In the Name of a Killer

Chapter Seventeen

Larissa and her husband lived in one of the better apartment blocks just off the inner ring road, the newest-built high-rises for members of the Party. The unthinkable collapse of communism in 1991 had terrified Yevgennie Kosov, who had never conceived its possible demise. He’d graduated into the Party direct from the Komsomol youth organization for the privileges of membership — which included superior living accommodation — not from any political ideology. Kosov’s personal ideology was the enjoyment of life as one of the Moscow elite and he had been initially frightened he might lose it all. He’d resigned and abandoned the Party, of course, like all sensible survivors. But still waited, in those early months, for official retribution. None had come. Now Kosov had completely recovered the shaken confidence, sure that things weren’t really going to change, but ready, at a moment’s notice, to adjust if the need became necessary.

Danilov retained the allocated but unmarked official car, knowing it would please Olga. She twisted back and forth in the front seat the moment he set off from Kirovskaya, swivelling fully after a few minutes to examine the rear seats and then announcing: ‘This is exactly the sort of car I want!’

‘This is a Volga. It’s not the model we’ve ordered. If we try to change we’ll go to the end of the queue.’

She tried to get the telephone off its rest but couldn’t release the clip: Danilov didn’t try to help her. She said: ‘Does this work? Could I speak to someone now, while we’re driving along?’

‘It’s official. All the calls are recorded.’

‘I want to call Larissa! Let her know we’re on our way! How do I pick it up?’

‘There’s no point in doing that.’

‘It could be explained as an official conversation. Yevgennie is a policeman, isn’t he?’

‘It won’t impress anyone: they’ll know it doesn’t belong to us.’

‘I want to!’

Danilov released the telephone and handed it across the car to his wife. She dialled incorrectly on the first attempt and he had to explain the transmission procedure as she dialled. Olga chattered her way through an inconsequential conversation about non-existent traffic delays, talking far more loudly than was necessary, and Danilov felt sorry for her. As she handed the telephone back to him, to be reclipped, she said: ‘Larissa was laughing. Why would she laugh?’

‘Maybe she thought it was funny.’ Danilov was not looking forward to the evening. For a while during the afternoon he’d considered cancelling. Larissa had protested that he shouldn’t, when they’d spoken: ‘I promise to keep my hands off you, even though it won’t be easy,’ she’d said. Perhaps she’d been laughing at the memory of the conversation, not at Olga’s showing off with a car telephone.

He managed to park immediately outside the apartment. Olga waited for him to walk around to let her out, as if she was reluctant to leave the car until the very last moment. He did so and began leading the way into the building, but she said: ‘What about the windscreen wipers! You know they’ll be stolen if you don’t take them off.’

Danilov turned back, irritated at having forgotten a basic rule of Moscow motoring. He returned to the vehicle, unsure how to disconnect the wipers on a model he didn’t know. The spring was too strong on the passenger side, briefly trapping his finger before he unhooked the blade. When he got into the better-lit vestibule he saw his hands were filthy with grease and that his shirt cuff was stained. His finger was bleeding slightly, where the spring had caught him.

‘You’re a mess,’ complained Olga.

‘I shouldn’t have bothered.’

‘It would have been awkward if it rained, on the way home.’

‘They might not have been taken.’

‘They would,’ insisted Olga. She liked to conclude any dispute, no matter how trivial.

Danilov felt foolish entering Larissa’s apartment carrying windscreen wipers. It didn’t help that she giggled at him. He smiled back, not knowing where to put the blades. ‘I need to wash.’

‘You do, don’t you? Why don’t you leave them in the kitchen?’

Danilov did so, and managed to get most of the grease off his hands in the sink there. Larissa stood watching, but by the door, as far away from him as possible. He thought she was going to remain there as he tried to get into the main room, forcing him to squeeze by and bring them close together, but at the last minute she came further into the kitchen, unblocking the doorway. As he went by she said quietly: ‘I might break my promise,’ and laughed again.

