Brian Freemantle - No Time for Heroes

It showed little sign of a hurried departure, apart from the bicycle in the garden. All the beds were made. A cot in a child’s bedroom was burdened with toys. The closets in the master bedroom were still full of men’s and women’s clothing. The refrigerator was well stocked, the milk not soured. The bureau in the den contained neatly itemised bills and some correspondence in what Slowen guessed to be Russian; he took it all, for translation in Washington, and made a random selection of the photographs on display, for comparison against the pictures assembled as part of the case records. From the Rimyans’ prints, they discovered the child to be a girl, aged about thirteen. Nowhere, in any address book or on any paperwork, did any of the names in which they were interested appear. The garage was empty, apart from a chest freezer as extensively stocked as that in the kitchen. From some of the paid bills in the den, vehicle service receipts, Slowen knew the car was a 1991 Ford, and its registration number, so he issued a search-and-find bulletin: conscious of his oversight in not extending their original Brighton Beach enquiry to surrounding districts, Slowen over-compensated, marking the circulation of the car alert nationwide. Sniffer dogs were taken in to go through the house from loft to basement, out into the garage and throughout the garden. No trace of drugs was found.

The house-to-house enquiries spread along both sides of Junction Boulevard and Elmhurst Manor, and into three adjoining streets. The Rimyans were a quiet, unostentatious couple. No-one quite knew what he did, but the consensus was it had something to do with the airports. The child, Marina, sang in the school choir. They did not invite neighbours into their home, nor accept invitations to visit.

‘What now?’ demanded Bradley.

‘We scale down the surveillance, but keep it in place,’ decided Slowen. ‘Likewise the telephone tap. And we go back to Brighton Beach and start all over again. We widen the public records search for our names, throughout the entire borough of Queens and Brooklyn. Make a Social Security check, too.’

‘We ain’t going to get diddly squat,’ guessed Wilkes. ‘And the Rimyans ain’t ever going to come back to their comfortable little nest here. I’ve never known the word go out more definitely than it has over this thing: nor be obeyed so completely.’

One unproductive interrogation followed another, to the impatience of Washington and the respective ministries in Moscow. On the fifth day, Danilov received the curt summons to postpone the following morning’s session with Antipov: a further enquiry into the inefficiency criticism had greater priority.

That was the day arranged for Cowley, in the evening, to go out with Danilov and Olga and Yevgennie and Larissa Kosov. Cowley had rigidly limited his drinking to three whiskies for several nights now.

It was also the day Rafferty and Johannsen sent the Geneva photographs to Cowley in Moscow, with a note that they hadn’t matched with anything in the FBI picture files. The package went off in the diplomatic bag to Moscow before the arrival of everything taken from Igor Rimyans’ house in the New York borough of Queens.

Which was unfortunate.

The dispute with Olga began with Danilov insisting upon taking Cowley to an authentic Russian restaurant instead of the Metropole hotel, although he agreed to a drink there first. It continued over his two initially suggested restaurants, so he didn’t bother to discuss the third. Her usual tint was still unavailable at the hairdressers; the substitute took badly again and she blamed him for the uneven colouring, which he thought was irrational and said so. She couldn’t find anything new to wear and turned her annoyance on Danilov, complaining he hadn’t given her sufficient money to buy what she wanted. Danilov gave her more. Olga bought the first suit she’d tried but rejected as too small, which it was, so she had to alter the buttons on the skirt which made it hang awkwardly. He tried to maintain peace by telling her it looked fine when she showed him, and she accused him of lying. He lost his temper in the quarrel that ensued and agreed Larissa would probably look better than her because Larissa usually did, which he bitterly regretted the moment he spoke. It did at least make him think before he spoke again, so when Olga said she was unhappy and thought they had a shitty marriage Danilov didn’t reply. They drove in hostile silence to Cowley’s hotel.

The American was waiting in the bar, as arranged. The whisky in front of him was the first, and he’d decided not to have more than two after that. Danilov chose Scotch as well, and hoped his surprise didn’t show when Olga ordered a martini, which as far as he knew she’d never drunk before. Cowley wondered why Danilov looked uneasy.

Kosov’s new BMW was parked very obviously outside the Metropole when they got there. Olga led familiarly into the hotel, going at once towards the chandeliered bar, where Kosov and Larissa sat in one of the better lighted booths. After the newspaper and television publicity Danilov was aware of several identifying looks, and guessed Kosov had intentionally chosen the most prominent banquette. He decided he was right from the exuberance with which Kosov greeted the American, as if they were old friends. They’d only met briefly during Cowley’s first investigation in Moscow: the Russian had been wrongly arrested in Kosov’s division. Kosov had enjoyed the brief notoriety: and because of the cover-up he had never known about the mistake. There was a bottle of French champagne already open in a pedestal cooler beside the table, and before the greetings were completed Kosov made a performance of pouring, ahead of the hurriedly approaching waiter.

Cowley thought he recognised Kosov as the sort of policeman he’d occasionally encountered, usually in small, Southern-State towns they believed they owned and probably did, although perhaps they were not quite so obvious as the Russian. Their earlier meetings had been entirely on an official level, and Kosov hadn’t behaved like he was behaving now. Cowley would not have expected a friendship between such a man and Danilov, which he at once acknowledged to be none of his business.

It was fortunate the two women were seated on opposite sides of the table. The jacket of Olga’s suit was strained too tightly into creases from bust to hip and the overhead light wasn’t kind to her patchy hair; she shouldn’t have worn the amber bead necklace so close to the blue stone lapel brooch, either. Larissa looked stunning. Her blonde hair was perfectly looped just short of her shoulders, shown off against the bright red dress with which she wore only a single-strand necklace of irregular black coral.

Kosov worked hard to dominate the conversation, going into elaborate reminiscences of their earlier encounter, insisting Cowley agree the serial killing investigation had been one of the most difficult he’d ever conducted. Cowley did agree because it had been, although Kosov would never know why.

‘I never thought you’d come back like this!’

‘Neither did I,’ said Cowley.

‘And now you’ve got your man again!’

‘Looks like it.’

‘You must have a massive confession by now!’

‘This is supposed to be a social evening, Yevgennie,’ said Danilov. It was a gentle rebuke, which he felt he should make, but he was intent upon the interest Kosov was showing in the murders.

‘The sort of work we do is interesting to everyone, isn’t that so?’ demanded Kosov, speaking to both women.

Olga nodded.

‘I’m fascinated,’ agreed Larissa.

Determinedly vague, Cowley said: ‘Investigations take their course. This one’s doing that.’ There’d been another protest from Washington that evening at the failure of the interrogation.