The King of Diamonds itadc-2

by Simon Tolkien

  ‘It’s not like the old days with all that dangling and strangling,’ said Macrae, sounding disappointed. ‘They’ve got it scientific now so it snaps their necks in a second.’

  They were in Macrae’s office on the morning after the arraignment. Suddenly Clayton jumped, hearing a loud snap. And then he looked back over his shoulder to where Jonah was sitting in the corner. Wale met Clayton’s stare and then leaned forward and snapped his fingers again hard. And Macrae laughed like it was the funniest thing he’d ever seen.

  After this episode Clayton started going over to Trave’s house a lot more in the evenings after work. But it didn’t help. Trave was depressed and felt as impotent as Clayton. And then Christmas came and the new year, and John Bircher fell off the top of a multi-storey car park and broke his head into three different pieces on the concrete down below.

  ‘Perhaps he jumped,’ said Clayton without conviction. ‘That’s what Macrae says.’

  ‘What? Felt sorry for his sins, couldn’t stand to live with himself any more?’ asked Trave with a hollow laugh. ‘I don’t think so. Bircher was as black-hearted as they come: look at his rap sheet. No, someone got worried because he knew too much — arranged to meet him and then gave him the heave-ho.’

  ‘It wouldn’t be that easy. Bircher was a big man, you know.’

  ‘Maybe whoever did it had a gun.’

  ‘Like Claes, you mean?’

  ‘Maybe. But you’ll never prove it.’

  They were sitting on either side of the old dining table in Trave’s living room, each nursing a glass of neat whisky. Trave sighed and relapsed back into his own thoughts; and then, as if coming to a decision, he got up and went over to an open-top bureau in the corner of the room and brought back a thick file crammed with well-thumbed, typed papers. There was a label on the front: regina versus david john swain, central criminal court, 1958.

  Trave dropped the file on the table in front of Clayton and leant down over him, rapidly turning the pages until he got to one towards the end headed evidence of jacob mendel.

  ‘Here, read this,’ said Trave. ‘And then we’ll talk.’ And Clayton began to read:

  DEFENCE COUNSEL, MR RELTON: You are the younger brother of the victim in this case, Ethan Mendel?

  WITNESS: Yes.

  COUNSEL: When did you last see your brother?

  WITNESS: November last year. He left our home in Antwerp to go to England.

  COUNSEL: Why?

  WITNESS: He was going to see Titus Osman.

  COUNSEL: Why?

  WITNESS: Osman knew my father before the war. They both dealt in diamonds. My family — we are Jews, and after the German invasion it became unsafe. More and more unsafe. Osman — he was called Usman then — helped my brother and me escape with our grandmother to Switzerland in 1942, but my parents waited. I don’t really know why. And then the next year, when Osman tried to help them, they were caught crossing the border into France and the Germans sent them to the deportation camp at Malines. And from there they went on a train to Auschwitz. And they died. Ethan wanted to know more about what happened to them and so he went to see Osman in England.

  COUNSEL: Did you hear from Ethan after he left?

  WITNESS: Yes, he telephoned my grandmother and me at Christmas, and he wrote us postcards. He said that he was staying longer than he’d expected and that he had met a girl, Katya, who was Osman’s niece. He said he was happy. And then at the start of May I got a letter from Ethan which was different. He said that he had found out something important, too important to tell me about except face-to-face. He said that I should come to England and talk to him. But I did not go to England because Katya telephoned to say that Ethan was dead — murdered. His body came back to us on an aeroplane.

  COUNSEL: Did Ethan say anything else in his letter about what he had found out?

  WITNESS: He said it was dangerous. That’s all.

  COUNSEL: You have the letter with you, Mr Mendel?

  WITNESS: Yes.

  Witness produces handwritten letter in postmarked envelope.

  COUNSEL: This will be exhibit 33, my lord. It’s dated May 4 of this year and postmarked Munich, West Germany — the day before Ethan Mendel’s death.

  JUDGE: Yes, very well — exhibit 33. Is that all, Mr Relton?

  COUNSEL: Yes, my lord.

  JUDGE: Very well. Do you wish to cross-examine the witness, Mr Arne?

  PROSECUTION COUNSEL, MR ARNE: Yes, my lord, just a few questions. You have no idea what it is that your brother wished to talk to you about, do you?