Yevgennie Kosov was in the middle of the living-room, in the process of helping Olga out of her coat: having done so the man felt out, putting his hands around Olga’s waist, and said: ‘What a body: trim as a bird!’ and kissed her. He kept his hands where they were. Olga smiled happily, unoffended at being groped.

Danilov had forgotten Kosov’s tactile need to touch and feel: when they shook Kosov enclosed Danilov’s hand in both of his and held on with one while he pummelled and patted Danilov’s shoulder with the other.

‘Too long, too long!’ boomed Kosov, with shouted exuberance. ‘Old friends like us shouldn’t leave it so long!’

Danilov wondered how much the other man had drunk before their arrival. There was a glass and a whisky bottle on a small table: it was Chivas Regal, displayed like a spoil of war.

‘Champagne for the ladies, a man’s drink for us,’ announced Kosov. He was a naturally large man made larger by constant excess, stomach sagging above his trouser belt and hardly disguised beneath a sweater which Danilov guessed he was supposed to admire: it was obviously cashmere. Kosov’s face had an alcohol glow and there were some broken red veins along both sides of his fleshy nose. The champagne was French, not Russian.

Kosov grinned as he passed the drinks around and said: ‘You didn’t have to get all messed up like that. No point in having influence if you don’t use it. I make damned sure the Militia patrols are around this block all the time and the villains know it. Anyone committing crime anywhere near my home knows I’ll have their balls for a necklace!’

‘I should have realized,’ said Danilov, mildly. He wondered how many other innovations Kosov had made.

‘Olga’s had her welcoming kiss! Where’s mine?’ demanded Larissa, in mock protest.

Danilov leaned forward briefly to brush her cheek, not reaching out to hold her: with their bodies shielding the movement, Larissa felt out and quickly squeezed his hand, a taunting gesture. She didn’t let go, however, bringing Danilov’s hand up as he stepped away from her. ‘You’ve cut yourself! It’s bleeding. Come on, I’ve got dressings in the bathroom.’

‘It’s nothing. It’s not necessary,’ Danilov tried to escape.

‘I don’t want you bleeding all over the apartment!’ complained Larissa. ‘Come on! I insist.’ She kept hold of the injured hand to lead him along the corridor to the bathroom, a dazzle of imported fittings. Inside she said: ‘Now you can kiss me properly!’

‘Stop it!’ protested Danilov.

‘Why?’ She had her head to one side, knowing his awkwardness, enjoying being the coquette.

‘It’s dangerous.’

‘Kiss me!’ she ordered.

He did. Larissa immediately put her hands on his buttocks, grinding her crotch into his. Danilov positively parted from her and said: ‘You’ll get blood on your dress.’ It was cashmere, like Kosov’s sweater, a pale blue. Larissa smelled as perfumed and fresh as she always did. Her hair as perfectly brushed, loose for his benefit, and her make-up almost flawless. ‘Your lipstick’s smudged.’

‘And you’re wearing it,’ Larissa agreed. She wiped it from his face and repaired her lipline while he wrapped the offered antiseptic covering around his finger. He saw ingrained into both hands some grease he’d missed in the kitchen and tried again in the bathroom sink. Not all of it came off and he guessed he’d need cleansing spirit to get rid of it completely. She said: ‘It’s good having you here.’

‘How can it be?’

‘I like looking at them and then at you. And thinking what we do, which they don’t know anything about. I get all excited. Do you want to feel?’

‘Stop it, Larissa!’

‘Tomorrow afternoon?’

He’d arranged to go to the mortuary again, with the American this time. ‘I’m not sure. I’ll try. We should get back to the others.’ He wondered what Cowley had achieved at the embassy: there hadn’t been any telephone contact.

‘Sure you don’t want to feel?’

Danilov didn’t reply, walking out of the bathroom ahead of her. Olga and Kosov were sitting side by side on a couch that ran more than half the width of one wall of the apartment. Kosov was holding Olga’s hand, resting on her thigh.

‘Isn’t this the most wonderful flat?’ demanded Olga. ‘I’ve never seen a television that big. And it’s got a video player: they can watch movies, right here in their own home!’

