‘Yes, well, like I just said, that was a long time ago. Now please, Bill, let’s not get sidetracked. It’s this case, not Inspector Macrae, I want to talk to you about,’ said Creswell testily. ‘I’ve got no problem at all with you tracking down Swain and this Earle character — you seem to have all that well under control. It’s the
…’ Creswell hesitated. ‘… the Blackwater side of things that concerns me.’
‘I don’t understand,’ said Trave, who had begun to have an inkling that he did.
‘Well, it’s delicate and I’m sure you don’t want me to have to spell it out.’
‘No, please do. I’d like to hear it.’
‘Oh, very well,’ said Creswell, putting down his pen with a look of irritation. ‘I’m sure it’s not news to you that your wife… that Vanessa’s seeing Titus Osman, and that obviously puts you in an awkward position out at Blackwater Hall or whatever the bloody place is called.’
‘Only if I let it, sir,’ said Trave doggedly. ‘With respect, I’ve been doing this job a long time, and I know how to be professional about it.’
‘I’m sure you do,’ said Creswell impatiently. ‘But you’re also clever enough to see that it’s not just what you do but what you’re seen to do that matters.’
‘Has somebody been saying something, sir?’
‘Yes, since you ask. I’ve had the chief constable on the phone this morning. Apparently he knows Osman socially, and Osman let it slip at some university gathering last night that you’d put him and his family through the third degree. Asked his sister-in-law whether she went to confession, suggested to Osman that he’d been starving his niece.’
‘She was suffering from malnutrition,’ said Trave. ‘It’s in the autopsy report.’
‘Fine, so you needed to ask the question. But no more, okay?’
Trave stayed silent, but his dissent was obvious. Creswell sighed, running his hands through his thinning hair, and eyed his subordinate with a look that seemed to mingle exasperation and sympathy in equal measure.
‘Look, Bill, I’m going to talk to you frankly,’ he said, taking off his glasses and leaning back in his chair. ‘We’ve known each other a long time you and I, and you’re a good detective, probably the best one I’ve got, but you’ve got faults too, just like everyone else. You’re stubborn and sometimes you over-complicate. You poke around in the shadows because you don’t like what’s going on right in front of your face. And I don’t want to see you doing that with this case. It’s plain as a pikestaff that this Swain character murdered the Osman girl, just like he killed that Belgian bloke two years ago. He’s got the motive, he’s got the gun, and his prints are all over the shop from what I hear. So get out there and find him and leave Osman and his family alone — okay?’
Creswell gave Trave a long, searching look, but Trave dropped his eyes.
‘Well?’ asked the superintendent.
‘They’re part of the investigation,’ said Trave. ‘I can’t just ignore them.’
‘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.
CHAPTER 12
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
