The King of Diamonds (30 page)

Jana answered almost immediately. She was dressed as usual in a long black woollen dress with not a hair on her head out of place – she’d obviously been up for some time. ‘Remember me?’ asked Jacob brutally, as he pushed past her into the hall and then turned and shut the door with a hard shove of his hand.

Jana didn’t respond. Terrified, she recoiled from Jacob into the corner, looking about wildly as if searching for some non-existent means of escape. Jacob laughed, enjoying her fear. He had no idea how much she was involved in all that had happened, but she was Claes’s sister, and that was crime enough.

‘Perhaps it’s the beard that’s throwing you off. Facial hair changes a man, doesn’t it?’ he said, fingering the thick black hair on his cheek and chin. ‘No? All right, well then let me remind you,’ Jacob continued, looking down at Jana’s shaking hands with unconcealed amusement. ‘I was here last summer in Titus’s study having a wrestling match with your Nazi brother – remember now?’

‘What do you want?’ asked Jana, stuttering over her words. She spoke hoarsely, as if fear had taken away her voice.

‘Want? I want everything,’ said Jacob with a humourless smile. ‘I want to know where you were when Katya died, whether you were involved in my brother’s death, what you did in the war – all your sins and secrets. But you aren’t going to tell me about them, are you? Not unless I make you, and luckily for you I haven’t got time for that. So let’s just settle for you telling me where Titus keeps his papers. Not his phone bills; his important papers. You know what I mean.’

Jacob stared into Jana’s frightened eyes, demanding a response, but she said nothing, just slowly shook her head from side to side.

‘You won’t say? Well, you’ll show me then.’ Abruptly Jacob leaned forward and took hold of Jana’s wrist, squeezing it, pulling her towards the back of the hall. ‘Come on, let’s start with his study. I know where that is.’

Inside the study he let go of her and went over to the desk. To his surprise, all the drawers except the one in the centre at the top were unlocked. He pulled them open one by one, rifling through their contents while Jana stood watching, looking appalled, like she was watching an act of desecration in a church. But there was nothing. Pens and stationery, headed letter-writing paper with an absurd golden crest at the top as if Osman was some kind of lord, a bundle of bank statements – everything that he wasn’t looking for.

Only the top drawer remained. Jacob didn’t bother asking Jana for the key. Instead he took the revolver out of his pocket, stood back from the desk, and carefully fired a bullet into the keyhole, smashing the lock and the wood. Jana screamed in terror, but he ignored her. Instead he swept aside the dust and looked inside, but there were only cheque books and Osman’s passport – and of all things a photogaph of Katya in a silver frame. He didn’t touch it – the impact of the bullet had smashed the glass.

‘Where are they – the documents, the diamonds?’ asked Jacob angrily, fastening his eyes on Jana again. Her face was white now, and he noticed how she kept fingering a silver crucifix hanging from a chain around her neck. It was obviously an unconscious gesture – something she did in moments of stress – but the reminder of her hypocritical religion made Jacob hate her even more. He went over to her. She tried to turn away, but he took hold of her face in his hand, forcing her to look at him. It was as if he was trying to read her mind.

‘There’s a safe, isn’t there?’ he said softly after a moment, letting go of her chin. ‘That’s where he keeps his past. Where is it? Tell me where it is.’

Jana turned away without answering, but not before Jacob had had time to see and understand her first reaction to his words. He knew what her rapid anxious glance up toward the ceiling had meant.

‘It’s not in here, is it?’ he said, speaking as if to himself. ‘It’s upstairs – upstairs where he sleeps. Show me where he sleeps.’

Jana stood rooted to the spot, ignoring Jacob’s order. But whether it was resistance or fear that had immobilized her, Jacob neither knew nor cared. He put the revolver up to the side of her head, pressing its muzzle against her temple. ‘Move,’ he commanded, and this time Jana moved – up the stairs to the first floor and down the corridor to the left until they came to the door at the end. She hesitated outside, but Jacob reached in front of her, turned the handle, and pushed her inside.

