But at the door, as he was leaving, he summoned his strength for one final effort. ‘It’s not for me that I’m asking you,’ he said. ‘It’s for the dead who can’t defend themselves: for Ethan and Katya — and yes, for the soon to be dead, for David Swain too. Think of them before you make up your mind.’
‘I have,’ she said. ‘And I’ve thought of the living too.’
There was nothing more to say, and so she closed the door, shutting her husband out as he stood looking back at her, committing the lines of her face to his memory one last time.
Vanessa was already upset after her ordeal in London, and Trave’s visit had made the strain almost intolerable. She’d had to appear convinced of Swain’s guilt in order to get her husband out of the flat, but beneath the surface she felt deeply confused, at sea amid a storm of conflicting emotions. She took a walk; she had a drink; she turned on the radio — but nothing helped. Try as she might, she couldn’t escape her recollection of that windowless Old Bailey courtroom with all those silent strangers hanging on her every word. Yes, it had only taken five minutes, but they had been five of the longest minutes of her life. She hadn’t been prepared for the sombre formality of the place — the wigs and the gowns and the antique language — and she hadn’t anticipated what it would be like to come face-to-face with David Swain for the first time. Until today he had been only a name. But now he was real — a living, breathing human being sitting only a few yards from where she stood giving evidence, a young man who probably only had a few weeks left to live, even though he was perfectly healthy. Sooner rather than later he was going to be turned off a gallows with a black hood over his head and his hands tied behind his back and left to swing until he was finally cut down. That was why the spectators’ gallery in the courtroom was filled to the rafters — it was the same reason why great crowds of people had always turned out to watch hangings when they were still carried out in public: a fascination with death that was as old as humanity itself.
Until today Vanessa hadn’t had to contemplate any of this, but now, by coming to court, she knew she’d become part of the process. She was involved, complicit, whether she liked it or not. And it was as if Swain instinctively knew this too. His eyes had never left her face all the time she was in the witness box, and she’d found she couldn’t resist his stare. She kept looking back at him as she answered the barristers’ questions; she could see the whiteness of his knuckles on the brass rail in front of the dock as he leaned over it toward her; and, as she walked past him down the aisle at the end of her evidence, she read his lips as he mouthed the word ‘thank you’ toward her, not once but twice.
Now she couldn’t get his face out of her mind, however hard she tried. He might well be guilty; in fact he probably was, but yet she couldn’t be sure. Bill had been right — she’d gone to London partly to assuage her conscience and partly, as he’d said, because she had doubts about Swain’s guilt, and denying her uncertainty to her husband had only served to make her doubts more insistent than before. They weren’t doubts about Titus — just like she’d told Trave, she was quite certain that he had had nothing to do with his niece’s murder, but what about Franz Claes? She remembered the cold, disgusted way she’d caught him looking at her sometimes in unguarded moments — in the rear-view mirror of the Bentley or when she entered a room. And she knew it wasn’t just her he hated; it was all women, except his sister perhaps, and she was as sexless as a woman could be. What must Claes have made of Titus’s passionate niece, Vanessa wondered, when Katya started asking awkward questions, poking her nose into Claes’s private affairs? Because Claes had secrets. That much was obvious. After quarrelling with Titus that evening at Blackwater, Vanessa had bought all the newspapers she could lay her hands on. She’d read every word about what had been put to Claes in cross-examination the day before; she’d looked at the blown-up photographs of his Nazi associates who’d ruled Belgium with an iron fist during the German occupation, pronouncing their harsh-sounding names to herself — Ehlers, Asche, Reeder. What had Claes been doing all those years, she asked herself — helping Jews or sending them to their deaths? And if the latter, what would Claes not do now to keep his secret?
Had Katya found out something about him? Vanessa wondered. Had he killed her because of that and set up Swain to take the blame? And had Katya known what he intended? Was that the meaning behind her desperate words — ‘They’re trying to kill me’?
