In the Name of a Killer

by Brian Freemantle

  ‘We’re going to break you, Paul. Find it all out in the end.’

  ‘I didn’t do it! Any of it!’

  ‘Let’s start again, from the beginning.’

  Chapter Thirty-Eight

  They assembled as before in the ante-room of the main conference chamber of the Federal Prosecutor’s building, but on this occasion the mood was quite different, incongruously light-hearted. The immaculately uniformed Yevgennie Kosov was clearly nervous but concealing it well, politely deferential to both General Lapinsk and Nikolai Smolin. There had been several clean shirts for Danilov to choose from that morning and Olga had pressed the trousers of his suit without being asked. When he thanked her she said she was going to Larissa’s flat, to watch the conference on their large-screen television. She seemed to expect Danilov to say something but he didn’t. The American ambassador and Ralph Baxter accompanied Cowley but made it clear they did not intend taking part in the conference, but were there to observe. Cowley remarked to Danilov that the forensic findings settled everything: Danilov admitted, but only within the other investigator’s hearing, that he was relieved. Until the Washington confirmation he’d considered the proof too circumstantial, by itself. He still had the feeling of anticlimax.

  The room had been set up as it had been for the first conference, with a long row of tables on a raised dais at one end of the room, and translator facilities for the journalists. Danilov guessed the hall was more crowded now than it had been the first time. There was a lot of noise and it was hot under the camera lights. As he sat down Danilov saw the man who had asked the question about Ann Harris’s hair shearing and realized he had forgotten to complete the inquiry he’d had Pavin begin. It didn’t matter any more.

  The orchestrating skills of Senator Burden’s media organizer were badly missed: for the first time Danilov was aware of the shallowness of Smolin’s voice, which frequently failed to carry, despite the microphones. Several times there were shouted requests, both in Russian and in English, for the man to repeat himself and to speak more loudly.

  The Federal Prosecutor tried. He insisted there was no doubt of the guilt of the man they had in custody. With unhesitating distortion, Smolin said forensic tests both in Washington and here in Moscow had positively identified samples recovered from the man’s clothing as having come from the bodies of the victims. They had also recovered the murder weapon, a single-edged knife the man had been carrying in a home-made sheath at the time of his arrest. Like a conjuror reaching his favourite trick, Smolin abruptly produced the knife from inside his jacket and held it aloft: there was a renewed explosion of camera lights and repeated requests for Smolin to show it in various ways to various camera positions. Cowley frowned sideways to Danilov, who shrugged: he’d thought the knife was still in the forensic laboratory. That was where it should have been.

  Once more there was a moment of surprised silence when Smolin finished talking, but this time it was more understandable because the Federal Prosecutor had provided no identification of their suspect. Demands for a name echoed, both in Russian and English, from several parts of the hall. Smolin said that at this time no decision had been reached about publicly identifying the man. There was a long history of mental illness. There had been two earlier instances of attacks upon women, for both of which he had served periods of detention in psychiatric clinics. He was in such a clinic now. The psychiatrist treating him there had assessed the man incapable of understanding what he was accused of: at the moment and in the foreseeable future it would be impossible to bring him before a court. The absence of any formal charge and subsequent criminal conviction on the overwhelming evidence was regrettable but in the circumstances unavoidable. And because of those circumstances, it would be wrong to divulge a name. Under repeated pressure Smolin conceded that the man was twenty-nine years old, worked as a labourer – although he refused to say where – and was unmarried. He lived at home with his mother.

  Trying to keep the chronology in sequence, the Federal Prosecutor introduced Kosov, who performed better than Danilov had expected from the ante-room apprehension. Kosov said the seizure had resulted from sound, practical police work, undertaken from the moment of his Militia station receiving the request to be on the look-out for suspicious characters or behaviour within the area in which all the murders had taken place. The man had tried to hide and then run when he had been challenged by a foot patrol. There had been a brief struggle but the man had not positively tried to resist arrest, although he was extremely – if not unnaturally – strong as he could personally attest. The remark created precisely the questioning reaction Kosov intended and he allowed the cell fight to be drawn out of him.

