Brian Freemantle - In the Name of a Killer

They trailed back to the rear of the police station and individually regarded Yezhov through the spy-hole, not trying to enter. The man was bunched on the bunk once more, arms hugging his legs tightly to his chest. He was rocking back and forth and making the whimpered, barking sound again. There was blood on his hair-patched head, where he’d hit the wall upon being knocked back from his attack. His face was puffed from crying.

As they went back to the front of the building, Kosov jerked his head towards the American and said: ‘Tell him it was good, solid police work.’

‘I understand what you’re saying,’ Cowley advised. ‘It seems like you’ve done a good job.’

‘Got him, when no one else could!’ declared Kosov, proudly.

As Danilov expected, Kosov strode from the building with them, towards the car. Maybe, Danilov reflected, a uniform would be a useful encouragement to the mother.

Pavin drove, knowing the way. Cowley wondered what they were going to do if there was still no reply at the apartment. Danilov held up the keys that had been in Yezhov’s possession and said it wouldn’t matter now. Danilov didn’t bother to reply when Cowley asked about a search warrant. Like the American, he was surprised by what could be the abrupt simplicity of it all. Unable to follow normal and practical police methods, because the killings were motiveless, this was always how the investigation had to be resolved, by chance. It was what he and Cowley had always expected. Yet, so soon, he found it hard to accept. Illogically he felt cheated, denied the opportunity to prove himself as a professional criminal investigator. And there was, additionally, another, different personal feeling. If Yezhov was the killer, it hadn’t been solved quite by chance. It had been solved by Kosov, using crooks: law-breakers, at least. Which wasn’t how it should have happened. What sort of reflection was that, he demanded of himself at once. A pompous one, he conceded. There was actually jealousy there, too. The need was to arrest a maniac, wandering, murdering. If Kosov was responsible for that, however he was responsible, then Kosov deserved the recognition and the credit: the convenient means justified the successful end. No one else was going to be murdered.

It was still not properly dawn when they got to Bronnaja, but Valentina Yezhov saw the car draw up below her apartment: she’d spent a lot of the night there, sleepless, anxious for the first movement that might have been Petr returning from wherever he’d been. Since the initial visit of the Militia and their subsequent, evaded, calls she had never slept until Petr was safely home. Four men, she saw, staring down with her hands to her mouth, nibbling at her knuckles: one in uniform, someone important. Petr had done it again — something again — and it was going to be like before, stared at and shunned, unsigned letters left in her box telling her to get out because everyone else in the block didn’t want a sex monster living there. It wouldn’t do any good, not to answer the door: they’d keep coming back, like they were doing now. She still wouldn’t answer, though: she wouldn’t know what to do or say, if she had to face them.

The bell sounded, stridently.

Valentina didn’t move.

It sounded again, longer.

She didn’t move. They’d go away. What else could they do, if there was no one there?

The lock turned. She cried out, more in disappointment at their catching her out than fear of their actually confronting her.

The door had opened at Danilov’s first attempt with the keys the detained man had been carrying. The interior of the apartment was in deep darkness, but her crying out identified Valentina. She blinked, unable to see in the first few seconds of brightness, when Kosov found the light switch. She was sitting on a flat, backless couch which clearly made up into a bed during a normal night. She had her hands nervously around her knees, so very much like her son back in the police cell.

It was Kosov who moved further into the room ahead of any of them. He began, too loudly: ‘OK, let’s not …’ before Danilov intervened.

‘I’ll question!’ he said, even louder, overriding the uniformed man. Danilov turned, including the American. ‘ We’ll question,’ he qualified.

Kosov’s reaction was astonishment, at being corrected. He opened his mouth, to protest, appeared to realize it would be wrong and then shrugged. A wall ornament appeared suddenly to interest him.

‘We have Petr Yakovlevich in custody,’ Danilov announced.

Valentina made a great effort to compose herself, straightening in front of the four men. The man who was speaking now seemed kinder than the one in uniform, who was walking about the apartment, picking up and putting things down, as if he had the right. Which she supposed he did: he was in uniform. ‘Why’s he in jail?’

‘He might have done something wrong,’ said Cowley.

Foreign voice, foreign dress, Valentina identified. The awareness, from the television and the newspapers, came at once, hollowing her out. ‘No!’ she insisted, loud herself now. ‘He didn’t do that! No!’

‘Didn’t do what?’ Danilov picked up. Beside him, Pavin was recording everything, writing surprisingly quickly for such a ponderous man.

‘What you’re saying.’

‘We’re not saying anything,’ said Cowley.

‘He’s better.’

‘Why aren’t you in bed? It’s still night.’

‘Waiting for Petr.’

‘He’s a grown man. Why do you wait up for Petr when he’s a grown man?’ demanded Danilov.

‘You know!’ She pulled a baggy cardigan tighter around her.

‘Tell me.’

‘He’s not a grown man. Not properly grown. Not in his head.’

Neither Danilov nor Cowley looked at each other, but Kosov came away from a small table at which he’d been standing and said: ‘There!’

‘You know he’s done something wrong, don’t you?’ urged Danilov.

Reluctantly Valentina nodded.

‘How do you know?’ asked Cowley.

‘You’ve been coming, for days.’ She was looking down at the floor now, voice sometimes difficult to hear.

‘Did he tell you what he’d done?’

She shook her head.

‘Did you ask him?’ pressed the American.

‘Yes.’

‘What did he say?’

‘Wouldn’t tell me. Said he hadn’t done anything.’

‘Has be brought anything home?’ said Danilov.

‘Is he locked up?’ demanded the woman. ‘In a cell or something?’

‘Yes,’ said Danilov, allowing her initially to evade the question.

‘He won’t like that. He hates being locked up, from the other times.’

‘The other times when he attacked women?’ said Cowley.

‘Yes.’

‘Is that what he’s done now?’ intruded Kosov, wanting to be part of what was happening.

‘I don’t know.’

‘Has he brought anything home?’ Danilov repeated.

‘I don’t understand.’

‘Things he wanted to keep, specially.’ Danilov wanted evidence to come without suggestion from them.

Cowley recognized the approach for some professional integrity, but not much: this interrogation, after what he considered technically to be forcible entry, contravened every American judicial rule and guideline on the statute book governing witness interviewing and possible evidence gathering. A defence lawyer five minutes out of law school with the worst degree in the world could have had it ruled inadmissible in any court in the United States.

‘I still don’t understand, not properly. But no.’

‘Why does Petr carry a knife?’ persisted Danilov.

‘He doesn’t!’ the woman denied, emphatically.

‘He was carrying a knife, in a sheath I guess he made himself, when he was arrested tonight.’