Vanessa was quite sure that Claes, acting with or without his sister, was more than capable of murdering Katya, but was he actually guilty? Maybe Bill was right. Perhaps Katya’s diary would tell her the truth. Perhaps she should look for it — climb the stairs to the room that had once been Katya’s bedroom and look in her bookcase for a hollowed-out book. But for that she needed Titus to come back to her. Without him she could never return to Blackwater Hall, without him her future seemed suddenly black. Vanessa was filled with a sudden visceral longing for her lover. She wanted to feel his arms about her; she wanted to wear his ring again; and as if in answer to her prayer the telephone rang beside her hand and it was Titus asking to come over.
He came with flowers, a multitude of them that temporarily hid his face and body until she had taken them out of his hands and filled all the vases in the flat with purple and pink and yellow and blue — a riot of colour to match the pictures on the walls that her husband had complimented her on earlier in the day.
‘I’m sorry,’ said Osman, watching her arranging the stems from the doorway of the kitchen. ‘I was rude to you in my own house, when you were my guest. I am ashamed of myself. Can you forgive me, Vanessa?’
He stood up straight and spoke formally, as if he was making some kind of public confession. She could tell he was nervous about what she would say. It was endearing how much he cared.
‘I already forgave you. About five minutes after I drove away from your house,’ she said with a smile, reaching out to caress his cheek as she went past him through the door with a bunch of flowers in her hand.
‘I was taken by surprise,’ he said, following her into the living room. ‘That was the problem. When I thought about it, of course I understood that you had to do what you thought was right. But by then you were gone, and I felt nervous about coming after you.’
‘It was Franz,’ she said. ‘If he hadn’t come in I wouldn’t have left. I can’t stand him, Titus,’ she burst out, unable to control her feelings any longer. ‘I can’t stand the way he looks at me; I can’t stand who he was. You worked with him so you could help people escape. I understand why you did what you did. But I can’t make compromises like that. It’s not who I am.’
‘I know: it’s the same reason you gave evidence,’ said Osman gently, taking hold of her hands. ‘You are true to yourself through and through, you’re like a perfect diamond. It’s what I love about you; it’s why I want you to be my wife.’
‘And that’s what I want too,’ said Vanessa agitatedly. ‘But not with Franz there. He can’t live with us, Titus, when we’re together. I don’t want to see him, or his sister.’
‘You won’t have to. I promise,’ said Osman, placing his hand over his heart like he was taking an oath. ‘Now, do you feel better?’
‘Yes. Like a new woman,’ she said, laughing as she returned his kiss. And it was true. She felt wonderful suddenly, like everything was finally going to turn out all right. Titus had given her what she wanted without even hesitating. What greater proof could she have of how much he loved her?
But the feeling of euphoria didn’t last. Perhaps it was Titus’s nervousness at dinner that unsettled her. He insisted on sitting at the back of the restaurant that he had chosen in an out-of-the-way backstreet and kept glancing over towards the door whenever any new customers came in.
‘I’m sorry, my dear. It’s this man, Jacob Mendel, that I told you about, who’s got me on edge,’ he explained. ‘The police still haven’t found him. He’s gone into hiding, but that doesn’t mean he won’t try something again. Like I told you before, he’s got a gun and has no qualms about using it. God knows where he got it from. They’re not easy things to get hold of in this country. You need a licence.’ Osman’s anxiety was obvious, and it unnerved Vanessa. She wanted Titus to be a rock, strong and invincible like he was before, not the bundle of nerves that he had turned into tonight.
‘You said he blamed you for what happened to his brother. Why? Why would he do that?’ she asked, thinking how pleased her husband would be to know that someone else shared his obsessive suspicion of Titus.
‘I don’t know. It makes no sense,’ said Osman. ‘Maybe because Ethan was my guest and I didn’t protect him, but how could I? I had no idea that Swain was coming. Just like I didn’t know with Katya. God, if only I had,’ he said, pressing his hand over his eyes as if trying to shut out an unwanted memory.
‘It’s not your fault,’ said Vanessa, taking Titus’s hand across the table. ‘But what about Franz? Are you sure he didn’t know…’ She stopped in mid-sentence, but her meaning was obvious.
‘Yes, of course I’m sure,’ said Osman, recoiling. ‘I know you don’t like Franz, but he had nothing to do with what happened to Ethan or Katya. He couldn’t have done.’
‘But he didn’t like Ethan, did he?’ said Vanessa, persisting with her questions despite Osman’s discouragement. ‘Ethan was Jewish.’
