The King of Diamonds

by Simon Tolkien

  ‘Tell me what happened with Katya,’ said Trave, ignoring Jacob’s attempt to change the subject. ‘Maybe you’ll feel better if you get it off your chest.’

  ‘I’d met her at Ethan’s funeral, and so she knew who I was,’ said Jacob, speaking slowly as if the words were hard to get out. ‘We sat in a café down the road from here, and I showed her the photographs of Claes. I told her everything, and she went white, whiter than I’ve ever seen anyone – white and silent. And then she believed. Just like she believed it was David Swain before. Because that’s what she was like – she was passionate, overflowing with emotion. And beautiful too – I understood why Ethan had loved her. And I didn’t even have to ask her to look, you know. She said she would – in Osman’s bedroom, in Claes’s bedroom – places I could never hope to get at. She called me a week later at the time we’d agreed on. She said she hadn’t found anything, but not to give up because she hadn’t finished searching. And then, after that, I heard nothing until . . . until she died.’

  ‘How long? How long did you hear nothing?’ asked Trave.

  ‘Three or four weeks. I don’t know. She told me that I’d have to be patient, and there was no way I could contact her without attracting Osman’s suspicion. Don’t you think I regret it now?’ said Jacob angrily.

  ‘Yes, I’m sure you do,’ said Trave. ‘But breaking into Blackwater Hall won’t help.’

  ‘How do you know? Katya found something. That’s why they killed her.’

  ‘And if she found something, they’ve already got rid of it a long time ago,’ said Trave. ‘You’re clutching at straws.’

  ‘Maybe. But that’s better than doing nothing – like you,’ said Jacob angrily. ‘This is the end game, don’t you see?’ he went on passionately. ‘If Swain is convicted of Katya’s murder, if he’s executed for it, then they’ve won. They’ll have got away with everything.’

  ‘Then you need to give evidence at his trial. Sending Swain’s lawyers copies of old pictures of Claes isn’t enough. You know that,’ said Trave, pointing up at the documents covering the walls. ‘You need to tell the jury that you asked Katya to search. Without that they’ve got no connection between Claes and Katya.’

  ‘But the connection’s not enough,’ said Jacob. ‘Like I told you before, hiding what I’ve dug up isn’t worth killing for. I need more. That’s why I asked Katya to look, for God’s sake.’

  ‘The jurors will still need to hear from you. Without you they won’t understand why she was vulnerable in that house,’ said Trave urgently.

  ‘Assuming they believe me,’ said Jacob. It was obvious from his tone that he didn’t believe they would.

  ‘Try them. Maybe they will.’

  But Jacob didn’t rise to the challenge. ‘I know what you’re saying,’ he said with a sigh – ‘don’t think I haven’t thought about going to court, still think about it all the time, but if I give evidence, Osman and Claes will know who I am, and I won’t last long after that.’

  ‘They probably do already, and anyway it’s a chance you’ll have to take,’ said Trave. ‘You owe Katya that much.’

  ‘I owe her everything. And that’s why I can’t let them find me. I can’t let them succeed. I have to stop them.’

  ‘They – you keep saying they,’ said Clayton, unable to contain his irritation. He didn’t like Jacob, he realized – didn’t like the man’s melodrama, his certainty that he knew best. ‘You’ve got no evidence whatsoever against Osman that I can see. Just guilt by association. Why couldn’t Claes have been acting alone – if he acted at all?’

  ‘Because he wasn’t – my brother died because he spoke to Osman . . .’

  ‘You don’t know that. Maybe he talked to Claes that afternoon after he saw Osman,’ said Clayton, interrupting. ‘Didn’t you just say five minutes ago that whatever your brother dug up in West Germany had nothing to do with Osman because, if it had, Ethan wouldn’t have rushed back to have lunch with him? You can’t have it both ways.’

  ‘I’m not trying to,’ said Jacob angrily. ‘You’re just twisting my words. Claes couldn’t have kept Katya a prisoner without Osman . . .’

  ‘Yes, but that doesn’t mean Osman killed her. He told us he was keeping Katya at Blackwater for her own good when we talked to him, and we’ve got independent evidence that that much is true,’ said Clayton, glancing over at Trave, who refused to meet his eye.

