The King of Diamonds

CHAPTER 29

Superintendent Creswell waited a moment to make sure he had his temper firmly under control and then turned round a large, green, leather-bound book and pushed it across his desk so that it was right in front of Inspector Macrae, who sat perched on the edge of his chair with a pained expression on his stretched, pale face.

‘This is Titus Osman’s accounts book for the last four years,’ said Creswell in a matter-of-fact tone of voice. ‘And here on the right is a page entirely devoted to you.’ Creswell tapped his forefinger where the name MACRAE was written in capital letters. ‘As you can see, there are three entries — fifteen hundred pounds on 4 October of last year, the day after Mr Swain was charged; five hundred pounds on 2 February, just after his trial began; and then another five hundred pounds just over a week ago. What was that last payment for, Inspector — seems a bit early for a third instalment?’ asked Creswell, looking up.

‘None of this has anything to do with me, and you know it doesn’t,’ said Macrae defiantly. ‘I’ve never taken any money off anyone.’

‘And nor has Constable Wale, I suppose. Adam Clayton tells me that Mr Osman shouted down at him — “Help me. That’s what I pay you for” — just before he died. Why would Mr Osman have said that, I wonder?’

‘How the hell should I know? I wasn’t there. Maybe he was talking about his taxes.’

‘Oh, please, Inspector. You can do better than that.’

‘No, I can’t,’ said Macrae angrily. ‘And I don’t have to. You’ve got nothing on me. Nothing!’

‘So you won’t mind us taking a look in your bank account then? You’re quite sure we won’t find any large deposits round these dates?’ asked Creswell, pointing at the ledger.

‘You can do what you bloody well like,’ shouted Macrae, getting up, but Creswell sensed a burgeoning anxiety beneath his subordinate’s outward bravado.

‘All right, Inspector. We’ll do just that, and in the meantime you’re suspended on full pay. I suggest you enjoy the money while you can,’ said Creswell, nodding a curt dismissal.

Macrae stood his ground for a moment, but in the end thought better of giving vent to his rage. He opened the door to leave, but then, just as he was about to go out, Creswell called him back.

‘I don’t know if you’ve heard about the new evidence that Bill Trave has dug up, but it appears that David Swain may well be an innocent man. And I warn you: if I find out that you or Wale laid a finger on that boy to extort his confession it won’t just be your job I’ll be after. You may have got away with using the thumbscrews in your last job, but you won’t get away with it down here. You understand that, don’t you, Mr Macrae?’ asked Creswell, emphasizing every word.

Macrae shot a venomous look at the superintendent and then turned away, almost colliding with Clayton in the doorway. Macrae stared at his erstwhile junior with undisguised hatred for a moment and then suddenly put out his hand and shoved Clayton out of his way. And after that, without a backward look, he hurried away down the corridor and disappeared around the corner.

‘Are you all right?’ asked Creswell, coming out from behind his desk and helping Clayton to his feet.

‘I’m fine,’ said Clayton, brushing himself down. ‘I was just taken by surprise, sir. That’s all.’

‘Well, Macrae won’t be working here again if I’ve got anything to do with it,’ said Creswell angrily. ‘He can go and join Wale down at Land’s End Police Station if he ever gets his job back.’

‘Will he?’ asked Clayton. ‘Get his job back, I mean?’

‘I don’t know. Depends what’s in his bank statements — the entries in Osman’s accounts book aren’t enough on their own, but I expect you’ve already worked that out for yourself. We can’t prove there’s not someone else called Macrae who did business with Osman, even though I’m sure it’s him. And of course we’ll never know if he was in on Osman’s plot to frame Swain for killing his niece. What do you think?’ asked Creswell. ‘You were there for Swain’s interview.’

‘I don’t know,’ said Clayton, frowning. ‘Macrae and Wale definitely did stuff to Swain, just like Swain said at his trial — not that we can prove it, but that doesn’t mean Macrae knew Swain was innocent. If I had to guess, I’d say Macrae thought he was guilty and Osman paid him for doing a good job making Swain confess. But I could be wrong. It’s difficult to get a clear handle on a lot of what’s gone on, sir, to be honest with you.’