‘Wonderful,’ agreed Danilov, dutifully. He didn’t think he’d ever seen such a large television, either. It was enclosed in a cabinet, with louvred doors that could seal it off. The video equipment was on a lower shelf. There was an extensive stereo display right next to it, close to the chairs that made up the suite. Danilov wondered how much had come from the grateful importer whom he’d introduced to the other man. The wallpaper was hessian and the ceiling-to-floor curtains were a heavy green velvet, shaded to match the thick and slightly darker green wall-to-wall carpeting.

‘Nothing to it if you’ve got the proper friends, is there, Dimitri?’ Kosov gestured towards Danilov. ‘Taught me all I know, on how to operate in a Militia district …’ He leaned forward towards Danilov, solemn-faced, responsibly serious policeman to responsibly serious policeman. ‘We’re looking after that inquiry. Checking out every street incident that could be relevant. And a lot more. I’ve put the word out, among special friends I’ve made since you were here. If there’s a whisper about, I’ll hear it. Don’t you worry.’

To judge from the other man’s dialogue, Danilov thought a lot of the video movies Kosov watched on his cinema-sized television screen had to be American crime thrillers. He was about to question what Kosov had told him when Larissa perched on the arm of his chair. To her husband she said: ‘How are you involved with Dimitri?’

Danilov supposed he should have realized from the geography of the city that his old Militia district would be included in the checks he’d asked Pavin to initiate, but until that moment he hadn’t. He wished Larissa hadn’t sat as she was, so close their legs touched. Before Danilov could find a dismissive reply, not wanting to talk about the murders, Kosov said: ‘The city’s detective force need uniformed officers to help them find a mass murderer.’

‘Two is hardly mass murder, is it?’ said Larissa.

Kosov got up from the couch to refill glasses. ‘It’ll be mass murder when he kills again,’ insisted Kosov, belligerently. ‘A maniac, killing and maiming.’

‘They weren’t maimed!’ contradicted Danilov.

‘Scalped!’ insisted Kosov. ‘Her and the man. That’s the information we’ve been given.’

‘Neither one was scalped!’ rejected Danilov, exasperated. ‘The hair was cut off.’ How could any inquiries throughout the Militia districts be objective if they were going to be interpreted like this? He’d have to go through the phrasing of the check request with Pavin first thing tomorrow.

‘Don’t you think it’s the work of a maniac?’

‘Of course it is,’ said Danilov, still wanting to terminate the conversation. ‘But this is hardly the place or time to talk about it, is it?’

Larissa shuddered and said: ‘Just think. He could be quite close to us now: just a street or two away.’

‘Why hasn’t there been any announcement about it yet?’ said Olga. ‘All I’ve read about is the girl. And it didn’t say anything about cutting off her hair.’

‘There might be, soon. We don’t want to cause any panic,’ said Danilov.

‘I’m glad …’ started Larissa, unthinking, then hurriedly stopped. ‘… that you’ve told us now,’ she finished, badly.

Danilov felt a warmth and hoped he wasn’t colouring at the nearness of Larissa blurting out his earlier hotel bedroom warning. Quickly he said to Kosov: ‘What do you mean, about putting the word out among your special friends?’

‘Just that,’ said the Militia commander. ‘People know who’s in charge of Militia station 19: and when I say I want help they know I mean it. So the word’s out. Any kinky bastard wandering around my streets I’m going to know about it, don’t you worry.’

Danilov realized the other man was glorying in the situation, posturing to impress. Surely the fool hadn’t inquired among the Dolgoprudnaya crime syndicate Larissa had told him about? At once Danilov realized that was precisely what Kosov would have done. The Dolgoprudnaya would probably laugh at him. Danilov resolved to treat with extreme caution anything that came from Kosov’s police station. Wearily Danilov said: ‘I look forward to getting anything you find out.’

‘Just like the old days,’ Kosov enthused. ‘The two of us working together again.’

Danilov couldn’t recall an investigation they had jointly handled, when they were in the same district. Wanting to change the subject, he said: ‘I sometimes miss uniform work.’

