The King of Diamonds (19 page)

‘All right, don’t ignore them. But treat them like witnesses, not suspects. Buy a pair of kid gloves if you have to.’

Trave nodded and got up to go, but at the door Creswell called him back.

‘How’s Clayton getting on?’ he asked.

‘Good,’ said Trave. ‘He’s enthusiastic, works hard.’

‘Glad to hear it,’ said Creswell. ‘One for the future, I’d say.’ He gave a small grunt of satisfaction and pulled another file towards him across the desk.

‘Everything all right?’ asked Clayton as Trave came back in the room.

‘Yes, no problem,’ said Trave. ‘But more work for you, Adam, I’m afraid. I’ve been talking to Creswell about the escape, and we both think we ought to find out a bit more about the mystery man who helped them over the wall, the one with the getaway car. Might help with finding Swain and Earle too.’

Clayton nodded, looking enthused. Swain was who they should be focusing on. He had no doubt about that.

‘What I want you to do is take Earle’s rap sheet over to archives and get a list of all his co-defendants and then pull up their mug shots if they’re known,’ Trave went on. ‘And then try and find out about any other associates he’s had and do the same with them. Once you’ve got some pictures, you can take them down to the prison and see if they can match any of them to the man who’s been so busy visiting Earle this last month. I’ll be here if you need me. I’m going to see how we’re getting on with this manhunt of ours.’

Clayton left with a smile on his face and a renewed sense of purpose. As soon as the door was closed, Trave reached for the telephone and put a call through to the stenographers’ department at the Old Bailey. He wanted to know if they could hurry up his request for a copy of the trial transcript in the case of
Regina versus Swain 1958
. He needed it top priority, he told the woman on the other end of the line – for the purpose of an ongoing murder inquiry.

It was in a basement down an alley off Wardour Street and called itself the Monte Carlo Casino – even had a cracked neon sign outside and a big burly doorman with tattoos on his meaty fingers, but that’s where its pretensions stopped. Down the steep narrow stairs, under the low ceilings, it was dark and cavernous and smoky and nobody asked any questions as long as you had the money to play. And Eddie had the money: a roll of blue and red bank notes bulging in the pocket of his trousers and three tall piles of yellow and blue chips stacked beside his right hand. Without even hesitating, he nodded for another card, and the dealer turned it over – the king of diamonds, the king of jewels, symbol of wealth and power – Eddie’s lucky card. He won again and leaned back in his chair, smiling, stretching his arm around the waist of the girl who was half-standing beside him, half-sitting on his knee, watching him play, drawn like a magnet to his luck.

She felt warm and soft, even more so when he let his hand stray up to where her breast began, pronounced under the low-cut red dress she was wearing. And she didn’t protest, even seemed to like it, folding herself more into his side. He had no curiosity about her as a person at all – he didn’t even know her name, but he liked her animal proximity and the intent way she was watching him – watching him win. Because tonight he was on a roll – he could feel the luck flowing through his veins, empowering him, transforming him from a nobody, a number on a prison governor’s list, into a force to be reckoned with – Easy Eddie, who’d gone through the roof and over the wall of Oxford Prison and ended up here in Soho on a Friday night holding the world in the palm of his hand.

Almost a week had gone by since his escape and Eddie was feeling more secure with every passing day. He’d bought himself a hat and a pair of thick glasses to go with his new suit of clothes, and without shaving he was now halfway to having a full beard. He looked a different person from the man in the police mug shot that had been in the papers a couple of times immediately after the escape, and, anyway, since then David Swain had been getting all the publicity, which was hardly surprising given what he’d got up to within an hour of getting out, whereas Eddie had kept his head down and his hands clean since he’d got to London. It wasn’t his fault that Davy was an idiot, Eddie thought contentedly as he ordered another drink and one for the girl too.

‘I don’t mind if I do,’ she said in a put-on classy voice that didn’t fool Eddie for a minute. He’d been in enough basement gambling dens in his day to know where the hookers and good-time girls came from, but it didn’t put him off. It was where he’d come from too: raised by his crazy grandmother in an evil-smelling flat above a grocery shop on the wrong side of Oxford. And he liked the way this girl looked – blond hair and blue eyes with big lashes and pouting red lips and her dress clinging to her skin like a sheath.

‘How old are you?’ he asked as he watched her sipping from her glass – she’d ordered Babycham, a little girl’s drink.

‘None of your business,’ she said in a ‘don’t ask no questions and I won’t tell you no lies’ kind of voice that made Eddie tighten his hand on her thigh.

‘Go on,’ he said. ‘Tell me.’