Creswell nodded and then sighed heavily, sitting back in his chair. ‘It was damn brave what you did yesterday, Adam. I’m going to make sure you get a commendation from the commissioner for it. That Mendel boy owes you his life.’

‘I think he knows that. He told me how grateful he is when I went to see him in his cell last night. It’s funny — it’s like what happened with Osman yesterday has knocked the wind out of him, at least for a bit. He couldn’t stop talking when Inspector Trave and I saw him in his flat. He was really obnoxious actually. But now he seems to be finding it hard to string two sentences together.’

‘Well, seeing death changes people — even the deaths of people we hate,’ said Creswell with a sigh. ‘And Osman’s death is going to catch up with you too, you know, sooner or later. You did what you had to do, but that doesn’t change the fact that you’re the one who fired the bullet. That’s what I wanted to see you about actually. Don’t you think you should take some time off? Maybe talk through what happened with someone qualified to help. There are good people I can recommend you to if you’re willing. You can have as long as you need.’

‘Thanks, but I’d prefer not to, sir, if you don’t mind, at least for now,’ said Clayton, biting his lip. ‘It’s work that’s keeping me going at the minute.’

Creswell drummed his fingers on his desk, trying to make a decision. ‘Well, maybe you know best,’ he said eventually. ‘God knows, I’m going to need all the help I can get if we’re going to save Mr Swain from his appointment with the hereafter. Thinking he’s innocent is one thing; convincing those old judges up in London is quite another. If there’s one thing they don’t like doing, it’s interfering with a jury verdict.’

‘But surely there’s the new evidence for them to look at,’ said Clayton, looking surprised. ‘We’ve got Katya’s diary now, and then Osman pretty well admitted her murder to Jacob in the bedroom before I got there. Haven’t you seen Jacob’s statement?’

‘Yes. And it’s not enough. Like it or not, Jacob’s not a credible witness. You can’t get away from the fact that he had an oversized grudge against Osman — he broke into the man’s house three times; he threatened Osman and Claes’s sister with a gun; and he’s also got no corroboration. In fact, as far as I can make out, the only thing you and the rest of the people in the courtyard heard was Osman shouting at the top of his voice that he was an innocent man when Jacob had a gun to his head. And as for Katya’s diary, well maybe it exonerates Swain of the first murder, assuming you accept what a dead girl with a drug history has said about a note that no longer exists. And it certainly shows Claes and Osman had a motive to get rid of Katya, but it doesn’t do anything to change the fact that Swain had a strong motive too and that he was there in the girl’s room with a gun at right around the time she died.

‘It’s a pity that ballistics can’t do any better with Claes’s gun. “It might be the one that killed Katya; it might not be” — it’s exactly what they said about the gun Swain had. I just wish Osman’s safe had contained something to incriminate its owner with the murders. We need more than a dead man’s whisper, Detective. That’s the truth. Is Claes’s sister still saying nothing?’

‘Yes; it’s like she’s had her tongue cut out,’ said Clayton, sounding exasperated. ‘I’ve tried everything — shouting at her, appealing to her conscience — but all she does is finger her bloody crucifix and look at the floor.’

‘Do you think Macrae could have interfered with her? I told him to stay out of it yesterday.’

‘No, I don’t think so. She’s doing it herself; she doesn’t need any help,’ said Clayton, shaking his head.

‘Well, we can’t hold her indefinitely. Try and think of something to get her to talk. Like I said, we need something more.’

Clayton nodded, trying to look hopeful when he felt nothing of the kind. The superintendent’s incisive analysis of the state of play had left him feeling dismally deflated.

‘Have you heard from Trave?’ asked Creswell as Clayton turned to go.

‘No — nothing since yesterday.’

‘Well, ask him if he’s got any ideas when you get the chance. He’s more likely than anyone to think of something. Swain getting a pardon is the only way he’s going to get his job back.’

‘I don’t really think that that’s what’s motivating him,’ said Clayton, but Creswell had already gone back to his correspondence and was no longer listening.

Despite numerous phone calls and two abortive visits to the house on Hill Road, Clayton heard nothing from Trave for the next two days except for a cryptic telephone message left at the front desk of the police station on the Saturday morning telling Clayton to hold on to Jana Claes at all costs. Clayton complied, even though Jana continued to resist all his attempts to make her talk, instead remaining entirely mute, with the same faraway expression in her eyes that she had worn ever since she’d been told about her brother’s death.

