In the Name of a Killer (51 page)

The doctors knew. Everyone knew. Why did this man want to know again. ‘Bit them. Wanted to taste. Not now. Better.’

‘You stabbed them, didn’t you? From behind? With a knife?’

‘Didn’t.’

‘And then cut off their hair? And the buttons? Why did you put the shoes where you did?’

‘Don’t know …’ Yezhov intended the denial to be that he didn’t know what the man was saying, what he was talking about, but it was too many words, so he stopped. He hadn’t done anything wrong: he was sure he hadn’t. But his mother thought he had: kept holding his hands and saying that she had to know, just like this man, although he wasn’t holding his hands. What was it, that he’d done? He couldn’t remember. He’d tell them, if he could remember. Then they’d let him go. Walk again. He wanted to walk, not feel things tight around him. Didn’t like things tight around him. The first time, when he’d been locked up, they’d put him in a funny jacket, with sleeves that didn’t end and were tied behind him, so that he couldn’t move at all, the tightest thing he’d ever known all wrapped around him. Screamed to get out: screamed and cried and thrown himself around the cell just like this but he couldn’t get out of it. Didn’t ever want to be put in a funny jacket like that again. In a cell just like this one. He made a great effort to at last look towards the men, towards the one who wasn’t wearing a uniform and whose voice was kinder. ‘No jacket. Please, no jacket.’

I’m hunting a maniac, thought Danilov: someone deranged, mentally unstable. And he was facing someone deranged and mentally unstable. There could be no question that the man had to be held, for more investigation.
Mother knows
. The home had to be scientifically examined. Danilov’s mind stopped, at the word. It was routine for a detained person’s belongings to be taken away. It might have been an idea to have examined it all before attempting this befuddled interview. ‘Are you going to tell me about it? What you did to these women?’

‘No.’ How could he tell what he couldn’t remember? ‘Want to go now.’

Kosov sniggered and said, without sympathy: ‘This is pathetic!’

Danilov thought so too, but differently from Kosov. He said to Yezhov: ‘You can’t go. You’ve got to stay here.’

‘NO!’

The outburst was so abrupt and unexpected that both Militia Colonels were completely startled. Yezhov broke like a spring from his coiled position, swiping out wildly at both of them as he tried to get to the door. The blow caught Danilov directly in the stomach, driving the wind from him: he staggered back, retching, against the unseen wall behind. Another blow missed Kosov. The indulgently fat uniformed man was grossly out of condition but solid-bodied. Yezhov had no support and little momentum as he came up off the bed. Kosov simply stepped forward, blocking the man. But Yezhov didn’t fall back. Instead he entwined his arms around Kosov’s neck, using the other man to pull himself up. In turn Kosov locked his arms around Yezhov and together the two pirouetted in a tight, violent embrace. Danilov pushed himself away from the wall, breath groaning into him, groping to dislodge Yezhov’s arms from the other policeman. He couldn’t, at first: the mindless grip was rigid, impossible to shift. Danilov had to use two hands and all his strength to prise first the fingers, then the arm loose. Partially freed, Kosov twisted to get further away from the other man, then drove his knee up full into Yezhov’s groin.

Breath and pain screeched from Yezhov. He jack-knifed, and as he doubled up Kosov kneed him in the side of the head, sending him reeling back on to the bunk. His head hit the wall as he collapsed.

Kosov went forward, fist raised, but Danilov said: ‘No more! You’ve controlled him! No more!’

Panting, Danilov still having difficulty in breathing properly, both men backed into the corridor. Kosov crashed the door furiously behind them, automatically looking back in through the sliding peep-hole. ‘Can you imagine the strength of that bastard? He’s like a fucking gorilla!’

‘He was very strong,’ Danilov agreed. Lydia Orlenko had made a point of her attacker’s strength. And the American medical opinion was that the killer had to be extremely strong, to drive the knife into his victims as he had done.

‘But we’ve got him!’ Kosov insisted, leading the way back towards the front of the building.

