The King of Diamonds

by Simon Tolkien

  ‘How well did you know Miss Osman?’ he asked.

  ‘I know her a lot. I look after her,’ said Jana, switching her attention to the younger policeman with obvious relief.

  ‘How do you mean? Look after her?’ asked Clayton, surprised by Jana’s choice of words.

  ‘I give her meals. I clean her room. I wash her clothes. I look after her.’

  ‘Why?’

  ‘Why? Because Titus asks me to. It is for a woman, not a man to do this.’

  ‘But why did Miss Claes need looking after? That’s what I’m asking you.’

  ‘She was not well. She had done bad things.’

  ‘And so you kept her a prisoner in her room to stop her doing them again. Is that right?’ asked Trave, returning to the attack. ‘With bars on the windows and a key in the door?’

  ‘No. No key.’

  ‘And fed her bread and water. That was for her own good too, was it?’ went on Trave remorselessly. There was a tough edge to his voice now, as if he’d decided to blast the truth about Katya out of Jana Claes with a full frontal assault.

  But Jana was unyielding. ‘I give her good meals. On a tray,’ she said, sounding genuinely annoyed. She’d let go of her walking stick now and was clasping and unclasping her hands in her lap. ‘It is not my fault she does not eat what I give her.’

  ‘And what else did you do?’ asked Trave. ‘Did you inject her with drugs? In her left arm, above her elbow?’

  ‘I gave her a sedative to help her sleep. Before; not tonight.’

  ‘How many times?’

  ‘Twice. That’s all.’

  ‘Think carefully about what you’re telling me, Miss Claes,’ said Trave slowly, fixing Jana with a hard stare. ‘I’ll ask you one more time. Is there something you want to tell me about Katya Osman, about what happened here tonight?’

  ‘No!’ Jana Claes almost spat out the word. She looked angrily from one policeman to the other and then took hold of her walking stick and got up.

  ‘I am tired,’ she said. ‘I need to rest.’ Clayton went over to the door and held it open for her, and as she went slowly by, he could have sworn that she was biting her lip and that there was a tear in the corner of her eye.

  David Swain sat at the top of a small hill with his back to a big horse-chestnut tree, looking down on the road below, which was illuminated by the lights of a myriad of police cars and vans parked in a long line running almost the whole length of Osman’s property. The house behind was also lit up, like a beacon in the night, and to the left the moon was palely reflected in the dark waters of Blackwater Lake.

  The police were searching the grounds. David could hear them, their voices calling to one another in the woods. They had to know about his wound, or at least suspect, or they wouldn’t be hunting him like this, like some wounded fox gone to ground with a telltale blood trail left behind. Soon they would cross to his side of the road and start climbing up the hill, and by then he would have to be gone. But where? Yet again David searched his mind for a plan, but he could think of nothing beyond the here and now. The pain in his left shoulder was too great. He had no idea whether Claes’s bullet had hit him or merely grazed him as he turned the corner at the top the stairs. All he knew was that it hurt and that his arm felt soft: it made him sick to his stomach to even touch it. When he’d got to the top of the hill he’d ripped away the left arm of his already-torn shirt to make a tourniquet, but it didn’t seem to have stopped the blood. He could feel it seeping down the side of his body, and, reaching across, he took the wad of money out of the left pocket of his trousers and transferred it to the right. It was all he had: the money and the gun and a head start.

  David shivered: in the last few minutes he had started to feel icy cold despite the fact that it was a reasonably warm night for the time of year, and he wished now that he’d been able to bring his jacket from the prison, but Eddie had insisted on using them for the dummies in the beds. Stupid bastard! Yet again David cursed his erstwhile friend through his chattering teeth. Why hadn’t Eddie waited like he said he would? David knew from his watch that he’d only been gone twenty-five minutes – less than the half hour they’d agreed, but there’d been no sign of the car when he’d got back to the road. Nothing at all: just the empty woods and an owl hooting overhead. Easy Eddie! – easy with his word, easy with his friends. David clenched his fists in anger and felt the pain in his shoulder shoot down his arm. He knew he had to stop thinking about Eddie. It was only sapping his strength, and, God knows, he had little of that left.

