Simon Tolkien Inspector Trave Trilogy: Orders From Berlin, The Inheritance, The King of Diamonds

‘How dare you disobey my orders?’ he began angrily. ‘Didn’t I tell you not to go to St James’s Park? Didn’t I tell you to leave the people in there alone?’

Trave bowed his head, saying nothing because there was nothing to say; he had no defence. But his brain was racing as he waited for Quaid to vent his fury. It had to be Seaforth who’d complained – he must have telephoned Quaid from the Corner House soon after Trave had left. And if his call had had such an effect on the inspector, then didn’t that imply that Seaforth was the one who’d spoken to Quaid before and got the inspector to agree to keep 59 Broadway out of the investigation? How had he been able to do that? And why?

‘I’m sorry, sir,’ said Trave when Quaid finally paused for breath. ‘But is the man who complained about me called Seaforth?’

‘How on earth do you know that?’ asked Quaid, looking surprised.

‘Mrs Brive told me about him. He was at the funeral. And then today he was with her at the Lyons Corner House—’

‘And they can be there tomorrow too if they want and the day after that, but without you spying on them,’ interrupted Quaid, working himself up to another tirade. ‘I’ve had enough of your insubordination. Any more of it and you’ll find yourself working for the military police. And in case you think that’s a soft option, let me tell you that it’ll be in one of the new internment camps for enemy aliens that the Home Office has opened up on the north end of Scotland. Not where I’d like to spend the winter, but it’s up to you. Do we understand each other, lad? Do we?’

Trave nodded. Quaid had threatened him with a transfer before, but this time he sensed the inspector was serious. He’d never seen his boss this angry, and the threat was considerably more detailed than it had ever been in the past. It would certainly spell the end of his career if Quaid went through with it. He might as well be interned himself.

Trave knew that almost anyone in his position with a basic instinct for survival would have decided to toe the line after the warning he’d received from Quaid, yet by the end of the day he had resolved to ignore the sword of Damocles hanging over his head and go back to Broadway the next morning.

Trave’s stubbornness was at the same time one of the best and one of the worst characteristics of his contradictory personality. As a boy at school, he’d been punished over and over again for refusing to abide by rules that he considered arbitrary or unfair and, looking back with the benefit of hindsight, he was man enough to realize that he’d often rebelled just for the sake of it, just to be different. But the cussed independence that he’d shown in his early years had stood the test of time and innumerable beatings by angry schoolmasters, and it had become second nature to him to be prepared to stand alone and do what he thought was right, regardless of the consequences.

He wasn’t intimidated by his boss. Quaid’s intemperate fury had only increased his curiosity about the occupants of 59 Broadway and Seaforth in particular. Ava’s new friend must be a powerful figure if he could have such an effect on Quaid, and he must care a great deal about his privacy to feel the need to put such pressure on the inspector. And then what was he doing with Ava, who had said nothing about meeting him in the West End when Trave had seen her the day before? Every time Trave went to 59 Broadway, he was left with more questions, and he knew that the only way he was going to find answers was by going back there, regardless of Quaid’s threats. All that had changed was that next time he was determined to be more careful about being seen. He’d underestimated Seaforth’s watchfulness once, and he didn’t intend to make the same mistake again.

CHAPTER 8 (#ulink_926e49bf-20ca-5d80-8605-a58d82ef9a5e)

Ava took out her key and unlocked the door, and came face-to-face with Bertram, waiting for her in the narrow hallway of their flat.

‘Where have you been?’ he demanded.

‘I told you. I went to see Mrs Willoughby.’

‘No, you didn’t,’ he countered. ‘I called her. Her phone number’s in the book, but perhaps you didn’t know that. She says she’s back in Tunbridge Wells with her cat and has been since the funeral, and she told me she doesn’t know anything about an arrangement to see you.’

‘How dare you?’ she said. ‘How dare you check up on me?’ They were the first words that came into her head.

‘I’ve got a right to,’ said Bertram, standing his ground. ‘You’re my wife, in case you’ve forgotten.’

She was still standing in the doorway, and she thought of turning around and running back the way she’d come, but she knew there was no point. She didn’t have enough money for a hotel, and besides, this was her home – she hadn’t anywhere else to go.

‘Tell me,’ said Bertram, taking a step towards her. ‘Tell me where you went, Ava. You were in one hell of a hurry to get out of the lawyer’s office this morning. It must have been something important. Or someone. …’

Bertram’s eyes were bulging and his fists were clenched. Ava wondered if he was going to hit her. He’d never done that before, but there was always a first time. Was this how it had happened with her father? she wondered. Had Bertram got angry about something – a loan of money, perhaps – and lashed out in frustration? Maybe that was what her father was saying before he fell: ‘No. No, I won’t’ lend you money. Was that what he’d meant?

