In the Name of a Killer

Chapter Twenty-Three

Paul Hughes stared fixedly at the Russian, mouth slightly agape, throat lumping in small, swallowing movements. There was a bigger swallow as he closed his mouth, but before he could speak Cowley said: ‘She didn’t die tonight, Paul. But your taxi driver did: the taxi driver you always asked for, Vladimir Suzlev. So we’re looking at two. Now we want you to tell us all about it.’

Now the economist went from one to the other and then turned the movement into a positive head shake of bewilderment. ‘What are you saying? I don’t know what you’re saying!’

‘Your speed,’ said Cowley, quietly, almost conversational. ‘Tell us your way, however you like.’

Danilov’s concentration was divided. He was intent upon everything about Hughes but he was also aware of the manner of the FBI man’s questioning, admiring it, unaccustomed to the approach. With the sort of evidence they had the Russian way would have been aggressive, demanding a confession: maybe even making an arrest without any preamble, waiting for the breakdown at the police station after hours or even days of confinement. This was very different. There was no accusing hostility in Cowley’s attitude. The approach was solicitous, friendly even: yet on the way to the hospital to see Lydia Orlenko it had been the American who had shown the anger and later Cowley who’d evolved the ice-thin manoeuvre for a Russian involvement in this interrogation. Should he adjust, put his questions the same way? Or just modify slightly, remain the unknown threatening figure next to Cowley’s kindly consideration?

‘About Ann?’ queried Hughes, cautiously.

‘Sure. About Ann,’ encouraged the other American.

Hughes shrugged, looking away from them at last, vaguely towards his feet. He began fingering the edge of his dressinggown. ‘And so it all comes tumbling down. Job. Wife …’

Danilov moved to speak but there was the smallest, halting gesture from Cowley, so he stopped.

‘… my fault,’ Hughes went on. ‘I know it’s my fault: always has been. But at least Ann knew the score. Enjoyed it.’

‘What was the score, Paul?’ asked Cowley.

The man looked up, smiling hesitatingly. ‘Sex. I liked it. She liked it: it was hardly a secret at the embassy that she liked it. Everyone’s too close together here in Moscow.’

Danilov saw his opening. ‘“I didn’t mean to hurt,”’ he quoted. ‘“Please like it.” Your notes: the ones you wrote to her.’

‘Not me!’ blustered Hughes.

Over his shoulder to Pavin, Danilov said in Russian: ‘Log.’ The telephone records came immediately into his hand from the efficient assistant. Turning back to the American, quoting again, Danilov said: “Just a little. You know it’s good for me …” He looked up. ‘That’s you, three weeks ago. She said: “OK, but not much. Don’t really hurt. It’s not my bag, you know that.” You said: “You do it then: whip if you like. Make me sorry.” She said: “That might be good … I don’t mind head … like it. Greek too, but Christ you hurt me last night. My tits bled, you bastard.” A month ago she said: “You didn’t say you were going to do that when you tied me up. How would you like it with a dildo up your ass …’”

‘Jesus!’ Hughes broke in, eyes bulging, mouth open again. ‘That’s …’

‘… only a small part of what we know,’ Cowley told him. ‘She might have liked sex but she didn’t like pain as you do, did she?’

Hughes remained staring at Danilov. ‘You tapped my phone … were tapping my phone … there’ll be a protest …’

‘Shut up, Paul!’ said Cowley, the friendliness dropped like a curtain. ‘And let’s cut the crap, OK? Just the truth from now on.’

‘I didn’t kill her!’

‘We think you did,’ said Danilov. ‘We know all the lies you told.’

‘I had to, didn’t I? Think how I was caught up! My position!’

Danilov was aware of the slight tightening of Cowley’s hands, the only hint of anger. Cowley said: ‘Tell us about last Tuesday: not last night. The one before. And the entire truth this time. No tidying up.’

‘I need to smoke. Can I smoke?’

Cowley nodded agreement. ‘Take your time.’

