The complete list of psychiatric patients whose case history showed possible similarities with the fixations manifested by the killer of Vladimir Suzlev and Ann Harris comprised twenty-six names when it was submitted to Major Yuri Pavin. With the need to have two officers present at every interview, and the even greater need to get those interviews completed as soon as possible, Pavin requested three extra men, anticipating the objections. Which came at once. There were officially written complaints that such a concentration of manpower would halt two other ongoing investigations, one a fraud case, the other an inquiry into currency speculation. General Lapinsk ruled that both should be suspended. The decision worsened the criticism throughout Petrovka towards Dimitri Danilov and to a lesser extent towards Pavin. The Major considered addressing everyone involved in the questioning in the early morning charge-room assembly, but upon reflection decided against it, believing it would appear as if he were defending himself when he did not consider he had anything to defend himself against. He stressed the importance of the psychiatric questioning when he assigned individual names to the paired groups. The response from every one was sullen indifference. Perhaps, decided the Major, Danilov himself should make the assembly-room address. He was the Colonel in charge, after all: it was his responsibility.
Then he read the overnight report of a two-man team engaged on another aspect of the inquiry, and in his initial excitement Pavin lost all concern about the psychiatric report problems.
Before telling Danilov he would have time to carry out the other inquiry the man had ordered, after seeing Vladimir Suzlev’s widow again. It was all coming together!
Chapter Twenty
With a lot to crowd in before the press conference, Danilov got up early, slipping out of bed with practised ease to avoid waking Olga. There was a clean shirt in the drawer, although it wasn’t very well pressed, but they hardly ever were. It took a long time going through kitchen cupboards and shelves to find black polish, to cover the neglected tear in his shoe. When he found it, the polish was hard and atrophied, oddly topped with a white powder. It didn’t achieve much of a shine but the tear was less visible. While he waited for water to boil for tea, he wetted his hair and at once regretted doing so: it was so short it stuck up, like wheat in a wind. It would dry before the conference and the inevitable photographs. Olga hadn’t stirred by the time he left the apartment, the carefully removed windscreen wipers wrapped in paper.
He was ahead of the morning rush hour, reaching Petrovka sooner than he expected, which made him even earlier than he’d planned: the Militia building was in transition between night and day shift. His floor was deserted. In his now brightly lit office Danilov wrote out the morning schedule, beginning with Pavin and running through the other preparations as he waited for the American to arrive to be taken to meet Lapinsk and the Federal Prosecutor, in advance of the actual conference. Finally he sat considering the conference itself. He’d never attended such an event before and didn’t know what was expected. The reason for the advanced encounter with the Director and the Prosecutor, he supposed. All he’d have to do was take their lead. Particularly about both murders. Were they going to disclose the connection today? Danilov smiled, suddenly, at his own question. The reservation about the possibility of an embassy involvement still existed. Would an apparent insistence upon making a linking announcement today force the American into some sort of disclosure? It might be worth trying. In which case he’d have to brief Lapinsk and Nikolai Smolin in advance, to ensure their proper response.
Definitely
worth a try, he decided. Danilov was reaching forward, to make an unnecessary reminder note on his pad, when Pavin entered the office: he never completed the note. Pavin, who never moved quickly, positively flustered in, his normally dour face broken by an expansive grin. The expression was so unusual that Danilov saw for the first time that the man had a gold-edged filling on an eye-tooth.
‘I’ve got the restaurant
and
the man,’ announced the Major. Across the desk he offered the security agency’s reception photograph of Ann Harris with her hand on the arm of Paul Hughes.
Danilov smiled up at his assistant, in what appeared to be matching triumph but which included a lot of relief. ‘No doubt?’
‘Absolutely none. The restaurant is called the Trenmos: it’s a combination of two names, Trenton, in New Jersey, and Moscow. Very American and very popular with the embassy. They ate there a lot: were well known. And the reservation, for that night, was actually in Hughes’s name. And there’s even more. I took the photograph this morning to Suzlev’s taxi firm, when I made the check you ordered. Three other drivers remember Hughes as one of Suzlev’s regular customers. He used to practise his Russian, just like the wife said.’
