Brian Freemantle - In the Name of a Killer

‘There’s a lot to come from your embassy, about the sort of girl Ann Harris really was,’ Danilov reminded.

The American regarded him curiously. ‘You making a special point?’

‘At the embassy, when your people didn’t think I could understand what was being said, there was a peculiar remark from Baxter. They were upset, of course. But Baxter said: “Why the hell was she like she was; you know what I’m saying.” I don’t know what he was saying: I’d like to.’

‘So would I,’ Cowley agreed. Could it be only the sort of independence that led her to refuse to live in the embassy compound? Or was there something more? The jetlag tiredness was pulling at him now but he was glad it had stayed at bay so long.

‘And particular names,’ continued Danilov. ‘In the month prior to her death, Ann Harris made sixteen telephone calls from her flat to Paul Hughes, her department head.’

‘Maybe I should clear the embassy inquiries out of the way tomorrow?’ suggested Cowley. If I can, he thought.

‘It might produce something,’ Danilov agreed.

‘We could always speak by telephone, if there’s the need.’

Danilov nodded. ‘There’s something else.’

‘What’s that?’

‘Who’s Dick Tracy?’

‘What?’ Cowley was utterly bewildered.

‘Dick Tracy? Is he a person?’

‘A comic book detective. Always mixed up with a lot of dumb characters.’

‘Successful?’

Cowley shook his head, still bewildered. ‘I guess.’

‘Dumb characters,’ reflected Danilov. ‘Quite accurate, really.’

The FBI Director was considering a cable to Cowley, warning the agent of the possible arrival in Moscow of Senator Burden, when Cowley’s message arrived for him. Cowley had prepared the report with a digest of the important points superseding the fuller account, so Ross very quickly came to the Russian reasoning for not issuing a public media warning connecting the murder of Ann Harris with that of Vladimir Suzlev.

Without bothering to read on, Ross got into immediate telephone contact with the Secretary of State. ‘We need to meet, as soon as possible. There could be a problem we didn’t ever imagine.’

‘Serious?’ asked Hartz, instantly worried.

‘If it turns out to be right, about twenty on the Richter scale,’ said the FBI chief. ‘And the Richter scale only goes up to ten.’

‘So you are involved?’ queried Pauline, hopefully.

‘Handling communications,’ qualified Andrews.

‘I’m sorry,’ said Pauline. ‘If it bothers you, I mean.’

Andrews smiled across the meal table, ‘I’m not going to let it. I’ll do whatever Washington wants: they’re the people who have got to be impressed with the final outcome. Them and Senator Burden, our future President. This way I’m off the hook, if it stays unsolved. The responsibility will be entirely Bill’s, won’t it?’

‘I suppose so,’ said Pauline, unsurely.

‘Bill’s really out on a limb here: I never properly realized it until last night, at the airport. If it goes down the tube, he goes with it.’

‘Perhaps it won’t stay unsolved,’ said Pauline, hopeful again.

‘Perhaps,’ said Andrews.

Cowley’s meeting with the ambassador mirrored that of the previous day: the same considerate welcome, the same inquiry after his comfort, the same excellent coffee served by the same broadhipped woman.

Cowley sat in the oasis of calm diplomatic equanimity, speculating how it would all fall apart if he revealed to the complacent man the unarguable connection between a murder of a drunken Moscow taxi driver and the killing of Ann Harris. Maybe the State Department would inform Hubert Richards, despite his specific overnight mesages to FBI headquarters that he be allowed to work on the embassy leads before any disclosure or alarm. Cowley supposed there would eventually be a complaint from the ambassador, for not being told. He was satisfied there were good professional reasons for withholding the link at the moment.

Gently encouraging, Cowley said: ‘I’m curious, sir, if you’ve come up with anything: particularly about any male friend she might have had here at the embassy. That becomes even more important now: forensic examination of the apartment rules out it being a Russian she went to bed with on the night of her murder.’ Was it right, even to approach the ambassador first? It would be, if Richards gave him something positive. The man moved an ornate silver paperweight around the blotter on his desk and Cowley thought the ambassador’s colour was starting to grow.

‘Didn’t expect a girl like Ann to sleep with a Russian, did you?’ said Richards, pompously.

‘I don’t know what to expect at the moment,’ said Cowley. ‘I’m extremely anxious to find out who the man was.’

‘Don’t know,’ said the ambassador, close to childlike shortness.

‘No one could give you any indication at all?’

‘None,’ insisted the diplomat. ‘Ann was a gregarious girl, well liked socially. But properly so, if you know what I mean. Postings here to Moscow are invariably accompanied, wives stationed with husbands.’

‘I do know what you mean,’ assured Cowley. ‘And I told you yesterday I’m not interested in morals or embarrassments.’

‘I have asked,’ Richards insisted, ‘I have been told of no one, married or otherwise.’

The silly old fool was lying, guessed Cowley, angrily. But probably not lying directly. From his previous embassy postings Cowley had learned that diplomats avoided accusations of evasion or deceit by failing to discover unpalatable things: what they didn’t know they couldn’t impart. It was Cowley’s definition of diplomacy. It had been wrong, to bother with the ambassador first. ‘If a relationship within the embassy were to be discovered by the Russians — and if their investigation ended in what we would regard as the worst possible conclusion — any embarrassment would be compounded, don’t you think?’

‘I do not need that pointed out to me. Neither do I consider it worthy of a response.’

‘An American involvement would be better contained — better handled — by an American,’ Cowley persisted.

‘You are repeating yourself! And impertinently!’ said the other American.

A very definite waste of time, Cowley accepted. It would even be pointless getting annoyed about it. ‘We are discussing a murder. The murder of someone with rather important connections.’

‘I will not have impertinence in my embassy, sir!’

‘Let’s hope, Mr Ambassador, that you don’t have a murderer, either.’

Richards’s face was blazing. Through tight lips he said: ‘I have an extremely busy schedule. Is there anything else you feel it’s necessary for us to discuss?’

‘Not at the moment,’ said Cowley. ‘But if you do hear something you will tell me, won’t you?’

‘Of course,’ said Richards.

Success of some sort, thought Cowley: he’d trapped a diplomat into telling a direct lie.

Barry Andrews was at his window with the scrap-yard view when Cowley walked into the FBI office. Cowley’s overnight messages were lying on the man’s desk.

‘What the hell have we got here?’ Andrews demanded loudly. ‘You saying she’s the victim of a serial killer?’

‘That’s what I’m saying.’

‘Jesus! The waves this is going to make!’

‘I haven’t told the ambassador. I don’t intend to, yet.’

‘Sure that’s wise?’

‘The bastard is snowing me. I’ve got to talk to people here at the embassy today and I’m going in cold: they can bullshit me all they like and I wouldn’t know it. So what about it, Barry? You tell me about Ann Harris. Someone’s got to.’