‘Surely there are benefits at Petrovka?’ sniggered Kosov.

‘I’d like to know what they are!’ Olga came in, ahead of her husband. ‘We haven’t even got a television that works properly.’

‘You want a favour, all you’ve got to do is ask,’ offered Kosov, generously. ‘My friends are your friends: you even knew some before me.’

‘I don’t believe you really miss it.’ Now Larissa was openly goading. ‘I think it takes very special qualities, to be a detective. Not like ordinary policemen. Don’t you think that, Yevgennie?’

Her husband squinted across the room, mind blurred by whisky. ‘Control detectives,’ he said. ‘Part of my staff. I’m in charge.’

‘Administratively. And your detectives don’t investigate murders, do they? Not like Dimitri.’ Larissa smiled ingenuously at the other woman. ‘Aren’t you proud of him, Olga? Knowing how clever he is? Hunting murderers? Maniac murderers?’

Danilov tried to press his leg warningly against hers: Larissa answered the pressure, smiling down. ‘I think you’re very clever. Brave, too.’

Olga seemed to have difficulty in finding an answer to the question she’d been asked. Eventually she said: ‘Yes, I suppose. I don’t really think about it. It’s his job.’

‘Which I didn’t come here to discuss,’ said Danilov, renewing the effort for another subject. ‘I came to eat dinner.’

Larissa had to get up from the chair arm to serve it and Danilov was relieved. Olga went to help and Kosov insisted on more whisky, while they waited. With the caviare Kosov served chilled vodka. There was imported French white wine with the cold fish and red, French again, with the duck, which Larissa served with marinated cabbage, both red and white. When Olga politely praised the meal Larissa said everything had come from the open, State-free market next to the Circus: every conceivable foodstuff was available providing you were prepared to pay the price. Kosov, who belatedly appeared to realize his wife had been mocking him about the degree of responsibility of a Militia post commander, told interminable police anecdotes whose point or denouement he frequently forgot, relapsing into shrugs and hopeful, join-me laughter and mumbled ‘you know’ and ‘so that was that’. Everyone felt varying degrees of discomfort.

Kosov poured brandy for himself and Danilov while the women cleared away. Kosov said: ‘Isn’t there really any understanding operating at Petrovka?’

‘I believe so, in the general serious crime section. Not in the homicide division though. There couldn’t be, could there?’

‘Of course there could,’ argued the expert. ‘Use the contacts of the serious crime squad not involved in murder.’

‘I haven’t got around to it yet,’ Danilov hedged.

‘Don’t want to obligate yourself, with other colleagues?’ guessed Kosov.

‘Something like that,’ said Danilov, taking the excuse.

‘Then let me help. All you’ve got to do is ask.’

Which would mean he would be taking favours from both members of the family, Danilov thought, knowing a different sort of discomfort. ‘I’ll remember that.’

‘Any time,’ said Kosov. ‘That’s what friends are for.’

Danilov couldn’t remember the other man being quite so openly condescending before. There was some desultory talk about films when the women returned and some quite animated conversation when Kosov announced that he was thinking of applying for exit visas so he and Larissa could take a vacation in Europe, probably both France and Italy. It was Danilov who brought the evening to a close, pleading pressure of work. Kosov kissed Olga goodbye and promised Danilov he would be hearing something from him in a few days. ‘The word’s out on the streets. Trust me.’

When Danilov kissed Larissa farewell she looked directly at him. ‘Don’t forget what Yevgennie said earlier: let’s not leave it so long until we get together again.’

‘Our turn next time,’ insisted Olga as they left, Danilov carrying the wipers in a piece of paper towel.

Danilov trapped his finger again replacing them on the police car but this time didn’t cut himself. He used the paper towel to wipe off as much fresh grease as possible.

‘Isn’t that going to be embarrassing?’ demanded Olga, when he got in beside her.

‘What?’

‘Having them back to us next time. Can you imagine what they’ll think of our apartment? I can remember the time when we had things every bit as good as theirs: better even.’

