The King of Diamonds. Simon Tolkien

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СКАЧАТЬ you,’ said Claes with a nod. ‘Once outside my room I heard someone walking on the floor above, and so I climbed the stairs and looked around the corner. There was a candle burning on the floor outside Katya’s room. It’s about halfway down the corridor on the left-hand side. Her door was half-open and the light was on inside. It was then that I heard the shot. Almost immediately a man came out. I could see it was Swain. I recognized him from when I stopped him before down by the lake, and from his trial. He was standing still for a moment, and I shot at him, but he saw me and ducked back behind the door. And immediately he ran away down to the end of the corridor, toward the other set of stairs, and I fired again, but I don’t know whether I hit him or not. And then he disappeared.’

      ‘What was he wearing?’ asked Clayton, speaking for the first time.

      ‘A blue-and-white shirt, some jeans maybe. I’m not sure about the trousers.’

      ‘Were the clothes torn?’

      ‘I don’t know. There was no time to see things like that.’

      Trave looked at Clayton impatiently, drumming his fingers on his knee as Clayton made a note in his report book.

      ‘So Mr Swain disappeared,’ Trave said, leaning forward. ‘Did you follow him?’

      ‘Yes, but not to catch him up. It would have been impossible: he was running and I have a problem with my leg’ – Claes tapped his left knee – ‘so I shouted down to Titus to warn him, and then I went downstairs myself. Titus was in the corridor outside his bedroom. We looked down here and it seemed like Swain was gone, so we went back up to Katya’s room.’

      ‘Together?’

      ‘No, Titus went first. I looked in all the rooms first because I wanted to make sure Swain wasn’t hiding somewhere.’

      ‘What would you have done if you’d found him?’

      ‘Whatever was necessary, of course,’ said Claes. There was a cold, clipped tone to his voice that Clayton found oddly disconcerting, chilling even.

      ‘And so when you didn’t find him, you went back upstairs and found Miss Osman shot in the head. How did that make you feel, Mr Claes?’ asked Trave.

      Claes didn’t answer for a moment. It was as if he was nonplussed by the question, as if he’d prepared himself to say what had happened but not how he felt about it. Clayton didn’t think that Claes was the type of man who spent much of his life discussing his feelings.

      ‘I was sorry. Of course I was sorry,’ he said slowly. ‘But there was nothing I could do.’

      ‘No, there wasn’t, was there?’ said Trave, sounding unconvinced. ‘Miss Osman hasn’t exactly been a high priority in this house recently, has she?’

      ‘I don’t understand.’

      ‘The doctor says she’s badly undernourished; she’s got puncture marks all the way up one arm; and there are steel bars on her windows. What have you got to say about that, Mr Claes?’

      ‘She had got herself into trouble in the town,’ said Claes, choosing his words carefully. ‘My brother-in-law was looking after her, but she was unwilling.’

      ‘Unwilling?’

      ‘Yes, often she would not eat. She was not grateful.’

      ‘Grateful! For being kept a prisoner in her own home?’

      Claes shrugged his shoulders.

      ‘Why did you try to shoot Mr Swain?’ asked Trave, changing the subject.

      ‘Because I was frightened of what he was going to do next. Titus was downstairs and he had already shot Katya.’

      ‘You didn’t know that.’

      ‘He was coming out of her room. I’d heard the shot. Anyone would have assumed it.’

      Clayton silently agreed, thinking that he’d have definitely taken a shot or two if some armed man was running around his house shooting people. But then again he didn’t keep a gun in his bedroom. Not like Franz Claes.

      ‘It’s not the first time you’ve tried to put a bullet in Mr Swain, is it?’ Trave observed.

      But Claes was ready for this.

      ‘No, Inspector, it is the first time. After Mr Mendel was murdered, I fired my gun to stop Mr Swain running away, not to hit him. This time it was different.’

      Trave didn’t argue. He was stroking his chin again, thinking, and Clayton was just wondering whether this might be the signal for him to take over, when Trave asked his next question. It was not one that Clayton had expected.

      ‘Where does your sister sleep, Mr Claes?’

      ‘On the top floor, further along the corridor from Katya’s room.’

      ‘I see. Further down the corridor. Well, then let me ask you this: Why did you fire twice down that corridor when you must have known that there was a serious risk that she would come outside and be hit?’

      Claes didn’t answer. There was a flush in his cheeks: it was the first time during the interview that he’d looked really discomforted.

      ‘You could have killed her, couldn’t you?’ said Trave, pressing the point.

      ‘It was a moment of stress,’ said Claes, finally answering. ‘I didn’t have time to think,’ he finished lamely.

      ‘You didn’t think,’ repeated Trave with a withering smile. ‘Well, thank you, Mr Claes, for your assistance. That’ll be all for now. But please don’t leave the house without telling us. We may be needing you again.’

      Claes stood, bringing his polished shoes together with an audible click; nodded his head once to the two policemen; and limped to the door. He went out without looking back.

      ‘Slippery bastard,’ said Trave. ‘He’s play-acting with that limp. He walked a lot quicker last time I saw him.’

      ‘Why do you dislike him so much, sir?’ Clayton felt compelled to ask the question. He hadn’t warmed to Franz Claes during the interview, but most of what the man said made sense, even though it was strange he hadn’t thought of his sister when he fired those shots. It was Trave’s hostility that was more puzzling.

      ‘It’s not that I like or dislike him; it’s that I don’t trust him. He’s got secrets – that much I can tell you.’

      ‘Secrets?’ repeated Clayton, surprised.

      ‘All right, a secret,’ said Trave. ‘He was picked up in a vice raid a few years back – before the Mendel murder. A man called Bircher was running a whole lot of underage boys out of an old tenement house in Cowley. The detective I talked to said they were going to charge Claes, but then orders came down to let him off with a talking to, because it was a first offence or something like that. I don’t know the ins and outs of it, but Osman obviously got involved – spun some sob story or other, made a donation to the police benevolent fund. I don’t know. It’s ancient history now. СКАЧАТЬ