could he be? I don’t know now. All I know is I have to find out.

‘I’ll skip the next bit,’ said Trave, looking up. ‘It’s just a list of names — German officials that Claes was involved with in Belgium. Jacob must have told Katya about them.’

‘There’s no proof in any of this, you know,’ said Vanessa, catching Trave’s eye. ‘Not against Titus.’

Trave didn’t respond, just nodded, and then went back to the diary.

Jacob said he had already tried to break into the house to find evidence but he’d got nowhere — Franz had been on to him as soon as he came through the window of Titus’s study. He told me it had to be someone on the inside looking. He said it was worth the risk because the proof was there. He was sure of it. Proof of what they’d done — to his and Ethan’s parents, to Ethan, to David. And I didn’t have to think before I agreed. It was easy. My life has a purpose again. And I’ll use this diary to record what I find. I’ll hide it when I’m not writing in it. In the old place. For the first time in as long as I can remember I am almost happy.

Trave turned the page, going on to the next entry:

August 20th:

I was sick with stopping the drugs for two days but now I’m better. I closed the door and said goodbye but then I realized there was nothing to say goodbye to. These people I know in Oxford — they’re not my friends. And I don’t need friends because now I have my mission. I can’t bring Ethan back — I know that — but I can do something for him — I can bring him justice. And justice for David too, except I don’t want to think about that, about the way he looked at me when I gave evidence against him at the trial. I didn’t know, David. I didn’t know…

‘Go forward,’ interrupted Vanessa impatiently, sitting up. ‘Read what happened at Blackwater. I need to know.’

Trave nodded, skimming across several pages and then started reading again:

August 24th:

I have begun the search and so far I have found nothing. I took Titus’s keyring and searched his desk but found only boring business letters and stationery. And today I phoned Jacob like we agreed and told him he must be patient. I will not call again until I have found something — it is too much of a risk. Still, I am sure my uncle has no idea of what I am about. He seems pleased to have me home; it’s as if he wants to believe I’m a reformed character. But he’s obviously got his doubts — says he’ll have to put some weight on my bones and colour in my cheeks before he takes me out into society which is fine with me. I’ve got better things to do than make small talk with bigwigs. I don’t know about Franz — he watches me, but then again he watches everyone. Who wouldn’t with secrets like he has! God, I hate him. And his sister too, muttering in Dutch over her stupid crucifix. I wonder what she knows…

August 25th:

Franz and Titus were arguing in the dining room. Titus has a girlfriend in Oxford, the wife of that policeman who put David away.

Trave looked up and caught Vanessa’s eye and dropped his gaze immediately. His wife had seemed so familiar sitting across from him on the sofa like she used to do that he’d forgotten for a moment the great divide that now separated them from each other. He bit his lip and went back to the diary:

Franz doesn’t like it; says a policeman’s wife is a bad choice. I wonder why! Of course Franz would hate any woman Titus brought home: everyone knows what he is but no one’s going to admit it. More lies. This house is built on them.

August 28th:

I hate Franz. I hate the way he watches me all the time, the way he sneers at me like he knows what I’m looking for and knows I won’t find anything. I can’t eat and I can’t sleep and I want to go back to Oxford and get fixed and forget, but I can’t do that either. I promised myself and I promised Jacob.

I look at my uncle and I can’t believe he could be involved. He’s always been kind to me; he often treats me like I’m his daughter. But if Franz is guilty then perhaps he is too. I have to know one way or the other. There’s a safe in Titus’s bedroom behind a picture. Yesterday I saw it open. I was out in the corridor and Titus had his back to me. He didn’t see me. I know he didn’t. And I went in there afterwards while he and Franz and Jana were downstairs eating lunch. I said I wasn’t hungry. That much was true. I tried all the different number combinations — every birthday, every important date I could think of, forwards and backwards, but nothing worked. I need to see him open it. That’s my only chance.