‘Don’t invite them then.’ Danilov didn’t want another evening like tonight. He’d swung between boredom and embarrassment with Kosov, and Larissa had made him constantly uncomfortable in other ways. And she’d known it: he guessed she hadn’t just felt superior to her husband and Olga but to him as well.

‘We have invited them.’

‘Not a specific date. Just don’t do anything more about it.’

‘Do you like her?’

Danilov looked quickly across the car and wished he hadn’t, from the guilt it might have conveyed. ‘Larissa?’

‘Who else do you think I mean?’

‘Of course I like her. We’ve all of us been friends a long time. Why do you ask?’

‘She was all over you tonight.’

‘Rubbish!’ said Danilov, almost too forcefully.

‘What were you doing in the bathroom?’

‘You know what we were doing. She was dressing my finger.’ It sounded pitifully inadequate.

‘It seemed to take a long time.’

‘I tried to get more muck off my hands.’

‘She had to stay and help you do that?’

‘We were talking.’

‘What about?’

‘I don’t know! Things at the hotel. How I enjoy working at Petrovka. Just talking.’

‘She’s very attractive, isn’t she?’

‘I haven’t thought about it.’ That had sounded wrong, too. Now Danilov was aware of Olga looking across the car at him.

‘Her dress was French. She told me, in the kitchen.’

Danilov didn’t reply. Despite the distraction of the conversation inside the car he found himself staring out into the quiet streets along which they were driving, looking. For what, he demanded angrily of himself. A figure wielding a knife? Or running with a handful of hair?

‘It showed her figure. She hasn’t got any fat, not like me, has she?’

‘I didn’t notice.’

‘She was so close to you I wouldn’t have thought you could have missed noticing.’

‘If we’re making comparisons, which we seem to be doing, I thought you and Yevgennie clung together pretty much tonight.’ Now it was petulance.

‘Yevgennie! Don’t be ridiculous. He’s always like that; always has been.’

Danilov edged off the inner ring road, to cut through minor streets in the hope of reaching Kirovskaya as quickly as possible. Wind-driven rain began misting the windscreen and Danilov had to start the wipers. There was a hard scraping noise as they cleared the screen and he guessed he had re-attached them wrongly.

‘At least he was interested in some physical contact with me. I haven’t been aware of you showing much recently.’

‘Don’t start an argument where one doesn’t exist, Olga!’ He was surprised at not being able to remember the last time they’d made love.

‘I …’ started the woman, loudly, but stopped. Controlling herself she went on: ‘I don’t recall you and I thinking of a vacation in Europe, when you were in charge of the district.’

‘Travel was much more strictly controlled when I was in charge.’ Danilov confronted a No Entry sign he hadn’t expected. He turned left, to make his own detour, acknowledging it wasn’t any longer a shortcut.

‘We still didn’t think about it,’ insisted the woman, stubbornly.

‘Yevgennie didn’t say they were going. It’s the sort of thing he’d do, talk about visas as if the trip is all fixed.’

‘Are you going to do it?’

‘Do what?’ Danilov rerouted himself on to the road he wanted, hoping there would not be any further obstruction. He’d certainly been uncomfortable with Larissa but he hadn’t expected the situation between them to be quite so obvious. Olga could only have a suspicion: he just had to deny any outright accusation and ridicule whatever innuendo she might make. Damn Larissa! She had been amusing herself and in doing so had created stupid, unnecessary difficulties.

‘Take up Yevgennie’s offer to put us into contact with people who can get things … like the old days.’

‘I don’t think so.’ Danilov began to recognize his surroundings and was relieved they were almost home.

‘Why the hell not?’ erupted Olga, loudly again. ‘I’m pissed off, going on like we are now! You told me Petrovka was promotion. Promotion means better things: more benefits. What benefits have we got, since the transfer? None! We’ve actually lost out! You expect me to go on like this?’

Danilov wondered what alternative she was threatening. ‘The job’s not the same any more.’

‘What’s the job got to do with it? Why did you have to give up all the connections you had? There was no reason.’

