In the Name of a Killer (41 page)

Kosov’s smile returned, at the obvious concern. ‘I told you at the beginning, they don’t want to get deeply involved.
Can’t
get deeply involved. Isn’t this sturgeon magnificent?’

‘Very good,’ agreed Danilov. He couldn’t directly forbid Kosov’s arrangement in any case.

‘When are we going to make an evening together again?’ demanded the other man.

‘Soon,’ said Danilov, unenthusiastically. ‘I’ll get Olga to arrange it.’ Larissa was on the afternoon shift again. He could go straight from lunch to the Druzhba Hotel. But he wasn’t going to, although he guessed Larissa would have been amused by his going to her after lunch with her husband. Certainly she’d be expecting him to contact her.

‘Television fixed yet?’

‘Not yet.’ Danilov’s more pressing concern was the washing machine. If they had a replacement for their own they wouldn’t be reliant any more upon the communal basement facility, which was rarely a facility at all.

‘Don’t forget what I said about introductions to people,’ urged Kosov. ‘You introduced me once: why can’t I do the same for you?’

‘I won’t forget,’ said Danilov. What place did professional integrity have, if he could even think, as he had done only minutes earlier, of going to Kosov’s wife directly after eating with the man? Very little. Wasn’t he posturing and performing, just as much as Kosov? Maybe even worse. At least Kosov was honestly corrupt, if that wasn’t too much of a paradox. The man wasn’t a cheating hypocrite, which was how Danilov was coming to regard himself.

There was small-talk about the Kosovs’ planned foreign holiday, interspersed by the man’s repeated efforts, which Danilov avoided, to learn why the public warning about the maniac killer had been delayed. At the end of the meal Kosov paid from a thick bundle of American dollars, which, if the currency legislation were strictly interpreted, it was illegal for him to possess. They parted with Kosov promising news very soon of the mystery wanderer and Danilov telling the man to be careful, although he was not quite sure what he intended the warning to mean.

Danilov did not drive directly back to Militia headquarters. Instead he took a widely sweeping route that took him part of the way along Vernadskaya and past the Druzhba Hotel where he knew Larissa would be working and probably waiting for him. But still with no intention of stopping. He looped on to Leninskii Prospekt, quite close to the offices where the taxi driver’s widow worked, to go by the premises from which Eduard Agayans controlled the majority of his activities. Danilov slowed, gazing at the once familiar block, and on impulse went into the slip road to stop completely. The block was smeared with street dirt and looked locked and unused. But that was always how it had appeared when he was cooperating with the black marketeer. Behind that boarded, shuttered front Danilov knew there would be foreign-made television sets that didn’t flicker and fade. And laundry machines that spun clothes almost dry, after washing. There would be no question of Agayans forgetting him, any more than he’d forgotten the florid-faced Armenian and the brandy ritual before any meeting. Wasn’t it time to stop being the hypocrite? To become like any other Russian, even Russian policemen? Urgently, annoyed at having made the tempting detour, Danilov re-started the engine, hurrying out into the traffic to get back to his office. Not yet: he wasn’t ready to give in yet.

At Petrovka he told Pavin of the sighting in Kosov’s district, without disclosing the unofficial detention help that had been proposed. He didn’t tell his assistant about the possibility of losing the investigation to the Cheka, either. Pavin said he was still checking out the query from the press conference. When Pavin said there was nothing worthwhile from any of the psychiatric institution enquiries, Danilov said: ‘Let me see all the discounted reported. I want to go through them personally.’

Pavin nodded. It would probably be a good idea. None of those he’d read himself showed the sort of inquiry that should have been made, the resentment at being assigned the job virtually obvious from every page.

‘I’ve been meaning to ask,’ said Danilov. ‘How did you manage to replace those stolen windscreen wipers as quickly as you did?’

‘Took them off another police car,’ said Pavin. ‘How else?’

‘The only way,’ Danilov agreed. Another Moscow realist, like so many others, he recognized; so many others except himself.

‘What’s going to happen to us?’

Paul Hughes looked impatiently at his wife. ‘The question doesn’t make sense. What
can
happen to us?’

‘Why are you being recalled?’

