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.
‘I’m sorry for the wait, Mr Osman,’ said Trave. ‘This room is where the intruder broke into your house and probably got out too, and so I wanted to bring you in here so that you could see if anything is missing or has been moved about. And I’m afraid that meant waiting until forensics had finished.’
‘No problem, Inspector. It gave me time to get dressed and compose myself a little,’ said Osman evenly.
‘And yet you look surprised,’ said Trave, noticing Osman’s raised eyebrows and the quizzical look on his face. ‘May I ask why?’
‘I suppose I am unaccustomed to being interviewed on the wrong side of my own desk,’ said Osman with a thin smile. ‘But it doesn’t matter; it is Katya, my niece, who matters. It is horrible, quite horrible, what has happened. I cannot believe it, cannot credit it.’ Osman shuddered and put his hand up to his face, running his fingers across his eyes.
Trave couldn’t tell whether Osman had been crying. There was certainly redness around his pupils, but whether from tears or rubbing was anyone’s guess.
‘I’m sorry, Inspector,’ said Osman, taking a deep breath and shaking his head as if trying to pull himself together. He glanced around the room. ‘Nothing appears to have been taken as far as I am aware. I have not had time to check the drawers in my desk.’
‘Why do you keep the top one locked?’ asked Trave. He kept his eyes fixed on Osman as he asked the question.
‘Because its contents are private.’
‘Private to me?’
‘Yes, Inspector: private even to you. And frankly I can’t see their relevance to what has happened here tonight.’
Clayton, shifting in his seat, silently agreed.
‘Look, my brother-in-law has told me that he saw David Swain outside my niece’s room tonight — the same man who murdered my guest, Ethan Mendel, two years ago,’ Osman went on, leaning across the desk. ‘I thought that Mr Swain was safely locked away in prison, but perhaps he has escaped. Has he, Inspector?’
‘Yes, he’s escaped,’ said Trave in a flat, expressionless voice.
‘I see,’ said Osman, sounding unsurprised. ‘Well, then, perhaps it is Mr Swain that we should be talking about. Not my private correspondence.’
‘I’ll decide which questions to ask, if you don’t mind, Mr Osman,’ said Trave coolly. ‘Perhaps you wouldn’t mind explaining why you felt the need to keep your niece imprisoned in her room?’
‘The bars on her window were for her safety,’ said Osman patiently. ‘And her door wasn’t locked, Inspector. If it had been, Mr Swain wouldn’t have been able to get into her room tonight, would he?’
‘Perhaps not. But then can you explain why she seems to have been suffering from malnutrition and has needle marks all up one arm?’ Trave spoke harshly, not bothering to keep the anger out of his voice.
‘The marks are from the drugs she took when she was in Oxford before I got her back here last month, and she is thin because she refused to eat. It wasn’t for want of trying. It broke my heart to see her like that, but she was stubborn like her mother, my sister.’
‘So I assume you got professional help?’
‘Yes, of course. My doctor has been here regularly to see her.’
‘Is he a psychiatrist?’
‘He’s a doctor, a good doctor.’
There was an uneasy silence. Once again Clayton found himself puzzled by the way that Trave was pursuing the investigation. Certainly there were questions that needed to be asked about the deceased’s physical state, but there was no real evidence that she’d been imprisoned in her room, and there was nothing to justify Trave’s ill- concealed hostility to Osman and his family.
‘Can you tell us what you know about what happened here tonight?’ Clayton asked, speaking for the first time.
‘Certainly,’ said Osman, transferring his attention from Trave to the younger policeman with a smile. ‘I went to bed at about eleven. I heard gunshots…’
‘How many?’
‘Several. I can’t be sure. I was asleep. I got out of bed and opened the door of my bedroom. I heard Franz shouting my name, and then at the same time someone was rushing past me in the corridor. He was running very fast, and instinctively I backed away into my bedroom or he would have knocked me over.’
‘Did you see who it was?’
‘No, he was too quick.’
‘He?’
‘I had the impression it was a man. As I say, he was very quick.’
‘Were the lights on?’
‘Yes. It was dark outside when I opened the door, and so I turned on the light in the corridor. I wish I hadn’t now as it must have helped Swain find his way downstairs.’
‘And where is your bedroom, sir?’ asked Clayton.
‘Just above where we are now, off the first-floor corridor. It’s on the far left side of the house as you face it from the front.’
‘Thank you,’ said Clayton, making a note.
Osman looked benevolently at Trave’s assistant, and Trave looked even more irritated than before. ‘So what happened next?’ he asked, taking over the questioning.
‘There was quite a lot of noise coming from downstairs, but then it stopped; and, at about the same time, Franz came down the flight of stairs nearest my bedroom. As you probably know, there is a staircase at each end of the house leading from the first to the second floors, but only one central staircase coming up from the ground floor, and I’d heard the intruder running down that one,’ said Osman, glancing over at Clayton, who was busy writing in his book. ‘Franz had his gun with him, and so we came down here and found the window broken over there. It seemed like Swain had gone, and so I left Franz to look through the other rooms while I went back upstairs and found Katya. She was…’ Osman’s voice broke, and he covered his face with his hand for a moment, mastering his emotion.
‘How do you think Swain knew where he was going?’ asked Trave, once Osman had had a chance to compose himself. ‘Has he been here before tonight?’
‘Never with my permission. Once without, but that’s all as far as I know. Katya had him in the house when I was away on business, and she even took him in her bedroom. I was very angry when I found out about it afterwards.’
‘Why?’