The economist did, fumbling for cigarettes from a side-table and then appearing to have difficulty with a lighter, as if he were trying to delay as long as possible the final confession. The pungent smell of the French tobacco permeated the room. Cowley and Danilov looked at each other. Hughes brought the pack back to the chair with him, settling himself, gazing down at the floor again, ‘It was usually Tuesday,’ he began, haltingly. ‘I work out at the embassy gym that night. Angela expects me home late: thinks I have a few drinks afterwards. Last Tuesday we went to the Trenmos, Ann and I. She liked it there …’ He looked up, briefly, towards Danilov. ‘She wasn’t very fond of anything Russian. We had a meal: went back to her place like we usually did. Had a drink. Went to bed. Then I left …’ He looked up again, to both of them. ‘That’s it.’

‘No, it isn’t,’ said Danilov, just ahead of the other irritated investigator. ‘Do it again. From the restaurant. What did you eat? What did you talk about?’

Hughes shrugged. ‘Can’t remember what we ate.’

‘What did you talk about?’ repeated Cowley. ‘Were you happy, the two of you? Or not?’

‘OK,’ said Hughes, shrugging again, the evasion blatant.

‘Stop it, for Christ’s sake!’ said Cowley, the friendship curtain still down. ‘Or would you rather come with us to a Russian station-house? You’re outside embassy jurisdiction: I’m here as a concession. You fancy a Russian prison interrogation, where I wouldn’t have access?’

Danilov took the cue, turning to Pavin to return the telephone log and nodding, as if some decision had been made between them.

‘No!’ pleaded Hughes, at once, too alarmed to argue about diplomatic immunity. ‘No, please! I’m sorry. OK, so it wasn’t a good evening. It was all coming to an end, we both knew that. The messy part: getting on each other’s nerves.’

‘So you argued?’ demanded Danilov.

‘No, not argued!’ Hughes retorted. ‘Just irritated with each other: things I said annoyed her, things she said annoyed me.’

‘But you still went to bed?’ said Cowley.

‘That’s what it was all about.’

‘It was uncomfortable at the restaurant,’ Cowley goaded. ‘What happened back at Pushkinskaya?’

‘Had a drink or two, like I said. Usual squabble: she was very house-proud, almost a fetish with her. She wouldn’t let me smoke that night, not like she normally did. She was being awkward, on purpose: said concessions were being withdrawn …’

‘But they weren’t, in bed?’ broke in Danilov.

‘Old times stuff,’ dismissed Hughes. He smiled hopefully at both of them.

Neither detective smiled back. Cowley’s hands flexed. Danilov said: ‘Her breasts were bitten.’

‘She liked …’ Hughes began, but Cowley, too loudly, said: ‘Don’t! You try it once more and you’re downtown on your own and I couldn’t give a fuck. I’ll insist you go downtown.’

Hughes’s cigarette had a long hang of ash. He stubbed it out hurriedly, strangely seeming to wither physically. ‘She let me. That was all. She let me.’ His voice was cracked, jagged. Then he said: ‘Jesus, this is awful! Embarrassing!’

Sure he knew how to play the interrogation now, Danilov said: ‘Ann Harris’s death was awful, too. She was stabbed in the back. All her hair was cut off. What was wrong with her hair? Didn’t you like it? Or was it some sex thing, like the buttons and the shoes?’

‘What buttons and shoes? I don’t understand.’

‘When you’re ready,’ said Cowley, accepting the denial for the moment. ‘You were in bed and you bit her.’

‘Not like that! You make it sound … like it was …’

‘… Deviant? Dangerously violent? Something we shouldn’t find unusual involving a girl who was killed and abused the same night with your teethmarks in her breasts?’ interrupted Danilov.

‘It was what we did!’

‘Why Suzlev?’ demanded Cowley. ‘Why kill him?’

‘I didn’t kill him.’

‘You did,’ insisted Danilov.

‘Paul?’

The American economist had been slumped, almost unnaturally bowed forward, but he stiffened at his wife’s voice. There was a sound like a groan as he half-turned towards the living-room door at which she stood. Unlike her husband she was dressed, in a red skirt and homeknit sweater decorated with matching red swans proceeding across the front, a squat woman on the point of fatness, freshly washed face shining free of make-up, her hair completely grey without any attempt at disguising dye or tinted highlights.

‘Paul?’ she questioned again. ‘What is it? What’s going on? What’s happened at the embassy?’ Towards the end she extended her look beyond her husband, inviting a reply from anyone.