It was a grand room with an elaborately carved cornice surrounding its high ceiling. The furniture was ornate French Second Empire – an armchair and a four-poster bed that had not yet been made from the previous night and, on the nearest wall, two matching wardrobes decorated with pastoral scenes that stood on either side of a small oil painting of Blackwater Hall as it had appeared a hundred years earlier. However, the real glory of the room lay in the views from the tall rectangular sash windows hung with exquisite pale white silk curtains. At the front was the tree-lined drive leading up to the gates, and beyond that, across the invisible road, the green hill climbing up to Blackwater village. And through the window to the right there was the same view as from the drawing room below, except this time from higher up, so that on a clear day such as this the eye could take in the full expanse of Blackwater Lake and the pine woods beyond, disappearing down into the distant valley. This was what Osman woke to every morning, thought Jacob with disgust, while those he had wronged lay buried in the dirt, seeing nothing.

‘All right, where is it?’ he demanded, raising the gun threateningly toward Jana’s head. Petrified, she pointed over to the picture between the wardrobes with a trembling hand.

Jacob’s eyes flicked over to the wall and back to Jana. He gestured with the gun, and, following its instruction, she backed away to the front window. Then, keeping the revolver trained on her with one hand, he lifted the picture from off its hook, revealing a steel wall safe surmounted by a small black-and-white number dial. His eyes lit up and he audibly exhaled, sensing how close he was now to the summit he had been struggling towards for so long.

‘I don’t know the code,’ said Jana in a whisper, pre-empting his question. He went up close to her again, but this time she held his gaze and he knew she was telling the truth. He returned to the safe and began twisting the dial this way and that, trying every combination of significant numbers he could think of – Osman’s birthday, the date the war ended and when it began, the registration number of Osman’s Bentley. Nothing worked. Finally, maddened with frustration, Jacob took aim and fired his revolver at the safe, but the bullet just ricocheted off the silvery surface and embedded itself in the opposite wall.

He would have shot again, but from down below there was the sound of someone knocking on the front door. Jacob and Jana both froze. Jacob was the first to recover. ‘Get away from the window,’ he ordered, but she did the opposite, flattening herself back against the glass, refusing to obey. Jacob advanced on her, seizing her arm, trying to drag her away, but she took hold of the curtain and stood her ground. She was surprisingly strong, and Jacob pocketed his gun, realizing he would need two hands. Straight away, Jana took advantage of the momentary loosening of his grip to twist around and bang on the window with one of her hands, trying to attract the attention of the man in the courtyard down below.

When he heard the noise Adam Clayton was just walking back to his police car. He’d requisitioned it from the station earlier that morning when he had gone in to try and track down Macrae, who was still nowhere to be found. Now, turning around, he looked up and saw Jacob Mendel locked in a struggle with Jana Claes. For a moment they were framed, silent and contorted in the first-floor window on the far left of the house. And then they disappeared, as if they had never been there at all.

Clayton looked about wildly for something with which to break a window, and then thought of the wheel jack in the back of the car. He’d got it out and was about to use it when Jana reappeared in the window above his head, pulling it up open wide. ‘He’s gone,’ she shouted, leaning out. And at that moment, to his left, out of sight and round the side of the house, Clayton heard the sound of another sash window opening; seconds later, he caught sight of a figure running fast across the wide lawn towards the trees. Clayton reacted instantly. He ran to his car, reversed it into a three-point turn with a screech of tyres, and set off up the drive, arriving at the fence where the path from the boathouse met the road long before Jacob could have got there on foot. Mindful of Jacob’s gun, Clayton moved his car further down the road out of sight and radioed in for reinforcements. Then he got out and stood behind a tree, watching. He knew his job wasn’t to arrest Jacob but to keep track of him until armed police arrived.

A minute passed and then another, but nothing happened. Everything was still and silent. Clayton was sure he was in the right place – from where he was standing he could see the bushes where Jacob had hidden his scooter the previous day. Cautiously, he crossed the road and climbed over the fence. He searched all the nearby undergrowth carefully at first and then with a rising panic, but there was no sign of the scooter. He looked anxiously down the path leading to the boathouse. It was narrow and uneven, unsuitable for riding, but perhaps Jacob had wheeled his scooter down there this time. Nervously Clayton started walking, stopping at each corner to check the way ahead. But there was nothing, until he came in sight of the boathouse and looked out across the lake to where a rowing boat was fast approaching the weeping willow trees lining the bank on the other side. There was one solitary figure pulling on the oars, and Clayton didn’t need the man to turn his head to know who it was.