  ‘You don’t see because you don’t want to see,’ said Jacob, looking over at Clayton with obvious hostility. ‘The two of them – they’re in it together: they have been from the start. Osman targeted my family; he planned the whole thing. He knew my father was wealthy – he’d dealt with him lots of times at the Antwerp diamond exchange before the war, and he knew that my father had hidden most of his diamonds when the Nazis came, just like the other Jewish traders did. He got me and my brother out of Belgium because he knew he had to get my parents to trust him with their escape. And the plan worked – my parents must have had at least half their fortune sewn into their clothes when Claes met them at the border. And sent them to Mechelen. Do you know about Mechelen, Inspector?’ Jacob asked, turning to Trave.

  ‘Yes, your grandmother told me,’ said Trave quietly.

  ‘But you didn’t go there, did you? You didn’t see it?’ Trave shook his head. ‘I thought not. It doesn’t look like anything nowadays – just an old barracks near the railway line with a big enclosed courtyard in the middle. The Belgian army use it as an officer training school. A school – can you believe it? And there’s nothing there except a tiny plaque to say what it was, when there should be a monument, the biggest bloody monument in Belgium to stop them forgetting. They shouldn’t be allowed to forget . . .’

  Jacob broke off, drawing deep breaths to control his anger. And when he resumed speaking, it was in a new, flat, expressionless tone, as if he knew that this was the only way that he could safely talk about the past.

  ‘The commandant there was called Schmitt – Philip Schmitt. He was a sadist – strip-searched the women himself when they arrived and used his big alsation on the prisoners. One of them died from bites. But he was the only one who did. People didn’t die in Mechelen. They needed them alive to make up the numbers for the trains. It was easy at first – the Jews reported to the camp themselves, called up for forced labour in the east, and the SS was sending out two trains a week. But then rumours got out about what was really waiting at the other end of the line, and the Jews went into hiding. The Nazis started doing round-ups, night arrests, but still there were fewer Jews coming into Mechelen than before, and so they had to wait until there were enough of them for a convoy. My parents had to wait two months, Inspector. I don’t know if they knew where they were going – I pray in my heart that they didn’t, but in my head I know they did. And yet they must have hoped, hoped right up to the end that they weren’t going where they feared they were going, that they would survive.’

  Jacob broke off, looking out into the darkness outside the window, as if he was trying to search back into the past.

  ‘The SS used third-class passenger carriages at first when they began the deportations in 1942,’ he went on again after a moment, ‘but then people started jumping out of the windows, and so they switched to goods wagons – seventy Jews locked in each truck for two or three days with no food, no water, almost no ventilation, and at the end – the end of the world. Screaming and shouting and barbed wire and arc lights and dogs and . . . and . . .’

  ‘You don’t need to tell us this. You don’t have to,’ said Trave. ‘We understand . . .’

  ‘No, you don’t. You don’t understand,’ Jacob interrupted passionately. ‘The selections were done straight away at the end of the platform. You probably know that – right to the camp, left to the gas. And my parents – they were split up. My father was selected to live; my mother to die. And so that was their last moment – being dragged apart in that terrible place. I see it through his eyes; I see it through her eyes. On and on and on fo
rever.’

  ‘How do you know this?’ asked Trave. ‘Your grandmother didn’t say . . .’

  ‘I didn’t tell her. She’s suffered enough – why should she have to live with that knowledge? I found it out from the SS records – the Germans kept lists of everything. That was their way. Both my parents were on the convoy when it left Mechelen, but only my father’s name was recorded as entering the camp. And he lasted six months and two weeks – about average for someone of his age – before he went to the gas as well. People didn’t survive. It’s a myth to say they did. Twenty-five thousand Jews went from Mechelen to Auschwitz in two years, from 1942 to 1944, and a thousand came back; and then no one wanted to hear what they had to say. No one except people like me – orphaned children who’d been hidden or escaped. And it’s up to us to make devils like Claes and Osman pay for what they did to our people – even if you gentiles won’t.’