‘I asked you to leave us,’ said Hughes. His voice was even more broken.

The dumpy woman looked puzzled, but at the same time appeared to realize her husband was under some sort of pressure. She smiled tentatively and said: ‘Can I get anything? Coffee?’

‘Just leave us. Please,’ said Hughes.

She didn’t move, at once. Then, with the skeletal words people use in times of personal uncertainty, she said: ‘I’ll be in the kitchen if you want me.’

Hughes scratched a match back and forth to light another cigarette and both Cowley and Danilov shifted, practically at the same time, angrily aware that the momentum had been broken. Trying too quickly to bring it back, Cowley said: ‘Was that how it happened, Paul? A lot of small arguments, early in the evening? Some sex stuff that got out of hand? Then, before you knew what was really happening, she was dead?’

Danilov prevented himself looking curiously at the FBI agent, who’d proposed a sequence they knew hadn’t occurred, supposing the man was simply trying to frighten the economist into an admission.

‘No!’ wailed Hughes. He looked up at them, eyes filmed. ‘We went to bed, right? She let me do what I wanted. We actually made love, but it wasn’t good, not for either of us. It was late by then: I had to get back. I said I’d see her the following day. I got dressed and left. Came straight back here.’

‘How did you come?’ asked Danilov.

‘Walked. It’s very close.’

‘Before you left Pushkinskaya there was no more argument?’ Cowley pushed the explanation back.

‘No.’

Both investigators discerned the reluctance. Cowley said: ‘What was it?’

There was the familiar shoulder movement. ‘She called me a bastard.’

‘Why?’

‘Wanted me to stay longer, I supposed. It had been very quick. I guess that was it. Wasn’t happy.’

‘You mean she wasn’t satisfied?’ insisted Cowley.

‘I guess.’

‘What about you?’

‘Me?’

‘Were you satisfied?’

‘Yes.’ Mixed with the earlier reluctance there was doubt this time.

‘You sure you didn’t hang around, waiting for her to leave the apartment?’ said Danilov. ‘Followed her to the alley near Gercena where it was dark enough to kill her with no one seeing?’

‘I didn’t know she was going to leave the apartment!’ denied Hughes. ‘How could I have done?’

‘Maybe she told you. Left with you,’ said Cowley.

‘That’s ridiculous!’ said the man. ‘Why should she do that?’

‘You tell us. Why, after going to bed with you, making love to you, did Ann Harris get up out of bed and walk — inadequately dressed — to where she was found?’ said Danilov.

‘I don’t know!’ The denial was another wail.

Danilov thought he heard a sound, a chair scrape, from the kitchen.

‘Why did you kill her, Paul?’ said Cowley, abrupt but quiet, friendly again. ‘Tell me why you killed Ann. And the cab driver. And attacked the woman tonight. Or don’t you know? Is that the way it is, Paul? Don’t you know? Just something that happens? Talk it through with us, whichever way it comes into your head.’

Hughes’s reply was quiet, too, his voice beseeching. ‘I didn’t kill Ann. I don’t know anything about a taxi driver. I don’t know anything about any woman, tonight. I don’t know, a lot of the time, what either of you are talking about. I lied about Ann. I admit that; all of it. I had to, after she was murdered: knew I could be destroyed if you found out, although I realized it was almost inevitable that you would. Trying to put it off, I guess. Hoping it wouldn’t happen.’

‘Where were you last night?’ persisted Cowley.

‘Here,’ said Hughes, too hurriedly.

‘It was a Tuesday,’ reminded Danilov. ‘You didn’t go to the embassy gym?’

‘Early,’ said the man, indistinctly, looking down again.

‘Your wife’s in the kitchen,’ said Cowley. ‘You want me to call her in to ask what time you got home?’

Hughes appeared to shrivel further. ‘I was with someone, after the gym. I got back here late.’

‘How late?’ pressed Danilov.

‘I don’t know. Eleven. Twelve. Nearer twelve, I guess.’

‘How about after twelve? Nearer one, in fact. After attacking a woman whom you didn’t properly kill, in an alley off Granovskaya Street?’

‘No!’ came the plea, again. ‘I was back before twelve.’

‘Was your wife awake?’ asked Cowley.

