Asche, was head of its anti-Jewish department, but Claes was always behind them in the shadows. I don’t know what he did. And what I’ve got on him isn’t enough. I’m not sure that it’s even a crime; it’s certainly not enough of a secret to kill people for. No, the information Ethan discovered was in West Germany, not Belgium, and in Germany I’ve found nothing. But it’s there. I know it is,’ said Jacob, making no effort to conceal his frustration.
‘Why?’ asked Trave. ‘Why are you so certain?’
‘Because Claes disappeared in late 1943 — just after my parents got arrested at the French border, in fact, although I don’t know if there’s a connection. And then there’s no trace of him until he turns up here a couple of years after the war, living the good life with Titus Osman. But that’s not all. He’s a man without a beginning as well. There’s no record of him or his sister in Belgium before 1931, when he joined the army — no birth certificate, nothing. He came from somewhere else — where I don’t know. Maybe he went back to wherever it was in 1943.’
‘To Germany?’
‘Yes, maybe. But there’s no trace of him there or anywhere else in Europe that I can find. And in Belgium I’ve been to every office and read every document that I can lay my hands on, but I need authority to go further, and it doesn’t make it any easier that there’s no appetite for investigating the occupation in my country. They want to look forward, not back. I think it’s because a lot of them collaborated with the Nazis. Belgian police helped with the round-ups, you know. Just like in France.’
Jacob’s bitterness was obvious, and Clayton, watching from over by the door, thought that Jacob was the first real fanatic that he’d ever met. Silent at first, Jacob now couldn’t stop talking — it was like a dam had burst, releasing the rage and frustration that had built up inside him through the long, lonely months he’d spent in this room cutting up newspapers and feeding his obsession with Titus Osman, who was almost certainly an entirely innocent man. If Claes had committed the murders in order to conceal his criminal past, then there was no reason he hadn’t acted alone or with his peculiar sister. Jacob was even more obsessed with Osman than Trave, thought Clayton. He remembered the shooting-club document he’d seen on the table earlier and wondered uneasily if Jacob had a gun.
‘What were you doing out at Blackwater today?’ Clayton asked, speaking for the first time. ‘I saw you in the woods watching the house.’
Jacob swung round to look at Clayton, and the hostility was back in his eyes.
‘I was looking,’ he said. ‘That’s all.’
‘But you broke in there last summer, didn’t you, and had a fight with Claes? Is that why you changed your name? In case he came looking for you? Or the police did?’
Jacob glowered at Clayton and then turned back to Trave. ‘Who’s he?’ he demanded angrily. ‘Does he work for that man who’s taken over from you — Macrae?’
‘He’s with me,’ said Trave. ‘And there’s no point pretending it wasn’t you. Your glasses in the bedroom match the ones Claes knocked off your nose. You broke into Blackwater Hall because you wanted to find evidence against Osman, didn’t you? I’d probably have done the same in your shoes.’
Jacob looked defiant, saying nothing.
‘So what did you do when breaking in didn’t work?’ Trave pressed. ‘What did you do next?’
‘I talked to Katya,’ said Jacob flatly.
‘Yes,’ said Trave quietly. ‘I thought you might have done.’ He put his hand up to his face and turned away, looking out through the window into the darkness. The image of Katya dead pushed up at him from where it always lay, frozen just beneath the surface of his consciousness with all the other horrors that he tried to keep shut out of his conscious mind. Again he saw her long blonde hair trailing across the pillow, her sunken cheeks, her beautiful, empty eyes. She’d died because she’d found something out, because Jacob Mendel had asked her to look, because he hadn’t had the courage to go in there again himself. A wave of hatred for Jacob shook Trave for a moment, but then with an effort of will he pushed it away, clearing his mind of emotion.
‘I wish I hadn’t,’ said Jacob, sensing the accusation in Trave’s silence. ‘God knows I feel responsible for what happened to her. And to Swain — I’ve sent his lawyers copies of everything I’ve got on Claes, but I don’t know if it’ll make any difference…’
‘Tell me what happened with Katya,’ said Trave, ignoring Jacob’s attempt to change the subject. ‘Maybe you’ll feel better if you get it off your chest.’
