memory in his mind, finding the line about the diary in the transcript of the girl’s evidence, and getting the information about the hiding place from Swain of all people, right under Macrae’s nose. He’d acted on a hunch and been proved correct, but that didn’t mean the diary still existed. Trave knew from personal experience that happy endings were few and far between in real life. If the diary contained anything of note, Osman had almost certainly found it when he and his lackeys spring-cleaned Katya’s bedroom after her murder, or before when he caught his niece looking through his things. Because that’s what must have happened, Trave thought. She must have found something out, or Osman wouldn’t have needed to have her killed. It was an article of faith for Trave now that Osman was responsible for his niece’s death. He couldn’t conceive of any other explanation, and it mattered to him not one jot that the only person who shared his view was Jacob Mendel, who was now in hiding somewhere, a fugitive from justice.
The diary had probably been destroyed. Going in search of it was probably a wild-goose chase. But a probability was not a certainty. There was a chance it was still there, sitting inside a hollowed-out book in Katya’s book-case, waiting to be discovered. There had been big books as well as small books on the shelves in Katya’s bedroom — hardbacks as well as paperbacks. Trave was sure he remembered them under the framed picture of her parents at the seaside that the doctor had asked him about. But was the right book there? Waiting?
There was only one way to find out and that was to look, but Trave knew it was hopeless for him to even consider going out to the house himself. He had no power to search openly, and Osman and Claes would be doubly on the watch for burglars after Jacob’s antics three days earlier. No, the only person with a chance of getting in and out of Katya’s room undetected was Vanessa.
Trave felt sick every time he thought of asking his wife to look for the diary, and yet he couldn’t leave the idea alone. He remembered the cold hatred he’d felt for Jacob when the young man admitted to persuading Katya to search for evidence, and now here he was contemplating asking his wife to do the same. Except that Vanessa didn’t need to be caught. A few minutes would be all it would take. Surely to God she could find an excuse to go upstairs for just a couple of minutes. The risk was minimal if she kept her wits about her.
He had to know one way or the other, Trave realized. And so he had to ask her. It was that simple. He’d already made his decision. For better or worse.
Vanessa didn’t answer her phone when he called her in the morning, and so he went over to her flat to find her. It was in a little street behind Keble College that he’d never been to before. She’d given him the address when she first moved there so that he could forward her mail, but this was the first time that he’d ever visited it. There was no one home, and so he wandered the streets aimlessly, wondering what he would find to do to fill his days now that he was officially an ex-policeman. He made a pint of beer and a cheese sandwich in the Gardeners’ Arms last half the afternoon and found Vanessa just returned from London when he knocked on her door again at half past three.
‘Hullo, it’s me again,’ he said, stating the obvious as he stood awkwardly on her doorstep, twisting his hat in his hands. He felt horribly nervous suddenly, with his heart beating hard and a hot red flush spreading across his face. It didn’t help that Vanessa didn’t seem pleased to see him. She seemed like someone he didn’t know any more, dressed in a black business suit and high heels, with her hair tied up above her head.
‘This isn’t a good time,’ she said. ‘I just got back from court, from giving evidence.’
‘How was it?’
‘Bad. I had to go. I know that. But I wish I hadn’t — had to, I mean.’ It was unlike Vanessa to muddle her words, and Trave saw how she looked upset, like she might be going to cry, and wished that he had chosen another time for his visit.
‘I’m sorry,’ he said. ‘I phoned earlier but you weren’t home. I wouldn’t have come if it wasn’t urgent.’
‘All right, I suppose you’d better come in,’ she said reluctantly, standing aside to let him pass before following him down the narrow hall into a small living room at the end of the corridor. Vanessa’s pictures covered the walls — places he knew and didn’t know rendered in vivid lines and bright colours. The paintings shocked Trave. He thought of the dark, unremarkable interior of the house two miles away up the road that they had shared together for more than twenty years. It bore no relation to this place. He’d never guessed at the energy, the creativity locked inside his wife; he realized with a jolt that he’d never helped her try and release it.
