Brian Freemantle - In the Name of a Killer

Moscow sucked. Was that still the way you said you were pissed off, back home? She didn’t know. Ann Harris didn’t think she knew anything about America any more. Which was an obvious exaggeration, but one she allowed herself, more black depression to wrap around herself. She didn’t care whether it was the right word or not. Moscow definitely sucked. Everything sucked: the job and her career and her future and the embassy and this affair. This affair most of all.

She walked without direction, uncaring, woollen hat pulled low, hands buried deep in the pockets of her inadequate coat, the only idea to get away from the claustrophobia of her apartment and maybe, too, what had just happened there. Or rather, hadn’t happened.

He’d been in so much of a goddamned hurry there’d hardly been any point in their getting undressed: she hadn’t been anywhere near her climax when he’d withdrawn and from the way he’d held himself over her she was sure he’d checked his watch with the same gesture. Bastard. But that was hardly the discovery of the century. There’d been the usual bullshit about love when it had first started but that was all part of the familiar, well practised ritual. Now they’d stopped bothering with any pretence. It was a fuck, pure and simple: at least it was for him. For her, like tonight, it usually ended up as pure and simple frustration. At least he rarely tried the worst of the funny stuff now: tonight he scarcely hurt at all. Which meant, she supposed, he was doing it to somebody else, somebody new. It had to be somebody in the embassy. She wondered who. The bastard.

Ann looked around her, with sudden concentration. She had to be somewhere close to Ulitza Gercena: somewhere in the embassy district, certainly. The next left should bring her on to a better-lit street: so near midnight this road, whatever its name, was dark and deserted, no one moving apart from her.

Ann continued on, deep in reflection again. What was she going to do? Break it off, she supposed. She was impatient with this part of an affair, the let’s-call-it-a-day part. It invariably dragged on, one waiting for the other to make the moves, each trying to give the other an easy escape, which usually made the whole business messier and anything but easy.

Maybe she wouldn’t do anything positive. Maybe she’d just carry on until her tour ended in six months. Her return to Washington would make a logical end. A farewell dinner, a farewell fuck, the unmeant promises: Look after yourself now. Write, so I’ll know where you are. It really has been great . There were others, of course. The one before this who knew he was reserve, still trying to get the pecker up to compete. It was amusing, sometimes, seeing him try. Fun. At least he tried to make her come. Sometimes she even did.

But would she be recalled in six months? She should be, according to the usual tour of duty. But by now she had expected to hear from the State Department whether she would be offered another overseas position right away or have to wait in Washington for reassignment. She’d give it another month. If there hadn’t been anything in the diplomatic pouch by then she’d ask openly and get things moving from this end. Two years might be the usual posting to the Commonwealth that had once been the Soviet Union but she’d heard too many stories of oversights and misplaced personnel files and lofty, unconsulted State Department decisions to keep a person in place because of their proven value.

And she’d definitely proved herself a better-than-average economist in the embassy’s financial division. She snorted an empty laugh on the lonely Moscow street: how come she was so efficient and so professional at work, never screwing up, while her personal life here had been such a fuck-up?

Moscow, she answered herself: it was the insular, unnatural existence of Moscow, everyone knowing everyone else, affairs begun, affairs ended, dinners accepted and dinners returned by rote, the same anecdotes today as the anecdotes of yesterday, never gaining in the telling. She hoped to Christ Uncle Walter proved right, about the career importance of Russia. If he was — if the promotion was as automatic as he’d guaranteed — then in hindsight it might have been worthwhile. Just. But if it didn’t happen like that, it would have been two years of imprisonment, without any time off for good behaviour or parole.

Ann saw the break in the buildings up ahead, the opening of the link-road she was seeking, and just slightly increased her step. It had been an impulsive, unthought-out decision to get away from the flat: the coat wasn’t warm enough and she only had a thin cotton shirt and skirt on underneath, because there had been the Russian warmth in the apartment: even warmer in bed.

Ann’s mind stayed on her uncle. He’d used his political clout to get her to Moscow. So he could use it to get her out. That would be the way to do it! Write to him before directly approaching the State Department, say how much she’d enjoyed the opportunity to work here and ask if he had any indication where she might be assigned next. Do it tomorrow, in fact: get the letter in that night’s diplomatic bag to Washington. For the first time for several hours her depression lifted, although not by much.

Ann turned into the smaller side road, little more than an alley, disappointed at not seeing the brightness of Ulitza Gercena: maybe this road curved, obscuring the junction.

It was only in the last few seconds that she was aware of anybody else and then she did not hear anything. It was an impression of someone very close and she began to turn but the knife went in smoothly, not touching any bone. There was a moment of excruciating agony and the scream tore from her but the hand was over her mouth, clamping her nose, suppressing any sound.

Ann Harris was dead before her body collapsed fully on to the pavement.

The hair was clipped first, as close to the skull as possible. Enough was kept but most was sprinkled over her face. The buttons, on the coat and shirt and skirt, had to be cut off by feel and the clothes properly rearranged. All the buttons were kept. One shoe had dropped off, as she fell. The other was removed, to be placed neatly, side by side, close to her head.

It was 2 a.m. when the telephone roused Dimitri Ivanovich Danilov, the senior Colonel of the People’s Militia for the Moscow region. He listened for several moments. Then he said: ‘Shit!’

Olga stirred when he got out of bed but did not wake up. Over the years, as the wife of a policeman, she’d learned how to sleep through such disturbances: she’d come to ignore quite a lot of things, in fact.

There was not much blood and most of what there was had been absorbed into the coat. Ann Harris did not lie as she had fallen, because the body had been moved slightly while she was shorn and the buttons removed. Now she was slightly over the outline chalked on the pavement, disturbed a second time by the initial examination of the pathologist and the forensic experts. The narrow street, which did bend before leading out on to Ulitza Gercena, had been sealed at both ends by Militia vehicles drawn across it. Shielding canvas screens were around the corpse, which was unnecessary, because the only people there at 3 a.m. on a sub-zero February morning were police. The floodlights unnaturally whitened everything and everyone: the men grouped and moving around looked as bloodless as the victim at their feet.