Brian Freemantle - In the Name of a Killer

It took another fifteen minutes for the two investigators to excuse themselves. The Soviet section of the restaurant was more crowded than Danilov had expected but they got a table. Cowley said he didn’t have any particular preferences, so why didn’t Danilov order for both of them: he didn’t drink, so he wouldn’t have any wine.

‘You didn’t play it straight,’ Cowley accused at once, the ordering completed.

‘Did you?’ challenged Danilov, just as quickly.

‘I thought so.’

‘I don’t,’ said Danilov. ‘You checked the twisted fingerprint in the evidence room when you came back to Petrovka, right? But didn’t tell me what you were doing.’ He was still enjoying the feeling of superiority.

‘I didn’t have the comparison back from Washington, from the stuff in Ann Harris’s office, until this morning,’ tried Cowley, defensively. ‘What was there to tell?’

Danilov had ordered vodka in preference to the sugar-sweet Chinese wine. He sipped, to give himself time, and said: ‘How about suspicion? You’d seen Hughes’s hand, when you talked to him.’

‘You suspected it, too. With better reason. You had the transcript of the telephone conversations but all you gave me was the fact of out-of-hours calls. Why the hell only give me half the thing to hit him with? You were fucking about, waiting for me to move.’

‘With good reason!’ seized Danilov, still believing himself ahead in the exchange. Slightly relaxing, with an admission, he said: ‘And I didn’t have the transcripts: I had to get them, additionally.’

‘From intelligence monitoring of diplomatic telephones?’

‘I got them,’ said Danilov, shortly, refusing the confirmation. ‘It’s our advantage.’

Danilov had ordered the duck and was glad, when it came. There were also stuffed dumplings and sour prawns. Appearing reminded, by the delivery of the food, Cowley said: ‘What about them eating together on the night of the murder? He couldn’t have jerked me around like he did if I had been able to hit him with that!’

Danilov did not want to disclose completely how desperately close he had been to knowing nothing until the last minutes before the conference. Using the American’s opening, he said: ‘Waiting. I think you didn’t tell me what you had because you wanted to keep the situation with Hughes completely within the embassy, so you could ship him home. Now you can’t. Certainly not without creating a major diplomatic uproar because by now his exit, diplomatically protected or not, will have been banned.’

He’d lost, Cowley conceded. He said: ‘The duck is good.’

‘It’s the obvious speciality.’ I’ve won, thought Danilov.

‘Maybe we should re-define the working relationship,’ suggested Cowley, capitulating.

‘I think that would probably be a good idea.’

‘I appreciated the inference in front of the prosecutor and your boss that everything was a joint discovery: that it was an evenSteven investigation,’ said Cowley.

‘That’s what I thought it was going to be.’

‘Have we made our points, do you think?’

‘I believe so.’

‘It would be stupid to shake hands or anything like that, wouldn’t it?’

‘Quite stupid,’ agreed Danilov.

‘I won’t get any playback from Washington, about anything, until tomorrow. I’ll call.’

‘I’ll be waiting.’ Danilov decided that everything had worked out well: extremely well. There still had to be Paul Hughes’s confession, of course.

The meal cost fifty roubles. Danilov wondered if Lapinsk would let him reclaim it. He doubted it. The system didn’t work as he understood it did in the West, with expense accounts.

Larissa was waiting behind the desk but emerged the moment he entered the hotel, to meet him in the foyer. She was smiling, enjoying herself in front of the other receptionists who shared the same rendezvous arrangements, and said: ‘Can I show you direct to your room, sir?’

Danilov turned with her towards the elevators, conscious of the smiling attention. ‘What’s all this about?’

‘I’m proud of you,’ she said. ‘You looked terrific on television. We switched from Russian to CNN, when the satellite came on. CNN were heading their news coverage with it: running the conference live. You looked wonderful. Why have you had your hair cut so short, incidentally? I like it, but then I liked the grey bits, too. Made you look distinguished.’

Danilov was unhappy she had so easily guessed the reason for the new hair-style. Ignoring her question, he said: ‘I didn’t like the conference.’

The elevator stopped at the sixth floor and he followed her out. Larissa said: ‘You looked as if you did.’

‘This isn’t getting any easier.’

‘What’s that mean?’ Larissa secured the lock but didn’t come forward to be kissed as she usually did, remaining at the far side of the room to frown at him curiously.

‘Just what I said: that it isn’t easy.’

‘Just like it wasn’t easy the other night at dinner?’

‘You made the difficulties there. Olga suspects.’

‘So what?’

‘So it’s difficult.’

‘Why don’t we stop thinking about you for a moment?’ challenged Larissa. ‘How do you think it is for me, with a slob like Yevgennie?’

‘Horrible,’ conceded Danilov at once. He humped his shoulders. ‘There isn’t anything I can say that would help: just that I feel sorry. I still don’t see why you behaved as you did.’

Larissa slowly began to disrobe, actually humming to herself a vague tune to accompany the striptease, which became more and more raunchily explicit with the more clothes she took off. ‘I wanted you to feel me when I was wet but you wouldn’t. Why wouldn’t you?’

‘You tried to make it obvious, to Olga and maybe to Yevgennie. You were trying to create a situation, weren’t you?’ demanded Danilov. He’d set out to show his annoyance but realized he sounded weak and petulant instead.

‘Feel me now,’ insisted Larissa, completely naked.

‘I think it would be an idea to cool things off for a while.’

Larissa pulled back the bed covers and lay provocatively displayed for him, one leg raised, the other stretched out before her on the bed. ‘Do you really mean that?’

‘Yes.’

‘Sure?’

‘What’s the point of hurting people?’

Larissa frowned. ‘Who?’ She appeared genuinely perplexed.

‘Olga. Yevgennie.’

She laughed. ‘All Olga has is a suspicion! And the only way to hurt Yevgennie would be to take his brandy bottle away. And do you really care? Wouldn’t you like to sort things out, so that we could be married?’

‘It’s complicated, you know that,’ said Danilov, refusing to answer. He’d never intended the affair to become this serious. Still didn’t. So why had he allowed it to happen? Surely he hadn’t been trying to prove he was still attractive to a vivacious, beautiful woman, despite the encroaching greyness he’d got rid of in a barber’s chair and the stomach bulge he constantly tried to suck in! Of course not! He had enjoyed the flattery, though. And Larissa was beautiful and vivacious.

‘Why don’t you come and fuck me, to help you make up your mind?’

Going towards her, Danilov realized the dinner episode hadn’t been for her personal enjoyment, a private joke. Larissa was pushing the situation, wanting Olga to find out.

There was a giggle of delight, quickly stifled as the television transmission ended. Worried. How they should be. Looked it, all of them. Frightened. Right they should be frightened. How it was important they should be. Sensational, about the hair. Not a maniac, though. Got that wrong. Cleverer than any of them. Prove it, now the hunt was properly announced. Hunt but never find. Never know where to look. How to look. Going to worry a lot more, all of them. Never get it right. The giggle came again, longer this time. Then the hum.