  He lay back against the tree and closed his eyes. Unconsciously he ran his fingers over the smooth red-brown surface of one of the chestnuts that were lying strewn on the ground at his side. It felt reassuring somehow, perhaps because it reminded him of his childhood. At school he and his friends had threaded thin pieces of string through the soft centres of the conkers, as they called them, and then fought with them in the playground, taking it in turns to smite the other’s chestnut until one of them burst and the other survived to fight another day. Conkers. David remembered an especially hard nut that had once been his most treasured possession, the veteran of countless fights, a legend in its own time but now long forgotten – in a drawer somewhere perhaps, mouldering. In that house on the other side of Oxford, where his mother, old before her time, lived with Ben Bishop, who drove a bus and treated him like he didn’t exist. It wasn’t David’s home any more, hadn’t been for a long time, but for now he couldn’t think of anywhere else to go. Ben worked on Sundays, and he needed someone to clean his wound, to let him rest for a few hours and get back his strength while he decided what to do, and surely to God his mother couldn’t deny him that. The police would come looking of course, but maybe not tonight, not while they were busy searching for him in the undergrowth. It was a bad plan. He knew that. But it was better than no plan at all.

  Using the trunk of the chestnut tree for support, David hauled himself to his feet and took a last look at the road below and the lights from the house hidden in the trees: Osman’s house and inside it Katya, dead with a bullet in her head. Then, with a heavy sigh, David tucked the gun in the waistband of his jeans, pushed the wad of banknotes deep into his pocket, and set off down the other side of the hill towards Blackwater village.

  It was difficult to see his way even in the moonlight, and once or twice he stumbled, almost losing his footing on the uneven ground. With each step he felt more light-headed, weaker at the knees, and, when he looked up, the stars seemed to be rushing through the sky as if he was looking at them through a black-and-white kaleidoscope. Reaching the empty road, he staggered a few hundred yards to a crossroads at the beginning of the village and then sank to the ground, exhausted, in the shadow of a garden hedge.

  He was awoken in the first grey light of dawn by the noise of a lorry’s engine only a few feet away from where he was. The driver waited a moment or two, no doubt for the cross-traffic to pass, and then drove away into the night. Across the road in the light from a street-lamp David could see the Blackwater village store. There was food in the window – biscuits and loaves and even a birthday cake, and David suddenly felt ravenously hungry. He hadn’t eaten since six o’clock the night before, and not much then. Saturday-night dinner in Oxford Prison was always the worst of the week: the cooks went home for the weekend, and the cons got food reheated from the night before.

  David remembered the shop now: he’d passed it on the bus ten times or more on his way to meet Katya at the boathouse in happier times. Katya and he had even been in there once, on a hot summer’s day more than three years ago now, standing in line behind a gaggle of children from the village as they queued to buy peppermints and ice creams from Mrs Parsler, who had to climb up on a tiny stepladder to reach down dusty jars of sweets from a shelf high above her head. Her husband’s name was on the sign above the door, and no doubt the two of them were now fast asleep behind the drawn curtains in their flat overhead. David was so hungry that he thought for a moment of s
mashing the shop window and taking the food from inside, but he resisted the temptation: if he was going to be caught, it wouldn’t be for something as stupid as that. Sleep had at least temporarily cleared his head, and he realized that he hadn’t any more time to waste. He needed help with his shoulder and he was too weak to go on much longer; certainly he was too weak to walk into Oxford. And there was no point trying to steal a car since he had no idea how to hot-wire the ignition. No, he’d have to get someone to drive him, and there was only one way of doing that.

  He stood waiting in the shadows, holding the gun inside his pocket. Nothing moved. The village was entirely quiet, its inhabitants blissfully unaware that they would be on the front page of the national news by the end of the day. And then, just as the church bell had finished tolling the hour of five, David saw lights coming up the road toward him. It was now or never. As the car slowed to a stop at the junction, he walked out into the headlights and waved his uninjured arm above his head.

  He was in luck. The driver wound down his window and leaned his head out.

  ‘What’s wrong, mate?’ The man sounded nervous, frightened even. David wasn’t surprised. He had to look like something out of a horror film, dressed in his blood-soaked, ripped-up prison clothes.

