purring underneath him. And then, just as he’d put the car in gear and was about to drive away, Max came running out of the front door with Robbie the Robot clutched in his hand.
David wound down the window.
‘I want you to have this,’ said Max. ‘Because…’
‘We’re brothers?’
Max nodded. David had never seen anyone looking so upset and so determined all at the same time.
‘Thank you, Max,’ he said, placing the robot carefully on the passenger seat beside the gun and the bag containing the sandwiches and the telephone. ‘I’ll take good care of him. And…’ He paused, searching for the right words, but they wouldn’t come. ‘I’m sorry,’ he said. ‘Tell your mother I’m sorry. This isn’t how I wanted it to be.’
Turning away and looking over his shoulder, he reversed out of the drive, and then, pausing for a moment, he stared over at the door where his mother was standing with her arm around her younger son. And she remained there, tight-lipped, immobile, as he stepped on the gas and drove away.
CHAPTER 11
Adam Clayton pulled down on the lever and watched the low-quality black coffee slowly filling the Styrofoam cup that he was holding under the nozzle of the hot-drinks machine. It was his third visit to the coffee machine that morning, and each cup had tasted worse than the one before, but he needed the caffeine to stay alert as he combed through the reports from the Katya Osman case that now covered every inch of his desk in the room he shared with Trave across the corridor. It was hard work, and he wasn’t sleeping well. Partly it was the pressure that always comes with a new inquiry, particularly one as high-profile as this; partly it was the continuing unease he’d felt with Trave ever since he’d voiced his anxieties in Osman’s boathouse two days earlier about Trave’s reaction to his wife’s ongoing relationship with the owner of Blackwater Hall. Clayton wished now that he’d kept quiet. Trave had not referred to the subject again, and so there was no opportunity to apologize or make amends, but he’d clearly not forgotten his junior’s implied doubts about his professionalism. Ever since their conversation, he’d treated Clayton with a new businesslike reserve, and the frostiness of the atmosphere had started to undermine the younger man’s confidence, making him realize how much he’d depended up to now on his boss’s goodwill and support.
And yet Clayton also felt a growing sense of injustice. He’d never have brought up the issue of a conflict of interest if Trave hadn’t treated everyone at Blackwater Hall like they were murder suspects, not witnesses. No wonder Claes and his sister had been less than forthcoming when Trave had started in on them straight away, giving them the third degree. And Osman had seemed genuinely distraught when they’d talked to him in his study across from the broken window through which this Swain character had come bursting in with his gun a few hours earlier. Swain was there in the house at the right time and with the right motive. Everything pointed to him, and yet Trave remained obviously dissatisfied, distrusting the accumulating evidence. Why? There was no reason for it. Unless…
‘You look like shit, lad. Something wrong with your love life?’
Clayton turned to his left and saw Inspector Macrae looking up at him from a chair in the corner. He’d obviously been too preoccupied with his troubles to notice that he wasn’t the only one in the break room when he’d come in earlier. But Macrae was like that — always there when you were least expecting it, popping up with some unnerving comment that you couldn’t think of an answer to. He was new at the station, transferred down from up north when old Inspector Finney retired. And Clayton and the other junior detectives were wary of him — he came with a reputation for getting results and not caring too much about how he got them. He seemed to have a way of always looking for the bad in people. It was more than cynicism, more like a perpetual sneer. It set Clayton on edge, and he tried to give Macrae as wide a berth as possible. Today he was the last person that Clayton wanted to talk to, but he could hardly turn his back on the man. Macrae was an inspector and Clayton was a junior detective, right down at the bottom of the station totem pole.
‘No, sir, I’m all right,’ Clayton said, forcing himself to sound friendly, like he was feeling on top of the world. ‘Just a lot of work suddenly. That’s all.’
‘Well, sit down and tell me about it, lad,’ said Macrae, patting the empty chair beside him. ‘Perhaps I can help.’
‘No, the work’s not a problem. It’s just I’ve got to give Inspector Trave a progress report when he comes in,’ said Clayton nervously. He stayed fixed to the spot by the coffee machine but looked longingly toward the door.
‘Ah yes. Bill Trave can be quite demanding when he wants to be. I’ve seen that for myself. Giving you a hard time of it, is he?’ asked Macrae with a smile, clearly enjoying Clayton’s discomfiture.
‘No, sir. Not at all.’
Macrae nodded knowingly as if he understood that Clayton wasn’t telling him the truth because he couldn’t, and then pointed again to the empty chair. Clayton sat down. He had no choice.
He’d never been so close to Macrae before, and Clayton felt an instinctive repulsion that he couldn’t quite explain to himself. It wasn’t that the man was ugly or smelt bad. Quite the opposite in fact: Inspector Macrae was a good-looking man in the prime of life, dressed in a far more expensive suit than Trave had ever worn. He wore his hair carefully combed back en brosse from his high, unwrinkled forehead and, to the extent that he smelt of anything, it was expensive Italian aftershave. But there was something weird about the way his waxy skin was pulled so tightly across the bones of his face like it was a mask with only his small, watchful grey eyes seeming to hint at the true personality underneath; and his hands were strange too — long, scrupulously clean nails on the end of tapering fingers and thumbs that Macrae kept perpetually in motion, moulding, stroking, kneading invisible shapes. An artist’s hands or a strangler’s, Clayton thought. Not a policeman’s.
‘An interesting case, this Blackwater murder, from what I’ve been hearing,’ said Macrae, looking not at Clayton but beyond him into the middle distance.
‘Yes,’ said Clayton non-commitally. He was not deceived by Macrae’s languid manner — the inspector clearly had an agenda of some kind.
‘Two press conferences already I see, so it’s quite high-profile.’
‘Yes, I suppose so.’
‘Well, it’s got all the ingredients, hasn’t it? A beautiful girl gunned down in a country house owned by a rich foreigner, a dangerous armed suspect on the run who’s killed before and may well do so again. What more could you ask for? A bit more exciting than your average, run-of-the-mill hit-and-run, eh, Constable?’
Clayton nodded, waiting to see where Macrae was going.
‘And I suppose Trave’s the natural choice given that he was in charge last time there was trouble over there.’ Macrae paused and then went on musingly: ‘But there’s talk, you know, that he’s got something of a personal interest in the case — something about his wife and Mr Osman. Have you heard about any of this? Rumours, station gossip — I don’t pay much attention, of course, but I wonder if it’s something that might affect his approach.’
Clayton shook his head, keeping his eyes resolutely on the floor. He knew what Macrae was after now. A case like this with a lot of news interest followed by a quick, dramatic arrest could do wonders for an ambitious inspector’s career.
‘ Adversely affect his approach,’ Macrae said softly, leaning closer and forcing Clayton to look him in the eye. ‘What do you think, Constable?’
‘I don’t know, sir. We’re doing the best we can,’ said Clayton stolidly. He might have some private concerns about his boss’s having a conflict of interest, but that sure as hell didn’t mean he was going to share his anxieties with a snake like Macrae.
‘We certainly are doing our best,’ said Trave brightly from the doorway, appearing as if from nowhere. ‘And while we really appreciate your interest, Hugh, we can’t stay to chat. We’ve got work to do, haven’t we, Adam? Come on.’
Clayton hadn’t obeyed an order with such alacrity in a long time. He practically ran out of the break room, leaving Macrae with an angry look on his face and a scarlet flush that was beginning to suffuse his pale cheeks. Clayton had no idea how much his boss had heard of what Macrae was saying, but Trave’s timing had been perfect,
