In the Name of a Killer (5 page)

‘I want those,’ insisted the American who had done most of the talking. ‘They’re evidence I shall need.’

Baxter said, through the interpreter: ‘We would like to keep the photographs.’

Danilov completed the collection, tapping them tidily into their folder. ‘They are official police exhibits, the property of the Moscow Militia.’

‘Son of a bitch!’ exploded the predictable American.

Danilov rose, before anyone else. Pavin followed, very quickly. Danilov said: ‘Thank you again, for this meeting,’ and stood waiting for Baxter to escort them from the building.

The journey back to the exit was made in complete silence. At the door Baxter did not appear to know what to do. Finally he said: ‘I have the mortuary address.’

‘I’ll be expecting you,’ said Danilov.

Pavin waited until he had negotiated the embassy forecourt and they were back on Ulitza Chaykovskaya before he spoke. He said: ‘I didn’t need a translation to know it was bad.’

‘She’s related to an American Congressman.’

‘Mother of Christ!’

Danilov wondered if the Major genuinely had any religious beliefs: they’d never discussed it. Neither had they ever discussed special arrangements possible in this new Militia district from which Danilov might have benefited, as he’d benefited before. He was sure Pavin would have a source: probably several. Everybody had their special sources. ‘They don’t think we’re competent enough. They expect to take over. They refused to tell me where she lived.’

‘Do we go back to Petrovka?’

‘No. Drive slowly towards the scene. She wasn’t dressed to go out walking, in that temperature. She probably lived close.’

‘The embassy compound, surely?’ Pavin frowned.

‘Some embassy staff live outside,’ said Danilov. ‘It’s worth checking.’ His first call from the car telephone was to the Foreign Ministry. He quoted his official ID, explained in great detail to the Records division what he wanted and promised to call back. The clerk, a man, said the checks might be difficult. Danilov said he’d try anyway. Danilov’s second call took longer, because he had to be transferred through several departments to put the forensic team on standby. They were back in the side road off Gercena before he tried to reach Lapinsk. As he dialled he looked out to where Ann Harris had lain, spread-eagled, only a few hours before. The small amount of bloodstaining had congealed like black oil, not red, and the chalked outline was practically trodden away beneath the morning dampness of slightly thawed frost and fog. Unnoticing, unconcerned people were scuffing over the blood and chalk with the toe-to-heel care of Russians expert in walking over slippery, frozen surfaces.

‘Why haven’t you come back here?’ demanded the Director.

‘I need to seal the flat.’

‘There’s been an official complaint, through the Foreign Ministry! What the hell happened?’ There were several barking coughs.

After a detailed explanation Danilov said: ‘They expect to take control. I don’t know the man’s name but I think he’s FBI.’

‘It’s preposterous – arrogant – for them to imagine that!’

‘I hoped that’s how you’d feel.’

There was a momentary silence, from the other man. Then Lapinsk said: ‘I’ve been called to the Foreign Ministry. The Agency for Federal Security have been summoned too.’

‘Do you want me to be there?’ suggested Danilov. It hadn’t taken long for the pressure to begin.

‘Novikov is doing the autopsy this morning: I told him to expect you. Stay on the investigation. Did you tell the Americans about the other business?’

‘No. Or everything that happened to the girl.’

‘I accept you were badly treated. I’ll see that a protest is made, to counter theirs.’

The Records clerk at the Foreign Ministry said they
had
been lucky: it was the benefit of the new Western-style computerization. The official registration details of Ann Harris, an American national, for whom a diplomatic visa had been issued in May the year before last, listed her address as Ulitza Pushkinskaya 397. The man, who was obviously a gossip, asked what she’d done wrong. Danilov told him it was nothing, a technical matter.

‘Outside the compound!’ Danilov announced triumphantly, to Pavin, keeping the telephone in his hand to summon the waiting forensic scientists.

‘The Americans are going to be furious.’

