Brian Freemantle - In the Name of a Killer

‘The evidence seemed compelling,’ Cowley insisted.

‘I’d intended you should escort Hughes back. I want you back here,’ declared the Director. ‘Get a flight today.’

‘I …’ Cowley started, but was cut off instantly.

‘… What?’ demanded Ross.

‘Nothing,’ said Cowley. ‘I’ll make the reservation.’

With such a complete telephone system available literally in front of him, Cowley called Dimitri Danilov from there instead of going back down to the FBI room. Determined, on his part, against continuing the competition he believed to have blurred their professionalism, Cowley announced his return to Washington, but said he wanted to meet Danilov before leaving, to discuss the outstanding requests of American scientists. Danilov had a further reason for a meeting: following the previous night’s attack upon Lydia Orlenko — and now there was no longer any reason to conceal a possible connection with the US embassy — the Federal Prosecutor and the Militia Director had decided the delayed public warning should finally be issued.

When Cowley returned downstairs and announced his recall, Andrews frowned and said: ‘When will you be back?’

‘I don’t know.’

‘You will be coming back?’

‘I don’t know about that, either.’

‘I said at the very beginning that I didn’t envy you this one.’

Cowley thought the man had said something different that night in his apartment, but he wasn’t interested in continuing the discussion. All he could think about was how badly he’d fouled up. ‘Maybe you’re lucky to be publicly out of it.’

‘That’s what I was thinking,’ admitted Andrews.

Burden reviewed the media coverage at a breakfast meeting in his suite: there were copies for everyone of what had been printed.

McBride said, invitingly: ‘Pretty damned good, don’t you think?’

‘So far, so good,’ agreed Burden. ‘Last night the FBI Director wouldn’t take my call. I was told the Secretary of State was unavailable. The ambassador here knows fuck-all. The FBI people here won’t cooperate … we’re being given the run-around.’

‘I don’t know who else — where else — we can go,’ ventured Prescott.

At that moment Beth Humphries came into the room, ashenfaced. Unspeaking she offered the Senator the Russian announcement of the linked murders, running on Reuter’s English language service.

‘Now we’ve got it!’ declared Burden, looking up. ‘I’m going to light a fire under the bastards that will roast them …’ He looked to McBride. ‘Get every reporter and television station you can find here, in two hours.’

‘Called back to be disciplined?’ queried Pauline, at once.

‘He caused the most God-awful flap, raising the alarm about Hughes,’ said Andrews.

‘Could it affect his career?’

‘Easily, at this level of political importance.’

‘Poor William.’

‘It could well be poor William,’ Andrews agreed.

Cowley decided against reopening the Arlington apartment he had closed down before leaving for Moscow. Instead he checked into the J. W. Marriott on 14th and Pennsylvania, within convenient walking distance of the FBI building. He’d slept intermittently during the flight, the rest of the time calculating the practical advantages of coming back to America. It gave an opportunity to interview Judy Billington, the college friend in whom Ann Harris had confided so fully. And possibly John, the brother in New York, with whom she had also shown some openness. Cowley had also evolved some queries of his own to put to the Bureau’s scientific division and hoped personally to get down to Quantico to discuss the psychological profile of the unknown killer.

He had outlined the scientific evaluations to Danilov at their meeting two hours before flying out of Sheremet’yevo airport. The Russian investigator had been familiar with deoxyribonucleic acid, or DNA, tests to establish genetic fingerprinting, although he’d had to concede such technology was at the moment inadequate for use in Russian police work. It was Cowley’s claim that a psychological and even physical profile of a killer they didn’t even know could be created by the Bureau’s Behavioural Science Unit that had bemused the Russian. Cowley’s insistence that the FBI regarded profile creation as a positive investigatory aid and that the unit had created accurate assessments of thousands of criminals in advance of their arrest had failed to convince the other man. At times he’d openly laughed in disbelief. Cowley wasn’t sure of the precise date, but he believed the Bureau had used the practice since the 1950s and would have thought enough scientific papers had been published since that time for the Russians to have at least learned about it, even if they didn’t trust it.

The same corn-and-milk-fed secretary came forward to meet him as he entered the FBI Director’s suite, but this time Fletcher was forewarned by Cowley’s call from the downstairs foyer and didn’t have to be summoned. Fletcher’s greeting was as supercilious as it had been for the briefing, just over a week before. Had it really only been just over a week? By the number of days, certainly. But to Cowley it seemed much longer: ages longer.

There was no smile from Leonard Ross, just the barest nod of greeting. The Director said: ‘Not an auspicious start.’

‘The circumstantial evidence looked good.’

‘You said so on the phone. And I read your report.’

‘And there were some operational difficulties,’ offered Cowley.

‘They’re still being obstructive?’

‘No,’ corrected Cowley. ‘There were problems of adjustment: there had to be. It’s settled now.’ Was it? He’d put it directly to Danilov, during their farewell encounter the previous day, that a lot of the mistakes had arisen through unnecessary personal competition, and the Russian had agreed. But there was no guarantee Danilov would keep his word to cooperate absolutely in the future. Which was not to doubt the man, but whatever instructions Danilov received from his superiors. Any more than he could guarantee to keep his word against positive orders from the man in whose office he was now sitting.

‘So how come they got to Hughes when I’d strictly ordered it shouldn’t happen, under any circumstances?’

A lawyer’s aggression towards a flawed witness, gauged Cowley. He recited the explanation he’d evolved with Danilov at the time, intent upon the Director’s reaction, which was impossible to guess from the man’s unchanging expression. ‘Hughes lives outside ,’ Cowley concluded. ‘The Russians let me accompany them, in the middle of the night, to interview the victim and then straight from the hospital to Hughes’s apartment. I had no alternative: no time to consult.’

Ross nodded, a slow, doubtful movement. ‘It happened,’ he accepted. ‘Didn’t become the problem it could have done. Or has it?’

‘I don’t understand,’ frowned Cowley. The Director was clearly critical, but it didn’t at this stage appear to be a suspension-from-the-case situation.

‘You sure — I mean absolutely sure — about Hughes’s alibi?’

‘The wife is particularly strong. Gives the impression of total honesty and her evidence, against the woman who survived, makes the timing utterly impossible. And the girl’s account corroborates all the wife says and clears Hughes of the first murder.’

‘Wives and mistresses have got together in the past: dozens of times,’ argued Ross. ‘Women do the damnedest things for men. I’ve never understood it.’

Cowley shook his head. ‘There was no time for them to prepare a story that sticks together like theirs does.’