Brian Freemantle - In the Name of a Killer

‘Not for the moment,’ said Cowley, trying for a way to puncture the pomposity. ‘Maybe later. Your wife will probably have questions of her own.’

Cowley escorted Danilov out of the embassy, to the waiting car. There he said: ‘I guess I’ll have a lot of overnight messages.’

‘And I have to brief the Director and the Prosecutor.’

‘We’ll speak by phone,’ said the American.

Barry Andrews was in the FBI office but away from his desk, pacing back and forth in front of the window. When Cowley entered, Andrews said: ‘Thank Christ you’re here! Where the hell have you been?’ He gestured to a pile of messages and diplomatic pouch material. ‘They’re going ape-shit in Washington, particularly over Hughes. You’re to keep the Russians from getting anywhere near him: you’ve personally got to get him back. Hidden in a box if necessary.’

Cowley scooped up the waiting papers. ‘There was another attack last night,’ he announced, wearily. ‘This time the victim didn’t die. And it won’t be necessary to ship Hughes home in a box. He’s a sado-masochist and Christ knows what else, but he didn’t kill Ann Harris. Or anyone else. He’s got alibi witnesses all the way.’ He hammered his fist against the desk, at once regretting the theatricality. ‘We’ve been wasting our fucking time! For days we’ve been chasing the wrong leads to the wrong man!’

‘But who …?’ started Andrews, stopping abruptly at the stupidity of the question.

‘I don’t know,’ said Cowley, depressed by what he saw as defeat. ‘Now we don’t have a clue; not a single goddamned clue.’

‘What about the woman last night? There must be something !’

‘Nothing that points anywhere positive. Just that her attacker was a man. She fainted or went into shock or something, when she was stabbed. Says she didn’t see his face.’

Andrews sat at his desk, lighting the first cigar of the day. ‘Hughes’s wife provide his alibi?’

‘The most convincing part.’

‘How’d she take it, knowing her husband was screwing around?’

‘It didn’t quite come out that way: it will, I guess, when she thinks about it.’

‘And who would have thought it, about innocent little Pamela?’

Cowley shook his head, irritably. ‘That’s all immaterial now.’

‘What are you going to do?’ asked Andrews.

Cowley looked down at all the messages. ‘Read my mail. Then call the Director and tell him I was wrong.’

‘That’s not going to sound good, after the uproar you caused in Washington with the original warning about Hughes.’

‘Tell me about it!’ said Cowley, repeating the earlier cynical cliche. He didn’t feel cynical. He felt foolish and angry at himself, for making the mistakes. Andrews was right. The admission wasn’t going to look at all good in Washington: in fact, it was going to look bloody awful.

Cowley took everything back to his compound suite but did not immediately read it, wanting to try at least to feel physically better. He left coffee filtering while he showered and shaved, his mind blocked by the forthcoming telephone conversation with the Director. The leads towards Hughes had been convincing, the obvious path to follow. And he had been correct in the peculiar diplomatic circumstances, alerting Washington in advance of any interview. But he didn’t need to read the incoming messages from Washington to imagine the panic. Obviously the Director would have discussed everything with the Secretary of State. So Paul Hughes’s sexual proclivities were public knowledge in the State Department. Would it affect the man’s future career? Almost inevitably. And that destructive information would have come from him. The necessary fall-out of an investigation. He wished the attempted self-reassurance had been more successful. All in the past now, he told himself. So what was the future? He wished to Christ he knew.

Being clean and shaved was the only improvement to the way Cowley felt. He poured coffee and still in a towelling robe settled to the messages, reading every exchange concerning the economist to prepare himself, reflecting beyond possible harm to Hughes’s career to the possible damage to his own. Overly pessimistic, he decided, seeking further reassurance. Wrong turns frequently occurred in investigations. This one — again because of the goddamned circumstances — was just more serious, that’s all. And entirely his own fault, Cowley decided: his and the Russian’s. They’d lost sight of what they were supposed to be doing and got into an infantile competition, each trying to outsmart the other, prove who was the better detective. And both ended up looking jerks. Not Danilov, the American corrected immediately.

The bulk of the remaining documentation was technical. The American post-mortem report was throughout critical of the Russian examination, claiming evidence could have been lost by its glaring carelessness. The American pathologist was only prepared to estimate the thickness and penetration of the stab wound to Ann Harris because of Russian incision clumsiness. Samples of hair that remained after the shearing had been subjected to deoxyribonucleic acid analysis, as had her blood, to isolate the molecular structure of her chromosomes and establish her individual genetic pattern. There was a request for available hair from the first victim, for similar analysis. The nasal bruising was obviously consistent with a hand being clamped over the victim’s face and then with the victim being pulled backwards, from behind. Chin bruising and inner lower lip contusions not listed in the Russian report were also consistent with this. Cowley underlined that paragraph, remembering the similar bruising earlier that morning upon Lydia Orlenko’s face. The two fingernails that had been roughly broken had left jagged splits and edges. The shattering of the nails could have happened either from striking the ground when she fell or by scratching her assailant in a last, frantic fight. No evidence had been found to support the scratching theory, from scrapings beneath the broken nails. But such evidence could have been lost during the first post-mortem, by movement of the body during transportation to America or by the delay in their receiving the body for examination. If the finger damage had been caused either by falling or fighting, the shattered parts should have been recovered by the scene-of-the-crime search. Such parts might also have had attached forensic evidence like blood or skin that could have been matched to the assailant by DNA comparison.

Cowley sighed, pushing the autopsy report aside. Nothing, except justifiable complaints. Or at least nothing that at the moment had any significance. Cowley halted the dismissal. There was one item of significance, which was further proof of Paul Hughes’s innocence. If Ann Harris had scratched hard enough to break her nails, Hughes’s face or hands would have been marked. And they hadn’t been, anywhere.

Back at the FBI facility in the embassy, Cowley personally transmitted all the details of the exonerating interview with Paul Hughes to Pennsylvania Avenue. Andrews remained with him throughout, reading each document after its dispatch. At the end the local man shook his head and smiled and said: ‘It happens. The damned case has only just begun.’

The connection from the secure booth in the embassy communications room to the FBI headquarters was instantaneous, with no interference whatsoever. At Leonard Ross’s insistence, Cowley verbally went through everything that he was sure the Director would by now have in front of him, in the fifth-floor office. There was silence for several moments after Cowley finished talking, the unspoken condemnation more accusing than any direct words. Eventually Ross said: ‘A complete mistake?’