  ‘What do you mean by that?’ asked Clayton, stirring. He was still standing by the door, continuing to bar Jacob’s only possible route of escape.

  ‘I mean you, Detective Whatever Your Name Is,’ said Jacob, half-spitting out his words as he fixed Clayton with a hostile glare. ‘You seem a lot more interested in me breaking into Blackwater Hall last summer than what those bastards have been doing in there. That’s what I mean.’

  ‘Burglary’s a crime,’ said Clayton, riled. ‘And you’ve got no proof against Osman, or Claes either for that matter. We don’t punish people without proof – not in this country.’

  ‘Proof!’ said Jacob with an angry laugh. ‘Like the proof that you police are using against that poor bastard, Swain, up in London just so that you can hang him for something he never did? I won’t let them get away with it, I tell you. I won’t let them win – proof or no proof.’

  ‘No one’s above the law,’ said Trave softly. ‘If you’ve got something else on Claes or Osman, show it to us. I promise you that I want to find evidence against them as much as you do.’

  Jacob gave Trave a long, searching look and then glanced back at Clayton. He looked like he was weighing something up in his mind. ‘Okay,’ he said, as if coming to a final decision. ‘I’ll show you what else I have.’ He got up from his chair and crossed over to the filing cabinet in the corner, using a key on his ring to unlock it. He opened the middle drawer all the way and bent down over it as if searching for something. Suddenly, too late, Clayton sensed what was happening. He rushed toward Jacob but then stopped dead in his tracks as the young man turned round to face him with a revolver gripped in his hand.

  ‘I know where you want to take me,’ Jacob said slowly, speaking to Clayton now, not Trave. ‘You want to lock me up for that burglary so I don’t try it again and take a gun with me this time. Maybe you’re right: I’ve reached the end of my tether and I’ll stop at nothing now – nothing.

  ‘Now get over there with the inspector. I’ll use this thing if I have to.’

  Clayton didn’t know whether he believed Jacob, but he wasn’t going to put his doubts to the test. Keeping his eyes fixed on the revolver, he edged across the room to join Trave by the window.

  Powerless, the two policemen watched as Jacob pulled out a rucksack from behind the filing cabinet. It was already packed, and they realized that Jacob must have been prepared for this day for a long time.

  ‘You’re making a mistake,’ said Trave. ‘Can’t you see I want to help you?’

  ‘Yes, maybe you do, although I don’t trust him,’ said Jacob, indicating Clayton with a wave of his gun. ‘But it doesn’t matter what you want any more. You’ve had your chance and you achieved nothing – just got David Swain arrested for something he never did. Osman played you just like he played my father, and now he’s got your pretty wife on his arm and my family’s diamonds in the bank.’

  ‘What are you going to do?’ asked Trave.

  ‘Do? I’m going to do whatever it takes to bring them to justice – I promise you that, Inspector,’ said Jacob. He sounded as if he was taking an oath. ‘Now I’m going to lock you both in,’ he said, backing away toward the door. ‘Don’t come after me or I’ll shoot. I don’t want to, but I will.’

  He turned out the light and closed the door, and moments later the two policemen heard the front door of the flat closing and a key turning in the lock.

  They crossed over to the window and the pale moonlight illuminated their tired, impotent faces as they watched Jacob getting on his scooter down below. He turned on the engine and rode away into the darkness without once looking back.

  CHAPTER 21

  Jacob had double-locked the door as he left, and it took Trave and Clayton a lot longer to get out of the flat than it had taken to get in. There was no telephone, and hammering on the locked door brought no response from any of the neighbours, and so they had to resort to taking it in turns to shout for help down into the empty street. Lights went on in the neighbouring houses, but it was still a maddeningly long time before people appeared below the window, and then there was a further delay while they had to satisfy a would-be rescuer that they were law enforcers and not lawbreakers. Eventually, however, a ladder appeared out of the darkness and the two policemen were able to climb down to the ground.

  Clayton already had his car running by the time Trave had pressed a pound note into the hand of the ladder’s owner and had joined him, taking the passenger seat, and Clayton wasted no time in heading off.

  ‘To Blackwater?’ he asked, glancing at his companion.

