The Inheritance. Simon Tolkien

be would see to that. The boy. But Stephen wasn’t a boy. He was twenty-two. He just felt like a boy to Trave. The policeman fought to keep back the thought that Stephen was so much like Joe. It wasn’t just a physical resemblance. Joe had had the same passion, the same need to rebel that had driven him to ride his brand new 600cc silver motorcycle too fast after dark down a narrow road on the other side of Oxford. A wet January night more than two years ago. If he’d lived, Joe would be twenty-two. Just like Stephen. Trave shook his head. He didn’t need the police training manual to know that empathizing with the main suspect in a murder investigation was no way to do his job. Trave had trained himself to be fair and decent and unemotional. That way he brought order to a disordered world, and most of the time he believed there was some value in that. He would do his duty, give his evidence, and move on. The fate of Stephen Cade was not his responsibility.

      Up in the police room, Trave poured himself a cup of black coffee, straightened his tie, and waited in a corner for the court usher to come and get him to give his evidence. He was the officer in the case, and, when the opening statements were over, he would be the first witness called by the prosecution.

      The courtroom was one of the oldest in the Old Bailey. It was tall, lit by glass chandeliers that the maintenance staff needed long ladders to reach when the bulbs blew out. On the wood-panelled walls, pictures of long-gone nineteenth-century lawyers stared out on their twentieth-century successors. The judge sat robed in black in a leather-backed armchair placed on a high dais. Only the dock containing the defendant and two uniformed prison officers was at the same level. Between them, in the well of the court, were the lawyers’ tables; the witness box; and, to right and left, the benches for the press and the jury. The jurors were now in place, and Trave felt them slowly relaxing into their new surroundings. Their moment in the limelight, when they stumbled over their oath to render a true verdict in accordance with the evidence, had come and gone. Now they could sit in safe anonymity while the drama of the murder trial played out in front of them. Everyone – members of the press, the jurors, and the spectators packed together in the public gallery above the defendant’s head – was focused on the prosecutor, Gerald Thompson, as he gathered his long black gown around his shoulders and prepared to begin.

      ‘What time did you arrive at Moreton Manor, Inspector?’ he asked, ‘on the night of the murder?’

      ‘Eleven forty-five.’ Trave spoke loudly, forgetting for a moment the acoustic qualities of the Old Bailey.

      ‘Were you the first policeman on the scene?’

      ‘No. Officers Clayton and Watts were already there. They’d got everyone in the drawing room. It’s across from the front hall.’

      ‘And the victim, Professor Cade – he was in his study. On the ground floor of the east wing.’

      ‘Yes. That’s right,’ said Trave.

      There was a measured coldness and determination in the way the prosecutor put his questions, which contrasted sharply with his remarkable lack of stature. Gerald Thompson couldn’t have been more than five feet tall. Now he took a deep breath and drew himself up to his full short height as if to underline to the jury the importance of his next question.

      ‘Now, tell us, Inspector. What did you find?’

      ‘In the study?’

      ‘Yes. In the study.’

      Trave could hear the impatience in the prosecutor’s voice, but he still hesitated before beginning his reply. It was the question he’d asked himself a thousand times or more during the four months that had passed since he’d first seen the dead man, sitting bolt upright in his high-backed armchair, gazing out over a game of chess into nothing at all. Shot in the head. Detective Inspector Trave knew what he’d found, all right. He just didn’t know what it meant. Not in his bones, not where it mattered. Pieces of the jigsaw fit too well, and others didn’t fit at all. Everything pointed to Stephen Cade as the murderer, but why had he called out for help after killing his father? Why had he waited to open the door to his accusers? Why had he not tried to escape? Trave remembered how Stephen had gripped the table at the end of their last interview in Oxford Police Station, shouting over and over again until he was hoarse: ‘I didn’t do it, I tell you. I didn’t kill him. I hated my father, but that doesn’t make me a murderer.’

      Trave had got up and left the room, told the sergeant at the desk to charge the boy with murder, and walked out into the night. And he hadn’t slept properly ever since.

      Thompson, of course, had no such doubts. Trave remembered the first thing the prosecution counsel had told him when the case was being prepared for trial: ‘There’s something you should know about me, Inspector,’ he’d said in that nasal bullying tone with which Trave had now become so familiar. ‘I don’t suffer fools gladly. I never have and I never will.’

      And Trave was a fool. Thompson hadn’t taken long to form that opinion. The art of prosecution was about following the straight and narrow, keeping to the path through the woods until you got to the hanging tree on the other side. Defence lawyers spent their time trying to sidetrack witnesses and throw smoke in the jurors’ eyes to keep them from the truth. Trave was the officer in the case. It was his duty not to be sidetracked, to keep his language plain and simple, to help the jury do its job. And here he was: hesitant and uncertain before he’d even begun.

      Thompson cleared his throat and glowered at his witness.

      ‘Tell us about the deceased, Inspector Trave,’ he demanded. ‘Tell us what you found.’

      ‘He’d been shot in the head.’

      ‘How many times?’

      ‘Once.’

      ‘Where in the head?’

      ‘In the forehead.’

      ‘Did you find the gun?’

      ‘Yes, it was on a side table, with a silencer attached. The defendant said he’d put it there after picking it up from the floor near the French windows, when he came back into the study from the courtyard.’

      ‘That was the story he told you?’

      ‘Yes, I interviewed him the next day at the police station.

      ‘His fingerprints were on the gun. That’s right, isn’t it?’

      ‘Yes.’

      ‘And on the key that he admitted he turned in order to unlock the door into the corridor. The defendant told you that as well in his interview, didn’t he, Inspector?’

      ‘Yes. He said the door was locked and so he opened it to let Mr Ritter into the study.’

      ‘Tell us who Mr Ritter is.’

      ‘He was a friend of Professor Cade’s. They fought together in the war. He and his wife had been living at the manor house for about seven years, as I understand it. Mrs Ritter acted as the housekeeper. They had the bedroom above the professor’s study, overlooking the main courtyard.’

      ‘Thank you, Inspector. All the fingerprint evidence is agreed, my lord.’

      ‘I’m glad to hear it,’ said the judge, in a tone that suggested he’d have had a great deal to say if it hadn’t been. His Honour Judge Murdoch looked furious already, Thompson noted with approval. Strands of grey hair stuck out at different angles from under his old horsehair wig, and his wrinkled cheeks shone even redder than usual. They were the legacy of a lifetime of excessive drinking, which had done nothing to improve the judge’s temper. Defendants, as he saw it, were guilty and needed to be punished. Especially this one. People like Stephen Cade’s father had fought in two world wars to defend their country. And for what? To see their sons rebel, take drugs, behave indecently in public places. Stephen Cade had made a mistake not cutting his hair for the trial. Judge Murdoch stared at him across the well of the court and decided that he’d never seen a criminal more deserving of the ultimate punishment. The little bastard had killed his father for money. There was no worse crime than that. He’d hang. But first he’d have his trial. A fair trial. Judge Murdoch would see