  WITNESS: No, but I’m pretty sure it was…

  COUNSEL: Please don’t speculate, Mr Mendel. We are solely concerned with facts here, not guesses. Do you know David Swain?

  WITNESS: No.

  COUNSEL: Do you know anything about letters written by Mr Swain to Katya Osman?

  WITNESS: No.

  COUNSEL: Do you know anything about David Swain’s movements on the day of your brother’s murder?

  WITNESS: No.

  COUNSEL: Do you know anything about your brother’s movements that day?

  WITNESS: No, of course I don’t. I was in Belgium when my brother was murdered. I already said that.

  COUNSEL: Yes, you did. And the point I’m making to you now is that you don’t know anything about what happened to your brother because he never told you anything, and you weren’t even in this country when he was killed…

  WITNESS: I know he’d found out something…

  COUNSEL: But you don’t know what it was. Your letter leads us precisely nowhere. It’s not evidence.

  WITNESS: But…

  COUNSEL: Thank you, Mr Mendel, I’ve no more questions. I’m sorry that you’ve had such a wasted journey.

  WITNESS: I don’t care what’s evidence or not evidence; I care about who killed my brother. Ethan died because he’d found out something, and I’m going to find out what it was.

  JUDGE: Please just answer the questions, Mr Mendel. Do you have any re-examination, Mr Relton?

  DEFENCE COUNSEL, MR RELTON: No, my lord.

  JUDGE: Thank you, Mr Mendel. You may step down.

  ‘Pretty effective piece of cross-examination I’d say,’ said Trave, catching Clayton’s eye as he looked up at the end of the page. ‘Jacob Mendel had no real probative evidence to give, and the defence looked stupid for calling him. That’s what I thought at the time anyway, but since then Jacob and his mysterious letter have gnawed at the back of my mind. It’s like Ethan’s note — an itch that won’t go away.’

  ‘Why?’

  ‘Because the letter and the note don’t make any sense. Think about it: Ethan goes to West Germany and finds out something dangerous and important — so important that he can’t put it in a letter but instead asks his brother to cross the Channel so that they can discuss it face-to-face. Then he rushes back to England and immediately goes off to Oxford to see a man he’s never met. And when he doesn’t find Swain at home, he doesn’t wait; instead he leaves an urgent note setting up a meeting at Osman’s boathouse for five o’clock the same day.’

  ‘You mean — how would Ethan have known Swain would get the message?’ said Clayton thoughtfully.

  ‘Yes. Unless whoever left the note knew Swain was at home and that’s why he left it — because he didn’t want to be seen.’

  ‘Because whoever it was wasn’t Ethan at all, but someone pretending to be him.’

  ‘Someone setting a trap,’ said Trave, nodding.

  ‘Why didn’t you tell me about the brother before?’ asked Clayton.

  ‘Because, like the prosecutor said, Jacob’s evidence didn’t go anywhere, and then you made it pretty obvious that you thought I was chasing my tail when I told you my concerns about Ethan’s murder after Katya was killed,’ said Trave with a dry smile. ‘I’m telling you now because it seems like you’ve got more of an open mind, and also — well, also because I’ve decided to do something about Jacob.’

  ‘Do something?’ repeated Clayt
on, sitting up, suddenly alert.

  ‘Yes, I’m going to go to Antwerp and try and find him.’

  ‘Why, if he doesn’t know anything?’ asked Clayton, surprised.

  ‘Because he might know something now. Look what he said at the end of his evidence,’ said Trave, tapping the page with his finger. ‘“Ethan died because he’d found out something, and I’m going to find out what it was.” Perhaps he’s done just that. I remember him at the trial. He was angry and upset, but determined too. He didn’t need to come all the way to London to give evidence, but he did. I don’t think he’s someone who’d give up easily once he’d set his mind to something.’

  ‘Like you,’ said Clayton wryly, raising his eyebrows.

  ‘Like me,’ agreed Trave. ‘The point is, Adam, I know in my bones that Swain’s not guilty. He’s a hot-headed fool, but he’s no murderer, and I’m not going to rest until I’ve proved it.’

  ‘And I suppose that’s also your only way to get your job back,’ said Clayton, looking quizzically at his ex-boss.