Ava felt like two people. Part of her was scared, backed up against the door, but another part of her was watching her husband with a strange detachment. He was hideous, she thought, and ridiculous too, with his green bow tie sticking out at right angles from under his double chin.

‘Who were you with?’ shouted Bertram, infuriated by her lack of response.

‘It’s none of your business,’ she said, shrinking away from his panting breath.

‘Of course it’s my business. You’re my wife. You do as I say.’ He had hold of her hand now, squeezing her wrist so it hurt her. ‘It was Alec Thorn, wasn’t it? I’ve seen the way he used to stare at you when we were over at your father’s, undressing you with his eyes like you were some kind of scarlet woman. Admit it, Ava!’ he shouted. And when she didn’t respond, he reached back with his free hand and smacked her hard across the cheek.

She was frightened, but she was angry too, angrier than she’d ever been in all her life. The stinging pain enraged her. What right did this pathetic excuse for a man have to hurt her? He was the one who deserved to be hurt.

‘What’ll you do if I don’t admit it?’ she demanded, spitting the words in his face as though she was laying down a challenge. ‘Kill me, like you did my father?’

He took a step back, visibly shocked by her accusation. His hold on her wrist weakened for a moment and she seized the opportunity to twist out of his grip, then pushed him hard in the chest using both hands. He staggered back against the wall and she ran past him through the hall and into the bedroom, slamming and locking the door behind her.

She stood in the centre of the room, listening. She could hear him moving around outside. She bent over, clutching her left side, trying to catch her breath and calm the wild beating of her heart. She felt frightened – she didn’t know what he was going to do. She’d seen the look in his eye when he hit her, and now she was convinced that he had killed her father. Perhaps he hadn’t set out to do it, but once their argument had got out of hand he’d lost his temper and pushed the old man over the balustrade to his death. Then he’d returned to the crime scene not because he was concerned for her, but because he wanted to secure the will so that he could get his hands on his victim’s money. Bertram would do anything for the money. That much was obvious.

What a fool she had been! Seaforth had warned her not to make Bertram think that she suspected him. Yet within moments of her return to the house, she’d done exactly that. And now she wasn’t safe any more. He’d kill her if he got his hands on her and make it look like a suicide. He was a doctor; he’d know how to do things like that.

Ava tried to clear her head, to beat down her rising panic. Bertram was outside, trying to get in – the door handle was turning this way and that. She thought of pulling back the blackout curtain, throwing up the window sash, and shouting down into the empty street for help. But she knew that that would do her no good. Even if the police came, they wouldn’t arrest Bertram. If they were going to do that, they would have done it already. They didn’t have enough evidence. Not yet, anyway. It was like she’d said to Seaforth – proof required more than just motive.

There had to be something connecting Bertram to the crime. There was no such thing as the perfect murder. She thought suddenly of the cuff link that Trave had shown her at the police station. Maybe it was Bertram’s; maybe it had come off his shirt while he was struggling with her father, and he hadn’t been able to find it when he came back and the police were there; maybe he’d been stupid enough to keep the other one. But if she did find it, would it be proof? Surely it would at least be enough to have him arrested.

Bertram had begun to hammer on the door. This wasn’t like the last time she’d locked him out, when he’d gone meekly to sleep on the sofa on the night before the funeral. This time he wasn’t giving up.

‘Let me in, Ava,’ he shouted. ‘I need to talk to you.’

But she ignored him, concentrating instead on ransacking the drawers of the chest in the corner where he put away his underwear. There was a case where he kept his cuff links with a black velvet cover and a silver clasp. She found it in the top drawer, but the cuff link she was looking for wasn’t there, nor was it in any of the pockets of the suits and tweed jackets that were hanging in a neatly pressed row in the closet. Perhaps it was locked up in his desk in the sitting room with the letters from his creditors, but if so, it might as well have been on the moon for all the good it did her. There was no way she was leaving the safety of the bedroom while Bertram was outside.

He was still banging on the door. She worried that it would give way. She needed something to hold it against him through the night. She looked back at the chest of drawers. It was heavy, constructed of solid nineteenth-century mahogany. It would do. The drawers were already half open, spilling ties and socks and underwear onto the floor, and now she pulled them fully out and threw them aside, then used all her strength to push the empty chest into place behind the door. Surveying her handiwork, she thought it would be enough. He couldn’t get in and she couldn’t get out. Now they could wait for morning.