‘Sort of. She was aware of me coming in.’

‘You going to call her from the kitchen? Or shall I?’

‘No!’ repeated Hughes, pleading more desperately. ‘Don’t involve her. Please don’t involve her!

Cowley sighed. ‘You know what we’re talking about! We’re talking about a double murder. And an attempted murder. We’re questioning you about every one of them. And you’re frightened about your wife finding out you had a piece of ass on the side!’

Hughes looked speechless at both investigators for several moments. Then his head began to shake. ‘I don’t know what to do.’

‘I know what you’re going to do,’ said Cowley, coming forward towards the other American. ‘You’re going to tell us, to the minute, where you were last night. And the moment I think you’re lying, as you’ve tried to lie like the stupid asshole you are since we got here, I’m going to close all this down and have you taken to a Moscow police station and I’m going to have the Russians issue a press release, saying that you’re being questioned in connection with a double murder. You can either tell your wife on your way out or let her see it on CNN. So from the top. What time did you get to the gym?’

‘Six,’ said Hughes, dully.

‘Six exactly? Not earlier? Or later?’

‘Definitely six. I had a game arranged, with Andrews …’ The smile came hopefully. ‘He’ll remember. Tell you.’

‘What time did you leave?’

‘Seven. He’ll confirm that, too.’

‘Then where?’

There was the hesitation. Cowley pulled impatiently back from the intent way he had been sitting, glancing at Danilov and shaking his head in dismissal. ‘OK, let’s wrap it up down at the station!’

‘Pam,’ blurted Hughes. ‘Pam Donnelly. That’s where I was. With Pam Donnelly.’

It took several moments for Cowley to remember the immaculately dressed economic assistant at the embassy on the day he’d first questioned Hughes. He recalled, too, the photographs of the Hughes wife and children, on the man’s desk. ‘Doing what?’

Hughes began the shrug, but stopped it. ‘She made supper, at her place.’

‘Yes?’

‘You don’t need me to tell you.’

‘That’s precisely what I need.’

‘We went to bed. Made love.’

‘Think of Ann, while you were doing it?’

‘That’s a cheap shot!’

‘Tell me about it!’ sneered Cowley, intentionally goading the man, who instead interpreted the remark literally.

‘That’s why the situation with Ann was ending,’ said the financial controller. ‘Because of Pam. It’s been going on for a few months.’

‘Did Ann know?’

Hughes shook his head. ‘I don’t think so, not about Pam. Just that it was over between her and me.’

Danilov thought the questioning was slipping sideways. ‘This other woman, she’ll be able to say what time you left?’

‘Yes.’

‘Where’s her apartment? Inside the compound? Or out?’

‘Outside. Vesnina Street.’

‘How did you get back?’

‘Car.’

Danilov wondered how the American safeguarded his windscreen wipers. ‘It would only have taken five or ten minutes, to get to either Granovskaya or Semasko, by car.’ They hadn’t asked the patrolman who found Lydia Orlenko if he’d heard a car driving away.

‘I don’t know where Granovskaya or Semasko are! I came directly home, after leaving Pam!’

‘We’re going to need to speak to your wife,’ said Cowley. ‘You’re going to need us to speak to your wife.’

‘I don’t want to hurt her.’

‘With your preferences, that sounds a pretty odd remark,’ said Cowley. ‘Don’t you think anyway you went past that a long time ago?’

Hughes made another effort to straighten, pulling the dressing-gown around himself. ‘I didn’t do it, any of it. You’ll accept that, eventually. Why wreck her life, telling her things she doesn’t need to know? It’s only sex. My business. It’s not a crime. I haven’t committed any crime.’

Cowley stood, realizing for the first time an ache, from sitting as long as he had. Looking down at the other American, he said: ‘Courts decide whether crime has been committed or not. And will, in these cases.’

Angela Hughes emerged from the kitchen the moment he knocked, and Cowley wondered how much of their conversation she had already heard from being obviously behind the door. She came apprehensively into the room. Both Danilov and Pavin stood. Pavin offered a chair. ‘What is it?’ she said. It was difficult to hear her words.

‘An embassy confusion,’ said Hughes, ahead of anyone else. ‘That’s all. An embassy confusion.’