  Danilov despised the boastfulness, but was scarcely successful in minimizing it when the questioning switched to him after Kosov named him as the other person involved in the fracas. Danilov was forced to admit it had taken two of them to subdue the unnamed Yezhov: Danilov guessed – correctly as it later transpired – how that would be appear in print when an American reporter suggested that Yezhov possessed the strength of two men.

  The conference shifted, with questions answered alternately by Danilov and Cowley. They disclosed the finding of some buttons in Yezhov’s possession and then more hidden beneath the floorboards of his bedroom. Danilov slightly redressed the prosecutor’s earlier exaggeration by deferring to Cowley to explain the pyrolysis and gas chromatographic techniques for matching the buttons and confirming by deoxyribonucleic acid analysis that the hair samples came from the murder victims. To a question from the man who had talked of Ann Harris’s defilement at the first conference and whom Danilov knew to be a New York Times reporter named Erickson, Cowley agreed that DNA tests were legally and scientifically regarded as infallible.

  After the general conference, both Danilov and Cowley gave separate interviews to the three major American television networks and following that took part in a shared interview with British, French and German networks. The British interviewer asked if there had been any friction in their working relationship. Both Cowley and Danilov said there had not, at any time.

  Later, in the ante-room, Nikolai Smolin declared the morning to have been a complete success. Having heard the British TV exchange, the Federal Prosecutor added that the whole affair had established that joint investigations were possible, which should be kept in mind in the future. The American ambassador promised to convey the feeling to Washington. He understood there was a personal letter of thanks on its way from the Secretary of State for the complete cooperation of the host nation. Senator Burden was also writing, but had asked in advance for his gratitude to be expressed.

  Kosov carefully chose a moment when Danilov was briefly apart from anyone else in the room. ‘It did go well, didn’t it?’

  ‘I thought so.’

  ‘I found it easier than I thought I would.’

  ‘You were very impressive,’ praised Danilov, waiting.

  Kosov quickly ensured they were still by themselves. ‘You heard any syndicate names yet?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘You won’t forget to tell me, if you do?’

  ‘Of course not.’

  ‘Have you spoken to Agayans?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘I think he might feel less pressured.’

  ‘That’s good,’ said Danilov. He’d make another visit to Leninskii Prospekt soon. But not to seek an outright gift. He’d insist on paying Agayans’s price for whatever he wanted. He guessed Agayans would want dollars, though, not roubles.

  Danilov rode back to Petrovka beside the chauffeur-driven General. Lapinsk said: ‘It’s a very successful conclusion to my command.’

  ‘I’m pleased it’s worked out as it has.’

  ‘I’ve only got another fifteen months to go.’

  ‘Let’s hope it’s quiet.’

  ‘Before you arrived this morning I was talking with Smolin about my successor.’

  Danilov looked across the car, beginning to concentrate on the conve
rsation. ‘Who is it to be?’

  Lapinsk smiled. ‘A final decision hasn’t been made. But you’ve impressed a great many people, Dimitri Ivanovich. I personally don’t have any doubt who it will be. So, in advance, congratulations.’

  Danilov said: ‘I’m very pleased,’ and wished he were more so.

  Danilov had been in his office for an hour when the convenient direct-dial telephone sounded. Larissa said: ‘You looked very good on television. Better even than last time.’ She sounded subdued.

  ‘I thought Yevgennie was good.’

  She ignored the remark. ‘I didn’t know you actually fought the murderer.’

  Convicted without the formality of a trial, thought Danilov: he was glad Yezhov’s name had been withheld. ‘It was really quite different from how it sounded.’

  ‘Olga watched with me. She seemed surprised you hadn’t told her.’

  ‘She said she was coming.’

  ‘She asked me, outright.’

  The unease stirred through Danilov. ‘What did you say?’

  ‘I wanted to tell her it was true. And that I loved you. But I didn’t. I said she was being silly.’

  ‘Did she believe you?’