‘I just wanted to do things differently.’ She wouldn’t understand if he tried to talk about honesty in an environment and in a country where if they had the chance people — even policemen — didn’t regard it as dishonest to use unofficial markets with unofficial money. It scarcely was dishonest by Russian values. No one really got harmed apart, perhaps, from the State whose perestroika boasts had failed and whose fault it therefore was that a second entrepreneurial society was necessary. Danilov wasn’t sure he could have properly expressed the way he felt, even if Olga had been interested, which he knew she wasn’t.

‘So we all have to suffer!’

Danilov supposed that from Olga’s viewpoint there was no other way to describe it. He wanted very much to present an argument to put against her, to justify his attitude, but couldn’t think of one. Lamely he said: ‘Let’s get this other business over. Then we’ll see.’

‘You will let Yevgennie introduce you to some of his friends?’ seized Olga, eagerly.

The Dolgoprudnaya was a properly organized crime syndicate, not a loose-knit group of black marketeers who’d wanted warehouses overlooked and delivery lorries unhindered. What blackmail potential would he be exposing himself to if he let the new-found integrity slip? It would … Danilov halted the reflection, surprised he had let it begin at all. Risk of blackmail from professional criminals was not the obstacle, real though that risk might be. The only consideration was his fragile integrity, the feeling he hadn’t properly analysed until now but thought of as being clean. And he didn’t want to surrender it. He didn’t want to continue this snappy conversation with a suspicious Olga, either. ‘We’ll see,’ he repeated.

‘It’ll be wonderful, having things like they were before,’ said Olga, misunderstanding. She was quiet for several moments, as Danilov coasted the car to a stop outside their apartment block. Then she said: ‘Rather than have them back to eat with us here we could take them out, of course. But we’d need dollars, so we could go to a hard-currency place.’

‘Shit!’ exploded Danilov, registering what she’d said.

Olga stared at him in bewilderment. ‘What is it?’

‘I’ve realized something I should have thought of before,’ admitted Danilov, angrily. It was too late — and there would be no benefit anyway — to call Pavin now. It would have to wait until the morning. Shit, he thought again: shit! shit! shit!

During the enforced bachelorhood after the divorce from Pauline — whose hobby had been cooking — Cowley had become a gourmand of convenience food. That evening he’d stocked up from the embassy commissary and prepared a Lean-Cuisine veal for dinner in the guest apartment. He was undecided between chicken and braised beef, for the following night.

He watched CNN while the veal heated, curious if there would be a reference to Senator Burden’s intended Moscow visit, after the warning cable he’d got that night from Washington. There wasn’t. Cowley appreciated the Director’s guidance, to refer any difficulties to him and not to become personally involved in any disagreements. He couldn’t imagine what those difficulties might be: he saw the politician’s visit being handled by the ambassador, with his participation entirely peripheral, a courtesy briefing session maybe.

Cowley’s mind was more occupied by other things.

Uppermost was the embassy itself, and Cowley’s belief that he saw a way forward there. The dilemma was how to go forward. He had a suspicion wholly unsupported at this early stage by one single incriminating fact. Yet if he was right, the killing of Ann Harris could possibly be an entirely American affair, with the suspect liable to arrest on technically American property, able to be returned to American jurisdiction and presumably tried before an American court. So was that how he should proceed, completely cutting out Dimitri Danilov and the Russian side of the investigation? It was his first inclination to do just that, until he rationalized it further and recognized that some at least of the incriminating facts necessary for a conviction would have to come from the Russians. Who — prior to the murder of Ann Harris — had another killing to solve. Which compounded the dilemma. Possibly under international law there was provision for an American national accused of the homicide of another American to be returned to United States jurisdiction. But what about any trial for the fatal stabbing of Validmir Suzlev, very much upon Russian soil and very much under the jurisdiction of Russian law? Although he could not conceive the connection, he didn’t doubt the killer of both was one and the same person. And it was absurd to imagine the Russian authorities agreeing to the Suzlev trial taking place in America, any more than Cowley foresaw Washington agreement for a Moscow trial of a US citizen for the Ann Harris crime. Dilemma on top of dilemma on top of dilemma, he decided: a matryoshka doll of legality. Which needed a mind far better constitutionally trained than his to lift, separate and decided upon.