‘They’re beautiful,’ he said, pointing at the walls. ‘You should never have given it up.’
‘Well, it’s not too late to start again,’ she said and then stopped, not intending her words to sound so harsh. She was overwrought. That was the problem. And her husband’s visit felt like an invasion. Her flat, her carefully created new surroundings, were an attempt to start again, but they were also a barrier against the past, against memories that she couldn’t cope with in the present. Just his presence posed a mortal threat to her peace of mind.
‘I’m sorry,’ she said. ‘Like I said before, this isn’t a good day. What is it you want, Bill? Why are you here?’
‘I found out something — about Katya Osman. She kept a diary.’ Trave spoke hesitantly, sitting perched on the edge of a low armchair and looking up at Vanessa where she stood, taut and unforgiving, with her back to the window. It was partly her lack of warmth that made him nervous, but he also wondered once again whether he had any right to ask her to place herself in danger on what might well be a fool’s errand.
‘She mentioned it in her evidence at the first trial,’ he went on when Vanessa did not respond. ‘And it might still exist. In her bedroom out at Blackwater. It might show what really happened,’ he ended lamely, unable to bring himself to ask Vanessa outright to go out there and look for the diary.
‘What really happened!’ Vanessa repeated her husband’s words with an angry, exasperated edge to her voice. ‘What really happened is that David Swain went and put a bullet in his ex-girlfriend because she didn’t love him any more, and now he hasn’t got the guts to own up to it.’
‘I don’t believe that,’ said Trave quietly.
‘No, of course you don’t. You believe in some crazy conspiracy theory about Titus because you can’t stand the idea of me being happy. Don’t I deserve a life even if you’re determined not to have one? Don’t I?’ Vanessa shouted, stamping her foot.
‘Yes, of course you do,’ said Trave, taken aback by his wife’s sudden fury. ‘I told you I want you to be happy.’
‘You know I waited outside that courtroom for two hours today while Swain finished giving his evidence, and then I was in there for five minutes,’ she went on, refusing to be placated as she gave full vent to her frustration. ‘That’s all it took — five minutes to burn my boats and go right back to where I started. Titus’ll never marry me now,’ she burst out, unable to control her bitterness.
‘Well, if so, he’s a fool,’ said Trave. ‘If he loves you, he’ll understand you went to court because you had to. Because Swain’s jury needs to hear all the evidence. There can’t be any justice otherwise. It’s the same reason why I want them to see Katya’s diary. Except I can’t get it. Only you can do that.’
‘No, I can’t,’ Vanessa snapped back. ‘Can’t you get it through your head, Bill, that Titus and I have quarrelled? I’m not welcome at Blackwater Hall any more, and so I can’t go snooping round there even if I wanted to, which I don’t.’
‘He’ll make up with you. You know he will,’ said Trave stolidly. ‘And I’m not asking you to snoop around. I just want you to find an excuse to go up to Katya’s bedroom for a couple of minutes — it’s halfway down the corridor on the top floor, looking out to the front. All you’ve got to do is look in one bookcase and see if there are any large books with hollowed out insides. And if you don’t find anything I won’t ever bother you again. I promise.’
‘Why? Why should I?’
‘Because then you can be happy. Look, maybe I’m wrong. Maybe Osman’s innocent; maybe Swain did kill Ethan and Katya; or maybe Claes did it and acted alone or with his sister. If you find the diary you’ll know what happened one way or the other. You wouldn’t have gone to London today if you didn’t have doubts.’
Vanessa looked hard at her husband and then shook her head. ‘No, Bill,’ she said, getting up from her chair. ‘I’ve done enough. If Titus comes back I shall marry him, and you know why? Because I don’t need any diary to tell me who he is. He’s a good man, an innocent man, and if you’ve any decency, you’ll stop hounding him and leave him alone.’
Trave felt sick. He wished he hadn’t come. He hadn’t been prepared for the reality of Vanessa’s new separate existence. There was something obscene about its negation of their shared past. He had no place here among these pictures, which screamed reproaches at him from every wall, and if he was to survive, he knew that he needed never to come here again.