Finally, late on Sunday afternoon, Trave called.

‘How have you been holding up, Adam?’ he asked. ‘Are you all right?’

‘I’m okay,’ said Clayton. He was touched by his old boss’s concern, but he saw no point in burdening him with a tale of the sleepless nights that he had been suffering since Osman’s death. ‘Where have you been?’ he asked.

‘Israel. I just got back. It was Vanessa’s idea, and now I’m dog-tired and flat broke.’ Trave laughed — he sounded happier than he’d done in months. ‘Did you get my message?’ he asked. ‘Have you still got Claes’s sister?’

‘Yes, until tomorrow.’

‘Good. Has she said anything?’

‘No.’

‘All right, meet me at the station in fifteen minutes. I need to talk to you.’ And Trave rang off before Clayton could ask him any more questions.

Trave was already waiting in what had once been his office when Clayton arrived. It was still the weekend, and there were few people around. Trave started talking before Clayton had even had a chance to sit down.

‘I want you to let me interview her,’ he said. ‘Right now.’

‘Don’t be silly. You know I can’t do that,’ said Clayton, taken aback by the request. ‘You’re not a policeman any more. You’ve got no right to talk to her in here. And besides, if she says anything it’ll be completely inadmissible.’

‘It doesn’t matter,’ said Trave urgently. ‘It’s not evidence against her I’m after; it’s evidence against her brother. And once she hears about who he is, she may tell us what he did to Katya.’

‘What do you mean “who he is”? Who is he?’

‘Let me talk to her,’ said Trave, ignoring the question. ‘We’re going to need more than Katya’s diary and a bit of hearsay from Osman to get Swain off. You know that.’

‘Show me what you’ve got, and I’ll get her to talk,’ suggested Clayton.

But Trave rejected the compromise: ‘It’s got to be me. I know how to play her,’ he said. ‘We’ve gone too far to stop now, Adam. Surely you can see that. You’ve got to let me see it through.’

Reluctantly, Clayton nodded. It was entirely against his better judgement, but he knew he had no choice but to go with Trave. He’d broken far too many rules already to baulk at breaking one more now.

They interviewed Jana in the same little room at the back of the police station where David Swain had made his confession four months before.

Escorted by Clayton, she shuffled down the corridor from her cell and sat down heavily in the chair opposite Trave. She looked very different to when Trave had last seen her. Her greying hair was no longer tied up in a bun at the back of her head but instead hung loose and unkempt around her shoulders, and her black dress was wrinkled and stained. There were dark circles under her eyes, which had lit up in brief recognition when she first saw Trave but now filmed over again as she retreated back into herself and dropped her gaze to the floor.

‘You remember me,’ said Trave, speaking in a reasonable, friendly voice as if they were meeting casually in a coffee-shop somewhere and not in the back of a police station. ‘You remember how we talked after Katya died. You remember how you told me that you never took communion, never went to confession in your church, but you wouldn’t tell me why. Well, I think you should tell me why now, Miss Claes. I think it’ll make you feel better. I think deep down you want to say what happened to that poor girl but you’re just too frightened. Isn’t that what you feel?’

Jana did not respond, but Clayton saw with surprise that Trave had got her attention. She was looking in his direction and had taken tight hold of the silver crucifix that was hanging from her neck.

‘I don’t think you knew what Titus Osman and your brother were going to do,’ Trave went on in the same quiet, mesmeric tone. ‘Not until after it happened, when Franz came and told you. So you see: it wasn’t your fault. You didn’t know; just like you didn’t know who your brother really was. And that’s what I’m here to tell you, Jana. It’ll help you if you know. I really think it will.’

‘Know what? What do you know about him?’ Jana burst out. She sounded scared, and her voice was hoarse, raw from not having been used in days.

‘Did you go with Franz when he left Belgium in 1943?’ Trave asked, answering Jana’s question with a question of his own.

She shook her head.

‘But you know he went to Germany, don’t you?’

Jana nodded.

‘Do you know what he was doing there?’

Jana gave another shake of her head, almost imperceptible this time, but her eyes were wide open now, fixed on Trave across the table.