‘I want to see what he had on him,’ said Danilov.

‘All waiting,’ said Kosov, efficiently.

Everything was already in a plastic evidence bag, a list attached. Danilov picked out the contents for himself, itemizing them against the list, and creating a pile on the table in the day-room from which he had earlier imagined hearing a noise. There was a comb, with several teeth missing. Two keys, on a ring. Three unidentified white pills, in a paper twist. And fifteen roubles. Danilov halted at the workbook from which Yezhov’s name had been obtained.

Left in the bag was a knife, in a homemade, roughly stitched leather sheath. And two buttons, one white, one brown, large and ornate, the sort used on women’s clothes. Danilov withdrew the knife. The blade was single-edged, the honed edge extremely sharp. Without actually measuring it, Danilov judged the blade to be about twenty-six centimetres long, possibly five centimetres across at its widest part, near the hilt, and five millimetres thick at its back. He guessed it would have perfectly fitted the wounds of each victim.

He looked back up at Kosov. ‘I need a telephone.’

Cowley and Pavin joined him at the Militia station in less than an hour, arriving separately, the American first. The prepared explanation, initially for Cowley’s benefit but intended to be the official version, was that Yezhov had been detained after being routinely questioned in the street by a Militia patrol officer curious at the man walking so late at night. Several times Kosov offered unnecessary details, which Danilov wished he hadn’t. He realized Kosov regarded himself as part of the investigatory team, intending to come with them to the Bronnaja apartment. Cowley snorted a laugh, shaking his head, and said it was difficult to believe the whole thing could be sorted out like this, almost by accident. Pavin immediately recognized the name, as quickly as Danilov had earlier, and said he’d been to Bronnaja twice the previous day without getting a reply on either occasion. The neighbours, recognizing him as officialdom, had denied knowing anything about the family, apart from confirming that the apartment was occupied by a mother and her son.

They trailed back to the rear of the police station and individually regarded Yezhov through the spy-hole, not trying to enter. The man was bunched on the bunk once more, arms hugging his legs tightly to his chest. He was rocking back and forth and making the whimpered, barking sound again. There was blood on his hair-patched head, where he’d hit the wall upon being knocked back from his attack. His face was puffed from crying.

As they went back to the front of the building, Kosov jerked his head towards the American and said: ‘Tell him it was good, solid police work.’

‘I understand what you’re saying,’ Cowley advised. ‘It seems like you’ve done a good job.’

‘Got him, when no one else could!’ declared Kosov, proudly.

As Danilov expected, Kosov strode from the building with them, towards the car. Maybe, Danilov reflected, a uniform would be a useful encouragement to the mother.

Pavin drove, knowing the way. Cowley wondered what they were going to do if there was still no reply at the apartment. Danilov held up the keys that had been in Yezhov’s possession and said it wouldn’t matter now. Danilov didn’t bother to reply when Cowley asked about a search warrant. Like the American, he was surprised by what could be the abrupt simplicity of it all. Unable to follow normal and practical police methods, because the killings were motiveless, this was always how the investigation
had
to be resolved, by chance. It was what he and Cowley had always expected. Yet, so soon, he found it hard to accept. Illogically he felt cheated, denied the opportunity to prove himself as a professional criminal investigator. And there was, additionally, another, different personal feeling. If Yezhov was the killer, it hadn’t been solved quite by chance. It had been solved by Kosov, using crooks: law-breakers, at least. Which wasn’t how it should have happened. What sort of reflection was that, he demanded of himself at once. A pompous one, he conceded. There was actually jealousy there, too. The need was to arrest a maniac, wandering, murdering. If Kosov was responsible for that,
however
he was responsible, then Kosov deserved the recognition and the credit: the convenient means justified the successful end. No one else was going to be murdered.

