Brian Freemantle - No Time for Heroes

Cowley went to the police car where the exhibit officer was packaging the recovered articles, and signed for the passport, managing to open it to the photograph by working on the outside of the plastic envelope. The parking ticket was in a separate sachet. The date automatically registered by the entry machine was the day Serov had died, the time 20-45. Cowley gave Rafferty the opened passport and told him to take the Key Bridge and return through Georgetown to confirm Michel Paulac had been the man with Serov.

As Cowley turned to Johannsen, the detective expectantly said: ‘You’d like to know how many flights left National after eight forty-five? And to where?’

‘And get the passenger lists and credit card slips for tickets that were bought that night,’ completed Cowley. He stopped, looking around the assembled policemen. Trying as always to be diplomatic among different forces, he said: ‘Anything else?’

‘You’re going to get your photograph taken again when we leave,’ cautioned Rafferty. ‘So you’d better wipe that shit from under your nose. Your look like Son of Hitler.’

Rafferty was thirty minutes behind Cowley returning to Pennsylvania Avenue, and arrived with more than confirmation of Michel Paulac being Petr Serov’s dinner companion four nights earlier.

‘Worked the visa pages open through the plastic,’ he reported. ‘Paulac’s been here every month since the beginning of the year. Never for longer than one week, according to date stamps.’

‘You’ve got the credit card number to work from,’ said Cowley. ‘He should have listed his hotel on the visa form.’

‘On my way,’ said Rafferty.

In his written report to the FBI Director, Cowley undertook fully to brief the protocol office at the State Department, before sending a detailed request for all possible information about Michel Paulac, of Rue Calvin, Geneva, to the Swiss police through Interpol.

Robertson was on the telephone precisely on the promised hour. The casing recovered from the car trunk was from a 9mm bullet of Russian manufacture for a Makarov pistol. Hammer markings were identical to those on the casing of the bullet that killed Serov.

Johannsen’s was the last report, which he came back to make in person, leaving the rest of the squad at the airport. There had been sixteen departing flights after 8.45 p.m. on the night in question, three of them the last shuttles to New York and Boston. Four had been international – none direct or intermediate to Moscow – the rest internal. All credit card slips had already gone to the respective companies for payment, and flight manifests had also been filed. The airlines and the card companies had warned it was going to take a long time.

‘And maybe get us nowhere,’ pointed out Johannsen. ‘Because Paulac’s ticket was out of Dulles, we’re assuming our killer drove out to National for his escape, right?’ He raised his hands against interruption, wanting to finish. ‘Why can’t the Ford being dumped at National be a wrong steer, to send us in more circles than we’re going around in already? Or if he flew in, he could have had a return ticket, or he might have bought his ticket with cash, so the credit card slips are going to tell us nothing. There’s a passport check against ticket names for international flights, but there were only four of those. Any ticket for a flight within America could be in whatever name the guy wanted to use.’

‘I don’t need reminding of the problems,’ said Cowley.

Danilov had caught a segment about the murder of Petr Serov on the previous evening’s television news and seen – with difficulty, because the set was old and faulty and beyond effective repair – a brief shot of William Cowley emerging from a plastic scene-of-crime tent and walking, unspeaking, through a swarm of questioning journalists. There was no reference on Russian TV to Cowley’s previous involvement in Moscow, or to Danilov, but there was, extensively, in the following day’s newspapers. On his way to Petrovka, Danilov stopped the car and bought the papers, reading the near-matching accounts and briefly indulging himself in memories. On an inside page there was a group photograph taken at the time, of Danilov and Lapinsk and Cowley and the Federal Prosecutor. One headline described the investigation as a triumph of co-operation between Russia and the United States; another used the word ‘brilliant’. Danilov carefully discarded the newspapers in a rubbish bin, not wanting to invite mockery by arriving at Militia headquarters carrying accounts of himself publicly described as the leading investigator in an Organised Crime Bureau from which he’d been deposed. But when he entered his office, every newspaper was on his desk, folded uppermost to demonstrate his previous importance. Games to play, Danilov decided.

Two fingered, he typed a memorandum to the Director asking what action he was expected to take upon the newspaper accounts of the killing of Petr Aleksandrovich Serov so obviously deposited in his office. Additionally he sent a note to the Foreign Ministry, asking to be informed what was happening in America, and made a copy for Anatoli Metkin with a covering slip assuming it was the sort of action Metkin would wish. He sent his communication to the Foreign Ministry at once, but to prevent it being interrupted he held back the message to Metkin.

By the time the creased-faced Director burst into his room, Danilov had typed invitations to the supervisors of the car pool and supply division, proposing meetings to decide their future working relationship, and written for display on the squad room noticeboard the news that he had been made responsible, on the specific orders of Anatoli Metkin, for all future work rosters, and also for the finance of the Bureau. Accordingly, he would in future need, in writing, each assignment of each investigator with itemised details of overtime being claimed; without such details, no payments would be authorised. He’d despatched copies of the roster arrangements to the Interior and Finance Ministries minutes before Metkin’s arrival.

‘What the hell are these!’ demanded Metkin, waving Danilov’s messages.

Danilov looked up, blank-faced: Metkin was very red. ‘A request for guidance,’ he said ingenuously.

‘I don’t know anything about any damned newspaper stories!’

‘I assumed it was upon your orders. What reason would there be for anyone in the squad room to come all the way up here to leave them?’

Metkin made tiny, ineffectual flapping gestures with his hands. ‘I don’t want anything going to the Foreign Ministry.’

‘I’m afraid it’s gone. About two hours ago.’

‘ What? ’

‘I don’t see the problem,’ said Danilov. ‘I might have misunderstood the newspapers, but shouldn’t we be interested in the murder of a Russian diplomat?’

‘Any request for information should have come…’ Metkin stopped before completing the sentence, so Danilov did it for him.

‘It will appear to have your authority, won’t it…?’ He let Metkin stand there, nonplussed. ‘Like these.’ Danilov offered the other man copies marked for his attention but not yet sent, of the notes about work rosters and overtime payments.

Metkin’s hands began to shake in fury. ‘This is preposterous!’

‘Why?’ asked Danilov. It was Metkin’s reaction that was preposterous: there couldn’t be any logical argument against the proposed overtime supervision.

‘I… It won’t… Investigators will be spending all their time writing explanatory notes when they should be out investigating crime!’

‘Fifteen minutes, at the end of every week. I can’t see either Ministry finding fault with that.’

For the first time Metkin appeared to see everything was endorsed for distribution to the Interior and Finance Ministries. ‘Don’t send these!’