‘Twenty-one – like the game,’ she said in a way that made it sound like she was ready for anything. ‘Aren’t you going to ask me my name?’

‘All right. What’s your name?’

‘Audrey,’ she said with a simper. ‘Like the actress.’

‘Like the actress,’ Eddie agreed. It made him want to laugh: this two-bit girl imagining herself like Audrey Hepburn. Eddie knew all her movies, had seen some of them twice or even three times; he even knew some of her lines by heart. Audrey Hepburn was a goddess of the silver screen – up there on Mount Olympus with Elizabeth Taylor and Marilyn Monroe, available for admiration, for staring at, loving even from afar, but never to be seen in the flesh or touched. But this girl, this Audrey, she
could
be touched, and Eddie suddenly wanted her with a hard need that came on him unawares.

‘I’m hot,’ he said. ‘Let’s get some air.’ And standing up, he felt her eyes watching his hands as he filled the pockets of his jacket with the Monte Carlo chips and then exchanged them for bright new banknotes at the caged window by the door.

She held his arm up the steps, uncertain of her footing in her high heels, and then reached down for his hand as they came out into the night. He still hadn’t told her his name.

They walked up Wardour Street past a line of people queueing outside a dimly lit cinema to see a late-night screening of Alfred Hitchcock’s
Psycho
– ‘the most frightening film ever’ screamed a poster by the door – and on past shops with blacked-out windows, crowded Chinese restaurants, and girls in doorways calling out to passers-by. The cold air made Eddie’s head swirl after the heat of the casino, and he stopped at an off-licence and bought a bottle of Bell’s whisky.

‘Where are we going?’ asked the girl.

‘Home,’ said Eddie, and he squeezed her hand as he guided her across the road and down a side street to the dark, nondescript tenement house where he’d been staying for the last week.

But she stopped outside on the pavement, refusing to go any further.

‘I need the money first,’ she said, looking him in the eye for the first time. And he saw how she looked different now out under the streetlights – not flirtatious, fluttering her eyelashes, hoping to pass for Audrey Hepburn, but shrewd and calculating – a lot older than twenty-one.

‘What money?’ he said. ‘I thought we were friends.’

‘Yeah, we’re friends,’ she said quietly, not bothering to conceal her East End accent any more. ‘But I need the money first. That’s all.’

‘How much?’ he asked, feeling flat all of a sudden, like all the air had gone out of him. He wasn’t an idiot – he’d known who she was and what they were doing, but he’d wanted the illusion too, at least until it was over. Was that so much to ask?

‘Twenty pounds,’ she said. And he reached into his pocket and counted off the money, not caring that it was more than she was worth, and then turned round, preceding her through the door and up the dimly lit stairs. And the girl followed in her high-heeled shoes, holding on to the bannister for support.

He couldn’t. However hard he tried, he couldn’t. Maybe the trying was why he couldn’t or maybe it was the alcohol or the way she’d turned the whole thing into a sordid business transaction, lying on the bed and staring out the window while he tried and tried. He remembered how he’d felt in the casino – like he had the world in the palm of his hand, like he was the fucking king of diamonds. And now here he was – failing at what every other man could do, in a seedy lodging house with a girl who didn’t care whether he lived or died. She was just like all the others. Except worse maybe – she hadn’t even asked him his name: he could read the indifference in her stupid, over-made-up eyes.

Eventually he gave up, pulled back, and poured himself another glass of whisky from the half-empty bottle on the bedside table. He drank it with his back to her, sitting on the side of the bed, listening to the sound of her washing in the sink, putting on her clothes, getting ready to go. And leave him. Just like they always did. Every last one of them. Always the same.

‘Fuck you,’ he said, turning round to look at her standing by the bed, balancing on one foot as she bent down to put on her shoes. ‘Fuck you, Audrey.’

‘Not much chance of that, pal,’ she shot back. And he could hear the contempt in her voice, see the derision in her eyes. And suddenly something inside of him broke. He’d fucking well show her he was a man. If he couldn’t show her one way, he’d show her another, and picking up the whisky bottle in a tight grip, he smashed it down on the side of her head.

She saw the blow coming at the last moment. Not in time to get out of the way, but in time to put her arm up to protect her eyes. And she didn’t fall but ran out of the door screaming, while he sat back heavily on the bed with the remains of the broken bottle in his hand and one of her high-heeled shoes lying on the floor at his feet.