‘I told you. For consultations. That’s not surprising, is it? Ann Harris was a member of my staff.’

‘I don’t see why you’ve got to go all the way back to America. Why couldn’t it be done by letter? Or report?’

‘I don’t know either,’ said the man, looking up from his packing. ‘You know the sort of waves someone like Burden can create: it’s got to be something to do with that nonsense at his press conferences.’

‘Were you sleeping with Ann Harris? Doing things to her I won’t let you do to me any more?’

‘Stop it, Angela!’

‘Were you? I want to know!’

‘I’ll get to see the children, before I come back. You want me to tell them anything, from you?’

‘Nothing I haven’t written, every week since we’ve been here. So you were fucking her? Hurting her? Did she like it? Was she braver than me?’

‘I can’t see my being away for much more than three or four days. A week at the most. Anything you want me to bring back?’

‘How do you know it will be a week? How do you know you will be coming back at all?’

‘Don’t be stupid! If I were being permanently recalled you would have been included as well. This is what the message said. Just consultations.’

‘Did you kill her?’

Hughes turned from the bed on which his half-packed suitcase lay, fully to confront his wife. ‘You know damned well I didn’t! What the hell’s wrong with you?’

‘I’m frightened! That’s what the hell’s wrong with me! And I think I’ve got good reason.’

‘I’m not the phantom maniac! If you don’t believe me about Ann Harris, what about the Russian woman? You know for a fact I couldn’t have carried out that attack. So I can’t be involved with any of it.’

She stood regarding him steadily for a long time. Then she said: ‘Perhaps it would be a good idea for me to go back to the States, whatever happens.’

‘What’s that supposed to mean?’

‘You know as well as I do. Maybe better.’

‘This is an accompanied post, for married men.’

‘I think I’m through doing things for your career.’

‘Wait until I get back here. So we can talk about it properly.’

‘We stopped doing things properly years ago.’

‘Please, Angela!’

‘The little-boy-lost plea! That didn’t used to come for a long time yet.’

‘Wait until I get back.’

‘See a lawyer in Washington, as well as seeing the kids. That’s what I’m going to do. I don’t think I’ll have any problem claiming cruelty, do you?’

There were twelve buttons: would have been more if she hadn’t come alive the way she had. Six more at least. And some hair. Wanted more buttons. More hair. Why? Just because, that’s why. Important there should be at least one more to take buttons and hair from to show up what idiots they all were. No mistakes this time, though. No more bad choices. Or ones that came alive. Two mistakes already, one after the other. Too many. Next time would be perfect. Mustn’t get to like it too much. It was difficult, not to like it. Felt powerful. Hugely powerful. Had the power of life and death. But it would mean he was mad, if he liked it too much. That’s what they’d say. What they
were
saying. Maniac. In all the papers. Wasn’t mad. Not mad at all. The opposite. Clever: cleverer than all the others. So only one more. Maybe two. Definitely no more than two. Didn’t really want to stop. So
much
power. Wasn’t mad. Wish there was a way they could know. That would be best of all, if there was a way they could know. Show them the power. Wasn’t possible, of course. Pity. Just two more. Or maybe three. Definitely no more than three.

Chapter Twenty-Six

There was a tailback from a three-car accident on the 95, which delayed Cowley getting to Quantico. He detested being late for appointments, so there was an illogical annoyance, without a sensible focus. When he finally arrived, to the snap-crack-pop of agents practising on the training academy’s target range, the psychologist said it didn’t matter: he’d shunted into a car himself the previous week, so he knew what it was like. And the hold-up had given him a final opportunity to read through his assessment.

Despite the reassurance he’d received in Moscow, Cowley said: ‘I was worried there wouldn’t be enough to create the profile.’

‘That’s what we’re paid for.’ Peter Meadows was a small, intense man whose glasses seemed inadequate despite their thick lenses, because he constantly squinted and leaned forward to peer through them. He was in chino jeans and loafers: the roll-neck sweater was wearing thin at the left elbow and there was a definite hole in one sock. In contrast to the man’s outward neglect, the office in the Behavioural Science Unit was immaculate, the impression of near-clinical cleanliness heightened by the harsh, hospital-glare brightness of the artificial neon throughout a basement area with no natural light. Nowhere in the office were there any obvious personal or sentimental possessions, like family photographs or qualification certificates. Meadows smiled, brightly, and added: ‘But there are difficulties you must keep in mind.’

