‘Inspector Trave. I was with Inspector Trave, sir,’ said Clayton, suddenly defiant. Macrae could do what he liked. In his conscience Clayton didn’t feel he’d done anything he should be ashamed of. He was keeping an open mind, trying to find out the truth. That’s what a detective was supposed to do, after all.
‘I thought so,’ said Macrae, who clearly didn’t see it that way. ‘Trave never gives up, does he? Well, you’ve hitched your horse to the wrong wagon this time, Constable. I’m not a good enemy to make. Trave’ll tell you that. And just to think that you told me I could count on your loyalty. I thought you had a bright future, but it looks like I was wrong.’
Macrae paused for a moment, sizing Clayton up as if deciding what to do. ‘I’m sure I’ll regret this,’ he said quietly, ‘but I’m going to give you a chance to make up for your misconduct. Find Mendel. You’ve done it before and you can do it again, and this time you’ll have Jonah to help you. Find him fast, and when you’ve got him, bring him to me. Don’t ask him any questions, just bring him to me. And stay away from Trave if you want to stay a detective. I’ll be watching you,’ Macrae added with a thin, spiteful smile before he turned away and went back into the house, leaving Clayton alone in the gloomy courtyard.
CHAPTER 22
On the same Monday morning that Jacob Mendel broke into Blackwater Hall, Vanessa Trave finally forced herself to make the phone call to her husband that she had been putting off from day to day ever since she had promised to marry Titus Osman two weeks earlier. She did not fully understand her own reluctance. She had no wish to go back to her husband, and yet she found it extraordinarily hard to make the formal break with her past that was now required. It felt like she was closing the book not only on her husband but also on her dead son: divorce was not just an acknowledgement of failure but also somehow an act of cruelty, a betrayal of the past. She hadn’t been able to explain any of this to Titus when he’d gently but insistently pressed her about her continuing inaction during dinner in Oxford two days earlier, but she realized that the delay was only making it harder to do what she had to do, and so she went straight to the telephone almost as soon as she’d got out of bed, determined to seize the bull by the horns.
Trave answered on the second ring, and she was momentarily at a loss for words. She hadn’t spoken to her husband in months, and the sudden sound of his voice disconcerted her. When she said her name it hurt that he sounded so pleased to hear from her.
‘Could I see you?’ she asked. She knew that she couldn’t tell him what she had to say on the phone. As she’d told Titus, he deserved better than that.
‘Now?’ he asked. ‘I’ve got to be in London this afternoon.’
‘Yes, all right,’ she said, taken aback. And yet it was better this way, she thought — an amputation should be done quickly or not at all. And she didn’t need to be at work until ten.
She named a coffee house on St Michael’s Street — neutral ground where they had never met before — and noticed that her hand was trembling when she put down the receiver.
She dressed carefully. Her instinct was to wear black but eventually she compromised, settling for a simple grey dress that she’d recently bought in a second-hand store in the market, with her old black overcoat on top. Frowning, she looked down at the two rings on her hands: the simple gold wedding band on the right and the perfect diamond on the left: Bill’s ring and Titus’s. Worlds apart, and yet set in permanent conflict. Slowly and carefully she took both rings off and put them away in a small jewellery box by her bed. Today she’d be herself only, she decided. It was better that way.
Trave was already sitting in the cafe when Vanessa arrived, and he insisted on queueing up at the counter to order her a coffee while she sat opposite his half-drunk mug at the table by the window, feeling more awkward by the minute. She wished there were set rules for this kind of meeting: she’d come here to tell her husband that she wanted a divorce, not to drink coffee. And yet here she was sitting amid a throng of women and their shopping as if she was just meeting an old friend. It was all wrong. She wished she’d chosen some sombre venue — the back of a church or some out-of-the-way corner of the public library. But it was too late now — she’d have to get on with it.