‘I’d met her at Ethan’s funeral, and so she knew who I was,’ said Jacob, speaking slowly as if the words were hard to get out. ‘We sat in a cafe down the road from here, and I showed her the photographs of Claes. I told her everything, and she went white, whiter than I’ve ever seen anyone — white and silent. And then she believed. Just like she believed it was David Swain before. Because that’s what she was like — she was passionate, overflowing with emotion. And beautiful too — I understood why Ethan had loved her. And I didn’t even have to ask her to look, you know. She said she would — in Osman’s bedroom, in Claes’s bedroom — places I could never hope to get at. She called me a week later at the time we’d agreed on. She said she hadn’t found anything, but not to give up because she hadn’t finished searching. And then, after that, I heard nothing until… until she died.’
‘How long? How long did you hear nothing?’ asked Trave.
‘Three or four weeks. I don’t know. She told me that I’d have to be patient, and there was no way I could contact her without attracting Osman’s suspicion. Don’t you think I regret it now?’ said Jacob angrily.
‘Yes, I’m sure you do,’ said Trave. ‘But breaking into Blackwater Hall won’t help.’
‘How do you know? Katya found something. That’s why they killed her.’
‘And if she found something, they’ve already got rid of it a long time ago,’ said Trave. ‘You’re clutching at straws.’
‘Maybe. But that’s better than doing nothing — like you,’ said Jacob angrily. ‘This is the end game, don’t you see?’ he went on passionately. ‘If Swain is convicted of Katya’s murder, if he’s executed for it, then they’ve won. They’ll have got away with everything.’
‘Then you need to give evidence at his trial. Sending Swain’s lawyers copies of old pictures of Claes isn’t enough. You know that,’ said Trave, pointing up at the documents covering the walls. ‘You need to tell the jury that you asked Katya to search. Without that they’ve got no connection between Claes and Katya.’
‘But the connection’s not enough,’ said Jacob. ‘Like I told you before, hiding what I’ve dug up isn’t worth killing for. I need more. That’s why I asked Katya to look, for God’s sake.’
‘The jurors will still need to hear from you. Without you they won’t understand why she was vulnerable in that house,’ said Trave urgently.
‘Assuming they believe me,’ said Jacob. It was obvious from his tone that he didn’t believe they would.
‘Try them. Maybe they will.’
But Jacob didn’t rise to the challenge. ‘I know what you’re saying,’ he said with a sigh — ‘don’t think I haven’t thought about going to court, still think about it all the time, but if I give evidence, Osman and Claes will know who I am, and I won’t last long after that.’
‘They probably do already, and anyway it’s a chance you’ll have to take,’ said Trave. ‘You owe Katya that much.’
‘I owe her everything. And that’s why I can’t let them find me. I can’t let them succeed. I have to stop them.’
‘They — you keep saying they,’ said Clayton, unable to contain his irritation. He didn’t like Jacob, he realized — didn’t like the man’s melodrama, his certainty that he knew best. ‘You’ve got no evidence whatsoever against Osman that I can see. Just guilt by association. Why couldn’t Claes have been acting alone — if he acted at all?’
‘Because he wasn’t — my brother died because he spoke to Osman
…’
‘You don’t know that. Maybe he talked to Claes that afternoon after he saw Osman,’ said Clayton, interrupting. ‘Didn’t you just say five minutes ago that whatever your brother dug up in West Germany had nothing to do with Osman because, if it had, Ethan wouldn’t have rushed back to have lunch with him? You can’t have it both ways.’
‘I’m not trying to,’ said Jacob angrily. ‘You’re just twisting my words. Claes couldn’t have kept Katya a prisoner without Osman…’
‘Yes, but that doesn’t mean Osman killed her. He told us he was keeping Katya at Blackwater for her own good when we talked to him, and we’ve got independent evidence that that much is true,’ said Clayton, glancing