Clayton walked slowly back up the footpath. He knew there was no point in hurrying now. Jacob would have disappeared into the Monday-morning traffic long before the pursuing police could catch up with him on the other side of the valley.

Osman and Claes returned to Blackwater Hall in the late afternoon, followed shortly after by Macrae. Clayton had spoken to his boss on the phone at the Old Bailey soon after he had got back to the house, but Macrae had decided to remain at the Swain trial, where he was required on a daily basis as the officer in the case, once he had established that Jana Claes was shocked but otherwise unharmed and that nothing had been taken.

‘Well, Mr Osman’s very grateful to you, Constable,’ said Macrae once they were alone, standing out in the courtyard in the gathering twilight. ‘You’re quite the hero, aren’t you, stopping an armed burglary and saving the damsel in distress? Almost worth a medal if you can just answer me one question.’

‘Sir?’ asked Clayton, feeling he had a pretty good idea of what was coming next.

‘Just this,’ said Macrae mildly. ‘How did you know to come here? What gave you the idea that this Jacob Mendel character was going to be breaking into Blackwater Hall at seven o’clock in the morning? Was it your sixth sense or something a bit more specific?’

Clayton swallowed apprehensively. He knew that he had no option but to put Macrae fully in the picture, given the seriousness of what Jacob had done and was likely to do again, but he also realized that a full report was not going to do anything to help his career prospects.

‘I saw him here yesterday watching the house,’ he began nervously. ‘And I followed him back to his flat – it’s off the Iffley Road. There were a lot of documents on the walls – photographs and newspaper articles about Claes, about him working with the Germans during the war . . .’

‘Ah, so that’s where all that came from,’ said Macrae, looking interested.

‘What came from?’ asked Clayton, not understanding.

‘Allegations that Swain’s barrister put to Mr Claes today in cross-examination. Just a sideshow – they didn’t amount to anything,’ said Macrae with a dismissive wave of his hand. ‘Carry on – I’m sorry for interrupting.’

‘Well, it was like Mendel was obsessed with Osman and Claes, and his glasses matched those that the burglar left behind last summer when he broke into Osman’s study. I was going to arrest him, but he pulled a gun and got away. And so I came out here and left a note to warn Osman, but Mendel must have removed it, and the phone line was down . . . I tried to call you as well, sir, but you weren’t home,’ Clayton spoke in a rush, trying unsuccessfully not to sound defensive.

Macrae looked at Clayton quizzically as if assessing whether he was telling the truth and then nodded as if temporarily satisfied. ‘All right, I understand why you came back here this morning,’ he said in the same easy-going tone as before. ‘But what I don’t quite grasp is what you were doing here yesterday when you saw Mendel watching the house. Can you enlighten me on that, Constable?’

‘I was looking for him,’ said Clayton.

‘Why?’

‘Because I thought he might be the one who broke in here last summer.’

‘So you’ve been devoting your valuable time to investigating a six-month-old failed burglary?’ asked Macrae with a sneer. ‘I’m afraid you’ll have to do a bit better than that. I’ll repeat the question: Why were you looking for Jacob Mendel out here yesterday afternoon?’

‘I thought he might have something to do with what happened,’ said Clayton reluctantly. He felt like he was being slowly backed into a corner.

‘Happened to whom?’ asked Macrae. There was a dangerous edge to his voice.

‘To Katya Osman.’

‘But we know what happened to her,’ said Macrae, making no effort now to conceal his anger. ‘She was brutally murdered by Mr David Swain, who’s being prosecuted for the offence up in London, while you’re busy trying to undermine the prosecution case against him down here. Just like your ex-boss tried to do, and now he’s about to become an ex-policeman. I’d say you’re in way over your head here, Constable.’