Brian Freemantle - In the Name of a Killer

There was a brief mumble of conversation, as Andrews talked away from the telephone. ‘Night after tomorrow?’

‘Perfect,’ agreed Cowley.

‘Pauline’s here!’ announced Andrews. ‘You wanna say hello?’

There was another mumble of conversation, the delay longer this time, before a faint voice came on to the telephone. ‘Hello.’

‘Hello.’

‘It’s a surprise, your being here.’

‘For me, too. You OK?’ Pauline sounded uncertain, but he supposed that was understandable. Three years was a long time.

‘Yes. You?’

‘Fine.’ An inconsequential exchange of strangers, Cowley thought. He didn’t consider himself a stranger. He hoped she didn’t, either. It was good to hear her voice, frail though it sounded.

There was a silence, neither knowing how to go on.

‘The day after tomorrow then?’ said Pauline.

‘Don’t go to any real trouble,’ urged Cowley, knowing she would. She’d enjoyed entertaining, in Rome and London.

‘You want to speak to Barry again?’

‘I don’t think so.’

‘I’ll be seeing you.’ Cowley remained by the telephone, staring down at it. He decided he was genuinely looking forward to seeing her again. Although looking forward didn’t really seem to be the right phrase.

‘Well?’ demanded Andrews. He looked at her over the top of his brandy bowl.

‘Well what?’

‘How was it, speaking to him again?’

‘Don’t, Barry!’

‘It’s a simple enough question.’

Pauline wished it were. ‘It was nothing. You know that.’

‘Good,’ said the man. ‘Wear your red dress. I like your red dress.’

‘All right,’ agreed Pauline, at once. It would be a mistake to tell him Cowley hadn’t liked her in red.

In his anxiety to correct the oversight, Danilov was at Petrovka before his assistant, which was unnecessary because it was still too early in the day for the man to begin the inquiry. Major Pavin listened without expression to the briefing, not showing in any way that he knew it to be overdue and clearly forgotten until now. Danilov said: ‘It was obvious, knowing there hadn’t been a Russian in the apartment. And that she’d eaten. It’s my fault.’ Only to Pavin would Danilov have made such an open admission.

With attempted helpfulness Pavin said: ‘I didn’t think of it, either. They just might have eaten in a Russian-currency restaurant.’

‘Would you, with easy access to dollars?’

‘No,’ Pavin admitted.

‘And neither would Ann Harris. Remember the apartment? Everything was American. And the letters? How much she disliked it here? She ate the night of her death in a hard-currency restaurant, with as little contact as possible with anything Russian. I’m sure of it.’ He paused. ‘And those restaurants can be checked!’

Pavin gave a resigned grimace. ‘It’ll occupy a lot of people again.’

‘How about the Militia posts in the area of the murders?’

‘Nothing so far.’

‘Take men off that: this has priority. But not off the hospital inquiries: I don’t like the time that’s taking.’ He was still personally angry at overlooking basic routine: it had been obvious. He’d even isolated the fact that she’d eaten from the pathologist’s written account, marking it for significance! ‘Work through from top to bottom, tourist hotels and hard-currency and credit-card places first. Leave until last those that also take roubles.’

Pavin nodded to the instructions, smiling to one side of Danilov’s desk. ‘So you finally got a new bulb!’ he said, satisfied the pressure on maintenance had got results.

The bulb that had been dead in its socket for several weeks had been replaced before Danilov arrived that morning. Instead of thanking his assistant Danilov said, uncomfortably: ‘There’s a problem with the car.’

‘It’s almost new!’

‘I parked overnight outside my flat,’ said Danilov, in another admission he wished he didn’t have to make. ‘The wipers were stolen.’ He’d already decided not to tell Olga.

‘A lot of people take them off.’

‘I should have done,’ said Danilov, shortly. Hurrying to end his further embarrassment he said: ‘Let’s start the restaurant checks, OK?’

‘I’m not sure what I’ll be able to do about the car.’

Belatedly showing his thanks Danilov said: ‘It’s better in here, with the proper light.’

Danilov had warned the reception area again and Cowley was ushered into his office minutes after he replaced the telephone from his initial, nothing-to-report contact of the day with the Militia Director.

‘You had some inquiries to make at the embassy?’ prompted Danilov, at once. How much of the truth would he really hear?

Cowley had already determined that an edited account would be quite easy: all he had to do, almost literally, was stick to the truth. He repeated the explanation for the out-of-hours telephone calls given by Paul Hughes and declared that none of the diplomats to whom he had talked could suggest who the girl’s lover had been: there’d been no indication whatsoever during the social rounds at the embassy.

So much for cooperation, thought Danilov, disappointed. Interested in the effect it would have upon the other man, he said: ‘So they lied to you, too?’

The reaction tilted Cowley, putting him on the defensive. ‘I’m sorry?’

‘Can you honestly believe there would be no indication who Ann Harris’s lover was, in that closed situation?’

Cowley smiled, humourlessly. ‘It’s difficult,’ he conceded.

‘Wasn’t there anything, from anyone? Baxter and Hughes particularly?’

‘Nothing positive from anyone.’ His first direct lie.

‘I didn’t ask that. I asked if there was anything .’

Cowley guessed the Russian didn’t completely believe him: he wondered at the black stains on the other man’s shirt cuffs. ‘Nothing,’ he insisted.

Danilov was convinced the other man was holding back. ‘How did they treat you, your people?’

Cowley smiled again, for better reason this time, toe-stretching for firmer ground. ‘Badly,’ he admitted, honest again. ‘They resent the suggestion of dirty smells inside their own house.’

Clever, decided Danilov. He regarded that as a truthful answer — an invitation for empathy between the two of them — which made him unsure where the un truthfulness was. ‘So it was completely unproductive?’

‘At the moment.’ Cowley would have preferred being open with the Russian: having another investigative opinion against which to put his own impression and get an impression back.

Danilov picked out the qualification immediately: at the moment . So what did the other man hope to discover later, after this moment? And where? And how? And about whom? The pathway had to be pointed by the American. ‘So where do we go from here?’

Cowley retreated thankfully into his edited preparation. The inconceivable link between a drunken Moscow taxi driver and an American diplomat was one of the most glaring implausibilities: he thought there would be some advantage in his examining once more the Suzlev file and perhaps in their both re-interviewing the widow.

Throughout what became an uninterrupted dialogue Danilov sat not looking directly at the American, but down at his desk: towards the end he began impressing a dotted pattern into a blotting pad which was too difficult to replace to be treated that way. He shouldn’t have taken risks with the pencil, either. Cowley had been provided with transcripts, and where available Englishlanguage copies of every documentary file, which he now had at the embassy. So there would be no need to refresh himself upon any of that. Which only left the forensic exhibits. But all those material exhibits had been explained in the written analysis. Was there something he had missed in the suggestion to interview again the widow of Vladimir Suzlev? ‘I think we can fit that in,’ he said, finally looking up from the punctured blotter. He hated not knowing: being kept in ignorance.