Brian Freemantle - In the Name of a Killer

Danilov edged into the group, which parted and began to break up when he was recognized. The movement caught the attention of the man bent over the body. Yuri Mikhailovich Pavin looked up and then nodded, when he saw his superior. Pavin rose, stiffly, as Danilov stooped to take his place. She’d been attractive, beautiful even, but now she was ugly. The eyes bulged, staring either in terminal terror or pain, and the lips were drawn back from her teeth in what looked like a snarl. The ugliness was made worse by what had happened to her hair: it had been chopped, in patches and close to the scalp, which was scratched and in places cut. Missed tufts stood upright. Her clothes did not seem unduly disturbed.

‘How long?’ asked Danilov. The woman’s body already appeared stiff, with rigor.

Pavin shrugged. ‘Maybe eight hours, maybe shorter. The doctor says the cold could have brought the temperature down quickly so he can’t really say.’

As if on cue a blast of wind drove up the narrow street, making them hunch against it. Danilov had taken to having his own hair cropped very short. This early in the year he should have worn his hat.

‘Who found her?’

‘Militia van, making the rounds. Timed at one twenty.’

‘She hasn’t been dead eight hours. Eight hours ago this street would have had people on it.’

‘I know,’ agreed Pavin.

Danilov was glad Pavin was going to be the evidence and exhibit officer again. And not just because of continuity. Pavin was the sort of back-up every investigator needed, a meticulous collector of isolated facts which, once assimilated, were never forgotten. He was a heavy, slow-moving man who looked more like a patrol officer than a Petrovka headquarters Major. Danilov privately doubted Pavin would rise any further in rank but didn’t believe Pavin wanted to: he guessed the man accepted that he had reached his operating level and was content. Pavin knew every guideline in the investigation manual and observed each one: it would have been Pavin who ordered the unnecessary canvas screens. ‘Any identification?’

‘None. This is all there was.’

Danilov accepted the key, preserved for later fingerprint tests inside a glassine envelope. ‘What makes you so sure she’s American?’

‘Clothes labels,’ said Pavin. ‘Every one American, inside the coat and the skirt and the shirt. The shoes, too.’

‘Is that how they were?’ asked Danilov, nodding towards the low-heeled pumps. At the moment they were only covered with protective, see-through plastic, not yet inside an exhibit bag.

‘I checked specifically: the observer in the Militia van thinks he might have kicked into them when they first found the body, when it was dark apart from their headlights. They were certainly by the head but he doesn’t know how neat.’

‘He didn’t touch them?’

‘He says not.’

‘Fingerprint the entire crew, for elimination.’

‘I’ve already arranged that,’ said Pavin. It was one of the basic, scene-of-the-crime rules.

‘Who’s the pathologist?’

‘Novikov,’ said the Major. Apologetically, as if he were in some way responsible for the medical rosters, he added: ‘I’m sorry.’

Danilov shrugged, resigned. In a court trial a year earlier he’d shown to be unsound a medical assessment reached by Viktor Novikov: the man had been forced to admit surmising rather than conducting a necessary test. The hatred was absolute. ‘What’s he say?’

‘Single stab wound. He’ll need the autopsy, of course, but it looks like a clean entry. Could be a sharp-pointed knife with a single edge. The head wounds are just superficial, caused when the hair was cut off. Some post-death bruising, to the left thigh and buttock, where she fell. No sign of her fighting: nothing beneath her fingernails where she might have scratched. Or hair, which she might have pulled.’

‘Sex?’

‘Her underclothes were intact: she wore tights over her knickers. Her outer clothes weren’t pulled up or torn.’

Danilov handed the glassine envelope back to his assistant and said: ‘That isn’t a hotel key.’

‘No.’

‘She could have been robbed of her handbag, I suppose?’

‘She’s wearing a cross on a gold necklace. And a gold Rolex. And there’s a signet ring, on her left hand. No wedding ring, though.’

‘How far away is the American diplomatic compound?’

‘Four, maybe five hundred metres. Behind the embassy on Ulitza Chaykovskaya. She needn’t necessarily be a diplomat, of course.’

Danilov sighed. The wind scurried up the street again, although not as strongly as before. It would have been past midnight when Danilov had got to bed, because he’d stopped off to see Larissa on her shift change-over and then made sure Olga was asleep before he followed her to bed: he felt gritty-eyed with tiredness and knew he wouldn’t sleep again for a long time now. ‘You alerted anyone else?’

‘That’s your decision,’ reminded the man who knew the rules.

‘This is going to be hell if she is connected with the US embassy,’ predicted Danilov. ‘The fact that she’s possibly American is bad enough.’

‘You think the Cheka will want to be involved?’ asked Pavin, using the original revolutionary name of the Soviet intelligence service, which was how the former KGB, now the Agency for Federal Security always internally referred to itself, with muscle-flexing bravado.

‘Probably,’ said Danilov. ‘And I can’t begin to imagine what the Americans will want.’ At that moment he didn’t even want to imagine.

‘It would have been easier in the old days,’ said Pavin, with a stab of nostalgia. ‘When we didn’t have to cooperate.’

‘There aren’t any old days, not any longer.’ He paused and then added: ‘Supposedly, that is.’ Danilov had once been enthusiastic about glasnost and perestroika — still would have liked to be — but after all the unmet promises and expectations he was resigned like everyone else to their failure through obstructive bureaucracy and latent Russian inefficiency. Even in the old, uncooperative days this would have been a bastard, if she was American. ‘Does Novikov know I’m the investigator?’

‘He guessed, because of the other one. He said you’d have to take your turn: there are other autopsies ahead of you.’

‘What about forensic?’

‘Finished just before you arrived.’

‘Anything?’ Pavin would have told him already if there had been: he still had to ask the hopeful question. Pavin would expect it.

‘Nothing immediate.’

Danilov gestured to the dark, glowering buildings all around. ‘No one hear anything?’ That was an even more hopeful question: Pavin would have produced any witness by now.

‘It’s mostly office buildings. I thought we’d start the house-to-house when it’s light.’

Danilov nodded agreement. ‘Photographs?’

‘All done. The ambulance is ready, when you close the scene of the crime.’

For several moments Danilov remained silent, gazing down at the now frozen and mistreated body of the young woman. Who are you, once-pretty girl? What hidden things am I going to find out about you that no one else knows? If they don’t matter, I’ll try to keep your secret. But how — dear, much doubted God how! — am I going to find whoever did this to you? Who made you so ugly? Not for the first time since joining the murder section of the serious crime squad Danilov was glad he and Olga could not have children, for him to live in deeply wrapped apprehension that one day another policeman might stare down at the battered and maimed remains of his own son or daughter. He was never able to think of a dead body just as a dead body: to remain utterly detached. Always he thought, as he was thinking at this moment, that this ugly, brutalized thing at his feet had once been a living person with feelings and fears and sadnesses and joys. Professionally wrong, he supposed. Or was it? Didn’t the fact that he did care make him more determined than most others at the Militia headquarters at Petrovka who he knew sneered and even laughed at him, on their way with open pockets to get favours returned for favours granted, Militia officers for the money-making opportunities the job presented, not because they were dedicated policemen? Danilov halted his own sneer, refusing the hypocrisy. Different now, since he’d joined the murder division. But what about before? What about Eduard Agayans and all the other grateful operators? He’d rationalized his own excuses, but he had no grounds, no right , to criticize other policemen. To criticize anybody. Allowing Pavin his scene-of-the-crime expertise, Danilov said: ‘Is there anything else?’