Brian Freemantle - No Time for Heroes

‘You look beautiful,’ said Kabalin.

From the main room Antipov looked at the smashed-down door. ‘Who’s going to pay for that?’

‘It’s all being recorded,’ assured Kabalin. A photographer was already taking pictures of the interior of the apartment. Kabalin indicated his scene-of-crime officer, Aleksai Raina: the man was putting the Stechkin pistol into an exhibit bag. ‘Everything taken for examination is being recorded.’

‘Have you got the legal right to remove things?’

‘Probably not. You going to complain?’

‘Probably not.’

‘What about our time?’ demanded the elder prostitute, taking her lead from Antipov. ‘Who’s going to pay for that? Everyone got a good look!’

‘Think of it as advertising,’ suggested Kabalin.

‘On a Militia salary, none of you could afford to buy what’s on offer,’ said Antipov.

‘Put your arms out,’ ordered Kabalin.

‘What!’ For the first time Antipov showed anger.

‘Manacles,’ said Kabalin.

‘Fuck off!’

‘I don’t care if you want to be chained forcibly. Suit yourself.’

Antipov extended his arms, wincing slightly when Kabalin snapped the handcuffs shut. The photographer took several exposures of the formal arrest.

At Petrovka, Kabalin let the two prostitutes share a detention cell and put Antipov in the holding cage adjoining the interview room. The arrested man had recovered his insolent disdain: he carefully removed the chamois jacket before stretching out full length on the narrow bed, hands cupped behind his head.

Kabalin telephoned Metkin from the Director’s own office. ‘Perfect,’ he reported.

‘I’ll come,’ said Metkin.

Dimitri Danilov was told by the desk officer as he walked into Petrovka to report at once to the Director: the man already had the telephone in his hand, announcing the arrival.

‘It was all done while you were asleep,’ Metkin announced, as Danilov entered the suite.

He took his time recounting every detail of the arrest, even showing Danilov the already processed photographs of the chained and glowering Antipov. A full account had already been sent to both the Foreign and Interior Ministries, with the suggestion that a full press communique be issued both to assure the American authorities of the standard of Russian investigations, after the recent criticism, and to satisfy the media clamour after the disclosure of the link between the killing of Ignatov and the Washington murders. Danilov didn’t have to bother contacting Cowley about the arrest, either: Metkin had already informed the American embassy.

‘It seems to have all worked out very satisfactorily?’ offered Metkin.

‘Yes,’ agreed Danilov. It was like being back at the beginning, sure about nothing, understanding nothing. ‘When was it discovered where Antipov was?’

‘Some time last night. Why?’

‘I would have expected to be told, as the officer in overall command.’ It sounded like whining petulance. But he should have been told: taken part in the arrest.

‘Concerned about headlines, Dimitri Ivanovich?’

‘Concerned about the efficiency of the operation after the problems we’ve already had,’ said Danilov.

Metkin tapped the photographs in front of him. ‘Everything has been done correctly…’ He smiled. ‘Now all you and your American friend have to do is interrogate the man and extract the confession.’

Why, wondered Danilov, was the questioning being left to him? Was the need to include Cowley sufficient reason?

Antipov’s arrest was not the only early-hours seizure in connection with the three matched killings. The Brooklyn Task Force had begun the promised, informer-concealing round-up of hookers and drug dealers the afternoon that Carla Roberts appeared before a judge to be fined $50 and released. By the end of the second day they had a surname and a description for Peter the Pole, who wasn’t Polish but Ukrainian and whose full name was Petr Zubko. Records produced a rap sheet with two small-time drug-trafficking convictions and three for aggravated assault. And a mugshot.

Bradley set up a round-the-clock stakeout on the Adam and Eve bar on Columbus and got a virtually positive ID on the third night: to make sure, they followed Zubko home to the amusement arcade on Atlantic Boulevard, picking out the room above when the light went on. The Americans didn’t wait as long as the Russians, three hours later and 5,000 miles away. It was only one in the morning when the SWAT team smashed in the door: the plywood was so flimsy the lead man was carried by the force of his first sledgehammer strike halfway through the hole he made. They were able to laugh about it afterwards: Zubko had already injected and was on the nod, too far gone to react. If he hadn’t been shooting up he could easily have killed the spread-eagled officer with one of the two guns later found in the stinking, dishevelled squat. Neither of the guns was a Makarov.

It wasn’t until mid-morning, long after the interrogation of Antipov had begun, that Zubko was fit enough to be questioned. As with Carla Roberts, Wilkes and Bradley did the questioning, with Slowen the uninvolved observer.

‘You’re in shit, Peter. Deep shit,’ began Bradley.

‘What you want?’

The hooker had been right, Slowen thought: the man did speak as if he had rocks in his throat. He had the neglected thinness of an addict who rarely ate, nerves tugging near his left eye and in his cheek. The shake was beginning in his hands, and he was using both to scratch away the skin irritation there sometimes was coming down from a heroin plateau.

‘To make the world a better place,’ said Wilkes. ‘It’s our reason for living.’

‘Don’t know what you mean.’

‘We mean ridding the streets of vermin like you,’ said Wilkes.

‘We’re going to send you away to a very bad place and you’re going to stay there for the rest of your life…’ The lieutenant stopped, pretending the need to consult the man’s criminal sheet. ‘Says here you’re forty-three. With the shit we found stashed in that rat-hole where you live, we got ourselves a major trafficking indictment here. And you’re an already convicted trafficker. A recidivist…’

‘… And there’s the guns,’ said Wilkes.

‘The guns!’ exclaimed Bradley, tapping his forehead. ‘I forgot the guns. You know, we can’t find a licence record anywhere for that Smith and Wesson and that Beretta…’

‘… You got a permit for those, Peter…?’

‘… Sure as hell won’t look good if you haven’t,’ said Bradley. ‘The one thing judges hate more than a major drug trafficker is a major drug trafficker who goes around with a loaded piece, prepared to kill people… You kill people, Peter?’

‘… Twenty-five years, I’d guess,’ came in Wilkes. ‘And there’s no parole for drug convictions, so you’re going to serve every one of them…’

‘… Which will make your sixty-eighth birthday pretty special,’ cos that’s the first one from now you’re going to enjoy outside the slammer…’

‘What you talk about?’

‘Courts don’t like big time, Grade A operators,’ said Bradley. ‘And that’s what you are. How else could you describe a trafficker with maybe more than a kilo of sixty or seventy percent shit in his room when we come calling?’

‘What you talk about?’ repeated Zubko. ‘Don’t have no kilo!’

‘Found it myself, under your bed,’ insisted Bradley.

‘Saw him do it,’ confirmed Wilkes.

‘No true!’

‘Gonna swear on oath,’ said Bradley.

‘Me too.’

Slowen hadn’t heard anything about a kilo of heroin until that moment.

‘You plant it!’ declared Zubko.

Solemnly the two detectives looked at each other, then back at the Ukrainian. ‘That’s a grave accusation,’ said Bradley. ‘Courts don’t like lies being told about the police.’