  ‘Yes, there’s that too,’ said Trave, agreeing with a wry smile of his own. ‘Creswell’s agreed to postpone my disciplinary hearing for a month, but I can’t see the Chief Constable showing me much mercy once he’s finally got me in his sights.’

  On the other side of town, Macrae was working late in his office, reading through the documents in the John Bircher file. After a few minutes he gathered together the incident reports, the attending doctor’s statement, and the three hideous photographs of Bircher’s smashed-up body lying on the concrete outside the entrance to the car park, fastened them together with a paper clip, and replaced them in the cardboard file. Then, picking up a red pen, he wrote SUICIDE in thick capital letters across the front, added his initials, and pushed the file to the other side of his desk.

  The door opened and Detective Constable Wale came in.

  ‘Well?’ asked Macrae, looking up.

  ‘Clayton’s been to Trave’s house again. I followed him there this evening. He stayed inside more than an hour. You want me to talk to him?’

  Macrae looked across the desk at his assistant and ran his eyes over Wale’s thick arms and heavy, oversized hands. The sight of them always gave him pleasure, and he hesitated for a moment, stroking his chin. He liked the thought of Jonah trying out a few of his techniques on that self-righteous little sneak, Clayton, but he knew that it wasn’t worth the risk of the runt going squealing to Creswell.

  ‘No, Jonah. It’s a tempting suggestion, I must admit, but I think we’d better leave Constable Clayton alone for now. Keep watching him though. He’ll hang himself if we give him enough rope — save us the trouble.’

  Macrae knew that it wouldn’t be long now before Creswell retired, and who better to take over as superintendent than the up-and-coming Inspector Macrae? And then, once he had the power, he wouldn’t waste any time: he’d shake up this sleepy police station and teach Clayton and his like a lesson that they’d never forget.

  CHAPTER 16

  Trave crossed the Channel on the early morning ferry to Calais and then took the train to Antwerp. He had never been to the city before and was unprepared for the baroque grandeur of the central railway station, with its gilt and marble interior and huge metal and glass dome. It was like a cathedral — there was even a rose window above the entrance, surmounted, however, not by Christ in glory but by a golden clock. In Antwerp the trains ran on time.

  Trave had obtained an address but no telephone number for Jacob Mendel from the lawyers who had acted for David Swain at his first trial two years earlier. The house was in the Jewish Quarter, which ran in a tangle of crooked streets south from the station. It didn’t seem too far on the street map that Trave had brought with him from England, and so he decided to walk. Almost immediately he found himself in a strange, utterly foreign world. It was the lunch hour, and crowds of Hasidic Jews thronged the pavements in their dark suits and white shirts, with curled sidelocks emerging from under their black felt hats. Everywhere was a hubbub of activity: cafes and synagogues and kosher delicatessens, and on Pelikaanstraat Trave passed by endless diamond shops with narrow storefronts and glittering wares watched over by morose merchants sitting perched on stools behind thick reinforced-glass windows.

  Trave soon felt hopelessly lost amid a sea of trams and bicycles. The roads with their long Flemish names all seemed to twist and turn into one another, and he had just made up his mind to stop and ask directions when he looked up and saw that he was standing opposite the side street that he was looking for. Jacob’s house was halfway down — a nineteenth-century apartment building constructed around a small cobbled courtyard. There were names on the letter-boxes, but Mendel was not one of them, and Trave was about to start knocking on the apartment doors when a voice called to him from behind in a language he didn’t understand.

  He turned around and found himself looking down at a small elderly woman with a bent back and a black scarf covering her hair. She was standing a few feet away in a low doorway under the entrance arch that Trave hadn’t noticed when he came in. She had a walking stick in her hand.

  ‘I’m English,’ he said hopefully. ‘I am looking for Jacob Mendel.’

  Surprisingly the old woman seemed to understand.

  ‘No Mendel here. Why you want him?’ she asked suspiciously.

  ‘To talk to him about his brother. I’m a friend.’

  ‘Friend! Everyone says that,’ she said with a sneer.

  ‘Well, I am one,’ said Trave. ‘Jacob wants to find out who killed his brother, and I want to find out too. I want to help him.’