When Trave finally sat down, Vanessa was struck by how run-down he looked. There were dark circles under his eyes, and his suit was crumpled as if it hadn’t been hung up in weeks. And something told her the dishevelment was not just superficial. He’d aged since she’d last seen him, turned some corner in his life that she hadn’t been there to see.
‘I’m sorry about your job,’ she said. She really was sorry, but her words sounded awkward, artificial.
‘It doesn’t matter,’ he said, even though it was obvious that it did. ‘You can’t keep making compromises forever. I’ll find something else to do.’
‘What?’ Vanessa asked, genuinely curious. The concept of Bill as anything other than a policeman was inconceivable to her.
‘Something,’ he said with a sad smile. ‘You look wonderful, Vanessa. Better than you’ve done in years.’
She flushed, touched and yet upset by the genuine pleasure in his voice. And she couldn’t cope with the way he looked at her so intently, as if memorizing every detail of her face. The meeting was painful, more painful than she could have imagined. She needed to tell him why she was here, to get the words out while she still could.
‘I need a divorce,’ she said. She spoke softly and didn’t know at first whether he had heard her. He looked away out the window, averting his face, gazing sightlessly at the people hurrying by in their winter overcoats. And when he turned back, there was an awful desolation in his pale blue eyes, which made her feel suddenly sick, as if she was an executioner disgusted by her own handiwork.
‘You want to marry Osman,’ he said. It was a statement, not a question.
‘Yes,’ she said. ‘He’s not like who you think he is, he’s…’ Vanessa stopped in mid-sentence, seeing the weary disbelief in her husband’s eyes. ‘It’s a second chance,’ she said. ‘Everyone deserves a second chance.’
‘Yes,’ said Trave quietly. ‘You do deserve that. You deserve the sun and the moon and the stars, Vanessa. And what I regret most in my life is that I failed to give you any of them.’
Vanessa wanted to cry. Her husband had never said anything as simple and loving to her before in all the years they had been married. He’d saved it up for now, when it was all too late. She couldn’t bear it. She steeled herself against him. She knew she had to if she was going to survive.
‘So you’ll help me,’ she said. ‘It’ll have to be your petition with Titus as co-respondent. There’s no other way.’
Trave nodded, and then he reached out and took hold of her right hand, the hand that was now missing its wedding ring. ‘Be happy,’ he said. ‘Try to be happy, Vanessa.’
She nodded, squeezed his hand once as if sealing an agreement, and got up to go. But then, at the doorway, she turned back, unable to leave him when she felt so in the wrong. He looked up, surprised, when she got back to the table, taken aback by her sudden return.
‘Titus didn’t kill Katya,’ she said, blurting out the words. ‘You believe it because he’s with me. Admit it, Bill. That’s why you’ve done all this.’
‘Done all what?’
‘Ruined your career, been so pig-headed.’ She spoke accusingly, harshly, but he also sensed the desperation in her voice, as if she was pleading for exoneration, and that was something he could not provide.
‘No,’ he said, shaking his head. ‘I hate Osman because of you. That’s true. But that’s not why I think he killed Katya.’
‘Why then?’ she asked, challenging him.
‘Because I don’t believe David Swain killed her or Ethan either for that matter,’ said Trave, choosing his words carefully. ‘Swain’s a fool, an angry fool, but he’s no murderer. But Claes is. I know he is. In fact I think he’s been responsible for many people’s deaths, even though I can’t prove any of them,’ he added bitterly. ‘And if Claes killed Katya, then he couldn’t have done it without Osman.’
‘No, that’s where you’re wrong,’ said Vanessa vehemently. It was years since Trave had seen her so passionate. ‘Maybe you’re right about Claes. I don’t like him either. He’s got some hold over Titus which I don’t understand, but that doesn’t mean Titus knows what he’s doing. Titus isn’t like Claes. I know him and you don’t. That’s the difference. He was taking care of Katya after she’d gone off the rails. It wasn’t his fault she blamed him