She woke up to the sound of the siren, and when it stopped, she could hear the noise of distant explosions. She got out of bed and went over to the window. She pulled back the blackout blind and looked out. It was the early dawn. The sun was still below the horizon, but there was just enough light in the northern sky for her to pick out the black dots that she knew were the enemy bombers flying in from the east, guided by the treacherous silver ribbon of the river lit up by the pale moonlight. Below them, streams and flashes of whitish-green incandescent light came and went as chandeliers of incendiaries fell, hanging in the sky like Roman candle fireworks cut through by the bright weaving lines of the searchlights. The billowing clouds were turning pink, although she couldn’t tell whether that was from the light of the invisible rising sun or the reflected glow of the fires below.

Ava remembered going as a child with her mother to a fireworks display in Hyde Park to celebrate the end of the last war. But she hadn’t been able to see because she was too small, so her mother had lifted her onto her shoulders. ‘Look, Ava, look at all the pretty colours. Aren’t they beautiful?’ Ava could hear her dead mother’s voice echoing back to her through the years. It was almost as though she were standing next to her now. These lights were beautiful too – beautiful and terrible – and Ava was glad her mother wasn’t alive to see them.

The incendiaries had done their work. The fires were beacons, lighting up the streets below for the planes circling overhead. Now pluming columns of black smoke began rising through the air as the high-explosive bombs started to fall. Ava pulled up the sash of the window and stood listening to the unsteady drone of the enemy aircraft and the booming ineffective chatter of the anti-aircraft guns and, louder than both, the shriek of the falling bombs and the terrifying explosions as they hit their targets. The whole northern sky was a mass of flame and smoke, but to the south there was nothing – just the sun coming up serenely through the clouds. It was obvious that Chelsea and Fulham were both being heavily attacked, but for now Battersea was unscathed. A line Ava had read in a newspaper or magazine somewhere came floating into her mind: ‘There was white dew on the grass and a nightingale sang and I felt ashamed of being human.’ She shivered in the cold.

There was no sound from next door. She wondered whether Bertram had gone out to the shelter, but she thought not. She sensed his presence on the other side of the barricade she’d erected the previous evening.

He knocked on the door at half past eight. The bombers had gone, and the break in the silence was a relief. She’d been sitting fully dressed on the edge of her bed, watching the clock on her night table, willing the hands to move for what seemed like hours.

‘Open the door, Ava,’ he ordered. ‘I’ve got to go out in a minute and I need to talk to you.’

She stayed where she was. She had nothing to say.

‘I’m sorry I smacked you,’ he said. ‘I lost my temper. But you shouldn’t have lied to me. I’m your husband, you know.’

He kept saying that, as if he had rights over her, as if he could tell her what to do or say. But that was over. He’d lost his rights when he murdered her father. She wanted never to see him again for as long as she lived.

‘Damn you, Ava, let me in,’ he yelled, getting angry again. ‘I need to change my clothes before I go out.’ He kicked the door hard when she didn’t answer. She flinched but stayed where she was.

‘All right, have it your own way,’ Bertram shouted. ‘I’m going to the Probate Office. We’ll talk about this when I get back.’

She went to the door, leaning over the chest of drawers to listen with her ear against the panel. His footsteps were receding; the front door closed. She was alone.

Ava forced herself to wait for five minutes in case Bertram’s departure was a ruse or he changed his mind and returned, but there was no sound. Finally she couldn’t stand it any longer – she pushed the chest of drawers out of the way and opened the door. She walked from room to room. The flat was empty. The only trace of the night’s events was a small dent in the bottom of the bedroom door where Bertram had kicked it before he left.

She needed help. The police were no use – smacking her across the face and kicking the bedroom door may have convinced her of Bertram’s guilt, but that wouldn’t get him arrested. No, what she needed now was a friend, someone to advise her on what to do next; somebody who would be on her side whatever happened; somebody she could rely on. She needed Alec. She remembered his offer of assistance at her father’s funeral. She’d ignored it at the time – she’d been too busy feeling angry and staring at Charles Seaforth – but now she felt she’d give almost anything to have Alec by her side. She rummaged through her handbag, searching for the card he’d pushed into her hand outside the church, and finally found it caught in the lining when she emptied all the rest of the bag’s contents onto the kitchen table.

She was in luck. Thorn answered the telephone almost straight away.