suffering in his eyes that had aged him by years in the months since they had last met. ‘God, I’ve had enough of this. Every day it just seems to get worse,’ David went on in a weary voice without waiting for an answer to his question. ‘Eddie’s a professional liar, and yet the jurors were hanging on every word he said. I could see it in their eyes. The trial’s a charade. That’s what it is. Claes and Macrae have got it sewn up between them.’
‘What about Osman?’ asked Trave.
‘What about him? I don’t know if he’s involved or not. Claes has probably got him duped as well. I wouldn’t put it past him. Claes is the one behind it all, you know. It was him who was there waiting for me each time, not Osman. At the boathouse when Ethan died, outside Katya’s room when I came out. He’s a clever bastard — I’ll say that for him. Too clever for the likes of us, I’m afraid. You should face it, Inspector — we’re all played out. They should have done with the fancy wordplay and hang me tomorrow.’
‘No,’ said Trave fiercely. ‘I won’t let them.’
David looked at Trave for a moment as if he was some kind of lunatic, but then his expression softened. ‘You mean well,’ he said. ‘And you want to help me. I know that. But the trouble is you can’t. You’re out of your league this time, Inspector. Accept it.’
‘No, I tell you,’ said Trave, shouting now as he seized hold of David’s hands across the table. ‘There is something — a chance.’
‘What chance?’ asked David, pulling his hands away, taken aback by Trave’s sudden outburst, his unnatural excitement.
‘Katya wrote a diary. Maybe it still exists; maybe Osman never found it. Did she tell you about it? Did she?’ asked Trave insistently, but David looked blank.
‘What about the afternoon she took you up to the house, up to her room — when Osman was away? Did she show you something then?’ demanded Trave, refusing to give up. His eyes bored into David’s, searching for a response, and slowly, as if in answer to a prayer, a light of understanding began to dawn in David’s face.
‘Yes, she kissed me,’ he said, speaking rapidly as if in the grip of a memory that he’d entirely forgotten up until that moment, ‘and she took out a big book from the shelf and opened it — and it was hollow. And there was another book inside with lots of tiny writing, her writing, and she went to a page in the middle and showed me a picture she’d drawn. It was a picture of us, and it was like we were in our own house and we didn’t need to hide all the time, like we had a future…’ David broke off in mid-sentence, putting his head in his hands to hide his pain, and behind his back the door of the interview room opened. It was another gaoler — an older, more senior one this time. ‘Time’s up,’ he said in a voice that brooked no argument. ‘The prison van’s here.’
‘What book was it?’ asked Trave as David got up to go. ‘What big book?’
‘I don’t remember. It was a long time ago. Like it was in another lifetime, like it happened to someone else,’ said David sadly as he held out his wrists for the gaoler to put on the handcuffs.
Trave sensed the return of David’s despair and wanted desperately to say something encouraging, but the words died in his mouth. It was just so damned hard to maintain hope when the cards were all stacked the other way, and he felt his heart sink as he watched David shuffle away down the corridor like a beaten man.
Just as he reached the top of the stairs leading up from the cells, Trave came face-to-face with Macrae.
‘What were you doing down there? Have you been up to something you shouldn’t?’ asked Macrae with a smirk on his face.
Trave thought of punching his enemy but knew that he’d be playing into Macrae’s hands if he did, and so contented himself with simply barging Macrae out of the way with his shoulder as he headed across the foyer toward the exit.
‘Sorry to hear about your job,’ Macrae shouted after Trave as soon as he’d recovered his balance, but Trave showed no sign he’d heard the taunt as he headed out the door into the cold darkness of the late afternoon.
CHAPTER 24
Macrae arrived first. He left Wale in the car, checked his coat, and followed the maitre d’ to a table in the corner set for two. He liked this place — the reflections in the big mirrors on the high white walls, the shine of the silver, the deference of the waiters in their tailcoats. The restaurant made him feel that he mattered, that he had weight in the world.
Methodical as always, he read the menu in its entirety, his thin lips moving silently as he enunciated the foreign words, savouring each one as he went about making his choice. And so he didn’t notice Osman until his host was in the act of sitting down opposite him at the table.
‘Well? What did Arne say?’ asked Osman expectantly once the waiter had poured them each a glass of wine from an expensive-looking bottle that had followed Osman to the table.
Macrae sipped it with interest before he answered with a question of his own: ‘Couldn’t you get her to change her mind?’
‘No, I already told you that,’ said Osman impatiently. ‘There’s no point in even trying. It’ll just make it worse. Bloody Trave — he’s got right under her skin with his mind games.’
‘Well, it won’t matter,’ said Macrae, patting his mouth delicately with his napkin. ‘Sir Laurence understands that you have a perfectly good explanation for your niece’s hysterical outburst. The fact is she was irrationally angry with you because you were preventing her from going back to the life of self-abuse from which you’d rescued her before. You can give evidence of that after Mrs Trave has said her piece; and then, as you know, we’ve got documentary proof of Miss Osman’s drug use and low-life associations, which we can also put in front of the jury. Sir Laurence says all this is a hiccup — nothing more than that.’
‘A what?’
‘I know. Not the word I’d have used either,’ said Macrae, raising his eyebrows in amusement. ‘But the point is you’ve got nothing to worry about. Swain’ll swing just like he deserves to, you’ll get the girl, and Trave’ll drink himself to death thinking about it.’
‘That’s the part that appeals to you, isn’t it?’ said Osman with a contemptuous look.
‘Yes, I’m not ashamed of it,’ said Macrae evenly. ‘We’re trying to see justice done. That’s the difference between us and Trave. He’s a self-righteous prig, and he deserves exactly what’s coming to him.’
‘Because he was in your way up the greasy ladder, I suppose?’
‘Not as much as he’s in yours,’ said Macrae with a dry smile. Turning to the hovering waiter, Macrae made his order, but Osman waved the man away. He didn’t know what it was about Macrae that irritated him so much or why he should feel so demeaned by their association. It was enough that he did, and he had no intention of prolonging their meeting any longer than he had to.
‘What about Jacob?’ he asked, pouring himself another drink from the bottle but purposefully leaving Macrae’s glass empty.
‘He’s gone to ground, but we’ll find him.’
‘You’d better. Before he finds me. He’s got a gun, remember.’
‘I remember,’ said Macrae, sounding unperturbed. ‘Do you think it was him or Trave who sent Swain’s lawyers the stuff about your brother-in-law?’
‘I don’t know. Both of them maybe. I’m not a clairvoyant,’ said Osman, making no effort to conceal his irritation as he got up from the table. ‘Just find Mendel, okay? Before he does any more damage.’
Without waiting for an answer, Osman extracted an envelope from the inside pocket of his jacket, dropped it on the table, and then walked away without a word of farewell. Outside, he almost ran into the burly figure of Jonah Wale, who was standing on the pavement. Wale said hello, but Osman barely nodded in response as he got into his Bentley, letting out a sigh of relief as Franz Claes put the car in gear and drove away.
Macrae watched Osman’s departure through the window and then picked up the envelope and glanced with satisfaction at its contents before turning his attention to the pate de foie gras that he had ordered to precede the coq au vin. It gave him pleasure to know that Jonah was watching him through the window as he ate.
Three and a half miles away ex-Inspector Trave was eating too — a cold dinner cobbled together from the remains of the two previous nights’ dinners, washed down with a glass of water from the tap. He ate mechanically, registering neither pleasure nor displeasure as he chewed and swallowed the food. His thoughts were elsewhere, focused obsessively on Katya’s missing diary. The last few days had been exhilarating: chasing down the elusive