  ‘I’ve been in an accident,’ said David, improvising. ‘A car hit me when I was crossing the road. I need to get to a hospital. Can you take me?’

  ‘I don’t know about that. Why don’t you knock on one of these doors, ask someone to call you an ambulance? I’m sure they will.’

  It was the answer David had anticipated. He hadn’t seriously expected that a passing motorist would give him a lift at five in the morning looking like he did, but the conversation had given him time to edge round toward the driver’s door of the car, and now he rushed forward and pulled it open, pointing the gun at the side of the man’s head.

  ‘Give me the keys,’ he said through gritted teeth. ‘I’ll shoot you if you don’t.’

  The man didn’t obey at first. He sat with his hands rigid on the steering wheel, obviously in shock, and it was only when David thrust the barrel of the gun against his right temple that he leant forward, turned off the engine, and handed David the keys with a shaking hand. On the man’s other side a young woman in a party dress sat frozen in fear, her eyes fixed on the gun.

  With the keys in his pocket, David pulled the handle of the door to the back seat, but nothing happened. It was obviously locked.

  ‘Open it,’ he shouted. ‘Open the fucking door.’ But the man did nothing. Perhaps shock had immobilized him again, or maybe he couldn’t face the thought of having the gun pointing at the back of his head. David didn’t care. His frustration boiled over, and he wanted to hit the man, to pistol-whip him until he did what he was told. And maybe he would have done if the woman hadn’t intervened. Leaning across the back seat, she lifted the lock and David got in.

  ‘All right,’ he said, tossing the keys over the man’s shoulder into his lap. ‘Now drive. We’re going to Oxford.’

  ‘We! Why we? Why can’t you leave us here and take the car? Please, please do that.’ The man had got his voice back, but he was quite clearly terrified out of his wits. He stumbled over his words, and the woman didn’t look any better: David could see her hands shaking in her lap. But David felt no sympathy or guilt. Instead he felt a curious sense of disconnection from himself. The panic and desperation that he’d experienced earlier up on the hill had disappeared, and now it was as if he was watching himself, as if he wasn’t really here at all. And besides, there was no time to argue. That much was obvious. There would be more police cars coming this way soon, joining the manhunt down the road.

  ‘Do as I say,’ said David, louder this time. ‘Shut your fucking door and drive. I’ll use this thing if you don’t. I promise you I will.’

  ‘Do what he says, Barry. Please!’ The woman’s voice rose almost to a scream on the last word. David could clearly see that she was about to have hysterics. But the man made no move to start the car.

  ‘All right,’ said David, taking a deep breath and making a conscious effort to speak in a calm and measured voice. ‘I can’t take the car and leave you here because you’ll go straight into that shop over there, wake up Mr and Mrs Parsler if they’re not awake already with the noise we’re making, and get them to call the police. I need a head start, and that’s why I need you to drive. Okay? Twenty minutes: that’s all I need, and then you’ll never see me again. I promise.’

  David didn’t know whether it was his words or the way he said them that had the desired effect, but the man seemed to relax. He sighed audibly and his shoulders slumped.

  ‘Put that thing down then,’ he said, turning his head to look at David over his shoulder. ‘I can’t drive with that pointing at me.’

  Carefully, David put the gun down on the seat beside him and covered it with his hand. The man nodded, pulled his door shut, and put the keys in the ignition, and, as they pulled away, David saw that the lights had come on in several of the neighbouring houses, including above the window of the general store opposite, and inconsequentially he thought how the night’s events might at least be good for the Parslers’ business.

  They drove in silence. The woman kept looking back at David and the gun on the seat beside him, but he didn’t pay her any attention. He was lost in thought, working out what to do, racing over the possibilities, calculating his chances, and all the time his shoulder hurt him more and more as he felt waves of hot and cold rush through his body. He wondered how much time he had left before he passed out.

  Halfway down the Cowley Road, he told them where they were going. ‘The railway station,’ he said. ‘Take me to Oxford Station.’