The woman looked curiously between Danilov and Cowley. ‘You are investigating the murder of Ann: I saw you both on television, at a press conference!’

‘That’s it!’ said Hughes, in panicked desperation. ‘Still something to do with Ann.’

‘What?’ There was the slightest suggestion of strength in her voice.

Cowley saw she had toast crumbs speckling the front of her swan-procession sweater. As the only possible spokesman, he said: ‘Mrs Hughes, we’d like you to help us on a small point. Tuesdays Paul uses the embassy gym. Stays on maybe. What time did he get home last night?’

The curiosity came to her face again. ‘What’s important about last night? Ann was murdered a week ago.’

‘We’re just filling in squares, familiarizing ourselves with everyone’s regular, normal movements at the embassy,’ said Cowley. ‘Please, Mrs Hughes. Last night?’

The woman looked very directly at her husband. Her voice hard, she said to him: ‘What do you want me to say?’

‘The truth,’ came in Cowley ‘I-we-want the absolute truth.’

Still looking at Hughes, she said: ‘Around eleven thirty. Maybe just after.’

‘You’re sure it was before midnight? Not after?’

‘It couldn’t have been after,’ she asserted, definitely, looking back to Cowley at last. ‘I woke up, sort of, when he got into bed. And then I heard the church clock strike, in Pecatnikov. It strikes every hour: not the quarters. Just the hour. I know it was midnight, because I counted the chimes. I do that, if I wake up during the night. Don’t know why. I just do. I think lots of people do.’

Neither Cowley nor Danilov looked at each other. Hughes became even straighter in his chair, his demeanour beginning to be that of a man expecting an apology. Foolishly he said: ‘Well? Satisfied?’

‘No,’ deflated Cowley, at once.

‘Satisfied about what?’ demanded the woman.

No one answered her. Indifferent about showing the same consideration as Cowley in front of the economist’s wife, Danilov said: ‘January 17 was a Tuesday. Where were you on January 17 …?’ He looked fully at Angela Hughes. ‘Do you remember the time your husband got home on January 17?’

‘How the hell could anyone remember something so unimportant after five weeks …?’ began Hughes, outraged, but his wife cut across him. ‘There’s no way I could have remembered,’ she said, ‘I was on home leave in Newark, New Jersey, with our sons, for the last three weeks of January: I wasn’t even here, in Moscow, on the 17th.’

There was a brief period of absolute silence, before Cowley said: ‘Mr Hughes, I’d appreciate your getting dressed to come to the embassy with us now. We’d like to speak to …’ He paused. ‘… The rest of the staff in the finance division.’

To Cowley, the woman said: ‘What’s he done? Why are you talking to him like this?’ And then swinging around to confront her husband she said: ‘Tell me what you’ve done!’

‘Nothing!’ Hughes insisted, with matching forcefulness. ‘You heard what he said. They want to speak to my staff: proper — essential in fact — that I am there. It’s my responsibility.’ He finished actually moving away from the group, sparing himself any further demands from anyone.

‘This isn’t right!’ she protested, turning upon them. ‘Not right at all! You’re not telling me the truth.’

‘Mrs Hughes,’ said Cowley, the patient consideration faltering. ‘The person to tell you the truth is your husband. But not now. Later.’

Dressed — although carelessly shaved — Hughes’s demeanour shifted surprisingly in the car going towards the American embassy, something close to confidence showing in the man. As they connected with the inner ring road, he actually turned smiling to Danilov, whose question it had been back at the apartment, and said: ‘Isn’t that funny? I’d forgotten all about Angela being back in America on January 17: wouldn’t have got the significance, not for a long time.’

‘What significance?’ asked Cowley.

‘You tell me,’ replied Hughes, defiantly. ‘Why is January 17 so important? What happened then?’

Danilov was unsettled by the man’s changed attitude. Trying to upset it, he said: ‘Don’t you remember? That’s the night Vladimir Suzlev, the taxi driver, was murdered.’

‘Aah!’ said Hughes, drawing out the expression. More defiant still, he said: ‘That makes January 17 very important, doesn’t it. Crucial, in fact. Good.’