  ‘I don’t know. I miss you.’

  Danilov supposed he was missing Larissa. ‘It’s best this way.’

  ‘I don’t think so.’

  Danilov didn’t respond.

  ‘Are you still there?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘I’ve called several times before.’

  ‘I’ve been out of the office a lot.’

  ‘I’m sorry. For how I behaved before.’

  ‘It doesn’t matter.’

  ‘If I hadn’t been like that, Olga wouldn’t have suspected.’

  Danilov supposed she was right, it’s too late now.’

  ‘I don’t want it to be too late. To end.’

  ‘We both decided it had to.’

  ‘I didn’t decide. You did. Come to see me at the hotel. Just to talk.’

  ‘There’s no … it wouldn’t achieve anything.’

  ‘I promise not to be like I was before.’

  ‘No.’ He shouldn’t give in: as much as he wanted to, he shouldn’t give in.

  ‘And I won’t go on about your leaving Olga and my leaving Yevgennie. I won’t make demands. We can just be together, whenever you want.’

  He didn’t want her to talk like this; to prostrate herself. This wasn’t Larissa. ‘There’s a lot to do. Tidying up.’

  ‘I said whenever.’

  ‘Maybe I can telephone? We could talk on the telephone.’

  ‘I meant what I said. About loving you. I really do.’

  Danilov refused to respond as he knew she wanted. ‘I’ll telephone,’ he repeated.

  ‘It won’t become difficult, not again.’

  It would if he let it, Danilov decided, replacing the telephone. He thought he knew now what was giving him the unsettled, anticlimactic feeling. The telephone jarred into the office again, breaking any further reflection.

  Cowley said: ‘All the forensic stuff has come in overnight.’

  ‘We may as well assemble it today,’ suggested Danilov. He might even be in time to present it to the Federal Prosecutor, although there was hardly any hurry.

  ‘That’s what I was thinking,’ Cowley agreed. He couldn’t imagine his having to stay in Moscow more than another few days: there was nothing more to do. He wondered if Pauline would accept an invitation for them to have dinner together before he left.

  Chapter Thirty-Nine

  All Petr Yezhov’s clothing tested in America was returned with the detailed forensic report, which meant Cowley had to transport two suitcase-sized containers to Petrovka, where all the evidence had been collected and logged. Two taxis raced each other to get to him outside the embassy in response to the Marlboro signal, imagining a trip to the airport. At Petrovka, Pavin helped him carry it up to the exhibit room, for the separate findings to be compared and finally assembled, as they would be for any presentation in court. All three of them were relaxed, the hard grind over.

  ‘We’ve got to make a proper submission to the Federal Prosecutor,’ Danilov disclosed, repeating that morning’s instructions from his briefing with Lapinsk. ‘They’re going to take the formalities as far as they properly can.’ He smiled. ‘The world has to see true Russian justice in action,’ he added, providing his own judgment. ‘We will never lose the Stalin guilt.’

  ‘We’d have probably done the same, in the circumstances,’ Cowley accepted, going along with the cynicism. ‘Everyone likes to capitalize on a success.’

  ‘There may be an open statement before a judge. The problem is publicly naming Yezhov: the Prosecutor’s reluctant to do that.’

  ‘I think he’s right,’ said Cowley. He wouldn’t have to wait around, for either a formal submission or a later court statement: if his presence was thought necessary for either he could fly back. He wondered if Pauline would still be in Moscow.

  They considered the Russian findings first, Danilov reading through it aloud, Cowley following on his own copy. The clothes division had left for Russian scientific analysis a jacket, two pairs of trousers, a pair of work dungarees, three shirts, two sets of underwear, a pair of workboots, a very worn pair of training plimsolls and the knife.