August 30th:

Twice now I’ve risked everything and come away with nothing, and I can’t do this any more. I know I can’t. Yesterday I lay under Titus’s bed for hours and he didn’t go near the safe — not once — but today I was lying there in the dust half asleep, daydreaming of Ethan, and suddenly Titus came in and went straight to the picture. I pushed up the counterpane and looked, but he was between me and the safe and I couldn’t see the numbers when he opened it. My heart was beating so hard and I was so frightened, and he looked round once and I thought he’d seen me, but then he left. And afterwards my legs were shaking so bad I could hardly make it out of the room. It’s so hard and I am so alone. I wish Ethan was here to tell me what to do because I don’t know about my uncle any more. Maybe he had nothing to do with killing Ethan; maybe Jacob’s got it wrong. Maybe it’s all Franz, but I can’t get into his bedroom. He keeps it locked. Day and night.

‘I told you,’ said Vanessa, nodding. ‘It’s not Titus; it’s Claes and his weird sister who are the guilty ones. But Katya must have found something. Otherwise they wouldn’t have killed her. Can’t you find what it was? It must be in there somewhere.’

Trave turned several pages and suddenly looked excited. ‘Here it is,’ he said, and began reading again:

September 2nd:

This has been the longest day of my life. I found what I was looking for and then I lost it because I was a fool, and now I am a prisoner here in my own room. And I will die here. I know I will. And be forgotten. Like Ethan. Unless maybe someone finds this record after I am dead. I must write down everything that’s happened while I remember, while I can still write. Thank God they don’t know about my diary. I don’t think they even suspect that it exists.

I was sitting here this morning in despair, and I took out a letter-writing pad from the top drawer of my desk to write a letter to Jacob to say it was over, because I’d gone as far as I could and found nothing. And the sun was shining down on me so brightly — it was like it was mocking me, except it wasn’t. I looked down out of the glare and it was showing me the outline of someone’s writing on the first page of the pad. And straight away I knew it was Ethan’s — even though the writing was only a faint indentation. I recognized his big, bold letters, and it was like he was speaking to me, like he’s been listening when I talk to him at night.

‘Dearest Katya, I’ve just got back. I need to see you. Meet me at the boathouse at five. Ethan.’ That was what he’d written. I looked at it and then I realized what it was. It was the note he must have written to me when he arrived back from West Germany on the day he died, or rather a copy of it that he had made unintentionally when his words indented through the thin paper as he wrote. I know what happened now. He must have come up to my room looking for me as soon as he got back, and then, when he didn’t find me, he took the pad out of the drawer to write the note, and when he was done, he put it back where he’d found it. And it’s been there ever since, waiting for me — Ethan’s message to me from beyond the grave.

And I knew straight away what happened afterwards too. Franz found the note taped to my door and he realized his opportunity. He tore off the top of the note and then used the bottom half to lure David out to the boathouse. So simple and yet so ingenious. And the plan worked beautifully. Ethan’s dead and David’s in prison serving a life sentence for something he never did.

And I realized something else, something terrible. Franz must have kept Ethan prisoner in the boathouse all through the afternoon waiting for David to come. He couldn’t have killed Ethan before or the time of death wouldn’t match. My darling was alive all day while I was out shopping. Shopping! I couldn’t bear it. I rushed out of the house. I needed to think. I ran through the woods to the boathouse. That was where Franz had to have kept him. Perhaps Ethan had found a way to leave me some note, some sign before he died. I searched in every corner, every cranny, every crevice, but there was nothing, and then I walked back down the path through the trees, back the way I’d come. Not once but twice. I went down on my hands and knees in the undergrowth but still there was nothing. Nothing at all. And so I went and sat in the boathouse, laying my head on the table where I’d sat with Ethan so many times before. I remembered the past and I forgot about time, and it was like Ethan was alive again, just beyond the reach of my arms. But then I heard voices outside on the steps and there was nowhere to hide when they opened the door.

Trave paused, glancing up at Vanessa as he turned the page. She was wild-eyed, sitting forward on the edge of the sofa only inches away from him with her hands clasped tight together in front of her chest. There was nothing he could say to comfort her, and so with a heavy heart he turned back to the diary and resumed his reading.