Brian Freemantle - In the Name of a Killer

‘Back off, Barry!’ warned Baxter.

‘Why don’t you do that, Barry?’ demanded Danilov, and wished he hadn’t attempted the tough-guy mockery.

Barry stood reluctantly aside, face aflame. He was having difficulty in controlling his hands. ‘Wait!’ he hissed, lips tighter than ever. ‘Just wait!’

Danilov walked easily by, emboldened by Pavin’s presence behind: relieved, too, that his assistant did not speak until they got down to street level.

‘What happened back there?’ said Pavin.

‘They were upset,’ said Danilov. He knew the American had wanted to hit him: he felt lucky the whole stupid episode hadn’t ended in a brawl.

Danilov expected a protest gesture, but not what Novikov staged at the pathology division. From Novikov’s office he was directed downstairs where an attendant further guided him to the examination theatre. The smell when he got there — a collision of formaldehyde and disinfectant and stale human body waste — clogged in his throat; it was even worse when he pushed through the door, to enter. Novikov wore a stained gown and a cotton protective hat which made him look hairless. He stood at the sink, washing his hands, a mask pushed down around his throat. A sheet, also stained, covered the body of Ann Harris.

‘I was sure you wouldn’t mind coming here,’ said the pathologist, without any tone of apology. ‘I realized from your having Lapinsk intercede that it was incredibly urgent so I knew you wouldn’t want to wait upstairs. You could have asked me yourself, of course.’

Novikov was a large, fleshy man, bulbous-nosed and thick-lipped. His hands were large, the fingers sausage-like. He didn’t even look like a surgeon, Danilov thought: surgeons should have delicate, tender hands. He supposed it wasn’t necessary to be tender with a dead body. He said: ‘I don’t mind at all,’ which wasn’t true.

‘Some people haven’t got the stomach for dissecting rooms.’

Fuck you, decided Danilov. ‘I said I don’t mind.’ Coming through the door he’d had to swallow against the smell: he wanted to do so again but didn’t.

‘Tough policeman, eh?’

‘I need the preliminary report.’ He didn’t want to spar and score debating points. He wanted to learn things that might help him trap a madman. And get out as quickly as he could, away from the smell and away from this man who had hands like a butcher.

‘I suppose senior colonels get all the most important cases.’

Danilov waited. His stomach felt loose. He made himself go further into the room, closer to the covered body. One foot protruded from beneath the sheet: she’d painted her toe-nails a pale pink. Danilov liked the colour. Larissa painted her nails sometimes: Olga never did. Olga even forgot to cut them.

Novikov spent a long time drying his hands and took off the protective hat, releasing a fall of lank hair, before he spoke. ‘White female Caucasian, aged between twenty-five and thirty. Weight, 54 kilos. Brown eyes. Black hair. Cause of death a puncture wound, from the rear, between the eighth and ninth ribs, under the scapula. Clean entry, with no bone contact. The weapon entered from the right side, through the intercostal muscle and lung, severing the aorta before penetrating the heart. There were superficial wounds to the head, which did not contribute to the cause of death …’ He paused. ‘I’m not going too fast: you’re managing to assimilate all this?’

‘I’m managing.’ Danilov almost retched after just two words.

The pathologist smiled, as if he realized. ‘No organic disease. Appendicectomy scar, lower right abdomen. As I told your man at the scene, it’s difficult to establish a precise time of death: I’d estimate between eleven and one o’clock. How’s that?’ He smiled again.

It was inadequate to the point of being absurd: the bastard was forcing him to stay in the room and ask questions. ‘Depth of the wound?’

‘Nineteen and a half centimetres.’

‘Blunt or sharp instrument?’

‘I said a clean entry.’

‘Pointed then?’

‘What else could it be?’ Novikov smiled, a magician arriving at his best trick. ‘Why not see for yourself?’

The sheet came back with a flourish. Ann Harris lay on her back. The rigor had left the body, which had a wax-like sheen and like wax appeared to be melting, bubbled and flaccid. Only the snarl remained, more horrifying than before. Novikov had examined like a butcher. The body incision, from neck to crotch, was carelessly jagged, the subsequent stitching uneven. Nothing had been swabbed clean, after being sealed.

‘You’ll have to help me turn her over.’

‘Cover her,’ said Danilov, tightly, not looking. When was the mutilation of Ann Harris going to stop?

‘I thought you wanted to see?’

‘Cover her.’ Strangely, Danilov’s stomach was settling, despite Novikov’s charade. When the pathologist didn’t move, Danilov himself pulled the sheet back over the disfigured corpse. Even-voiced he said: ‘So it was a tapered wound?’

Novikov’s disappointment was visibly obvious, a vein pumping in the man’s right temple. ‘It was a tapered wound,’ he agreed.

‘Width, at the point of entry?’

‘Five centimetres.’

‘Thickness?’

‘Five millimetres, at its thickest: the back of the knife.’

The other man shifted, with apparent impatience, and Danilov thought, your game, you bastard: now you stay and play it. ‘Any surface tearing of the skin at the point of entry?’

‘Why didn’t you look for yourself?’

‘Any surface tearing of the skin?’

‘I said it was clean!’

‘A sharp knife then?’

‘Yes.’

‘ Especially sharp?’

‘How can I answer that?’

‘By telling me if there was any fractional indentation of the skin immediately around the wound.’

‘There wasn’t.’

‘Which would indicate the knife being especially sharp?’

‘It’s a reasonable assumption.’

‘Any indication that the knife blade was serrated?’

‘Smooth-bladed. No serration.’

‘It could have been a kitchen knife?’

‘It could have been.’

‘Anything to show a struggle?’

‘I told your man last night.’

‘Tell me!’

‘There was bruising to the left thigh and buttock. It was postmortem lividity: that means it occurred after death.’

‘I know what it means. What about fingernail scrapings?’

‘Nothing. Death was practically instantaneous.’

‘Sexual assault?’

‘None.’ Novikov hesitated, then said: ‘But there had been recent sexual intercourse.’

Danilov sighed, exasperated. ‘Which you haven’t thought important enough to tell me until now?’

‘It would have been in my complete, written report.’

‘I don’t want to wait until your complete, written report!’ The obstructiveness was back-firing, making the man himself appear incompetent: Danilov wished there had been others to witness it, like before.

‘There was semen, in the vagina.’

‘Sufficient for blood grouping?’

Novikov nodded. ‘B. Rhesus Negative.’

The most common, Danilov reflected, bitterly. ‘What was her group?’

‘B again. But Rhesus Positive.’

‘Why are you sure it couldn’t have been rape?’

‘Rapists don’t replace tights and knickers. She was properly dressed. There was no vaginal bruising.’

‘Was there bruising around the wound?’

‘Very slight.’

‘Was it a stab? Or was the knife driven in?’

‘Driven in.’

Abruptly, again, Danilov realized a further important omission. He gestured to the covered body. ‘You didn’t say how tall she was.’

‘One point six five metres.’