Brian Freemantle - In the Name of a Killer

He’d taken her before she was properly awake, hugely aroused, and it had been difficult in her surprise for Pauline to respond fully to his excitement. She hadn’t matched him at the end but she didn’t think he had realized: she knew he was pleased, at how it had been. Afterwards Pauline made breakfast in her housecoat. Andrews was fully and immaculately dressed when he emerged from their bedroom.

‘I’m going out to Sheremet’yevo to meet him tonight,’ Andrews announced.

Pauline poured the coffee as her husband sat down. ‘That’s considerate.’

‘Want me to pass on any message?’

She frowned down at him. ‘Hello, I guess. What else?’

‘How do you feel about seeing him again?’

Pauline replaced the coffee-pot, aware she had to be careful with the answer. ‘I don’t think I feel anything.’

‘We’ll have him here for dinner. You’d like that, wouldn’t you? Having him to dinner?’

‘If you want to.’

‘Do you want to?’

‘It’s your decision, Barry. You know that.’

‘Yes,’ he said. ‘My decision.’

Andrews positioned himself close to the doors beyond the Customs area and hurried forward the moment Cowley emerged, but then didn’t seem to know what to do with his hands, holding both before him initially and then clasping them behind his back. The smile was hesitant. ‘Hi!.. Hi Bill … Good to see you.’

‘I hardly expected you to meet me in.’ Could it ever be good to see the man who had taken his wife? Not taken, Cowley corrected at once: he’d lost Pauline’s love long before Andrews had appeared on the scene.

‘How you doing?’ The smile lasted slightly longer this time.

‘OK.’

There was an uneasy silence between them in an airport full of noise. Then Andrews said: ‘Thought it best to get it out of the way. You and me.’

‘You get a briefing, from the Director?’

‘A long one.’

‘It was a headquarters decision. Political.’

‘That’s what the briefing said.’

‘I hope we can work together.’

‘Why shouldn’t we?’ The smile came on again.

There was a jostle of people around them and Cowley felt two men very close, whispering in English the offer of taxis.

‘Let’s get the hell out of here!’ said Andrews. He half reached for Cowley’s bag but then drew back. The embassy car was directly in front of the terminal. The road surface of the main highway into the city was pockmarked with holes, jarring the vehicle. ‘Just like New York!’ said Andrews.

‘How’s Pauline?’ It would have been ridiculous for Cowley not to have asked.

‘Good … very well … says to say hello.’

‘Say hello back.’ It was going far better between them than he had expected.

‘Ambassador wants to see you first thing tomorrow,’ announced Andrews. ‘Political lecture, I guess.’

‘I already had one in Washington.’ Cowley didn’t remember the man speaking like this, firing rather than saying the words. Cowley detected a cigar odour in the car: he couldn’t remember Andrews being a smoker, either. Cowley stared out, not able to see very much in the darkness apart from faraway lights, to the right. ‘There doesn’t seem much information available.’

‘Being made available,’ qualified Andrews. ‘The investigator is an asshole. Name’s Danilov, Dimitri Danilov. Sneaky son-of-a-bitch.’

‘I understood there was to be cooperation?’

‘We should have taken complete charge, not shared it. That’s what I expected. There’ll need to be a lot of arm twisting, to get what we want. There’s an autopsy report you won’t have seen.’ Andrews patted a dossier beside him. ‘Got it here.’

Buildings began to form ahead, high-rise apartment blocks, and the darkness began to lift, with street light. ‘Tell me about Danilov.’

‘Typical jerk, small-time policeman, out of his depth and trying to hide it. Got into her apartment before we could get to it: sealed it. We’re burning ass over that. They’ve given us a list of what they say they took, but we’ve no way of knowing if it’s accurate. We’re demanding a return of the body, too.’

‘Anything special in the autopsy?’

Andrews smiled across the car. ‘She’d been screwed. How about that! Senator Walter Burden’s virgin niece had been screwed.’

‘I thought there was no evidence of rape.’

‘Screwed before she went out into the street.’

‘Boyfriend?’

‘She didn’t have one, as far as I know. The original Frigid Bridget.’

‘You know her?’

‘In her company a few times, at dinners, stuff like that.’

‘What sort of a girl was she?’

‘Attractive. Good body: nice tits. Sure of herself: knew she had uncle’s pull, back home. Didn’t bother much with the hired help, like me. Saw herself at ambassador and First Secretary level.’

The car turned on to Ulitza Chaykovskaya and Cowley saw the embassy ahead. ‘So you didn’t like her?’

The other man shrugged. ‘Didn’t like or dislike. As I said, I didn’t know her that well.’ He turned down the sideroad by the old embassy towards the new legation and accommodation compound at the rear. ‘We’re using the living quarters but the bastards insisted on local labour and bugged every fucking thing in the new embassy. We’ve got to pull it down and rebuild.’

The suite allocated to Cowley consisted of a sitting-room, with an alcove kitchen to one side, a bedroom and a separate bathroom equipped with a shower. The living-room had American furnishings, a couch and two easy chairs covered in rough-weave, oatmeal-coloured material on a white shag carpet, and a dark wood dining set of table and four chairs. The bookcase held mostly National Geographic publications. The majority of the books displayed were guides or explanations of the new Russian confederation and Russian life. There was a video player beneath the television set.

Andrews nodded towards it and said: ‘Television here is crap, apart from CNN, by satellite. There’s a video library, though. And the marine sergeant can get stag movies.’

‘I don’t anticipate much time for television,’ said Cowley. ‘Your cable said the investigator …’ He paused, for the name. ‘… Danilov … it said he speaks English?’

‘Motherfucker tricked us with that,’ admitted Andrews. ‘Sat there gabbling Russian and listening to everything we said, among ourselves. Asshole! Mind if I smoke?’

Yes, thought Cowley. ‘Go ahead,’ he said. Cowley wondered just how much he would need the language he’d begun to learn in military intelligence, which had been his original career choice before joining the FBI, where he’d brought it up to near fluency at the Bureau language centre at Monterey. For the Russian to have feigned ignorance of English to hear everything that was said seemed hardly typical jerk, small-time policeman. ‘I guess I’m going to have to work out how to operate as I go along.’

Andrews crossed towards the kitchen to go unerringly to a cupboard containing a selection of bottles, kindling a cigar as he went. ‘Stocked up for you!’ It was an anticipation rather than an announcement. ‘What do you want?’

‘I don’t drink, not any more.’

Andrews regarded him with a look verging on disbelief. ‘You’ve got to be joking!’

‘No.’

‘Jesus! Who would have thought it?’ Andrews poured himself scotch, over ice.

Cowley refused any annoyance at the open condescension. He had been a drunk, so someone who’d known him as well as Andrews was entitled to disbelief. And if he showed any reaction, Andrews might imagine the reason deeper than simple annoyance, at being patronized. He said: ‘What sort of steer can you give me?’