‘Such as?’

‘Russia,’ said the psychologist, simply. ‘Our assessments and profiles are predicated from an American society: certain basic characteristics that we calculate to be common, throughout. If your killer is Russian, some of those assessments might be a little off course.’

‘Some?’ pressed Cowley. ‘But not all?’

‘Not all,’ agreed the man. ‘General things first. I’m tagging him asocial. The most important thing about that classification fits in with where the murders and the failed attack took place, all in fairly close proximity. When you get him, he’ll live in the area: asocials attack close to their homes or workplaces because they feel most secure there. Usually asocials don’t know their victims: I’m not going to be dogmatic about this, but the victims are probably chosen at random, complete strangers to him. Asocials don’t bother to conceal their victims, after the crime, which again fits what you’ve given me.’

‘What about specifics: the shoes, hair and the buttons?’

‘One at a time,’ insisted Meadows. ‘The positioning of the shoes indicates obsessive neatness: the shoes are the most likely items to fall off, in an attack. So they must be restored. Putting them by the head could be taken as a plea for forgiveness, too: there’s no hate or dislike in the killing. But your asocial will knowhe’s doing wrong and that he’s causing pain. He’s saying sorry. But let’s not slip past the neatness. He’ll wear cross-over jackets: they’re smarter than single-breasted suits. He’ll wear suits on a Sunday: on a vacation. Always have a sharp crease in his pants. Always have clean shoes. The neatness could extend to personal cleanliness, although that doesn’t always follow. If it does, he’ll wash his hands a lot. Have clean fingernails.’

‘What about the hair?’

Meadows turned down the corners of his mouth, in a doubtful expression. ‘A lot of scope here. Could be he’s ugly: wants to make the people he kills ugly, too. Maybe he’s simply bald – could be medical baldness, from chemotherapy or nervous depilation – and just wants to make them look like he does. Certainly there’d be a connection to the obsessional neatness: so he won’t be
completely
bald. There’ll be hair that doesn’t fit his own idea of how he should look. Then again it could just be a souvenir. I’ve read that the hair is scattered about but he probably keeps some. Souvenirs are very important to them.’

‘So he’d have it, if we make an arrest.’

The bright smile came again. ‘That would make it all very easy, wouldn’t it?’

‘Which leaves the buttons.’

‘Nipple fetish,’ said the behaviour expert immediately. ‘Well documented, readily obvious. Ann Harris had bruised, bitten nipples: the Russian woman talked of her breasts being fondled.’

‘We think we know who bit Ann Harris. He was a lover who liked inflicting pain. He has an alibi.’

‘Russian?’

‘American.’

‘Does he fit the profile?’

Cowley tried to put the pieces together. ‘Similarities. They wouldn’t lead me directly to him. Are you saying it’s a sexual motive?’

Meadows came forward for better focus, forcefully shaking his head. ‘Not in the way that you and I would think of sexual gratification. There’s rarely penis penetration from an asocial attacker. The satisfaction is psychosexual. Where there’s a connection again. Asocials use sharp, pointed instruments: a penis substitute. Like the knife in this case. Never a firearm.’

‘Would there be a mental history? We’re obviously running institution checks.’

Meadows made another doubtful expression. ‘It’s always worth going through the system: your man could have shown disturbances involving one or all of the manifestations he’s now demonstrating. But don’t necessarily look for it progressing previously to murder. Killing is the
final
explosion: the ultimate towards which he’s been building. If you want to target, go for someone with a mental history that shows a nipple fixation: maybe actual mutilation that brought about his arrest and led to his being institutionalized. There’d be a progression there. When he mutilated the nipples before, he got arrested and locked up. Maybe because he was known to the women he attacked. Providing he evades capture, he’s not going to get locked up by killing them, is he? In fact he’s
protecting
himself by killing them. Cutting off their buttons is cutting off their nipples, a substitute like the knife is a penis replacement.’