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

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      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.

      ‘I’m in trouble, Alec,’ she said. ‘I need your help.’

      ‘What kind of trouble?’ he asked. She could hear the concern in his voice.

      ‘It’s Bertram. He hit me, and I think he was the one who pushed my father. I’m frightened—’

      ‘Where is he now?’ asked Thorn, interrupting.

      ‘He left to go to the Probate Office a few minutes ago, and I think he’ll be gone for quite a while, so I’m fine for now. But I’m worried about when he gets back. …’

      ‘Stay there,’ said Thorn. ‘I’m on my way. You did right to call me.’

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