‘I’m not exceeding any authority,’ Danilov insisted. ‘The address is not within the official diplomatic residencies.’

‘It’s probably still considered diplomatic territory, beyond our jurisdiction.’

‘We’ll worry about that later,’ decided Danilov. He paused. Then he demanded, suddenly: ‘Who’s Dick Tracy?’

Pavin frowned quickly across the car. ‘I don’t know. Why?’

‘I’m curious.’

Over the next three hours the repercussions of Ann Harris’s murder rippled quickly throughout widely differing parts of the world.

The American Secretary of State was halted by an aide just before taking off for Hyannisport for a sea fishing trip. He decided to cancel.

On Capitol Hill, in Washington, DC, a polite State Department officer hesitantly entered the Dirksen Building suite of Senator Walter Burden and said: ‘I am afraid, sir, there’s some unpleasant news. The Secretary of State asks you to call. He wishes to tell you personally.’

At the FBI headquarters on Pennsylvania Avenue, at the bottom of Capitol Hill, a priority cable arrived from Moscow and because of Ann Harris’s family connections was hurried immediately to the Director. Although the Director was a judge himself, he convened a conference of the Bureau’s legal department.

Simultaneously, a matching priority cable was received at the CIA headquarters at Langley, Virginia. The Director called his own legal conference before telephoning his counterpart on Pennsylvania Avenue. Both Directors agreed to get separate legal opinion and talk later.

In Moscow Lieutenant-Colonel Kir Gugin hurried officiously into the Foreign Ministry, irritated there had been no reason for the summons, but curious to see if there could be any benefit for the newly created Agency for Federal Security.

And senior Militia Colonel Dimitri Danilov, with assistant Major Yuri Pavin, arrived at a third-floor flat on Ulitza Pushkinskaya ahead of any American presence.

Petr Yakovlevich Yezhov had carried out two known assaults on women. During the second he had completely bitten off the left nipple of a prostitute who in unintended retribution had given him gonorrhoea minutes before the bite.

For both attacks, mental evidence having been called at each trial, Yezhov served periods of detention in Moscow psychiatric institutions. As a result he had developed an obsessional hatred of incarceration and was determined never to be locked up again.

Yezhov’s was one of fifty names to emerge during the case history search of the city’s psychiatric clinics and hospitals.

Chapter Four

Danilov disliked entering the homes of murder victims. He’d had to do it too many times and always had a sense of awkwardness, feeling he was intruding into the privacy of someone whose privacy had already been too much violated. In the minute entrance hall he said: ‘This isn’t a normal situation. I want everything – and I mean
everything –
completed
now
. There won’t be another chance. There must be no damage …’ Nodding towards Pavin, who carried the specimen case, Danilov said: ‘The Major will compile a complete and detailed inventory of anything removed. List it
at
the moment of collection. I want nothing overlooked, to be complained about later. Understood?’

There were grunts and nods from the assembled men: as if investing him with the responsibility for what might go wrong, they remained slightly behind as Danilov went further into the apartment.

The curtains were drawn, but all the lights still burned, showing an apartment luxurious by Russian standards, comfortable by Western. The wallpaper was heavily patterned, unlike any Danilov had seen in Russia, and the furniture was obviously also imported. There was an extensive stereo system along one wall, with records stacked on a shelf above. All the books in a cabinet against a far wall were English-language. Cushions on a couch and an easy chair fronting a small table were crumpled from the pressure of being sat upon. There were two glasses – one still containing some clear liquid – on the table. Delicately he sniffed and then carefully dipped his finger into the liquid. It was vodka.

Ann Harris’s handbag was on a small occasional table that supported a sidelamp, which was on. The bag was the sort that secured by a snap clasp. The clasp was undone.

