Brian Freemantle - In the Name of a Killer

Lapinsk’s face went beyond a frown, into a grimace. ‘Who?’

‘Is being assigned to take over?’

The coughs came, like an engine reluctant to start. ‘There is to be no reassignment. You are to remain the investigator. But we have had to make political concessions. The decision has been taken, beyond the Foreign Ministry, to accept the American offer of technical and scientific assistance.’

Danilov sat absolutely unmoving, trying to understand. There had to be more. ‘What else, beyond technical and scientific help?’

‘The American FBI have suggested a liaison officer.’

‘It becomes a joint Russian and American investigation?’ He hadn’t lost it! But what fresh dangers were being imposed upon him?

‘It’s judged necessary, politically,’ Lapinsk insisted. ‘And it’s to our advantage.’

‘The entire responsibility is no longer ours?’ anticipated Danilov.

‘Exactly!’

Neither would a successful conviction be entirely his, either. Another balance was quick to settle. Nor would a dismal failure. There was very definitely an advantage, political or otherwise. ‘How is this liaison going to work?’

Once again Lapinsk stared intently across the intervening desk, using the silence to make a point. ‘ Absolutely ,’ the Director insisted. ‘I want the attitudes of the past, whatever the causes, forgotten. I am ordering you — because I have been ordered myself to see that it happens — to cooperate completely. Everything shared: nothing withheld.’

‘Which includes Suzlev?’

‘Of course it includes Suzlev.’

‘Nothing like this has ever happened before,’ said Danilov, more to himself than the other man.

‘Never,’ agreed Lapinsk. ‘A successful investigation will be the most visible example yet of the bond between ourselves and the United States of America.’

Danilov was momentarily silenced by the brutal cynicism. Ann Harris was no longer a pretty girl made ugly, the victim of a maniac. She’d become a political pawn, to be shifted around an international chessboard: roll up, roll up, here’s Ann Harris, snarling-in-death example of Russian/American cooperation. He said: ‘Yes.’ It was all he could manage for the moment.

‘It’s our protection,’ insisted the nervously coughing man. ‘I never thought we’d be this lucky.’

‘Yes,’ repeated Danilov. Stirring himself, he said: ‘Do we have a name: know who the liaison is going to be?’

‘Not yet. Just that he’s coming from Washington.’

Danilov fully recognized, belatedly, that he has survived. And still had the opportunity to gain all the professional benefits and advantages he’d hoped to achieve. If the investigation trapped a killer. ‘I’ll do nothing to create problems,’ he assured his superior. He probably wouldn’t get a further chance.

‘One more problem,’ warned Lapinsk, in immediate confirmation of the unspoken thought. ‘That’s all it will take. One more mistake and it will be taken away from you. Everything. You might be allowed to remain in the department but effectively your career will be over. I won’t protect you any more: couldn’t risk protecting you any more.’

Danilov decided he was a prepared and trussed sacrifice for any future difficulty or disaster. His mind stayed with one word — trussed — momentarily unable to recall where he had encountered it recently. And then he remembered. It had been the word used by Ann Harris’s economist friend in Washington, to describe what it was like to be the victim of bondage. Danilov decided he didn’t feel quite that helpless, not yet. Close, though.

Larissa was annoyed and determined to show it, irritably shrugging off his first attempt to kiss her, slumping in the narrow hotel room chair that enclosed her like a protective cast so that the only way he could make any effective contact was to kneel at her feet, which he guessed was what she wanted. When he stretched up to kiss her from the ungainly kneeling position she again turned her head away from him.

‘I got here as soon as I could.’ He should really have gone back to his office to study the pathologist’s report. He hoped it would not be incomplete, forcing further contact with the childishly obstructive man.

‘I felt like a whore, hanging around the lobby!’

She would have been in competition with a few other genuine professionals: Danilov had positively isolated three in the reception area, fifteen minutes earlier. ‘I’ve said I’m sorry. I warned you it was going to be a problem for me, these next few weeks.’

She smiled down at him, with feigned reluctance, the beginning of forgiveness. ‘It’s cut down the time we’ve got together: they want the room back in an hour.’

Two other hotel receptionists as well as Larissa were involved in affairs and had evolved the system for assignations in a city where there was no such thing as casual accommodation. One used a room awaiting occupation while the others ensured there was no interruption or premature registration by a genuine guest. With Novikov’s material to digest Danilov was glad there was a short time limit. He wondered, idly, who the bona fide occupants would be in an hour’s time. And what their reaction would have been to knowing what the room had been used for, immediately prior. Larissa allowed herself to be kissed properly at last, twisting in the chair to put her arms around his neck to pull him to her. His knees were beginning to hurt.

‘I’ve missed you,’ she said.

‘I’ve missed you, too.’

‘How’s Olga?’

He shrugged. ‘Like she always is.’ Larissa wasn’t neglected and untidy, like his wife. The receptionist’s suit was still crisp, with no stains anywhere, and the white shirt didn’t look as if it had been worn all day. She smelt fresh and perfumed and Danilov guessed she had prepared herself for him: her soft red lipstick was fresh and the eye-line was newly applied. On impulse he took one of her hands. The varnish matched the lipstick. He took off one of her shoes. Her toe-nails were painted, too, a slightly harsher colour than Ann Harris had used.

‘What are you doing?’ she frowned, artificially.

‘Nothing.’ He stayed with her foot cupped in his hand. What reason — what fetish — made the killer put the shoes neatly beside the shorn head?

‘I hate Yevgennie!’ she announced, with sudden vehemence. ‘I can’t bear him touching me any more.’

‘Does he touch you?’ Danilov felt a vague stir of jealousy, which was ridiculously hypocritical. Yevgennie was her husband: he had the right.

‘Sometimes. He wanted to last night but he was too drunk.’ She came forward on the chair, parting her legs around him as much as the tight skirt would allow. ‘He was boasting about knowing the Dolgoprudnaya, trying to impress me.’

Organized crime was an unadmitted development of perestroika : the Dolgoprudnaya was the most powerful group, openly referred to as the Mafia family controlling northwest Moscow. There had been nothing like it in Danilov’s Militia days. ‘Your husband’s a greedy fool.’

‘You could officially report him, if you wanted to.’

‘I don’t want to.’ Danilov had introduced Kosov to all his grateful black economy contacts before passing over control of the Militia district: it was the way the system worked. Eduard Agayans, the ebullient Armenian, had been the first. They’d drunk the brandy, as they always did. Agayans had winked and told everyone not to worry: he’d look after the newcomer. Kosov had smiled back, telling Agayans not to worry, either: that he’d continue the care he knew Danilov had shown in the past.

‘Why not?’

‘Don’t be silly, Larissa. You know why not.’