But he could be somewhere out in the grounds. I’ve got people looking, but it’s difficult in the dark. To be sure, I mean. And he may be wounded. We don’t know.’
‘Wounded?’
‘Yes. The owner’s brother-in-law, Franz Claes, says he fired two shots at him in the corridor out there. The first one hit the door and the second one hit the wall at the far end, just by the turning to the stairs, but it may have touched Swain on the way. It was too dark for Mr Claes to see, apparently. But the bullet holes match his story.’
‘We’ll need to get ballistics to compare the bullets with the one over there,’ said Trave, pointing at Katya. ‘Not that I’m holding my breath.’
‘Sir?’
‘Nothing. Don’t worry about it. How did Swain get in?’
‘He broke the window in the study downstairs, and I reckon that’s how he got out too. All the other doors and windows seem to have been locked when we got here. Oh, and he tore his clothes on the rosebushes outside. There’s a bit of shirt we’ve recovered. Blue-and-white stripe, like prison uniform. I’ll have it checked out.’
‘Anything missing?’
‘Can’t be sure yet, but the owner hasn’t noticed anything, except a silver candlestick that the intruder took upstairs from the dining room, to light his way. He left it outside the door before he came in here. I’ve got it being dusted for fingerprints. And the study too, sir. Photographs as well.’
‘Good. You’ve been very professional, Adam. Just what I would have hoped. Well, I suppose we’d better go and talk to our friends downstairs. See what their story is,’ said Trave, making for the door.
Clayton felt pleased. He didn’t often get praise from his boss, so when it came, it was worth savouring. But he also felt uneasy. There was something Trave wasn’t telling him, he thought, as they went downstairs. In normal circumstances he’d have expected the inspector to have a modicum of sympathy for the owner and his family after what they’d just been through, but instead, Trave’s attitude seemed to be bordering on hostile before he’d even clapped eyes on them.
‘Who do you want to see first?’ asked Clayton once they were back in the hall. ‘There are just three of them – the owner and his brother-in-law and sister-in-law. No servants – none of them live in apparently.’
‘Claes – the one with the gun,’ said Trave immediately. ‘Doesn’t he say he was the first one on the scene?’
Clayton nodded and was halfway to the drawing room door when Trave’s voice stopped him in his tracks.
‘Wait. We haven’t decided where to interview them yet. Where’s more important than the order they go in right now.’
‘You don’t want to interview them where they are?’ asked Clayton, looking puzzled.
‘Osman? No, anywhere but in there. That’s his lord-of-the-manor room.’
‘His what?’
‘The place where he struts about entertaining high society, feeling like a million dollars. No, we need to put him on edge, put him at a disadvantage when we talk to him.’
Trave stroked his chin musingly, and Clayton kept quiet. None of this made much sense as far as he was concerned. The training book said you should put witnesses at ease in order to get as much out of them as possible, not put them through the third degree. Unless they were suspects, of course, but Titus Osman wasn’t that. If anything, he was a victim. His niece had just been murdered, for God’s sake. However, Clayton knew better than to question his boss’s methods. Trave was the best detective on the Oxford force when it came to getting results.
‘What about Osman’s study?’ Trave asked, looking up. ‘Are forensics still working in there?’
‘Yes. I told them to start downstairs so you and the doctor could see the deceased first. I hope that was right?’
‘Yes, no problem,’ said Trave distractedly. ‘But tell them to finish in the study before they go anywhere else. We’ll interview Claes and his sister in the drawing room, and then see Osman in the study when forensics are done in there. We may have to wait a bit but that doesn’t matter.’
Franz Claes sat bolt upright on the edge of the sofa, facing Trave and Clayton, who sat side by side on the matching sofa opposite. The empty fireplace was between them. Claes was short, no higher than five foot two or three, and his forward position meant that he could at least keep his feet on the floor, although Clayton felt that Claes would have preferred a straight-backed wooden chair to the comfort of the sofa in any event. He was that type of man.
‘When did you get dressed, Mr Claes?’ asked Trave.
‘After calling the police and making sure Swain was no longer in the house.’
It was a strange first question to ask, thought Clayton, but Claes didn’t appear surprised by it. He seemed alert, ready for anything that might be thrown at him. And to be fair, Clayton had been surprised too when Claes had answered the door dressed semi-formally as he was now, in blazer, starched white shirt, and trousers, with not a hair out of place. He even looked as if he had shaved. His cheeks were entirely smooth and hairless even though it was the middle of the night.
‘And so you were the first to see Mr Swain?’ Trave continued.
‘Yes, I heard him as he went past my bedroom door. It was slightly open.’
‘It’s on the first floor as I recall,’ said Trave.
‘Yes, at the opposite end of the corridor to Mr Osman.’
‘Why do you call him Mr Osman? He’s your brother-in-law, isn’t he?’
‘Titus then,’ said Claes, nodding as if he had lost an insignificant point in a game that had barely begun. ‘As I say, I heard a noise. My light was off but I had not yet fallen asleep, and so I got up and went outside.’
‘Wearing?’
‘Pyjamas. I took my gun with me.’
‘And where was that? Do you sleep with it under your pillow, Mr Claes?’
‘It was in the top drawer of my desk,’ said Claes, apparently unruffled by the close questioning. His English was surprisingly good, thought Clayton. He spoke slowly and with an accent, but he was clearly fluent.
‘Is this the gun?’ asked Trave, holding up a Smith and Wesson revolver now neatly packaged in a see-through plastic bag.
‘Yes.’
‘And you’ve got a licence for it, have you?’
‘You know I have, Inspector. It’s the same gun I had two years ago. It’s not the first time we’ve discussed it, you know,’ said Claes with a half-smile. It was not an attractive smile, thought Clayton. It was partly the way in which the tightening of Claes’s facial muscles threw into sharper relief the ugly scar that ran down the left side of his face, but it was also because there was no warmth in the man. His eyes were cold too, grey and watchful and somehow disconnected.
Trave