Their arrival at the embassy prevented any continuation of the conversation. By unspoken agreement, Pavin remained with the car in the side road separating the embassy from the museum to Fedor Chaliapin. The entry guard was the marine whom Cowley had encountered on his first day and seen on subsequent visits. Cowley insisted Dimitri Danilov was coming into the legation upon his authority, and Hughes further bewildered both investigators by saying that he also guaranteed the Russian’s admission.

Pamela Donnelly responded immediately to Hughes’s summons, hurrying through the door without knocking and smiling broadly until she saw the other two men, belatedly coming to an uncertain halt, the smile fading.

‘It’s all right,’ said Hughes quietly, calming. ‘You remember Mr Cowley, from the other day?’

The girl nodded, guardedly. She was as carefully dressed as before, mid-calf brown leather boots a perfect match with the deeper brown velvet skirt, the sweater cream this time, with no motif. She didn’t look the sort of girl who would enjoy having her nipples bitten or enduring any other sort of pain for that matter. But who could tell? Cowley said: ‘We want you to tell us something. The truth. About January … particularly a period about five weeks ago.’

She looked questioningly at Hughes. He said: ‘It’s all right, darling. Tell them everything. They know about you and me. So it’s important you tell them what they want to know.’

Pamela looked back to Cowley. ‘What about January, five weeks ago?’

‘Do you remember Tuesday, January 17?’

She frowned. ‘Not particularly. Should I?’

‘We want you to,’ came in Danilov. ‘Were you and Mr Hughes together that night?’

She looked uncertainly again at Hughes, who nodded. She said: ‘Yes.’

‘It was five weeks ago,’ said Danilov, picking up on Hughes’s earlier protest. ‘Can you be definite about that specific date?’

‘Yes,’ she said again, shortly. She was beginning to colour.

‘Why so sure?’ pressed Cowley.

‘I don’t like this … it’s … it’s unpleasant,’ she objected.

‘It’s important, darling. Very important,’ said Hughes, urgently. ‘Tell them everything they want to know.’

Refusing to look directly at them, Pamela said: ‘Angela was in America. For three weeks. The middle week — the 17th was in the middle week — Paul virtually lived with me all the time …’ The colour deepened. ‘Certainly stayed with me every night. He only went home between times to change.’

‘At night?’ demanded Cowley.

‘Sometimes. We’d go back together, pick up what he wanted, and go on somewhere.’

‘He didn’t go out alone, on the night of that Tuesday?’

‘Not any night. Why?’

‘They think I killed Ann,’ Hughes announced. His voice was flat but he smiled, inviting astonishment at the absurdity of the suggestion. ‘There was another murder before her. On the 17th.’

‘What!’ The girl was pebble-eyed with astonishment. ‘But that’s … incredible.’

Cowley had thought she was going to say absurd or ridiculous; that’s what alibi-providers usually said. ‘What about last night?’

‘Paul came to my place from the gym. I cooked a meal.’ She stopped, refusing to go on.

‘What time did he leave?’

‘Sometime after eleven. Quarter after, maybe.’

From his desk Hughes said to Danilov, ‘Which gives me fifteen minutes to get to Pecatnikov, just like Angela told you.’

‘Would you be able to swear in court, on oath, to everything you’ve told us today?’ asked Cowley, resignation in his voice.

‘In court?’ echoed the girl, alarmed.

‘If you were asked?’

She looked at Hughes, briefly, then said: ‘Yes. If I had to.’

‘So would Angela,’ Hughes insisted. ‘You heard what she said.’ The supercilious assurance was fully restored again: he had his hands cupped across the desk, the right one uppermost, showing the twisted finger that had seemed so important such a short time ago. ‘Is there anything else we can help you with? Any of us?’

‘Not for the moment,’ said Cowley, trying for a way to puncture the pomposity. ‘Maybe later. Your wife will probably have questions of her own.’

Cowley escorted Danilov out of the embassy, to the waiting car. There he said: ‘I guess I’ll have a lot of overnight messages.’

‘And I have to brief the Director and the Prosecutor.’

‘We’ll speak by phone,’ said the American.

Barry Andrews was in the FBI office but away from his desk, pacing back and forth in front of the window. When Cowley entered, Andrews said: ‘Thank Christ you’re here! Where the hell have you been?’ He gestured to a pile of messages and diplomatic pouch material. ‘They’re going ape-shit in Washington, particularly over Hughes. You’re to keep the Russians from getting anywhere near him: you’ve personally got to get him back. Hidden in a box if necessary.’