It was still not properly dawn when they got to Bronnaja, but Valentina Yezhov saw the car draw up below her apartment: she’d spent a lot of the night there, sleepless, anxious for the first movement that might have been Petr returning from wherever he’d been. Since the initial visit of the Militia and their subsequent, evaded, calls she had never slept until Petr was safely home. Four men, she saw, staring down with her hands to her mouth, nibbling at her knuckles: one in uniform, someone important. Petr had done it again –
something
again – and it was going to be like before, stared at and shunned, unsigned letters left in her box telling her to get out because everyone else in the block didn’t want a sex monster living there. It wouldn’t do any good, not to answer the door: they’d keep coming back, like they were doing now. She still wouldn’t answer, though: she wouldn’t know what to do or say, if she had to face them.

The bell sounded, stridently.

Valentina didn’t move.

It sounded again, longer.

She didn’t move. They’d go away. What else could they do, if there was no one there?

The lock turned. She cried out, more in disappointment at their catching her out than fear of their actually confronting her.

The door had opened at Danilov’s first attempt with the keys the detained man had been carrying. The interior of the apartment was in deep darkness, but her crying out identified Valentina. She blinked, unable to see in the first few seconds of brightness, when Kosov found the light switch. She was sitting on a flat, backless couch which clearly made up into a bed during a normal night. She had her hands nervously around her knees, so very much like her son back in the police cell.

It was Kosov who moved further into the room ahead of any of them. He began, too loudly: ‘OK, let’s not …’ before Danilov intervened.

‘I’ll question!’ he said, even louder, overriding the uniformed man. Danilov turned, including the American. ‘
We’ll
question,’ he qualified.

Kosov’s reaction was astonishment, at being corrected. He opened his mouth, to protest, appeared to realize it would be wrong and then shrugged. A wall ornament appeared suddenly to interest him.

‘We have Petr Yakovlevich in custody,’ Danilov announced.

Valentina made a great effort to compose herself, straightening in front of the four men. The man who was speaking now seemed kinder than the one in uniform, who was walking about the apartment, picking up and putting things down, as if he had the right. Which she supposed he did: he was in uniform. ‘Why’s he in jail?’

‘He might have done something wrong,’ said Cowley.

Foreign voice, foreign dress, Valentina identified. The awareness, from the television and the newspapers, came at once, hollowing her out. ‘No!’ she insisted, loud herself now. ‘He didn’t do that! No!’

‘Didn’t do what?’ Danilov picked up. Beside him, Pavin was recording everything, writing surprisingly quickly for such a ponderous man.

‘What you’re saying.’

‘We’re not saying anything,’ said Cowley.

‘He’s better.’

‘Why aren’t you in bed? It’s still night.’

‘Waiting for Petr.’

‘He’s a grown man. Why do you wait up for Petr when he’s a grown man?’ demanded Danilov.

‘You know!’ She pulled a baggy cardigan tighter around her.

‘Tell me.’

‘He’s not a grown man. Not properly grown. Not in his head.’

Neither Danilov nor Cowley looked at each other, but Kosov came away from a small table at which he’d been standing and said: ‘There!’

‘You know he’s done something wrong, don’t you?’ urged Danilov.

Reluctantly Valentina nodded.

‘How do you know?’ asked Cowley.

‘You’ve been coming, for days.’ She was looking down at the floor now, voice sometimes difficult to hear.

‘Did he tell you what he’d done?’

She shook her head.

‘Did you ask him?’ pressed the American.

‘Yes.’

‘What did he say?’

‘Wouldn’t tell me. Said he hadn’t done anything.’

‘Has be brought anything home?’ said Danilov.

‘Is he locked up?’ demanded the woman. ‘In a cell or something?’

‘Yes,’ said Danilov, allowing her initially to evade the question.

‘He won’t like that. He hates being locked up, from the other times.’

‘The other times when he attacked women?’ said Cowley.

‘Yes.’

‘Is that what he’s done now?’ intruded Kosov, wanting to be part of what was happening.

‘I don’t know.’

‘Has he brought anything home?’ Danilov repeated.

‘I don’t understand.’