Danilov went back to the photograph before him. ‘We’ve got him! … Shit! It was there and I missed it! Look!’
‘What?’ said Pavin, astonished by the outburst.
‘I even
thought
something was odd at the mortuary but I didn’t
see
it was,’ said Danilov. ‘And that was it –
see
! How could I have missed it?’
‘What?’ repeated Pavin, bewilderment replacing astonishment.
Instead of replying Danilov offered back the photograph. ‘Look at him!’ he insisted. ‘Look at the hand!’
‘The finger’s twisted!’ isolated Pavin, instantly.
‘The index finger of the right hand,’ agreed Danilov, more calmly. ‘It will obviously need to be confirmed forensically, for courtroom evidence. But it’s twisted so that it couldn’t give a proper impression. Just as none of the lateral pocket loop prints in Ann Harris’s apartment have a proper impression of the right hand that held the vodka glass. Or made prints in the bathroom. Hughes’s prints and those we found will match! I know they will!’ Danilov no longer felt inferior. That was, he conceded to himself,
just
how he had felt from the moment of Cowley’s arrival: inferior in scientific facilities and personal ability and in personal training and even – the most uneasy admission of all – in how he looked and dressed, compared to the American. But not any longer: not completely. In appearance maybe, but not on any other level. He’d drawn even, professionally proving himself equal. Now he wouldn’t have to stage any phonily rehearsed disclosures at pre-conference encounters. Because now he
knew
. So how
would
he handle it? He wasn’t sure, not at that moment.
‘That’s what the American would have been doing in the evidence room,’ Pavin guessed. ‘Checking the fingerprint sheets.’
‘Most probably,’ Danilov accepted. What he’d just learned might carry the investigation on. But, like so much else in the case, it created as many questions as it provided answers. There was far more political implication than before. And what was the Russian jurisdiction? Could he, a Russian investigator, enter the US embassy to question an American diplomat? He was sure he couldn’t. Whatever the result of any questioning, could Hughes invoke diplomatic immunity? Probably. Did what they had discovered really incriminate the man in murder? Not necessarily. Or merely extend a suspicion heightened by the telephone transcripts that the Cheka had reluctantly made available and which showed Hughes to be a liar? Maybe nothing more than that.
‘Now we’ve got to take it forward,’ said Pavin, prescient as always. ‘It’s the complication everyone was frightened of. It won’t be easy.’
‘It’s never been easy.’
‘You going to tell the American?’
‘I haven’t decided, not yet.’
‘It doesn’t look as if he was confiding in us.’
‘One of us is going to have to tell the other sometime,’ pointed out Danilov. ‘Otherwise it becomes ridiculous.’ So much
was
ridiculous.
‘Do we have enough to make an arrest?’
Danilov examined the question. ‘Maybe if Hughes were Russian. Certainly enough to bring a Russian in for questioning: people are always nervous, being interrogated in a police station. Stalin’s best legacy to the Russian legal system.’
‘Stalin’s unintentional legacy,’ disputed Pavin, with rare cynicism. ‘And Paul Hughes isn’t Russian.’
‘Then no.’
‘What about the press conference?’
‘An intrusion now,’ said Danilov.
‘You’re not going to say anything there?’
‘Not publicly,’ said Danilov, although an idea began to germinate. ‘Far too early for that. But Lapinsk must know. The Prosecutor, too.’
‘What about postponing the conference?’
Once more Danilov examined the Major’s question, acknowledging the point and wondering whether he had been right in thinking, as he was sure he once had, that Pavin would forever remain at his current rank. Danilov said: ‘It would be convenient. But wrong. It would convey the impression of a sudden development: build up expectation.’
‘I would have thought …’ Pavin started, but stopped at the intrusion of the internal telephone.