‘I thought not. All right, let me tell you. He had a job, an important government job. It was in a place called Referat IV B4 of the Reich Main Security Office at 116 Kurfurstenstrasse in Berlin. That was the department dealing with what the Nazis called Jewish affairs, and your brother was working there for a man called Eichmann, Lieutenant Colonel Adolf Eichmann. Have you heard of him, Miss Claes? I’m sure you have — he’s been in the news a lot recently because he’s about to go on trial in Jerusalem. He’s charged with being the chief organizer of the Holocaust, the extermination of the Jewish people

…’

‘No.’ It was a cry more than a word, torn from deep inside Jana’s chest.

But Trave ignored the interruption. ‘Yes, Miss Claes. When he got to Berlin, your brother was given the rank of Sturmbannfuhrer, a major in the SS. You couldn’t hold that rank if you were a foreigner, but then that wasn’t a problem because he wasn’t really Belgian, was he, Miss Claes? He was German just like you. And so in late 1943 he went back to being Franz Kleissen, which was the name he gave up when he went with you to Belgium in 1931. I don’t know why you both emigrated from Germany in the first place or changed your surname from Kleissen to a Belgian name. Perhaps it was to get work during the Depression. Anyway, it doesn’t matter now. Franz Claes became Sturmbannfuhrer Kleissen and went to work killing Jews, packing them up in cattle trains and sending them to Auschwitz from all over Europe, not just Belgium.’

‘You’re lying. It’s not true,’ screamed Jana, getting up from the table. Her fists were clenched, and Clayton thought for a moment that she was going to attack Trave. But Trave remained unperturbed.

‘I’m afraid it is true,’ he said. ‘And I have documents and photographs to prove it. Look, here’s your brother in full uniform standing beside Eichmann. The man on the right is Heinrich Muller, head of the Gestapo. They’re outside SS headquarters in Berlin. And in this photograph he’s in Auschwitz itself with the commandant, Rudolf Hoss. They’re standing on the platform at the end of the railroad track, and those are Jews in the background from a sonderkommando, collecting the belongings of the men, women, and children who have just been led off to their deaths. It was in Auschwitz apparently that your brother suffered the injury to the left side of his face. One of the prisoners attacked him during an inspection and was hanged for it afterwards, so it’s not a war wound at all. And in this photograph your brother’s at the camp entrance: you see the sign over the gate, do you, Miss Claes? ARBEIT MACHT FREI — ‘Work makes you free’? It’s him, Jana. There’s no doubt about it. Here, take your time. Look.’

Trave paused, fanning out the photographs across the table.

‘Where did you get these?’ asked Jana, subsiding back into her seat.

‘In Jerusalem. I flew there two days ago to see the investigators preparing the Eichmann trial and they gave them to me. They matched them with your brother straight away when I gave them his photograph and told them what I knew about his background. The Israelis would have loved to put him on trial too if they could have found him, but I told them he’s dead now, beyond their vengeance. No one can bring him back, and no one can change what he did. But there is something you can do, one small thing to make amends — now, before it’s too late.’

‘What? What can I do?’ asked Jana. Her voice was barely more than a whisper.

‘You can tell the truth. There’s a man up in London who’s going to hang for a crime you know your brother committed. But if you tell the truth about what happened to Katya, he can go back to his family and have his life back. And you won’t have to live with the guilt of his death for the rest of your life.’

‘What will happen to me if I tell you?’ asked Jana nervously. ‘I kept her locked in. I did not tell the truth.’

‘I’ll do my best for you,’ said Trave. ‘But I think it’s your immortal soul you should be concerned about right now, not the British courts. You don’t need me to tell you that you’re going to need absolution if you’re to have any chance of eternal salvation, and for that you must repent; you must tell the truth. Once we’re done here, I promise I’ll bring you a priest, and you can make your peace with God. But first you must save the living. It’s time, Miss Claes. It’s time.’

