Brian Freemantle - Kings of Many Castles

Unseen, behind the president’s back, Wendall North gave the Secret Service chief the stiff middle finger.

In his wife’s room Anandale said, “We’re going home.”

“To get my arm fixed?” said the woman.

“To get your arm fixed,” agreed Anandale.

Olga Melnik had already heard the Russian tape but went through the pretense of reading the transcript Charlie took back to the embassy incident room, together with his original recording to become part of the evidence collection. While she did-with John Kayley in his room absorbing it for the first time-Charlie studied the autopsy report on Vera Bendall.

He skipped the normal medical introduction, although noting that the woman was described as generally under-nourished, eager for the specific findings. The cricord cartilage of the larynx had been crushed but the odontoid peg of the second cervical vertabrae was intact, which it would not have been if she had succeeded in properly hanging herself. There were three lesions in the neck caused by the support metal breaking through the left bra cup. There was pre-death bruising to her shoulder blades and to the back of the head, which the pathologist attributed to the back of her body hitting the cell door, presumably in her death throes or in the agony of strangulation. No photographs had been taken of the body before it was removed but according to the prison guards’ reports the woman had been virtually in a sitting position, with her back against the door. There were mortuary photographs of the body, naked, showing strangulation bruising completely encircling the neck. There was bruising on the finger endings of both hands which the medical examiner suggested were caused by the woman’s instinctive efforts to loosen the ligature in the final moments before death. The pathologist described as lividity the discoloration to Vera Bendall’s knees and thigh and to both buttocks, all of which was clearly visible on other post mortem photographs. In the opinion of the Russian pathologist the medical evidence was as consistent with a choking person’s failed, last minute change of mind when an attempted suicide hanging went wrong as it was with any suggestion of foul play, which made it too inconclusive for either definitive finding.

“But not for me,” declared Charlie, carrying the report out into the larger room as Kayley and Olga emerged from theirs.

“I think I hear you,” welcomed Kayley.

“And I’ve heard John’s opinion,” continued Olga.

There was an inherent moment of reluctance, not actually at sharing but at the worry of not knowing how it would be interpreted and acted upon by people whose minds worked so much differently from his. This was a static evaluation of something that had to be carried on, Charlie reminded himself. Which Kayley had obviously already decided. “As the pathologist remarks, there unfortunately aren’t any photographs of Vera Bendall in the position in which she actually died. Three guards-and the prison doctor-have sworn statements that she choked herself, by twisting her bra around her throat, attaching it to the cell’s protruding locking mechanism and then dropping in the expectation of breaking her neck. Which wasn’t ever possible. We know the precise measurements of the lock, from the ground, is only a meter. Her neck didn’t break, couldn’t have broken. She was suspended-according to what the guards’ evidence suggest-with her legs and buttocks virtually against the ground, slowly to suffocate …”

“Which is what the pathologist describes,” broke in Olga, playing Devil’s Advocate.

“There are too many things that don’t click together,” came back Charlie. “Lividity is after death bruising, when the blood puddles at the lowest possible point in the body, where it’s no longer being pumped because the heart’s stopped. Medically-provably-Vera Bendall has blood puddling in both knees and both buttocks. She can’t have died in two positions. She either died on her knees. Or on her back, which accounts for the much more substantial blood collection in her buttocks …” Charlie offered the series of mortuary photographs showing the continuous, unbroken pre-death bruising around Vera Bendall’s throat. “That marking isn’t possible if she half-suspended herself, with her back against the door and her calves and buttocks against the ground. The strangulation line would have been continuous in the front but not at the back: her weight would have kept the ligature away from the nape of her neck, leaving it unmarked. Vera Bendall was choked to death from behind, on her knees, her neck totally encircled from behind until she died. The bruising to her head and shoulders came from her struggling against the knees, pressed hard up against her, of her killer like the bruisingto her fingers came from trying to prise the ligature away. She was held like that, throttled on her knees, long enough for the blood to begin to puddle in the front. Which it did even more obviously in these pictures when she was turned on to her back and the bra attached to the door lock.”

Olga turned to Kayley. The American said, “I didn’t get the total neck encirclement. It makes it even stronger.”

“I want to take all the autopsy material back to England, get independent pathology opinions,” said Charlie, talking to the American. “You doing the same?”

Kayley nodded, lighting one of his aromatic cigars. “You want to tell us about England?”

Charlie wasn’t aware of any air extractors in the main room, feeling the passive fumes at the back of his throat. “Consultation, with my directorate. Bullshit bureaucracy. The usual stuff. You’re both set up here: no need. I’m not.”

There was obvious disbelief on the faces of both Olga Melnik and John Kayley. Charlie humped his shoulders, exaggeratedly. “That’s all it is. There isn’t anything more.” He was glad of the precaution of taking his packed case to Protocnyj Pereulok that morning: he had hoped to go back to Lesnaya to say goodbye again to Natalia and Sasha but this was taking longer than he expected.

The American matched Charlie’s shrug, exhaling a wobbling smoke ring at the same time. “If you say so, Charlie.”

“I say so.” Why the fuck didn’t anyone believe him when he was actually being honest!

Kayley made a flag of the transcript Charlie had just delivered. “You sure as hell got under his skin.”

“Opened some doors, maybe,” allowed Charlie. To Olga he said, “Is there anything on the Isakov death at Timiryazev?”

“Accepted-until now-as an accident,” replied the woman. “All I’ve been able to get so far is the basic militia report. It’s an ungated crossing. His car stalled, straddling the line. Hit by the Kalininin express so hard it virtually broke in half …”

“Autopsy?” interrupted Charlie.

Olga shook her head. “And of course he’s been buried. I’ll apply for his exhumation.”

“What about a military record?”

“The detailed request has gone to the Ministry of Defense.”

“And an organization … a brotherhood …?” pressed Charlie. He’d definitely run out of time to get back to Lesnaya.

“That too, as soon as we find, if we can find, whatever service Vasili Isakov was in.”

“I bumped into a lot of your guys checking vantage points for the second gunman?” Charlie told Kayley. “There were more of them than me so I left them to it.”

“Four possible high rises, the tallest the Comecon building,” recounted Kayley, wearily. “They even checked the Ukraina Hotel across the river. Between the most obvious buildings there’s a total of forty-two positions, eight more if you want to include the almost impossible hanging-out-of-the-window points. No one heard anything, saw anything, although most were looking from their windows at the presidential arrival. No shell casings found by my guys or handed in, before they asked. Two more high rises that could conceivably have been used. They’re being checked because everything’s being checked.”