over at Trave, who refused to meet his eye.
‘You don’t see because you don’t want to see,’ said Jacob, looking over at Clayton with obvious hostility. ‘The two of them — they’re in it together: they have been from the start. Osman targeted my family; he planned the whole thing. He knew my father was wealthy — he’d dealt with him lots of times at the Antwerp diamond exchange before the war, and he knew that my father had hidden most of his diamonds when the Nazis came, just like the other Jewish traders did. He got me and my brother out of Belgium because he knew he had to get my parents to trust him with their escape. And the plan worked — my parents must have had at least half their fortune sewn into their clothes when Claes met them at the border. And sent them to Mechelen. Do you know about Mechelen, Inspector?’ Jacob asked, turning to Trave.
‘Yes, your grandmother told me,’ said Trave quietly.
‘But you didn’t go there, did you? You didn’t see it?’ Trave shook his head. ‘I thought not. It doesn’t look like anything nowadays — just an old barracks near the railway line with a big enclosed courtyard in the middle. The Belgian army use it as an officer training school. A school — can you believe it? And there’s nothing there except a tiny plaque to say what it was, when there should be a monument, the biggest bloody monument in Belgium to stop them forgetting. They shouldn’t be allowed to forget…’
Jacob broke off, drawing deep breaths to control his anger. And when he resumed speaking, it was in a new, flat, expressionless tone, as if he knew that this was the only way that he could safely talk about the past.
‘The commandant there was called Schmitt — Philip Schmitt. He was a sadist — strip-searched the women himself when they arrived and used his big alsation on the prisoners. One of them died from bites. But he was the only one who did. People didn’t die in Mechelen. They needed them alive to make up the numbers for the trains. It was easy at first — the Jews reported to the camp themselves, called up for forced labour in the east, and the SS was sending out two trains a week. But then rumours got out about what was really waiting at the other end of the line, and the Jews went into hiding. The Nazis started doing round-ups, night arrests, but still there were fewer Jews coming into Mechelen than before, and so they had to wait until there were enough of them for a convoy. My parents had to wait two months, Inspector. I don’t know if they knew where they were going — I pray in my heart that they didn’t, but in my head I know they did. And yet they must have hoped, hoped right up to the end that they weren’t going where they feared they were going, that they would survive.’
Jacob broke off, looking out into the darkness outside the window, as if he was trying to search back into the past.
‘The SS used third-class passenger carriages at first when they began the deportations in 1942,’ he went on again after a moment, ‘but then people started jumping out of the windows, and so they switched to goods wagons — seventy Jews locked in each truck for two or three days with no food, no water, almost no ventilation, and at the end — the end of the world. Screaming and shouting and barbed wire and arc lights and dogs and… and…’
‘You don’t need to tell us this. You don’t have to,’ said Trave. ‘We understand…’
‘No, you don’t. You don’t understand,’ Jacob interrupted passionately. ‘The selections were done straight away at the end of the platform. You probably know that — right to the camp, left to the gas. And my parents — they were split up. My father was selected to live; my mother to die. And so that was their last moment — being dragged apart in that terrible place. I see it through his eyes; I see it through her eyes. On and on and on forever.’
‘How do you know this?’ asked Trave. ‘Your grandmother didn’t say
…’
‘I didn’t tell her. She’s suffered enough — why should she have to live with that knowledge? I found it out from the SS records — the Germans kept lists of everything. That was their way. Both my parents were on the convoy when it left Mechelen, but only my father’s name was recorded as entering the camp. And he lasted six months and two weeks — about average for someone of his age — before he went to the gas as well. People didn’t survive. It’s a myth to say they did. Twenty-five thousand Jews went from Mechelen to Auschwitz in two years, from 1942 to 1944, and a thousand came back; and then no one wanted to hear what they had to say. No one except people like me — orphaned children who’d been hidden or escaped. And it’s up to us to make devils like Claes and Osman pay for what they did to our people — even if you gentiles won’t.’
‘What do you mean by that?’ asked Clayton, stirring. He was still standing by the door, continuing to bar Jacob’s only possible route of escape.
‘I mean you, Detective Whatever Your Name Is,’ said Jacob, half-spitting out his words as he fixed Clayton with a hostile glare. ‘You seem a lot more interested in me breaking into Blackwater Hall last summer than what those bastards have been doing in there. That’s what I mean.’
‘Burglary’s a crime,’ said Clayton, riled. ‘And you’ve got no proof against Osman, or Claes either for that matter. We don’t punish people without proof — not in this country.’
‘Proof!’ said Jacob with an angry laugh. ‘Like the proof that you police are using against that poor bastard, Swain, up in London just so that you can hang him for something he never did? I won’t let them get away with it, I tell you. I won’t let them win — proof or no proof.’
‘No one’s above the law,’ said Trave softly. ‘If you’ve got something else on Claes or Osman, show it to us. I promise you that I want to find evidence against them as much as you do.’
Jacob gave Trave a long, searching look and then glanced back at Clayton. He looked like he was weighing something up in his mind. ‘Okay,’ he said, as if coming to a final decision. ‘I’ll show you what else I have.’ He got up from his chair and crossed over to the filing cabinet in the corner, using a key on his ring to unlock it. He opened the middle drawer all the way and bent down over it as if searching for something. Suddenly, too late, Clayton sensed what was happening. He rushed toward Jacob but then stopped dead in his tracks as the young man turned round to face him with a revolver gripped in his hand.
‘I know where you want to take me,’ Jacob said slowly, speaking to Clayton now, not Trave. ‘You want to lock me up for that burglary so I don’t try it again and take a gun with me this time. Maybe you’re right: I’ve reached the end of my tether and I’ll stop at nothing now — nothing.
‘Now get over there with the inspector. I’ll use this thing if I have to.’
Clayton didn’t know whether he believed Jacob, but he wasn’t going to put his doubts to the test. Keeping his eyes fixed on the revolver, he edged across the room to join Trave by the window.
Powerless, the two policemen watched as Jacob pulled out a rucksack from behind the filing cabinet. It was already packed, and they realized that Jacob must have been prepared for this day for a long time.
‘You’re making a mistake,’ said Trave. ‘Can’t you see I want to help you?’
‘Yes, maybe you do, although I don’t trust him,’ said Jacob, indicating Clayton with a wave of his gun. ‘But it doesn’t matter what you want any more. You’ve had your chance and you achieved nothing — just got David Swain arrested for something he never did. Osman played you just like he played my father, and now he’s got your pretty wife on his arm and my family’s diamonds in the bank.’
‘What are you going to do?’ asked Trave.
‘Do? I’m going to do whatever it takes to bring them to justice — I promise you that, Inspector,’ said Jacob. He sounded as if he was taking an oath. ‘Now I’m going to lock you both in,’ he said, backing away toward the door. ‘Don’t come after me or I’ll shoot. I don’t want to, but I will.’
He turned out the light and closed the door, and moments later the two policemen heard the front door of the flat closing and a key turning in the lock.
They crossed over to the window and the pale moonlight illuminated their tired, impotent faces as they watched Jacob getting on his scooter down below. He turned on the engine and rode away into the darkness without once looking back.
CHAPTER 21
Jacob had double-locked the door as he left, and it took Trave and Clayton a lot longer to get out of the flat than it had taken to get in. There was no telephone, and hammering on the locked door brought no response from any of the neighbours, and so they had to resort to taking it in turns to shout for help down into the empty street. Lights went on in the neighbouring houses, but it was still a maddeningly long time before people appeared below the window, and then there was a further delay while they had to satisfy a would-be rescuer that they were law