With a wooden medical spatula Danilov opened the handbag fully, so that it gaped, and used long-armed tweezers to lift out the contents, one by one. As he did so, he listed the items for Pavin to record. There was a compact, with a fixture at the side, empty, for a lipstick canister. The billfold was Vuitton: it held American Express and Visa cards, American and Russian driving licences, a plasticized embassy ID card, seventy-five roubles and eighty US dollars. There was one photograph, a studio portrait without any background, of a smiling couple, both grey-haired. Danilov estimated their age at about sixty. The address book was very small, clearly designed for a handbag or a pocket. Danilov flicked through, quickly, seeing both American and Moscow numbers. He offered it sideways to Pavin, who held out a waiting plastic envelope. The diary was a slender one, pocket-sized again, with a line-a-day entry. Danilov looked more intently than he had at the address book, realizing at once it was very much an appointments record, with no personal entries. The line for the previous day was blank. That, too, went into a plastic exhibit envelope. Danilov gestured to the fingerprint man for the handbag to be tested.

The kitchen was clean, with no indication of a cleared-away evening meal the previous night. The dishwasher – a dinosaur rarity in a Russian home – was empty. Everything in the store cupboards carried American labels, bought from the embassy commissary. The tins were regimented on the shelves, sectioned by their contents, so that selection would only take moments. Even the perishable goods in the refrigerator, like milk and butter and bread, carried American brand names.

There was an extensive range of alcohol in a cupboard beneath sink level, bourbon and scotch whisky, brandy and gin. The vodka bottle was at the front, half empty. All the labels – even the vodka – showed them to be imported. There were fifteen bottles of wine, a selection of white and red, laid in a rack where the kitchen cabinets ended. All came from California.

The bedroom was at the end of a corridor. The door was half open: Danilov used the spatula to push it further, so they could enter. The bed was in chaos, most of the covers on the floor, the sheets crumpled into kicked-aside rolls.

Pavin indicated the pillows and said, needlessly: ‘Both indented.’

Danilov called back into the lounge for the evidence experts. When they reached him he said: ‘I want this room checked everywhere for prints …’ He nodded to the bed. ‘Search it, now, for fibres or hair. Then take it all to the laboratory. I want any stains checked, for blood, semen, anything.’

Perfume, skin-care creams and cleansers were ordered along the glass top of the dressing-table. In addition there were three framed photographs. One was of Ann Harris taken in Moscow, against the background of the onion domes of St Basil’s Cathedral. The second was of the couple whose picture had been in her handbag. The third was of a man standing in such a way that the Capitol in Washington was in the background: the photograph had been taken low, but even without that trick for elevation the man appeared large. The dressing-table drawers held carefully folded underwear, sweaters and scarves, each in allocated places. Danilov sifted through, with the spatula: nothing was concealed between the folds of the clothes. The closets were just as carefully arranged, first suits and then dresses and finally separate skirts. There were twelve pairs of shoes, in a rack at the bottom of the closet. Danilov guessed there were more clothes than Larissa or Olga owned between them. Reminded, he thought he would have to contact Larissa sometime: she’d have to be told how difficult it was going to be for a while. How long, he wondered.

There was another framed photograph of the large man, this time with Ann Harris beside him on Capitol Hill, on top of a cabinet to the left of the bed. The upper drawer held a blank pad of paper and a pencil, a jar of contraceptive cream, a packet of contraceptive pessaries and Ann Harris’s American passport. The larger cupboard beneath held only a padded silk make-up bag. With some difficulty Danilov eased the zip open with the tweezers. It contained a battery-driven vibrator and a small jar of lubricant jelly. Danilov’s fresh discomfort was neither from surprise nor criticism but once again at the intrusion: this had been her business, her intimate pleasure, something to which she’d had the right of privacy. Invariably there were secrets, he reflected, recalling his mental promise to the dead girl in the alleyway. I’ll go on trying, he promised again.

He found her correspondence in the cabinet on the other side of the bed. She had kept her letters in their envelopes and held packs together, about ten at a time, with elastic bands. At the back – he couldn’t decide whether they were intentionally hidden or not – was a thicker bundle, different-sized sheets of paper without envelopes.