Every day, every night, Clayton went back and forth in his mind. The only thing he was sure of was that he wanted to know more. And maybe Jacob would be able to tell them something…
‘Have you told Macrae about this?’ asked Trave.
‘No, of course not,’ said Clayton, sounding surprised.
‘Are you going to?’
‘No, why would I do that?’
‘Because you’re working for him now, and so it’s your duty to tell him.’
‘Well, if I tell Macrae, he’ll find some excuse to get hold of Jacob and put him somewhere neither of us will ever find him, or at least not until Swain’s trial is over and it’s too late. The Blackwater case is Macrae’s pride and joy, you know. He guards it like it’s his private property. And he doesn’t trust me with it any more for some reason. My role’s limited to giving evidence next week. That’s why I’ve been able to go on all these joyrides out to Osman’s boathouse.’
‘I wonder what Jacob was doing out there,’ said Trave musingly.
‘I don’t know. Let’s go and ask him,’ said Clayton. ‘That’s why I’m here, isn’t it?’
Trave nodded, smiling for what seemed like the first time in weeks. ‘You’d better drive,’ he said. ‘You’re the one who knows where we’re going.’
They arrived outside 78 Divinity Road ten minutes later. Clayton was driving his own car since it was a Sunday, and they parked right across the street from Jacob’s house. It was a residential neighbourhood that had clearly seen better days. The tall, narrow nineteenth-century houses that had once been home to affluent families had been split up into small one-bedroom flats after the war, and 78 was in no better or worse condition than its neighbours. Some of the paint was peeling from the stucco, particularly around the portico under which Trave and Clayton were now standing, and above their heads several electric wires hung loose where there had once been an outside light. A few pieces of washing were hanging from a makeshift clothesline rigged up inside the wrought-iron balcony that ran the length of the first floor, and the white garments flapped to and fro occasionally in the intermittent wind like a row of disconsolate ghosts, but there was otherwise no sign that anyone was at home. The sun had set and the last of its light was beginning to fade from the sky, but there were no lights on in any of the windows.
To Trave’s right, there were five doorbells with a handwritten name beside each one, and Edward Newman proclaimed himself in neat capital letters as the occupant of Number 5.
‘How do you know he’s Newman?’ asked Trave.
‘Because 5’s obviously the top flat, and I saw him in the window at the top of the house a couple of minutes after he got back. And I don’t think he’s Fiona Jane Taylor, who lives in Number 4.’
Trave nodded. ‘All right, let’s go and talk to him,’ he said, and rang the bell. They waited for nearly a minute, but there was no response, and so Trave tried again, pushing the bell longer and harder this time. Still nothing happened. The building remained dead to the world, and behind them an empty brown paper bag blowing this way and that across the deserted street was the only sign of life.
‘Makes my road look like the West End of London,’ said Trave, blowing on his hands to keep them from going numb.
Clayton laughed. ‘I doubt he’s gone far,’ he said. ‘We can come back.’
‘You can,’ said Trave. ‘I’m going in.’
‘You’re what?’ said Clayton, unable to believe his ears. ‘You haven’t got a search warrant.’
‘And I’m not exactly likely to get one, am I? A suspended policeman about to get his marching orders — I carry about as much weight as a wet rag, and you can’t do anything official without Macrae’s say-so. No, I’m not really too worried about doing things by the book any more, Adam, to be honest with you. You’d better get used to it if you want to stick around me. People are dead and a boy’s likely to swing for something he never did; so I’m going to do whatever I have to do to get at the truth. And right now that means breaking into this flat. I’d like to see what Mr Newman-Mendel’s got up there before he comes back. Are you coming or not?’
Clayton knitted his brows, looking undecided, but then suddenly laughed out loud, infected by Trave’s mood of recklessness.
‘What the hell,’ he said. ‘I’m in.’
‘Good,’ said Trave. ‘Have you got something plastic or a piece of wire?’