  ‘Yes, you heard Jacob,’ said Trave with a sigh. ‘That’s where he’s going. Maybe not tonight, but sooner rather than later. He’s convinced himself that there’s vital evidence somewhere in the house, and he won’t rest until he’s found it, although personally I think it’s a wild-goose chase. If there was anything, Osman would have got rid of it at the same time he got rid of Katya. No, the evidence exists; it’s just somewhere else. That’s all.’

  ‘How can you be so sure?’ asked Clayton. He’d heard nothing in the flat to convince him that Osman had had anything to do with his niece’s murder. Claes was a different matter.

  Trave started to respond, but his voice was drowned out by the wail of a police-car siren coming toward them down the other side of the road. For a moment its blue flashing lights illuminated the darkness, and then it was gone.

  ‘I know where they’re going,’ said Trave with a smile. ‘Someone obviously thought we were up to no good back there. Probably that old woman in the ground-floor flat. She’s certainly had a day to remember.’

  ‘What do you think Jacob’s intending to do with that gun?’ asked Clayton nervously, wishing that the police car was following them out to Blackwater Hall instead of heading uselessly over to Jacob’s empty flat. Right now they needed all the help they could get.

  ‘Well, I don’t think he’s going to kill anyone with it, if that’s what you’re worried about,’ said Trave with quiet confidence. ‘Not unless Claes fires at him first, and I honestly don’t think Jacob’s looking for that kind of confrontation. He could have shot Osman and Claes a long time ago if he’d wanted to, but instead he’s spent every minute of every day going round Europe searching for evidence against them, because it’s justice he’s after, not some clandestine murder in the dark.’

  ‘Well, I hope you’re right. But whatever he’s got in mind, we need to warn the people at the Hall. They’ve got a right to know,’ said Clayton, glancing anxiously at his watch. It was six o’clock already, and Jacob would easily have got to Blackwater by now if that was where he’d gone. Once again Clayton cursed his stupidity for having allowed their prisoner to get away and pressed his foot down hard on the accelerator, trying in vain to extract a little more speed from his old second-hand car.

  Trave said nothing, and they passed the rest of the journey in an uneasy silence.

  Jacob stood motionless in the darkness with his back to a tall pine tree on the edge of the woods that bordered the wide lawns surrounding Osman’s house. The wind had died down si
nce the afternoon but still blew softly through the trees, and overhead the crescent moon peeped out intermittently from behind a veil of clouds, shedding a pale light down onto the well-tended grass. About two hundred yards away the Hall was a great shadowed shape lit here and there by pricks of electric light. The minutes passed and nothing happened, but Jacob showed no sign of impatience. His face was impassive, giving no clue to the feverish workings of his brain.

  The Swain trial had already been running for three days, and Jacob had confidently expected Claes and his sister and Osman to go to London to give evidence on the Friday, two days earlier. They hadn’t, but the newspaper yesterday had reported that preliminary legal arguments were over and that the live evidence would begin on Monday. And until his unexpected encounter with the police, Jacob had calculated on the three of them being gone for the day, giving him the opportunity to quietly break into the house and search it at his leisure. Osman was a collector, a keeper of trophies – there would be evidence somewhere of his crimes. Jacob was sure of it.

  But now the situation was out of his control. Trave might not want to stand in his way, but the other policeman certainly would, and a locked door would not keep them imprisoned in his flat for very long. On his arrival fifteen minutes earlier Jacob had climbed up into the trees and cut the telephone line running from the road up to the Hall, and now all he could do was wait and see what happened next.

  Jacob cursed himself yet again for having come out here earlier in the day. There was no need for it. Monday was going to be his opportunity, and if he’d stayed home that young detective would never have found him. But there was no point regretting his mistake. What was done was done. The house drew him like a magnet – that was the problem. Tonight he would sleep in the boathouse. It was the place where he felt closest to his brother – it was where Ethan had been happy and where he had died, murdered in cold blood by those two bastards who’d already sent Ethan’s and his parents to the gas chambers. A spasm of hatred gripped Jacob’s thin frame, but it was gone in a moment as he reasserted control over himself. He hadn’t come this far to let emotion get in the way of what he had set out to do.