Brian Freemantle - In the Name of a Killer

‘Jesus!’ Hughes broke in, eyes bulging, mouth open again. ‘That’s …’

‘… only a small part of what we know,’ Cowley told him. ‘She might have liked sex but she didn’t like pain as you do, did she?’

Hughes remained staring at Danilov. ‘You tapped my phone … were tapping my phone … there’ll be a protest …’

‘Shut up, Paul!’ said Cowley, the friendliness dropped like a curtain. ‘And let’s cut the crap, OK? Just the truth from now on.’

‘I didn’t kill her!’

‘We think you did,’ said Danilov. ‘We know all the lies you told.’

‘I had to, didn’t I? Think how I was caught up! My position!’

Danilov was aware of the slight tightening of Cowley’s hands, the only hint of anger. Cowley said: ‘Tell us about last Tuesday: not last night. The one before. And the entire truth this time. No tidying up.’

‘I need to smoke. Can I smoke?’

Cowley nodded agreement. ‘Take your time.’

The economist did, fumbling for cigarettes from a side-table and then appearing to have difficulty with a lighter, as if he were trying to delay as long as possible the final confession. The pungent smell of the French tobacco permeated the room. Cowley and Danilov looked at each other. Hughes brought the pack back to the chair with him, settling himself, gazing down at the floor again, ‘It was usually Tuesday,’ he began, haltingly. ‘I work out at the embassy gym that night. Angela expects me home late: thinks I have a few drinks afterwards. Last Tuesday we went to the Trenmos, Ann and I. She liked it there …’ He looked up, briefly, towards Danilov. ‘She wasn’t very fond of anything Russian. We had a meal: went back to her place like we usually did. Had a drink. Went to bed. Then I left …’ He looked up again, to both of them. ‘That’s it.’

‘No, it isn’t,’ said Danilov, just ahead of the other irritated investigator. ‘Do it again. From the restaurant. What did you eat? What did you talk about?’

Hughes shrugged. ‘Can’t remember what we ate.’

‘What did you talk about?’ repeated Cowley. ‘Were you happy, the two of you? Or not?’

‘OK,’ said Hughes, shrugging again, the evasion blatant.

‘Stop it, for Christ’s sake!’ said Cowley, the friendship curtain still down. ‘Or would you rather come with us to a Russian station-house? You’re outside embassy jurisdiction: I’m here as a concession. You fancy a Russian prison interrogation, where I wouldn’t have access?’

Danilov took the cue, turning to Pavin to return the telephone log and nodding, as if some decision had been made between them.

‘No!’ pleaded Hughes, at once, too alarmed to argue about diplomatic immunity. ‘No, please! I’m sorry. OK, so it wasn’t a good evening. It was all coming to an end, we both knew that. The messy part: getting on each other’s nerves.’

‘So you argued?’ demanded Danilov.

‘No, not argued!’ Hughes retorted. ‘Just irritated with each other: things I said annoyed her, things she said annoyed me.’

‘But you still went to bed?’ said Cowley.

‘That’s what it was all about.’

‘It was uncomfortable at the restaurant,’ Cowley goaded. ‘What happened back at Pushkinskaya?’

‘Had a drink or two, like I said. Usual squabble: she was very house-proud, almost a fetish with her. She wouldn’t let me smoke that night, not like she normally did. She was being awkward, on purpose: said concessions were being withdrawn …’

‘But they weren’t, in bed?’ broke in Danilov.

‘Old times stuff,’ dismissed Hughes. He smiled hopefully at both of them.

Neither detective smiled back. Cowley’s hands flexed. Danilov said: ‘Her breasts were bitten.’

‘She liked …’ Hughes began, but Cowley, too loudly, said: ‘Don’t! You try it once more and you’re downtown on your own and I couldn’t give a fuck. I’ll insist you go downtown.’

Hughes’s cigarette had a long hang of ash. He stubbed it out hurriedly, strangely seeming to wither physically. ‘She let me. That was all. She let me.’ His voice was cracked, jagged. Then he said: ‘Jesus, this is awful! Embarrassing!’

Sure he knew how to play the interrogation now, Danilov said: ‘Ann Harris’s death was awful, too. She was stabbed in the back. All her hair was cut off. What was wrong with her hair? Didn’t you like it? Or was it some sex thing, like the buttons and the shoes?’

‘What buttons and shoes? I don’t understand.’

‘When you’re ready,’ said Cowley, accepting the denial for the moment. ‘You were in bed and you bit her.’

‘Not like that! You make it sound … like it was …’

‘… Deviant? Dangerously violent? Something we shouldn’t find unusual involving a girl who was killed and abused the same night with your teethmarks in her breasts?’ interrupted Danilov.

‘It was what we did!’

‘Why Suzlev?’ demanded Cowley. ‘Why kill him?’

‘I didn’t kill him.’

‘You did,’ insisted Danilov.

‘Paul?’

The American economist had been slumped, almost unnaturally bowed forward, but he stiffened at his wife’s voice. There was a sound like a groan as he half-turned towards the living-room door at which she stood. Unlike her husband she was dressed, in a red skirt and homeknit sweater decorated with matching red swans proceeding across the front, a squat woman on the point of fatness, freshly washed face shining free of make-up, her hair completely grey without any attempt at disguising dye or tinted highlights.

‘Paul?’ she questioned again. ‘What is it? What’s going on? What’s happened at the embassy?’ Towards the end she extended her look beyond her husband, inviting a reply from anyone.

‘I asked you to leave us,’ said Hughes. His voice was even more broken.

The dumpy woman looked puzzled, but at the same time appeared to realize her husband was under some sort of pressure. She smiled tentatively and said: ‘Can I get anything? Coffee?’

‘Just leave us. Please,’ said Hughes.

She didn’t move, at once. Then, with the skeletal words people use in times of personal uncertainty, she said: ‘I’ll be in the kitchen if you want me.’

Hughes scratched a match back and forth to light another cigarette and both Cowley and Danilov shifted, practically at the same time, angrily aware that the momentum had been broken. Trying too quickly to bring it back, Cowley said: ‘Was that how it happened, Paul? A lot of small arguments, early in the evening? Some sex stuff that got out of hand? Then, before you knew what was really happening, she was dead?’

Danilov prevented himself looking curiously at the FBI agent, who’d proposed a sequence they knew hadn’t occurred, supposing the man was simply trying to frighten the economist into an admission.

‘No!’ wailed Hughes. He looked up at them, eyes filmed. ‘We went to bed, right? She let me do what I wanted. We actually made love, but it wasn’t good, not for either of us. It was late by then: I had to get back. I said I’d see her the following day. I got dressed and left. Came straight back here.’

‘How did you come?’ asked Danilov.

‘Walked. It’s very close.’

‘Before you left Pushkinskaya there was no more argument?’ Cowley pushed the explanation back.

‘No.’

Both investigators discerned the reluctance. Cowley said: ‘What was it?’

There was the familiar shoulder movement. ‘She called me a bastard.’

‘Why?’

‘Wanted me to stay longer, I supposed. It had been very quick. I guess that was it. Wasn’t happy.’

‘You mean she wasn’t satisfied?’ insisted Cowley.

‘I guess.’

‘What about you?’