Brian Freemantle - In the Name of a Killer

‘I’m usually at home,’ said Cowley. It was a dismally honest admission of his loneliness. He’d need velvet gloves all the time, not just diplomatically, he decided.

‘Sure you don’t want to think more about it?’ suggested Ross.

Knowing the Bureau’s adhesive attention to detail, he supposed it was obvious there would be a full history in Personnel records about the collapse of his relationship with Pauline and of her subsequent marriage to Andrews, but Cowley was still vaguely unsettled by it. ‘Quite sure.’ Another sweeping commitment, he realized. Despite the assurances he was giving today, it hadn’t been particularly easy, during the last meeting three years earlier. Couldn’t be better, how about you? Couldn’t be better. Glad to hear it. You look terrific. You too . Like Muzak played in supermarkets.

‘There’s a hell of a lot riding on this,’ said the Director in further warning.

‘I can imagine,’ said Cowley. Could he, he wondered.

Eduard Ustenko was one of the new breed of Russian ambassadors, a professional product of perestroika reforms and the supposed Russian adoption of Western market philosophies: his university degree was actually in economics. He was always immaculately suited — usually in greys and blues — and always a sought-after guest on the Washington cocktail circuit, with a vivacious wife who managed to look as if she were dressed by a Paris couturier house, even if she wasn’t. The Style section of the Washington Post judged them the most popular diplomatic couple in the city.

Today, dressed for the occasion, Ustenko wore dark, almost funereal, grey. Henry Hartz met him at the door of his office suite, as he had the CIA and FBI Directors earlier. As with the Directors he led the man to the easy chairs.

‘It’s a terrible tragedy,’ said Ustenko. ‘On behalf of my government I offer our deepest and most sincere regret. I intend extending that personally to Senator Burden and the unfortunate girl’s family.’

‘There should have been consultations before the girl’s apartment was entered,’ Hartz complained. He wondered how long it would take. And how difficult it would prove to be.

‘We would have also hoped for more cooperation towards our investigators when they visited your embassy. The entry and examination of the apartment was entirely consistent with a murder investigation. Every item removed for forensic examination has been listed.’

‘The apartment was sealed before the arrival of any of our officials,’ persisted Hartz. ‘We would expect an immediate copy of that list.’

‘I will pass that request on at once,’ promised Ustenko. ‘I can foresee no problems arising there.’

Russia ten, America nil, scored Hartz. ‘You must understand our extreme concern at such a savage killing of an American citizen: an American diplomat?’

‘Particularly in the circumstances,’ said the politically aware ambassador.

Hartz felt the perspiration start: he was glad it was only slight. He had intended immediately raising the offer of American technological assistance but quickly changed direction, to use Ustenko’s opening. ‘Senator Burden is an extremely influential politician here in Washington.’

‘I recognize that,’ Ustenko accepted. ‘He — and his views — are well known to me. Although not personally, of course.’

‘A man very aware and adept at domestic politics.’

‘That’s my belief.’

‘But sometimes, unfortunately, with stubbornly held and preconceived ideas which do not reflect the reality of current situations elsewhere in the world.’

Ustenko nodded but said nothing this time.

Hartz realized, uncomfortably, that he was teetering on the very edge of a diplomatic abyss. ‘Senator Burden’s particular influence is upon allocation of overseas aid.’

The ambassador nodded again but still remained silent.

‘On the subject of aid, we are very sincere in our offer of any technological assistance that might be useful in tracking down the killer of Senator Burden’s niece.’

‘We appreciate that,’ said Ustenko, speaking at last. ‘I understand the Russian gratitude has already been officially expressed.’

‘Not having suffered the economic difficulties unfortunately experienced by your country in the last few years — difficulties you know we are anxious to alleviate — it’s conceivable that our law enforcement agencies have developed some quite unique techniques.’

‘Quite conceivable,’ agreed Ustenko.

‘I would like you to reiterate our offer to your government.’

‘I understand,’ said the ambassador, who did, completely.

He was doing his best to disguise it but the anger was obvious as he thrust into the compound apartment and from experience Pauline said nothing, waiting for him to speak. It was important always for him to lead a conversation when he was angry.

‘The investigation has been taken away from me!’ Andrews announced, hands tight against his sides. ‘They’re sending somebody from Washington.’

‘You’re due for recall anyway,’ said Pauline, quickly, wanting to help.

‘I hadn’t finished talking,’ Andrews complained. ‘The somebody is your ex-husband.’