Danilov nodded to the announcement and said to his assistant: ‘The American, on time as ever. He’s learned the Marlboro trick.’ When the escorted Cowley was shown into the room, Danilov was instantly aware of the immaculately pressed suit and the hard-starched collar of the shirt, pin-secured, that he so much envied.
At once Cowley said: ‘I think this press conference is going to be difficult. Your people have agreed to Senator Burden taking part. God knows why. Or what the point is. It’ll be a circus.’
The Western ease in criticizing politicians, so new in his own country, still surprised Danilov. He was quite uninterested in any press conference now. Feeling his superiority, he said: ‘You haven’t discussed it, with the Senator?’
Cowley regarded the Russian sourly, ‘I have been instructed not to divulge anything of the investigation, to any outside party.’
Danilov’s germinating idea flowered, but he decided to give the other man one opportunity. ‘How about me?’ he said.
‘You?’
‘In an hour I am going to introduce you to my Militia General – someone I suppose you would call the Moscow police chief. And to the Federal Prosecutor: Attorney General, if you want a comparison. I’ve no idea how they will want the press conference to be conducted, but I think they’ll expect you and I to be in agreement with each other: know precisely where we are in the investigation.’
‘I’m sure they will,’ said Cowley, smoothly. He didn’t like the evasion. Although he did not altogether trust Danilov – he put trust on a different level than this present consideration – he genuinely liked the rumpled Russian with his tight haircut and his permissible pride in his ability to speak English, which he supposed matched his own in the ease he had found with Russian. He didn’t feel he had any choice in the deceit. The forensic results that had arrived overnight in the diplomatic bag had provided far better evidence than he’d expected – even though the unnecessary elimination stuff had to be gone through – and he anxiously needed further guidance. Which he’d already asked for, before leaving the embassy that morning. And until he got Washington’s reply – although he was sure he could predict what it would be – it was impossible for him to confide anything.
‘So you believe we do?’ pressed Danilov. ‘That we both know where we are?’
Danilov
did
have something! It was poker with strangers whose game he didn’t know, all cards face-down, unsure of the value of his own. ‘I’d certainly like to think so …’ A pause. ‘Wouldn’t you?’
The familiar, evasive response, Danilov recognized. It had been Cowley’s choice, not his: the man had been given his chance, chosen the course he wanted to follow. ‘Yes,’ he said, heavily. ‘I would have liked to think that. You’ve shared everything with me?’
Cowley nodded, wanting to use the directness. ‘And you’ve shared everything with me?’
Danilov nodded agreement back. Confrontations to come, he thought: some sooner rather than later. ‘Shall we go?’
It was only when Pavin turned from Stolesnikov Street towards the conspicuous Marxist-Leninist Institute on Pushkinskaya that Danilov appreciated the ironic coincidence of Ann Harris’s apartment being in the same thoroughfare. Danilov expected Pavin to park in the Institute’s facilities, but at the adjacent Prosecutor’s premises the Major sounded sharply on the horn. The signal was instantly answered by the high iron gates swinging open to admit them. Pavin put their car next to General Lapinsk’s official, freshly washed Volga.
Their smooth and quite unexpected reception continued inside. A uniformed attendant ushered them to the second floor and into a reception room where Lapinsk and Nikolai Smolin were already waiting. Danilov knew he and the American were fifteen minutes ahead of their appointed time. He went through the introductions, assuring the other two Soviet officials there was no problem in any discussion being conducted in Russian. For several moments after the formal greetings, the four men stood in an uncertain group, no one certain how to proceed. At last, with ill-concealed reluctance, Smolin took nominal charge, which had to be his role for the conference.
‘There have been over a hundred journalist applications to attend today,’ the Prosecutor said. ‘And the television teams all have support staffs. We’ve arranged simultaneous translation. The television companies have also asked for individual interviews, after the open session …’ The Prosecutor hesitated, indicating Lapinsk. ‘I have all the police reports, up until yesterday. Is there anything else I should know?’