Cowley scooped up the waiting papers. ‘There was another attack last night,’ he announced, wearily. ‘This time the victim didn’t die. And it won’t be necessary to ship Hughes home in a box. He’s a sado-masochist and Christ knows what else, but he didn’t kill Ann Harris. Or anyone else. He’s got alibi witnesses all the way.’ He hammered his fist against the desk, at once regretting the theatricality. ‘We’ve been wasting our fucking time! For days we’ve been chasing the wrong leads to the wrong man!’

‘But who …?’ started Andrews, stopping abruptly at the stupidity of the question.

‘I don’t know,’ said Cowley, depressed by what he saw as defeat. ‘Now we don’t have a clue; not a single goddamned clue.’

‘What about the woman last night? There must be something!’

‘Nothing that points anywhere positive. Just that her attacker was a man. She fainted or went into shock or something, when she was stabbed. Says she didn’t see his face.’

Andrews sat at his desk, lighting the first cigar of the day. ‘Hughes’s wife provide his alibi?’

‘The most convincing part.’

‘How’d she take it, knowing her husband was screwing around?’

‘It didn’t quite come out that way: it will, I guess, when she thinks about it.’

‘And who would have thought it, about innocent little Pamela?’

Cowley shook his head, irritably. ‘That’s all immaterial now.’

‘What are you going to do?’ asked Andrews.

Cowley looked down at all the messages. ‘Read my mail. Then call the Director and tell him I was wrong.’

‘That’s not going to sound good, after the uproar you caused in Washington with the original warning about Hughes.’

‘Tell me about it!’ said Cowley, repeating the earlier cynical cliche. He didn’t feel cynical. He felt foolish and angry at himself, for making the mistakes. Andrews was right. The admission wasn’t going to look at all good in Washington: in fact, it was going to look bloody awful.

Cowley took everything back to his compound suite but did not immediately read it, wanting to try at least to feel physically better. He left coffee filtering while he showered and shaved, his mind blocked by the forthcoming telephone conversation with the Director. The leads towards Hughes had been convincing, the obvious path to follow. And he had been correct in the peculiar diplomatic circumstances, alerting Washington in advance of any interview. But he didn’t need to read the incoming messages from Washington to imagine the panic. Obviously the Director would have discussed everything with the Secretary of State. So Paul Hughes’s sexual proclivities were public knowledge in the State Department. Would it affect the man’s future career? Almost inevitably. And that destructive information would have come from him. The necessary fall-out of an investigation. He wished the attempted self-reassurance had been more successful. All in the past now, he told himself. So what was the future? He wished to Christ he knew.

Being clean and shaved was the only improvement to the way Cowley felt. He poured coffee and still in a towelling robe settled to the messages, reading every exchange concerning the economist to prepare himself, reflecting beyond possible harm to Hughes’s career to the possible damage to his own. Overly pessimistic, he decided, seeking further reassurance. Wrong turns frequently occurred in investigations. This one — again because of the goddamned circumstances — was just more serious, that’s all. And entirely his own fault, Cowley decided: his and the Russian’s. They’d lost sight of what they were supposed to be doing and got into an infantile competition, each trying to outsmart the other, prove who was the better detective. And both ended up looking jerks. Not Danilov, the American corrected immediately.

The bulk of the remaining documentation was technical. The American post-mortem report was throughout critical of the Russian examination, claiming evidence could have been lost by its glaring carelessness. The American pathologist was only prepared to estimate the thickness and penetration of the stab wound to Ann Harris because of Russian incision clumsiness. Samples of hair that remained after the shearing had been subjected to deoxyribonucleic acid analysis, as had her blood, to isolate the molecular structure of her chromosomes and establish her individual genetic pattern. There was a request for available hair from the first victim, for similar analysis. The nasal bruising was obviously consistent with a hand being clamped over the victim’s face and then with the victim being pulled backwards, from behind. Chin bruising and inner lower lip contusions not listed in the Russian report were also consistent with this. Cowley underlined that paragraph, remembering the similar bruising earlier that morning upon Lydia Orlenko’s face. The two fingernails that had been roughly broken had left jagged splits and edges. The shattering of the nails could have happened either from striking the ground when she fell or by scratching her assailant in a last, frantic fight. No evidence had been found to support the scratching theory, from scrapings beneath the broken nails. But such evidence could have been lost during the first post-mortem, by movement of the body during transportation to America or by the delay in their receiving the body for examination. If the finger damage had been caused either by falling or fighting, the shattered parts should have been recovered by the scene-of-the-crime search. Such parts might also have had attached forensic evidence like blood or skin that could have been matched to the assailant by DNA comparison.