Trave was silent, waiting to see what effect his words would have on Jana. He wondered if she’d understood him — he’d deliberately used the ornate language of her religion to appeal to her conscience. She closed her eyes tight shut and opened them again and looked down at the crucifix in her hand. And then she took a deep breath, and her body trembled as she exhaled and began to speak:

‘Katya was sleeping. Franz came to me; he said: “Stay in your room.” And I did what Franz told me to do because he is my brother. Then I heard a bang — a shot from a gun. Franz came again and said he had to do it, because Katya was bad; she wanted to hurt us if she could. And I was crying. But Franz said I must say nothing. He made me promise. He said that a man is coming and I must stay inside, lock my door. And then later the man came and there was more shooting, and running — running all over the house. And then Titus told me the same thing — I must say nothing. And I did what they said because I was frightened, and because I promised, and because it was too late, too late.’ Jana began to cry as she repeated the words. Great shuddering sobs shook her body as the floodgates of emotion broke inside her and she wept for what she’d done.

‘I did not know,’ she said through her tears. ’You must believe me. I kept her in, but I did not know what they were going to do.’

‘I believe you,’ said Trave, passing Jana a box of tissues across the table. ‘Did you know about what they did to Ethan?’

‘Yes. Franz told me. At the end after Katya died. He needed me to understand that we had to stay together, protect one another. But now he’s dead, and I… I am all alone.’ Jana’s voice, previously not much more than a hoarse whisper, suddenly broke, and she put her hands up over her face.

Trave watched her for moment, realizing that he felt no pity for Jana at all, not one scrap of sympathy, and then abruptly got up from the table.

‘Thank you, Miss Claes,’ he said in a businesslike voice. ‘You’ll sign a statement confirming all this, won’t you? And you’ll tell it to a court if you have to?’

Jana nodded.

‘Well, then you can rely on us doing our best for you. Detective Clayton here will show you where to sign. And I’ll arrange for that priest to come and see you.’

Two hours later Trave and Clayton found themselves sitting opposite Sir Laurence Arne, QC, in his chambers at Number 2 Doctor Johnson’s Buildings in the Temple. It was Sunday evening, and Trave had rung up Arne’s clerk from the police station, hoping at most to get an appointment for the following day, but when he explained his business, the clerk had told him to wait and then returned a minute later to say that Sir Laurence was working late and would see Mr Trave that evening if Mr Trave so wished. And Trave had so wished, repeatedly breaking the speed limit as the pushed his old Ford to the limit on the road up to London so that there would be no delay in showing the prosecuting barrister Jana Claes’s statement and Katya’s little diary.

Arne finished reading and took off his half-moon glasses. ‘You guarantee to me that this is authentic?’ he asked, holding up the diary.

‘Yes,’ said Trave. ‘My wife risked her life to get it.’

‘And the Claes woman is telling the truth. You’re sure of it?’ Clayton and Trave nodded.

‘Why though? Why would she tell you all this now?’ asked Arne.

‘Because I told her that her brother worked for Adolf Eichmann in Berlin between 1943 and 1945. I went to Israel on Friday to talk to the investigators there, and they gave me documents that prove it. They didn’t know about him until now because he’s been living here under an assumed name,’ said Trave, reaching into his briefcase and taking out the same file of photographs that he’d shown to Jana Claes earlier in the evening. Arne looked at them one by one and then put them down on his desk with a heavy sigh. He looked shaken and his eyes were troubled.

‘Do you think that this is what Ethan Mendel found out in West Germany — that Claes worked for Eichmann? Is this why Claes and Osman killed him?’ he asked.

‘Yes, I think so,’ said Trave. ‘Osman had to help Claes because Claes held the secret of his past too. They were tied together by what each of them knew about the other. They must have hated each other by the end.’

‘A pact made in hell,’ said Arne, nodding. ‘But why do you think Jacob couldn’t find what his brother found? He obviously didn’t leave any stone unturned looking.’

‘I think that Claes must have gone to West Germany and destroyed the records after Ethan’s death,’ said Trave thoughtfully. ‘Ethan’s mistake was to believe Osman wasn’t involved. He sealed his own death warrant when he came back to Blackwater and told Osman what he found.’

‘But yet you’ve found out the truth,’ countered Arne.

‘Yes, in Israel, not Germany. And the information about Claes and Eichmann only came to light there after the Israelis started interrogating Eichmann last year and preparing the case file for his trial. It wouldn’t have been available to Jacob even if he’d had the same kind of official access that I had, which he wouldn’t have done of course.’