‘Oh,’ said Pauline, lost for anything else.

‘I’ve been told to help, with anything within the embassy. That’s all.’ Fucking messenger boy, he thought.

‘How …?’ Pauline stumbled. ‘I mean, it’s got to be …’

‘It’s going to be fine,’ Andrews interrupted, subduing his fury, not wanting Pauline to know how he felt. ‘We’ve worked together in the past. No reason why we shouldn’t again.’

‘If you’re sure,’ said the woman, uncertainly.

‘It’ll be good, being back together again, like the old days!’ insisted Andrews, his face clearing. ‘You’d like that, wouldn’t you?’

‘Not if he hasn’t changed,’ said the woman, finding her own answer and believing it was what her new husband would want to hear.

The first victim had been a man.

His name was Vladimir Suzlev. At the time of his death he had been fifty-two years and three months old, a married man with two teenage children, an off-duty taxi driver. And quite drunk: Novikov’s autopsy suggested, from the alcohol level in his Group O blood and stomach contents, that Suzlev has consumed more than one flask of spirit, perhaps almost two. Danilov wondered if that much alcohol had numbed the pain of the knife going in: he hoped so. Certainly the death scene photographs at which he was looking, laid out on his overflowing desk in his overflowing office at Ulitza Petrovka, didn’t show the terrorized agony frozen on Ann Harris’s face. Absurdly Suzlev appeared almost to be smiling, a happy man in sudden death. No more than asleep. Dreaming. The head shearing hadn’t been so horrific here because absurdly Suzlev has been almost bald. According to the bewildered and grief-racked wife who worked as a telex operator for a joint-venture Russian-Swedish company, Suzlev compensated for a completely hairless pate by allowing the peripheral hedge to grow long, almost collar-length. In death, the man had simply had a haircut, a short-back-and-sides tidying. A lot of the hair cut off was scattered over his face, as much of Ann Harris’s had been strewn over hers. Suzlev’s shoes were placed neatly beside the right side of his head.

Danilov stretched back from his desk, slightly pushing the Suzlev file away, mentally examining what he was doing. Or trying to do. Routinely checking, as he’d told Lapinsk: the bedrock of all police investigation. Looking for what, here? A thread, he answered himself; a common denominator, linking both crimes. So what were the links? Unquestionably the cutting of the hair, to be sprinkled over the face. And the shoes, positioned as they were to the right side of the head. But what about buttons? None had been taken, from any article of Suzlev’s clothes. And there’d been enough, on the man’s jacket and topcoat: even securing the flaps on the hat he’d worn. Why from the girl but not from the man? Danilov leaned forward, logging the first inconsistency on the blank sheet in his evidence book. He stared again at the photographs of the man, then at those of the girl. Pictured as found, he remembered, from both sets of discovery evidence. But not as they’d fallen. Novikov’s written report on the taxi driver stressed the after-death bruising to the side and front of the man’s thigh, supporting the supposition that having been stabbed from behind he’d fallen forward. The identical bruising suffered by Ann Harris. Yet both had been found as they’d been photographed, splayed on their backs. So the killer had turned his victims, after they’d fallen. But not immediately, Danilov guessed: it would have been easier to cut the hair when they were face down. He made another notation, in his book. What else? The wound, he recalled at once. Vladimir Suzlev had been killed from a thrust to the right-hand side of his body with a single-edged knife. The depth of the wound had been slightly less than nineteen centimetres. The entry width was five centimetres and the thickness, on the unhoned edge, had been five millimetres. Apart from the depth variation, the same as Ann Harris. Between the eighth and ninth rib, like Ann Harris. And like Ann Harris, with minimal bruising around the wound. Again a sharp knife. Which hadn’t encountered any bone obstruction. Danilov made another similarity note and then hesitated. There was more to record, from the wound: obvious, to a trained investigator, but still needing to be stated as evidence. Both wounds showed entry from the right, crossing to the left of the body to penetrate the heart. So the killer was right-handed. Had he been left-handed, attacking from behind, the wound would have been from the left. Was there anything else this early in the inquiry? Novikov’s voice echoed in his mind: access from right to left: slightly upwards, perhaps . Ann Harris had been one point six five metres tall: Vladimir Suzlev had been four millimetres short of two metres, and with the man the pathologist had definitely recorded the entry path as upwards. So the killer was quite short. How many right-handed, middle-height people lived in Moscow?