disappeared.’
‘What was he wearing?’ asked Clayton, speaking for the first time.
‘A blue-and-white shirt, some jeans maybe. I’m not sure about the trousers.’
‘Were the clothes torn?’
‘I don’t know. There was no time to see things like that.’
Trave looked at Clayton impatiently, drumming his fingers on his knee as Clayton made a note in his report book.
‘So Mr Swain disappeared,’ Trave said, leaning forward. ‘Did you follow him?’
‘Yes, but not to catch him up. It would have been impossible: he was running and I have a problem with my leg’ — Claes tapped his left knee — ‘so I shouted down to Titus to warn him, and then I went downstairs myself. Titus was in the corridor outside his bedroom. We looked down here and it seemed like Swain was gone, so we went back up to Katya’s room.’
‘Together?’
‘No, Titus went first. I looked in all the rooms first because I wanted to make sure Swain wasn’t hiding somewhere.’
‘What would you have done if you’d found him?’
‘Whatever was necessary, of course,’ said Claes. There was a cold, clipped tone to his voice that Clayton found oddly disconcerting, chilling even.
‘And so when you didn’t find him, you went back upstairs and found Miss Osman shot in the head. How did that make you feel, Mr Claes?’ asked Trave.
Claes didn’t answer for a moment. It was as if he was nonplussed by the question, as if he’d prepared himself to say what had happened but not how he felt about it. Clayton didn’t think that Claes was the type of man who spent much of his life discussing his feelings.
‘I was sorry. Of course I was sorry,’ he said slowly. ‘But there was nothing I could do.’
‘No, there wasn’t, was there?’ said Trave, sounding unconvinced. ‘Miss Osman hasn’t exactly been a high priority in this house recently, has she?’
‘I don’t understand.’
‘The doctor says she’s badly undernourished; she’s got puncture marks all the way up one arm; and there are steel bars on her windows. What have you got to say about that, Mr Claes?’
‘She had got herself into trouble in the town,’ said Claes, choosing his words carefully. ‘My brother-in-law was looking after her, but she was unwilling.’
‘Unwilling?’
‘Yes, often she would not eat. She was not grateful.’
‘Grateful! For being kept a prisoner in her own home?’
Claes shrugged his shoulders.
‘Why did you try to shoot Mr Swain?’ asked Trave, changing the subject.
‘Because I was frightened of what he was going to do next. Titus was downstairs and he had already shot Katya.’
‘You didn’t know that.’
‘He was coming out of her room. I’d heard the shot. Anyone would have assumed it.’
Clayton silently agreed, thinking that he’d have definitely taken a shot or two if some armed man was running around his house shooting people. But then again he didn’t keep a gun in his bedroom. Not like Franz Claes.
‘It’s not the first time you’ve tried to put a bullet in Mr Swain, is it?’ Trave observed.
But Claes was ready for this.
‘No, Inspector, it is the first time. After Mr Mendel was murdered, I fired my gun to stop Mr Swain running away, not to hit him. This time it was different.’
Trave didn’t argue. He was stroking his chin again, thinking, and Clayton was just wondering whether this might be the signal for him to take over, when Trave asked his next question. It was not one that Clayton had expected.
‘Where does your sister sleep, Mr Claes?’
‘On the top floor, further along the corridor from Katya’s room.’
‘I see. Further down the corridor. Well, then let me ask you this: Why did you fire twice down that corridor when you must have known that there was a serious risk that she would come outside and be hit?’
Claes didn’t answer. There was a flush in his cheeks: it was the first time during the interview that he’d looked really discomforted.
‘You could have killed her, couldn’t you?’ said Trave, pressing the point.
‘It was a moment of stress,’ said Claes, finally answering. ‘I didn’t have time to think,’ he finished lamely.
‘You didn’t think,’ repeated Trave with a withering smile. ‘Well, thank you, Mr Claes, for your assistance. That’ll be all for now. But please don’t leave the house without telling us. We may be needing you again.’
Claes stood, bringing his polished shoes together with an audible click; nodded his head once to the two policemen; and limped to the door. He went out without looking back.
‘Slippery bastard,’ said Trave. ‘He’s play-acting with that limp. He walked a lot quicker last time I saw him.’
‘Why do you dislike him so much, sir?’ Clayton felt compelled to ask the question. He hadn’t warmed to Franz Claes during the interview, but most of what the man said made sense, even though it was strange he hadn’t thought of his sister when he fired those shots. It was Trave’s hostility that was more puzzling.
‘It’s not that I like or dislike him; it’s that I don’t trust him. He’s got secrets — that much I can tell you.’
‘Secrets?’ repeated Clayton, surprised.
‘All right, a secret,’ said Trave. ‘He was picked up in a vice raid a few years back — before the Mendel murder. A man called Bircher was running a whole lot of underage boys out of an old tenement house in Cowley. The detective I talked to said they were going to charge Claes, but then orders came down to let him off with a talking to, because it was a first offence or something like that. I don’t know the ins and outs of it, but Osman obviously got involved — spun some sob story or other, made a donation to the police benevolent fund. I don’t know. It’s ancient history now. Let’s see what the sister’s got to say.’
CHAPTER 8
Out in the hall Jana Claes sat on a high-backed wooden chair awaiting her turn in the drawing room. She had had time to get dressed and was now wearing her usual coal-black outfit with her greying hair tied up in a bun at the back of her head. Her pale face was even more wan than usual, but otherwise there was little to indicate that it was the middle of the night and that she had been woken by a murder committed only a few yards away from where she slept, except perhaps that the stillness of her hands seemed forced, as if inside she was rigid rather than relaxed, trying hard to hold herself in check.
She kept her eyes on the ground, only looking up when her brother came out of the drawing room and stopped for a brief moment beside her chair.
‘Be careful of the old one. He’ll try to trap you,’ he said, speaking in an undertone in rapid Dutch. ‘Remember what I said.’
She nodded: a small but clear inclination of her head, and Claes turned away toward the stairs, apparently satisfied, just as Clayton came out into the hall.
‘Miss Claes,’ said the policeman, holding the door of the drawing room open. ‘We’re ready for you now.’
Reaching behind her shoulder, Jana unhooked the handle of a walking stick from the back of her chair and got slowly to her feet.
‘Do you need a hand?’ asked Clayton, reaching forward instinctively to help Jana up.
‘No!’ Jana almost shouted the word, recoiling from the policeman’s touch, and Clayton gave her a wide berth as she went past him into the drawing room.
Trave was standing in front of the fireplace with his back to the door. He’d been thinking about his wife and