They kept him in West End Central overnight, charged him with the assault, and then sent him back to Oxford in a police car, wedged between two huge uniformed officers in the back seat who said nothing all journey, just gazed straight ahead like they were a couple of stood-down robots. But Eddie enjoyed the ride, notwithstanding his cramped conditions. There was an escort car up in front with its sirens blaring and its lights flashing, clearing them a way through the traffic, and he felt important again, like he’d felt in the Monte Carlo Casino the previous evening when he’d been winning all those blackjack hands, before he got railroaded by that stupid girl. A spasm of hatred contorted Eddie’s face for a moment as he remembered the look on her face before he smashed her with the bottle. The fucking bitch had got exactly what she deserved, even if it had meant getting nabbed.

But Eddie’s anger was passing. He had a talent for living in the present and he hadn’t really expected to stay on the run forever. He hadn’t told David, but he knew that almost all escapers got caught again within a few days. He’d done well to last a week, and he looked forward to the new respect he’d have back at the gaol for his daring escape – it was almost worth the extra time they’d tack on to his sentence, if they did add any on, that is. Maybe he could make a deal – he was pretty sure the police would be interested in what he had to tell them about Davy Swain and their late-night chats about that Katya girl, even if it was that self-righteous copper, Trave, who was in charge of the investigation – he was the one who’d busted Eddie the last time, put him away for fencing stolen goods. Self-righteous or not, coppers were like everyone else – they knew which side their bread was buttered on.

And it was Trave who met them at the back door of the police station dressed in a suit that was even more creased and crumpled than the one Eddie was wearing. He looked like he hadn’t had any sleep, and he looked angry. Not self-righteous but angry. Like a man on a mission. It worried Eddie, but he wasn’t going to let it show. ‘I want my hat,’ he said, hanging back, insisting on his rights. ‘It’s mine. They took it off me in the car.’

At a nod from Trave one of the burly policemen retrieved the hat from the front seat, and Trave shoved it down hard on Eddie’s head so that it covered his eyes.

‘Welcome back, Eddie,’ he said, leading the way inside. ‘We’ve got some talking to do, you and I.’

But Trave waited to start the interview until Adam Clayton had got back from the prison. It was Clayton’s second visit there in three days, but this time he was no more successful than the first. He’d drawn a blank with all the mug shots.

‘The prison officer who checked in Earle’s friend’s no fool. I think he’d recognize him if he had the chance – I just haven’t been able to show him the right photograph. That’s all,’ said Clayton ruefully. ‘Maybe Earle’ll help us.’

‘I wouldn’t hold your breath,’ said Trave. ‘Easy Eddie’s got a big mouth when it comes to talking about himself, but I don’t see him selling his friends down the river just because we ask him to and say please.’

And so it proved, although it wasn’t for want of trying. Trave controlled his irritation and instead plied Eddie with cigarettes and coffee in the station’s only unchipped mug, and soon Eddie was singing about his daring escape – in fact once he got started they couldn’t shut him up, and Clayton’s hand started to ache as he wrote down how Eddie worked out how to use the scaffolding in the rec room and made papier-mâché for the dummies in their beds, how he measured the sheets and used the broken chair as a grappling hook to get over the inner wall. But then, just when he’d got to the vital point in his story, Eddie shut up tight as a clamshell. However hard Trave pressed him, he wouldn’t say who’d helped him and David Swain over the outer wall, wouldn’t say if it was the same man who visited him at the prison, wouldn’t say who that was either, until in the end Trave lost patience.

‘Do you know how much trouble you’re in?’ asked Trave, leaning across the table into Eddie’s cigarette smoke. ‘You took Swain out to Blackwater Hall, you and your bearded friend, didn’t you?’

‘No, I told you. We split up.’

‘There wasn’t time for you to split up. You drove him out there in the getaway car, and you gave him that gun. That’s what happened, isn’t it?’

‘No.’

‘And you know what that makes you, Eddie, don’t you? An accomplice to murder.’

‘I didn’t know nothing . . .’ Eddie stopped in mid-sentence and swallowed hard. He took another cigarette from the packet on the table and lit it from the one he already had. Clayton noticed how his hands were shaking.

‘You knew,’ said Trave. ‘You’ve already told us how Swain kept you up at night going on and on about Katya Osman and how much he hated her . . .’

‘That don’t make me no accomplice,’ said Eddie, interrupting.

‘It does if you helped him. And if you want to help yourself now, you’ll tell me who put you up to this.’

‘Nobody did. I got out because I wanted to get out. I’ve done it before, you know.’

‘Not when you’re coming to the end of your sentence you haven’t, and not with help from outside. What made this time different, Eddie?’

‘Nothing made it different. I don’t like prisons. That’s all.’

‘All right, I’ll tell you what made it different. David Swain – that’s who. You didn’t need to take him along – in fact it doubled your chances of getting caught.’