What did he need, to confirm his suspicion to the point of an open accusation? Certainly one piece of comparable forensic evidence he knew to be at Petrovka. And possibly to meet the widow of the taxi driver, to try to find the so far elusive link.

All possible tomorrow, Cowley decided. And with it reached another decision. He wouldn’t give Danilov the slightest indication that he had a lead. It was still far too early — and the ruling on how legally to handle the matter after an arrest would have to come from Washington — and anyway he was not beholden to the Russian, owing an exchange on a quid pro quo basis. The priority always was a quick and diplomatically acceptable conclusion to the investigation, not how to win Russian friends and influence them.

Cowley stirred himself to turn off the unwatched television and retrieve the veal parmesan from the oven, moving automatically, still deep in reflection. It was always wrong — positively lectured against at the FBI academy at Quantico — to allow personal feelings to intrude into any investigation. But he was looking forward to the upheaval among those supercilious, arrogant sons-of-bitches at the embassy if he were proven right. Allowing himself the cliche, Cowley decided it would hit the place like a bombshell. More friends he ultimately wouldn’t win and influence.

He wasn’t sure about the joint American-Russian press conference he’d been told to attend: there’d be the need for further guidance from Washington about that, particularly about whether to link the taxi-driver murder, which at the moment they wanted kept separate.

Cowley, who had developed a living-alone neatness, had almost finished clearing away and tidying the kitchen when the telephone rang, momentarily startling him. He answered expectantly, hoping it might have been Danilov with some sort of news. Instead he immediately recognized Barry Andrews. The man sounded slightly drunk, his words slipping at the sibilants.

‘Just got back from the social club,’ announced Andrews.

‘Yes?’

‘Talking about you, Pauline and me. Wanna know when you’re going to come to dinner, like old times.’

In those old times Pauline had been his wife, Cowley reflected. ‘I’m still trying to sort out a work pattern,’ he said, cautiously.

‘You’re not working day and night. You’re not working now!’

Why was he avoiding the decision? Nervous of seeing her, now the opportunity was there? Of course not! Ridiculous! What conceivable reason was there for him to be nervous? Any date could possibly be disrupted if things moved as quickly as he hoped they would now. ‘What is most convenient for you? I’ll fit in.’

There was a brief mumble of conversation, as Andrews talked away from the telephone. ‘Night after tomorrow?’

‘Perfect,’ agreed Cowley.

‘Pauline’s here!’ announced Andrews. ‘You wanna say hello?’

There was another mumble of conversation, the delay longer this time, before a faint voice came on to the telephone. ‘Hello.’

‘Hello.’

‘It’s a surprise, your being here.’

‘For me, too. You OK?’ Pauline sounded uncertain, but he supposed that was understandable. Three years was a long time.

‘Yes. You?’

‘Fine.’ An inconsequential exchange of strangers, Cowley thought. He didn’t consider himself a stranger. He hoped she didn’t, either. It was good to hear her voice, frail though it sounded.

There was a silence, neither knowing how to go on.

‘The day after tomorrow then?’ said Pauline.

‘Don’t go to any real trouble,’ urged Cowley, knowing she would. She’d enjoyed entertaining, in Rome and London.

‘You want to speak to Barry again?’

‘I don’t think so.’

‘I’ll be seeing you.’ Cowley remained by the telephone, staring down at it. He decided he was genuinely looking forward to seeing her again. Although looking forward didn’t really seem to be the right phrase.

‘Well?’ demanded Andrews. He looked at her over the top of his brandy bowl.

‘Well what?’

‘How was it, speaking to him again?’

‘Don’t, Barry!’

‘It’s a simple enough question.’

Pauline wished it were. ‘It was nothing. You know that.’

‘Good,’ said the man. ‘Wear your red dress. I like your red dress.’

‘All right,’ agreed Pauline, at once. It would be a mistake to tell him Cowley hadn’t liked her in red.