  It felt strange to be back in the station car park again, parked only a few yards away from where Eddie and he had arrived from the prison so elated five hours earlier. It seemed impossible that it was such a short time ago. Where was Eddie now? David wondered angrily, thinking of his cellmate driving away through the night to a new life in his red Triumph, but then he dismissed the thought from his mind. He had more important things to think about now, like laying a false trail. He needed to concentrate. Everything depended on him getting it right in the next few minutes.

  ‘Well, aren’t you going to go then?’ asked the man, looking back at David in the driving mirror. ‘Twenty minutes: that’s what you said. We’ve done what you asked.’

  ‘I need to know when the first train leaves for London. That’s when I’m going. Go and look on that board over there. It’ll say.’

  ‘I don’t need to look,’ said the man. ‘The first one on a Sunday’s at twenty to six.’

  ‘How do you know?’

  ‘I’ve been on it before.’

  ‘Well, twenty to six it is then,’ said David, settling back in his seat. And they relapsed into silence. The man, Barry, sat rigid, staring straight ahead at the big Victorian clock over the station entrance, but his companion kept looking back at David. She seemed less frightened now, as if realizing that if he was going to do anything to them he’d have done it already. She was pretty in an odd sort of way, David realized. All dressed up in her party frock with a ribbon in her hair at the end of an evening that he’d turned into a nightmare.

  ‘What’s your name?’ he asked.

  ‘Lucille,’ she said. ‘What’s yours?’

  ‘David.’ He liked the way she said her name. Not Lucy – Lucille. A bit of class. ‘Pleased to meet you,’ he added, making the words sound like a joke. And she smiled, as if appreciating his effort to lighten the tension. But Barry didn’t see it that way.

  ‘Shut up,’ he said, turning toward her. ‘Don’t talk to him, Luce, all right?’

  But she was having none of it. ‘Shut up yourself,’ she said. ‘You don’t own me.’

  David smiled. ‘So you’re not married?’ he asked.

  ‘No way,’ she said. David could sense Barry bristling with irritation in the seat in front, but she hadn’
t finished. ‘What did you do?’ she asked. ‘We saw all those police cars back there before you . . .’ Her voice tailed off, but David had picked up on her greedy curiosity and felt suddenly disgusted.

  ‘It doesn’t matter,’ he said. ‘It doesn’t matter what I did.’

  He looked up at the station clock. It was time.

  ‘Give me your jacket,’ he said, tapping Barry on the shoulder.

  ‘No.’ Barry sounded defiant, angry even.

  ‘Give me your fucking jacket,’ David shouted, losing his temper. And his anger had the desired effect. The man took off his jacket and passed it back to David, while the woman cowered in her seat, her fear returning as she saw the gun in his hand.

  ‘Right,’ said David. ‘I’m going. Don’t follow me and don’t call the police. Okay?’

  He didn’t wait for an answer, just got out of the car and walked quickly into the station without a backward glance. He was sure they would call the police, but maybe not straight away. And probably not from the station either. He should have time.

  He asked the clerk at the ticket office a whole lot of questions about train times, about the cost of first- and second-class tickets, and even about whether there was a dining car, hoping that the man would remember him when the police came asking questions later, and then, with a single ticket in his pocket, he crossed the bridge to the London platform. And when the train arrived several minutes later, blocking the view across the tracks from the ticket office and the car park, he slipped away unnoticed through a side exit, climbed over the barrier, and walked away towards the canal with the collar of Barry’s jacket pulled up around his ears.

  CHAPTER 9

  Trave sat behind the big mahogany desk, across from its owner, Titus Osman, who was dressed in an expensive coal-black suit and tie. The desk’s surface was covered with a light film of white fingerprint powder but was otherwise bare except for a telephone, a green-shaded reading lamp, and a photograph of Katya in a silver frame. It had been taken several years previously, and she looked nothing like the emaciated waif she had since become. Clayton sat to one side of the desk with notebook and pen at the ready; opposite him, on the other side of the room, the glass from the shattered window pane lay in pieces on the pale blue Axminster carpet. Outside, Osman’s red and white roses were just beginning to be visible in the first grey light of dawn, and beyond the dew-covered lawn the sound of the police search teams shouting to each other in the woods was distantly audible.