something. Swain getting a pardon is the only way he’s going to get his job back.’
‘I don’t really think that that’s what’s motivating him,’ said Clayton, but Creswell had already gone back to his correspondence and was no longer listening.
Despite numerous phone calls and two abortive visits to the house on Hill Road, Clayton heard nothing from Trave for the next two days except for a cryptic telephone message left at the front desk of the police station on the Saturday morning telling Clayton to hold on to Jana Claes at all costs. Clayton complied, even though Jana continued to resist all his attempts to make her talk, instead remaining entirely mute, with the same faraway expression in her eyes that she had worn ever since she’d been told about her brother’s death.
Finally, late on Sunday afternoon, Trave called.
‘How have you been holding up, Adam?’ he asked. ‘Are you all right?’
‘I’m okay,’ said Clayton. He was touched by his old boss’s concern, but he saw no point in burdening him with a tale of the sleepless nights that he had been suffering since Osman’s death. ‘Where have you been?’ he asked.
‘Israel. I just got back. It was Vanessa’s idea, and now I’m dog-tired and flat broke.’ Trave laughed — he sounded happier than he’d done in months. ‘Did you get my message?’ he asked. ‘Have you still got Claes’s sister?’
‘Yes, until tomorrow.’
‘Good. Has she said anything?’
‘No.’
‘All right, meet me at the station in fifteen minutes. I need to talk to you.’ And Trave rang off before Clayton could ask him any more questions.
Trave was already waiting in what had once been his office when Clayton arrived. It was still the weekend, and there were few people around. Trave started talking before Clayton had even had a chance to sit down.
‘I want you to let me interview her,’ he said. ‘Right now.’
‘Don’t be silly. You know I can’t do that,’ said Clayton, taken aback by the request. ‘You’re not a policeman any more. You’ve got no right to talk to her in here. And besides, if she says anything it’ll be completely inadmissible.’
‘It doesn’t matter,’ said Trave urgently. ‘It’s not evidence against her I’m after; it’s evidence against her brother. And once she hears about who he is, she may tell us what he did to Katya.’
‘What do you mean “who he is”? Who is he?’
‘Let me talk to her,’ said Trave, ignoring the question. ‘We’re going to need more than Katya’s diary and a bit of hearsay from Osman to get Swain off. You know that.’
‘Show me what you’ve got, and I’ll get her to talk,’ suggested Clayton.
But Trave rejected the compromise: ‘It’s got to be me. I know how to play her,’ he said. ‘We’ve gone too far to stop now, Adam. Surely you can see that. You’ve got to let me see it through.’
Reluctantly, Clayton nodded. It was entirely against his better judgement, but he knew he had no choice but to go with Trave. He’d broken far too many rules already to baulk at breaking one more now.
They interviewed Jana in the same little room at the back of the police station where David Swain had made his confession four months before.
Escorted by Clayton, she shuffled down the corridor from her cell and sat down heavily in the chair opposite Trave. She looked very different to when Trave had last seen her. Her greying hair was no longer tied up in a bun at the back of her head but instead hung loose and unkempt around her shoulders, and her black dress was wrinkled and stained. There were dark circles under her eyes, which had lit up in brief recognition when she first saw Trave but now filmed over again as she retreated back into herself and dropped her gaze to the floor.
‘You remember me,’ said Trave, speaking in a reasonable, friendly voice as if they were meeting casually in a coffee-shop somewhere and not in the back of a police station. ‘You remember how we talked after Katya died. You remember how you told me that you never took communion, never went to confession in your church, but you wouldn’t tell me why. Well, I think you should tell me why now, Miss Claes. I think it’ll make you feel better. I think deep down you want to say what happened to that poor girl but you’re just too frightened. Isn’t that what you feel?’
Jana did not respond, but Clayton saw with surprise that Trave had got her attention. She was looking in his direction and had taken tight hold of the silver crucifix that was hanging from her neck.
‘I don’t think you knew what Titus Osman and your brother were going to do,’ Trave went on in the same quiet, mesmeric tone. ‘Not until after it happened, when Franz came and told you. So you see: it wasn’t your fault. You didn’t know; just like you didn’t know who your brother really was. And that’s what I’m here to tell you, Jana. It’ll help you if you know. I really think it will.’
‘Know what? What do you know about him?’ Jana burst out. She sounded scared, and her voice was hoarse, raw from not having been used in days.
‘Did you go with Franz when he left Belgium in 1943?’ Trave asked, answering Jana’s question with a question of his own.
She shook her head.
‘But you know he went to Germany, don’t you?’
Jana nodded.
‘Do you know what he was doing there?’
Jana gave another shake of her head, almost imperceptible this time, but her eyes were wide open now, fixed on Trave across the table.
‘I thought not. All right, let me tell you. He had a job, an important government job. It was in a place called Referat IV B4 of the Reich Main Security Office at 116 Kurfurstenstrasse in Berlin. That was the department dealing with what the Nazis called Jewish affairs, and your brother was working there for a man called Eichmann, Lieutenant Colonel Adolf Eichmann. Have you heard of him, Miss Claes? I’m sure you have — he’s been in the news a lot recently because he’s about to go on trial in Jerusalem. He’s charged with being the chief organizer of the Holocaust, the extermination of the Jewish people
…’
‘No.’ It was a cry more than a word, torn from deep inside Jana’s chest.
But Trave ignored the interruption. ‘Yes, Miss Claes. When he got to Berlin, your brother was given the rank of Sturmbannfuhrer, a major in the SS. You couldn’t hold that rank if you were a foreigner, but then that wasn’t a problem because he wasn’t really Belgian, was he, Miss Claes? He was German just like you. And so in late 1943 he went back to being Franz Kleissen, which was the name he gave up when he went with you to Belgium in 1931. I don’t know why you both emigrated from Germany in the first place or changed your surname from Kleissen to a Belgian name. Perhaps it was to get work during the Depression. Anyway, it doesn’t matter now. Franz Claes became Sturmbannfuhrer Kleissen and went to work killing Jews, packing them up in cattle trains and sending them to Auschwitz from all over Europe, not just Belgium.’
‘You’re lying. It’s not true,’ screamed Jana, getting up from the table. Her fists were clenched, and Clayton thought for a moment that she was going to attack Trave. But Trave remained unperturbed.
‘I’m afraid it is true,’ he said. ‘And I have documents and photographs to prove it. Look, here’s your brother in full uniform standing beside Eichmann. The man on the right is Heinrich Muller, head of the Gestapo. They’re outside SS headquarters in Berlin. And in this photograph he’s in Auschwitz itself with the commandant, Rudolf Hoss. They’re standing on the platform at the end of the railroad track, and those are Jews in the background from a sonderkommando, collecting the belongings of the men, women, and children who have just been led off to their deaths. It was in Auschwitz apparently that your brother suffered the injury to the left side of his face. One of the prisoners attacked him during an inspection and was hanged for it afterwards, so it’s not a war wound at all. And in this photograph your brother’s at the camp entrance: you see the sign over the gate, do you, Miss Claes? ARBEIT MACHT FREI — ‘Work makes you free’? It’s him, Jana. There’s no doubt about it. Here, take your time. Look.’
Trave paused, fanning out the photographs across the table.
‘Where did you get these?’ asked Jana, subsiding back into her seat.
‘In Jerusalem. I flew there two days ago to see the investigators preparing the Eichmann trial and they gave them to me. They matched them with your brother straight away when I gave them his photograph and told them what I knew about his background. The Israelis would have loved to put him on trial too if they could have found
