Brian Freemantle - In the Name of a Killer

‘I just wanted to do things differently.’ She wouldn’t understand if he tried to talk about honesty in an environment and in a country where if they had the chance people — even policemen — didn’t regard it as dishonest to use unofficial markets with unofficial money. It scarcely was dishonest by Russian values. No one really got harmed apart, perhaps, from the State whose perestroika boasts had failed and whose fault it therefore was that a second entrepreneurial society was necessary. Danilov wasn’t sure he could have properly expressed the way he felt, even if Olga had been interested, which he knew she wasn’t.

‘So we all have to suffer!’

Danilov supposed that from Olga’s viewpoint there was no other way to describe it. He wanted very much to present an argument to put against her, to justify his attitude, but couldn’t think of one. Lamely he said: ‘Let’s get this other business over. Then we’ll see.’

‘You will let Yevgennie introduce you to some of his friends?’ seized Olga, eagerly.

The Dolgoprudnaya was a properly organized crime syndicate, not a loose-knit group of black marketeers who’d wanted warehouses overlooked and delivery lorries unhindered. What blackmail potential would he be exposing himself to if he let the new-found integrity slip? It would … Danilov halted the reflection, surprised he had let it begin at all. Risk of blackmail from professional criminals was not the obstacle, real though that risk might be. The only consideration was his fragile integrity, the feeling he hadn’t properly analysed until now but thought of as being clean. And he didn’t want to surrender it. He didn’t want to continue this snappy conversation with a suspicious Olga, either. ‘We’ll see,’ he repeated.

‘It’ll be wonderful, having things like they were before,’ said Olga, misunderstanding. She was quiet for several moments, as Danilov coasted the car to a stop outside their apartment block. Then she said: ‘Rather than have them back to eat with us here we could take them out, of course. But we’d need dollars, so we could go to a hard-currency place.’

‘Shit!’ exploded Danilov, registering what she’d said.

Olga stared at him in bewilderment. ‘What is it?’

‘I’ve realized something I should have thought of before,’ admitted Danilov, angrily. It was too late — and there would be no benefit anyway — to call Pavin now. It would have to wait until the morning. Shit, he thought again: shit! shit! shit!

During the enforced bachelorhood after the divorce from Pauline — whose hobby had been cooking — Cowley had become a gourmand of convenience food. That evening he’d stocked up from the embassy commissary and prepared a Lean-Cuisine veal for dinner in the guest apartment. He was undecided between chicken and braised beef, for the following night.

He watched CNN while the veal heated, curious if there would be a reference to Senator Burden’s intended Moscow visit, after the warning cable he’d got that night from Washington. There wasn’t. Cowley appreciated the Director’s guidance, to refer any difficulties to him and not to become personally involved in any disagreements. He couldn’t imagine what those difficulties might be: he saw the politician’s visit being handled by the ambassador, with his participation entirely peripheral, a courtesy briefing session maybe.

Cowley’s mind was more occupied by other things.

Uppermost was the embassy itself, and Cowley’s belief that he saw a way forward there. The dilemma was how to go forward. He had a suspicion wholly unsupported at this early stage by one single incriminating fact. Yet if he was right, the killing of Ann Harris could possibly be an entirely American affair, with the suspect liable to arrest on technically American property, able to be returned to American jurisdiction and presumably tried before an American court. So was that how he should proceed, completely cutting out Dimitri Danilov and the Russian side of the investigation? It was his first inclination to do just that, until he rationalized it further and recognized that some at least of the incriminating facts necessary for a conviction would have to come from the Russians. Who — prior to the murder of Ann Harris — had another killing to solve. Which compounded the dilemma. Possibly under international law there was provision for an American national accused of the homicide of another American to be returned to United States jurisdiction. But what about any trial for the fatal stabbing of Validmir Suzlev, very much upon Russian soil and very much under the jurisdiction of Russian law? Although he could not conceive the connection, he didn’t doubt the killer of both was one and the same person. And it was absurd to imagine the Russian authorities agreeing to the Suzlev trial taking place in America, any more than Cowley foresaw Washington agreement for a Moscow trial of a US citizen for the Ann Harris crime. Dilemma on top of dilemma on top of dilemma, he decided: a matryoshka doll of legality. Which needed a mind far better constitutionally trained than his to lift, separate and decided upon.

What did he need, to confirm his suspicion to the point of an open accusation? Certainly one piece of comparable forensic evidence he knew to be at Petrovka. And possibly to meet the widow of the taxi driver, to try to find the so far elusive link.

All possible tomorrow, Cowley decided. And with it reached another decision. He wouldn’t give Danilov the slightest indication that he had a lead. It was still far too early — and the ruling on how legally to handle the matter after an arrest would have to come from Washington — and anyway he was not beholden to the Russian, owing an exchange on a quid pro quo basis. The priority always was a quick and diplomatically acceptable conclusion to the investigation, not how to win Russian friends and influence them.

Cowley stirred himself to turn off the unwatched television and retrieve the veal parmesan from the oven, moving automatically, still deep in reflection. It was always wrong — positively lectured against at the FBI academy at Quantico — to allow personal feelings to intrude into any investigation. But he was looking forward to the upheaval among those supercilious, arrogant sons-of-bitches at the embassy if he were proven right. Allowing himself the cliche, Cowley decided it would hit the place like a bombshell. More friends he ultimately wouldn’t win and influence.

He wasn’t sure about the joint American-Russian press conference he’d been told to attend: there’d be the need for further guidance from Washington about that, particularly about whether to link the taxi-driver murder, which at the moment they wanted kept separate.

Cowley, who had developed a living-alone neatness, had almost finished clearing away and tidying the kitchen when the telephone rang, momentarily startling him. He answered expectantly, hoping it might have been Danilov with some sort of news. Instead he immediately recognized Barry Andrews. The man sounded slightly drunk, his words slipping at the sibilants.

‘Just got back from the social club,’ announced Andrews.

‘Yes?’

‘Talking about you, Pauline and me. Wanna know when you’re going to come to dinner, like old times.’

In those old times Pauline had been his wife, Cowley reflected. ‘I’m still trying to sort out a work pattern,’ he said, cautiously.

‘You’re not working day and night. You’re not working now!’

Why was he avoiding the decision? Nervous of seeing her, now the opportunity was there? Of course not! Ridiculous! What conceivable reason was there for him to be nervous? Any date could possibly be disrupted if things moved as quickly as he hoped they would now. ‘What is most convenient for you? I’ll fit in.’