Cowley sighed, pushing the autopsy report aside. Nothing, except justifiable complaints. Or at least nothing that at the moment had any significance. Cowley halted the dismissal. There was one item of significance, which was further proof of Paul Hughes’s innocence. If Ann Harris had scratched hard enough to break her nails, Hughes’s face or hands would have been marked. And they hadn’t been, anywhere.

Back at the FBI facility in the embassy, Cowley personally transmitted all the details of the exonerating interview with Paul Hughes to Pennsylvania Avenue. Andrews remained with him throughout, reading each document after its dispatch. At the end the local man shook his head and smiled and said: ‘It happens. The damned case has only just begun.’

The connection from the secure booth in the embassy communications room to the FBI headquarters was instantaneous, with no interference whatsoever. At Leonard Ross’s insistence, Cowley verbally went through everything that he was sure the Director would by now have in front of him, in the fifth-floor office. There was silence for several moments after Cowley finished talking, the unspoken condemnation more accusing than any direct words. Eventually Ross said: ‘A complete mistake?’

‘The evidence seemed compelling,’ Cowley insisted.

‘I’d intended you should escort Hughes back. I want you back here,’ declared the Director. ‘Get a flight today.’

‘I …’ Cowley started, but was cut off instantly.

‘… What?’ demanded Ross.

‘Nothing,’ said Cowley. ‘I’ll make the reservation.’

With such a complete telephone system available literally in front of him, Cowley called Dimitri Danilov from there instead of going back down to the FBI room. Determined, on his part, against continuing the competition he believed to have blurred their professionalism, Cowley announced his return to Washington, but said he wanted to meet Danilov before leaving, to discuss the outstanding requests of American scientists. Danilov had a further reason for a meeting: following the previous night’s attack upon Lydia Orlenko — and now there was no longer any reason to conceal a possible connection with the US embassy — the Federal Prosecutor and the Militia Director had decided the delayed public warning should finally be issued.

When Cowley returned downstairs and announced his recall, Andrews frowned and said: ‘When will you be back?’

‘I don’t know.’

‘You will be coming back?’

‘I don’t know about that, either.’

‘I said at the very beginning that I didn’t envy you this one.’

Cowley thought the man had said something different that night in his apartment, but he wasn’t interested in continuing the discussion. All he could think about was how badly he’d fouled up. ‘Maybe you’re lucky to be publicly out of it.’

‘That’s what I was thinking,’ admitted Andrews.

Burden reviewed the media coverage at a breakfast meeting in his suite: there were copies for everyone of what had been printed.

McBride said, invitingly: ‘Pretty damned good, don’t you think?’

‘So far, so good,’ agreed Burden. ‘Last night the FBI Director wouldn’t take my call. I was told the Secretary of State was unavailable. The ambassador here knows fuck-all. The FBI people here won’t cooperate … we’re being given the run-around.’

‘I don’t know who else — where else — we can go,’ ventured Prescott.

At that moment Beth Humphries came into the room, ashenfaced. Unspeaking she offered the Senator the Russian announcement of the linked murders, running on Reuter’s English language service.

‘Now we’ve got it!’ declared Burden, looking up. ‘I’m going to light a fire under the bastards that will roast them …’ He looked to McBride. ‘Get every reporter and television station you can find here, in two hours.’

‘Called back to be disciplined?’ queried Pauline, at once.

‘He caused the most God-awful flap, raising the alarm about Hughes,’ said Andrews.

‘Could it affect his career?’

‘Easily, at this level of political importance.’

‘Poor William.’

‘It could well be poor William,’ Andrews agreed.