Brian Freemantle - In the Name of a Killer

‘No!’

‘Did she upset you?’

‘No!’

‘Never?’

‘No.’

‘“Why the hell was she like she was?”’ quoted Cowley, yet again. ‘That sounds like you were exasperated. Angry. Upset, certainly.’

‘Exasperation isn’t anger,’ tried Baxter.

Cowley snatched at the doubt. ‘But you did say it!’

‘I don’t remember, precisely,’ said the diplomat, qualifying further. ‘I resent this inquisition! Won’t have it. You’ve no right.’

‘An American embassy is American territory, irrespective of the country it’s in,’ Cowley reminded him. ‘An FBI agent is empowered by federal statute of the United States of America to investigate murder within the territory and jurisdiction of America. That’s the law.’

‘I’m sorry … I didn’t mean … you confused me …’

‘Why are you confused, Mr Baxter?’

‘I want to help, really. But this is harassment. An inquisition …’

The diplomat was rocky, Cowley judged: but enough to blurt out something without thought? ‘“You know what I’m saying,”’ he quoted, relentlessly, going on like a dog picking at the last scraps on a bone. ‘What were you saying, Mr Baxter?’

‘Just that,’ said Baxter, desperately. ‘That she was arrogant. Exasperating.’

‘Sufficiently arrogant and exasperating to be murdered?’

‘No! That’s ridiculous! You’re twisting words!’

‘Were you her lover, Mr Baxter? Had you been with her that night?’

‘No! This is intolerable! I won’t be treated this way!’

‘Who was then?’ persisted Cowley. ‘I know, from the scientific examination, that no Russian was in the Pushkinskaya apartment last Tuesday.’

‘I don’t know !’ Baxter shouted so loudly that his voice cracked, causing the man more disorientation. ‘I’m sorry,’ he said, quieter now but still unsettled. ‘You are harassing: not giving anyone time to think.’

‘There’s nothing to think about. All I want from this enclosed, insular embassy is to know the name of Ann Harris’s lover, so that I can talk to him. Just a name. That’s all.’

‘I don’t have a name,’ said Baxter, stubbornly, face set more firmly. ‘ Why has her lover necessarily got to be attached here?’

Cowley decided the man had pulled himself together; withdrawn behind the barrier of a professional diplomat. Not so rocky after all: the annoyance now was at himself, for allowing the escape, not at the foot-shuffling evasion he believed he had been encountering. ‘So you can’t help me?’

‘I’m afraid not: not on this line of inquiry.’

‘Or won’t?’

‘That’s a contemptible question I will not answer.’

‘This isn’t going to go away, Mr Baxter. If there are embarrassments, nothing can stop them coming out.’

Baxter’s face flinched but became impassive again as he regained control. ‘I don’t choose to comment upon that remark, either.’

‘Think upon it then,’ urged Cowley. ‘If you decide there is anything you can help me with, I’d like to hear from you.’

The economic section was on the most dispiriting side of the embassy, directly fronting a shabby Moscow apartment block over a tangle of barbed-wire security and almost completely obscuring the beautifully restored town-house of Fedor Chaliapin, the opera singer rehabilitated after years of being banned as a non-person during the reign of Stalin. So depressing was the outlook — and so little of the Chaliapin mansion visible — that the windows were boarded from ceiling to floor, so that lights had to burn permanently to enable the financial staff to work.

Again the department had been formed by partitioning a huge original room into smaller units. Paul Hughes occupied the largest part of the conversion, befitting his position as controller. The designation was actually spelled out on a door inscription and again on another name-plate on a large mahogany desk. The entire area to the left of the desk was occupied by two computer terminals, with connected printers, and tape storage facilities. Directly in front were telephones on short leads to attach to the computer modems. There were two large framed photographs on the desk, one of a smiling woman holding her hair from her eyes in an obvious breeze, the other of two children, a boy and a girl, in Sunday-best clothes, posing formally. The girl was smiling but awkwardly, trying to conceal rigidly braced teeth.

Hughes remained behind the desk. There was no smile of greeting, either. ‘Barry Andrews told me you were coming, but I don’t know what I can do to help you,’ he announced at once.

There was a pervading smell of tobacco in the room. The man was smoking a cigarette and there were several butts already in an ashtray on the desk. Paul Hughes’s features were striking, thin-faced but with a beaked nose and pure white hair combed forward. The striped blue suit was impeccable, clearly hand-made with a lapelled waistcoat across which a gold watch-chain linked two flapped pockets. Had Hughes chosen straight diplomacy and not economics, Cowley guessed the man would have already been short-listed for an ambassadorship. Cowley said: ‘Ann Harris was a member of your staff: you must have known her well.’

‘Reasonably.’

‘Did you get on, personally?’

‘This is a small department of an embassy in an unusual environment,’ lectured Hughes. ‘It’s essential to be compatible: things would become unworkable otherwise.’

‘I’m not completely sure I understand what you’ve just said.’

‘It’s necessary to make a conscious effort to get on well with everyone.’

‘Did it need a conscious effort to get on with Ann Harris?’

‘Not at all. She was a very pleasant girl.’

‘How would you describe things between you? Division controller to employee? Or friends?’

Hughes gazed unspeaking across the desk for several moments, and Cowley was caught by the stillness with which the man held himself. Finally Hughes said: ‘Neither. There was always the proper degree of respect between us but there was not a rigid distancing: as I said, that wouldn’t work here. But I would not go as far as to say we were close friends.’

‘I didn’t actually ask if you were close.’

‘It was amicable,’ allowed Hughes.

‘Did you mix socially?’

‘Everyone mixes socially: it’s an enclosed society.’

‘Regularly?’

Hughes shrugged. ‘As and when. There’s usually something organized here at the embassy every week, but people don’t go every time. There’s a fairly active dinner circuit.’

‘Ann Harris has dined with you?’

‘My wife and I.’

‘And you with her, at Pushkinskaya?’

‘I think so: yes I’m sure we have.’

‘But not recently? If you’d been there recently you would have remembered more easily?’

There was another unblinking stare. ‘No, not recently.’

‘Where do you live, Mr Hughes; you and your wife? In the compound or outside?’

‘Outside.’

‘Isn’t it difficult to get outside accommodation? I thought it was at a premium.’

Hughes brought both hands up on the desk, leaning forward to light another cigarette from the butt of the old. They were French, Cowley saw, identifying the packet. Hughes said: ‘Is a conversation about the accommodation problems of Moscow going to help find Ann’s killer?’

Now it was Cowley who hesitated, looking at the man and the way he was craning forward, ‘I don’t know. At the moment we’re a long way from finding the killer. Where is your apartment?’

Hughes sighed. ‘Pecatnikov. We were lucky enough to take it over from my predecessor. I really can’t see the point of this conversation.’