  The old woman looked at him blankly and Trave realized with a sinking heart that she hadn’t understood a word he’d said. Her English was obviously very limited, and Trave didn’t know a word of Dutch.

  ‘Parlez-vous francais?’ he asked, switching to French, but the old woman ignored him. Instead she looked him up and down, staring intently, and then waved her walking stick toward his feet. For a moment he thought she was going to attack him with it, but then realized that she was giving him an instruction: ‘You wait,’ she said, and then turned around and went back through the doorway behind her.

  She emerged again a minute later, holding out a big book, a piece of paper, and a pencil. Trave opened the book and found that it was written in incomprehensible lettering, which he assumed to be Hebrew.

  ‘I can’t read this,’ he said, pointing to the text and tapping the side of his head to try to make her understand his ignorance.

  Impatiently she pulled the book back, closed it, and pushed the blank piece of paper down on top of the cover and made as if to write.

  ‘You write,’ she said. ‘Then you come back.’

  ‘When?’

  ‘Four,’ she said, holding up four fingers. ‘Maybe.’

  Trave nodded and began to write:

  Jacob — I am the police inspector who was in charge of David Swain’s case. Like you I do not believe Swain killed your brother. Perhaps we can help each other to find out who did?

  William Trave

  When he was finished, Trave caught the old woman’s eye as he handed the note back to her.

  ‘Please,’ he said, pointing to his chest. ‘I mean good.’

  ‘Yes, yes. Friend,’ she said, and Trave took comfort from the fact that at least she didn’t pronounce the word with the same derision with which she’d spoken it earlier. ‘Now you go,’ she ordered. And Trave went.

  With more than two hours to kill, he wandered the streets in a state of distraction. Would Jacob come? Would he know anything? Trave had no answers to his questions. He began to feel hemmed in by the rows of tall medieval guild houses in the old town with their myriad of leaded windows, and so he headed west toward the river. Leaning on the parapet, Trave gazed out over the wide expanse of the Scheldt and watched as the afternoon turned from blue to grey in a moment as a bank of low clouds came funnelling up the river from the North Sea. He shivered suddenly, feeling t
he January cold in his bones, and turned to go back.

  The old concierge was waiting for him under the entrance arch. ‘Badge,’ she said. ‘Show me badge.’

  Trave complied, and she examined his credentials for a moment before beckoning him inside her doorway. Trave took off his hat and followed her into a surprisingly spacious room with two windows overlooking the main street through which the last of the winter sunshine was picking a golden, glowing path across the spotless wooden floor. There was no sign of Jacob Mendel, but on the other side of the room an old lady with bright blue eyes was sitting in a rocking chair beside a brightly burning fire. Trave could see that she must once have been very beautiful, but now her skin was wrinkled and pulled tight over the bones of her face so that it seemed as if she was made of antique porcelain, like the teacup she was holding in her hand. She was dressed entirely in black with her silver-grey hair tied up into a bun at the nape of her neck, and an enormous white cat lay stretched across her lap, apparently fast asleep.

  ‘Excuse me for not getting up, Mr Trave,’ she said in accented but otherwise perfect English, gesturing to an armchair facing her on the other side of the fire. ‘Mrs Morgenstein’s cat does not like to be disturbed. Would you like tea?’

  Trave shook his head as he sat down, but the concierge handed him a cup regardless, before vanishing behind a curtain into the interior of the apartment.

  ‘It seems I have no choice in the matter,’ he said wryly. ‘Mrs Morgenstein was a lot more formidable earlier.’

  ‘Yes, she can be quite frightening when she chooses,’ said the old lady, smiling. ‘But it’s because she’s protective — she’s the kindest person when you get to know her. I miss her since we moved. And her cat.’

  ‘We?’ repeated Trave, looking perplexed.

  ‘I’m sorry, Inspector. I don’t mean to talk in riddles. I’m Aliza Mendel, Jacob’s grandmother. I expect you’re wondering where Jacob is?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘He’s gone, I’m afraid. Where I don’t know. It’s nine months now since he left, and he is my last living relative, so you can understand why I am worried.’ Aliza screwed up her eyes, resisting a spasm of pain that momentarily contorted her features. ‘It is why I am here, Inspector: to ask you if you find Jacob to give him a message from me.’