Arne was silent for a moment and then got up and went over to the window, where he stood looking out into the darkness. ‘This is the devil’s work,’ he said gravely. ‘In all my years at the bar I have never seen the like of it. I prosecuted that boy twice for murder, and each time I was sure he was guilty. I thought he deserved to hang the first time. And yet he was innocent, as innocent as you and I. This news makes me doubt myself, makes me doubt our whole system of justice.’

‘So will you help us?’ asked Trave. ‘I didn’t know who else to come to.’

‘Yes,’ said Arne firmly. ‘There are people I need to talk to, but I can tell you my recommendation will be not to fight the appeal. You can rely on me for that. And I hope, Mr Trave, that you will soon be reinstated. It is the least that you deserve.’

As Trave shook Arne’s hand on the way out, he remembered how he’d once imagined him as a bird of prey hovering over his victim. He looked nothing like that now, thought Trave. In fact, he’d never seen a prosecuting barrister look more human.

Two days later, early on Tuesday morning, David Swain was told to get dressed for court. He was confused. His lawyers had told him that his appeal wouldn’t be heard for another week, and yet here he was being bundled into a prison van with no warning. He wondered if it perhaps had something to do with what he’d heard on the radio about Osman’s death out at Blackwater Hall. But there’d been nothing in the report about new evidence. David remembered the worried look on his lawyers’ faces when he’d asked them about his chances at the end of their last visit. It didn’t bode well for the appeal if that was where he was headed.

But there was no point speculating. Instead David glued his face to the window of the van, drinking in sights that he knew he might never see again — a newspaper seller setting up his stand outside Euston Station, the spray of silver water cascading from the fountains in Trafalgar Square, a cyclist weaving in and out of the traffic on Charing Cross Road while an anxious-looking woman gripped the hand of a little boy as they stood waiting to cross at the traffic lights. It could be his mother and Max, thought David with a wrench — how they might look a month from now when he was no longer in the world.

At last, with a lurch, the prison van turned in at the gates of the Royal Courts of Justice. David caught a brief glimpse of silver-grey stone spires and monumental archways before he was taken out and locked up in yet another cell. Iron doors and cement floors and concrete walls and dripping taps and the endless toxic smell of urine and faeces — this was the world where he belonged, far away from sunshine and grass and children playing in parks — other sights he’d seen flashing by the van window that morning on his way to court.

He didn’t have long to wait. A jangling of keys and an unlocking of endless doors and he emerged out into the Court of Criminal Appeal. To David it seemed more like a vast, cavernous library than a courtroom. Shelves of antique leather-bound books rose up on all sides from the floor to the distant wood-panelled ceiling, while far away to David’s right three old men in black gowns and horsehair wigs were sitting on tall high-backed chairs at a long polished wooden table on an elevated dais. Their bony hands were strangely illuminated by the green subaqueous light from their reading lamps, but otherwise the courtroom was a dark, shadowy place, inspiring in David not hope but despair.

After a moment the familiar hawk-like figure of the prosecutor, Sir Laurence Arne, rose from a bench below the judges and began to speak: ‘My lords, I have asked for this case to be called on today in advance of its appeal date as it appears that there has been a serious miscarriage of justice, not just in the lower court but also in relation to the defendant’s conviction on another murder charge in 1958. Inspector Trave of the Oxfordshire police has produced to me certain documents, which leave me in no doubt that Mr Swain has been the victim of a wide-ranging conspiracy to make him take the blame for not just one murder but two…’

David swayed in the dock, unable to believe what he was hearing. It was a fantasy, a dream from which he would wake in a moment, a final trick of the cruel and malevolent fate that had pursued him for the last three years. The prosecutor’s words washed over him until finally a light dawned inside his head and he understood. It was over. He was free. The nightmare was at an end.

His mother was waiting for him outside the court. He didn’t recognize her at first because her face was lit up like he had never seen it before. It was as if all the years of worry and toil had been magically lifted from her in one transcendent, cleansing moment. And beside her, gazing up at his half-brother through those same extraordinarily thick glasses, was Max.

‘I’m very happy you’re free,’ said Max seriously. ‘Because I have a lot of things to show you at home. Not just robots; other things too. I’ve made some of them. You are coming home with us, aren’t you, David?’

‘Yes, Max,’ said David, taking a firm grip of his half-brother’s hand and smiling over Max’s head at their mother. ‘I’m coming home.’