  From the clothing a number of hairs had been recovered. They had been visually and microscopically compared with hair samples taken from all the victims and in only one instance, a single blonde hair discovered on the jacket, was there any possible similarity. It was with the blonde hair of Nadia Revin. The opinion refused to call it a definite match. There had been minute blood samples recovered from the underwear, both B Rhesus Positive, which was Yezhov’s grouping. No samples taken from the workboots had matched with any dirt, mud or dust at any of the murder scenes: although the ground would have been frozen at the actual time of the killing, particular attention had been paid to the soil around Nadia Revin’s garage. The knife was single-edged, twenty-seven centimetres long, five centimetres wide at its broadest and five millimetres thick at its unhoned edge. It was a very common type of work or kitchen knife. The width and thickness could be presented as being consistent with the entry wounds: none of the killing thrusts had been identical in depth, but the narrowing of the wound as it progressed through the bodies could again be consistent with the leading, pointed part of the blade. The knife had held no blood traces. There were deposits of citric acid, obviously left from the cutting of fruit. The home-made sheath had been opened, for the inside to be examined. There had been four haem deposits on the inside of the leather. All had proven to be animal blood. There were more traces of citric acid, a minute amount of whey, analysed to be from goats’ cheese, and minute particles of nail and skin debris – probably the result of nail paring – again from Yezhov.

  Danilov came up from the file. ‘And the knife itself.’

  ‘“Consistent with,”’ Cowley qualified. ‘That’s not conclusive. Would you go to court with that?’

  ‘The decision of the Federal Prosecutor,’ Danilov recalled, partially side-stepping. ‘On balance I think we probably would.’ Avoiding no further, he said: ‘But I’m glad you’ve got more.’

  They reversed the comparison procedure, Cowley dictating to Danilov’s checking: everything from Washington had been duplicated in Russian as well as English. Cowley admired the consideration.

  Subjected to American examination had been the quilted topcoat Yezhov had been wearing when he was seized, together with a jacket, a jerkin, two pairs of trousers, three shirts, a set of underwear and one pair of shoes. And the buttons recovered from Yezhov and later from his bedroom cache.

  The blood smear on the quilted coat had been B Rhesus Positive and proved, under DNA analysis, to be that of Yezhov himself. From the left-hand pocket of the coat had been recovered four separate hairs, two deeply embedded in the lining. One was positively identified under the DNA test as having come from Vladimir Suzlev.
The other three, under the same test, were definitely from Ann Harris. From the right-hand pocket six separate strands were lifted, three also deeply implanted in the lining. One remained unidentified. One was from Lydia Orlenko. Four were provably traceable to Nadia Revin. Three more hairs from Ann Harris were found in the left-hand pocket of one of the pairs of trousers. A single hair from Lydia Orlenko had been embedded inside the left-arm sleeve cuff of the jerkin.

  The pyrolysis test on buttons required them to be heated to 770 degrees Centigrade. This converted the material into gas, to be run through a chromatograph mass spectrometer. It had therefore been necessary to destroy four of the samples under scientific test conditions. One of the buttons had beyond doubt formed part of a set of six green coloured fastenings, three of which had remained on the shirt, close to and below where her belt would have covered them, listed as being that worn by Ann Harris on the night of her murder. Five buttons were analysed by a Foyier Transformer infra-red spectrometer: two unquestionably came from the same shirt, actually completing the hacked-off green set. In the holes of two others, one blue, one brown, remained strands of the cotton that had secured identical buttons to the outer coat that Lydia Orlenko had worn when she was attacked, and to the fashionable driving jacket in which Nadia Revin had kept warm on her way home from the Metropole Hotel. Both buttons again proved positive, under pyrolysis.

  Cowley paused, briefly looking up from his recitation of the scientific facts. ‘There was no comparison possible with three manufactured from a nylon base or one of polyester. Neither from the three …’ Cowley faltered, frowning up to meet the puzzlement of both Danilov and Pavin. ‘… Neither from the three made from bone, which is not a substance reacting to the stated tests,’ he forced himself to finish, unevenly.

  There were several moments of complete silence in the room. Then Pavin insisted, defensively: ‘The log isn’t wrong.’

  ‘We compiled it together,’ Cowley agreed.

  ‘Let’s do it again,’ Danilov insisted.