Clayton had neither, but the penknife attached to his key chain proved sufficient to get them through both the front door and the door to flat Number 5, which they reached at the top of three steep flights of uncarpeted stairs. Jacob had obviously just pulled the latch shut when he left — the mortice lock further down the door had been left open. Now the two policemen stood in a narrow hallway running the length of the flat with two doors opening on either side. On the right there was a small kitchen with an old stove, a half-empty fridge, and a low shelf on which various packets with labels from a kosher grocery in the centre of town were displayed in a line. And beyond the kitchen on the same side a sparsely furnished bedroom contained only a narrow iron bed made up with sheet, blanket, and pillow tucked tight together with military precision; a small night table; and a heavy mahogany wardrobe in which Jacob’s clothes hung pressed and ready for use on a line of wire hangers. Everything was neat and orderly. It was like a monk’s cell, thought Trave: all that was missing was a cross over the bed, but that of course was hardly likely, given that the occupant was a Zionist Jew.
The windows on this side of the flat looked across to the back of a row of similar houses in the next street which were illuminated by a few lights here and there, and down below, in the gathering gloom, the policemen could make out the outlines of a few straggly bushes in the house’s disused garden surrounding the shape of what looked like an old Anderson air-raid shelter from World War II that stuck up out of the ground with a humped earthen back like some kind of stranded primeval creature. There was no one in sight and no sound from the floors below.
Leaving the bedroom, they crossed over to the other side of the corridor, to a tiny bathroom and toilet and, next to it, the living room, by far the largest room in the flat. It was twilight now and the soaring spires of the city churches were visible as silhouetted shadows on the skyline outside the window, but inside the room it was almost dark. Here they were at the front of the house, and they knew they could not risk turning on the light since it would have been visible to Jacob on his return if he chanced to look up from the road down below, but Trave had thought to bring a torch, and now he turned it on, circling the beam of light as they took in their surroundings. There was a rectangular pine table in the centre of the room covered with papers. A single chair was tucked into its side, and over by the window a button-back blue armchair faced a small television. The only other pieces of furniture were a large free-standing bookcase in the far corner stuffed to overflowing with books, files, and magazines and, beside it, a tall metal filing cabinet. But up above, all four walls were entirely covered with photographs, newspaper articles, maps, and diagrams so that the place felt like a miniature war room. It was a sinister place, Clayton thought — full and yet empty all at the same time. He had the sense that the man who lived in this room was driven, dedicated — someone who would stop at nothing to do what he had set out to do.
Now Trave focused his torch on the faces looking down at them from the photographs on the walls: David Swain peering out from one of the wanted posters that had gone up around the city after Katya’s murder; Eddie Earle in profile — a snapshot inset in an article describing the escape from Oxford Prison; Titus Osman, dressed in a dinner jacket speaking at a charity function the previous month; and, in the centre of the opposite wall, above two photographs of Blackwater Hall, a triptych of blown-up pictures of a man who was unmistakably a younger version of Franz Claes, albeit with no disfiguring scar below his left ear. In the first he was wearing a military uniform, standing on a raised platform in front of a microphone, addressing a crowd. There was a banner above his head emblazoned with big black gothic lettering. It looked like Dutch, and neither Trave nor Clayton could understand a word of it, but at the bottom of the picture ‘Flemish National Union 1938’ was written in neat letters. Trave wondered for a moment at Jacob’s use of English to annotate the picture, but then realized it made sense. Aliza had said that her grandson had inherited her facility with languages, and if Jacob Mendel was going to become Edward Newman, then he would need to immerse himself in his new identity even when he was alone.
In the next picture, the one in the centre, Claes was on the far left of a row of official-looking men in suits seated behind a long table facing two other men in skullcaps who were wearing the Star of David on their jackets. Again there was a handwritten inscription underneath — ‘Meeting of Security Police with AJB — Antwerp, July 1942.’ But it was the third picture that was the most striking. Here Claes stood between two other men outside some kind of government building. Claes was still in a suit, but his companions were in German uniform, and underneath Jacob had written in thick capital letters: ‘Asche, Claes, Ehlers — Sipo SD, Brussels — August 1943 —
