In the Name of a Killer

Chapter Two

There was not much blood and most of what there was had been absorbed into the coat. Ann Harris did not lie as she had fallen, because the body had been moved slightly while she was shorn and the buttons removed. Now she was slightly over the outline chalked on the pavement, disturbed a second time by the initial examination of the pathologist and the forensic experts. The narrow street, which did bend before leading out on to Ulitza Gercena, had been sealed at both ends by Militia vehicles drawn across it. Shielding canvas screens were around the corpse, which was unnecessary, because the only people there at 3 a.m. on a sub-zero February morning were police. The floodlights unnaturally whitened everything and everyone: the men grouped and moving around looked as bloodless as the victim at their feet.

Danilov edged into the group, which parted and began to break up when he was recognized. The movement caught the attention of the man bent over the body. Yuri Mikhailovich Pavin looked up and then nodded, when he saw his superior. Pavin rose, stiffly, as Danilov stooped to take his place. She’d been attractive, beautiful even, but now she was ugly. The eyes bulged, staring either in terminal terror or pain, and the lips were drawn back from her teeth in what looked like a snarl. The ugliness was made worse by what had happened to her hair: it had been chopped, in patches and close to the scalp, which was scratched and in places cut. Missed tufts stood upright. Her clothes did not seem unduly disturbed.

‘How long?’ asked Danilov. The woman’s body already appeared stiff, with rigor.

Pavin shrugged. ‘Maybe eight hours, maybe shorter. The doctor says the cold could have brought the temperature down quickly so he can’t really say.’

As if on cue a blast of wind drove up the narrow street, making them hunch against it. Danilov had taken to having his own hair cropped very short. This early in the year he should have worn his hat.

‘Who found her?’

‘Militia van, making the rounds. Timed at one twenty.’

‘She hasn’t been dead eight hours. Eight hours ago this street would have had people on it.’

‘I know,’ agreed Pavin.

Danilov was glad Pavin was going to be the evidence and exhibit officer again. And not just because of continuity. Pavin was the sort of back-up every investigator needed, a meticulous collector of isolated facts which, once assimilated, were never forgotten. He was a heavy, slow-moving man who looked more like a patrol officer than a Petrovka headquarters Major. Danilov privately doubted Pavin would rise any further in rank but didn’t believe Pavin wanted to: he guessed the man accepted that he had reached his operating level and was content. Pavin knew every guideline in the investigation manual and observed each one: it would have been Pavin who ordered the unnecessary canvas screens. ‘Any identification?’

‘None. This is all there was.’

Danilov accepted the key, preserved for later fingerprint tests inside a glassine envelope. ‘What makes you so sure she’s American?’

‘Clothes labels,’ said Pavin. ‘Every one American, inside the coat and the skirt and the shirt. The shoes, too.’

‘Is that how they were?’ asked Danilov, nodding towards the low-heeled pumps. At the moment they were only covered with protective, see-through plastic, not yet inside an exhibit bag.

‘I checked specifically: the observer in the Militia van thinks he might have kicked into them when they first found the body, when it was dark apart from their headlights. They were certainly by the head but he doesn’t know how neat.’

‘He didn’t touch them?’

‘He says not.’

‘Fingerprint the entire crew, for elimination.’

‘I’ve already arranged that,’ said Pavin. It was one of the basic, scene-of-the-crime rules.

‘Who’s the pathologist?’

‘Novikov,’ said the Major. Apologetically, as if he were in some way responsible for the medical rosters, he added: ‘I’m sorry.’

Danilov shrugged, resigned. In a court trial a year earlier he’d shown to be unsound a medical assessment reached by Viktor Novikov: the man had been forced to admit surmising rather than conducting a necessary test. The hatred was absolute. ‘What’s he say?’

‘Single stab wound. He’ll need the autopsy, of course, but it looks like a clean entry. Could be a sharp-pointed knife with a single edge. The head wounds are just superficial, caused when the hair was cut off. Some post-death bruising, to the left thigh and buttock, where she fell. No sign of her fighting: nothing beneath her fingernails where she might have scratched. Or hair, which she might have pulled.’

‘Sex?’

‘Her underclothes were intact: she wore tights over her knickers. Her outer clothes weren’t pulled up or torn.’

Danilov handed the glassine envelope back to his assistant and said: ‘That isn’t a hotel key.’

‘No.’

‘She could have been robbed of her handbag, I suppose?’

‘She’s wearing a cross on a gold necklace. And a gold Rolex. And there’s a signet ring, on her left hand. No wedding ring, though.’

‘How far away is the American diplomatic compound?’

‘Four, maybe five hundred metres. Behind the embassy on Ulitza Chaykovskaya. She needn’t necessarily be a diplomat, of course.’

Danilov sighed. The wind scurried up the street again, although not as strongly as before. It would have been past midnight when Danilov had got to bed, because he’d stopped off to see Larissa on her shift change-over and then made sure Olga was asleep before he followed her to bed: he felt gritty-eyed with tiredness and knew he wouldn’t sleep again for a long time now. ‘You alerted anyone else?’

‘That’s your decision,’ reminded the man who knew the rules.

‘This is going to be hell if she is connected with the US embassy,’ predicted Danilov. ‘The fact that she’s possibly American is bad enough.’

‘You think the Cheka will want to be involved?’ asked Pavin, using the original revolutionary name of the Soviet intelligence service, which was how the former KGB, now the Agency for Federal Security always internally referred to itself, with muscle-flexing bravado.

‘Probably,’ said Danilov. ‘And I can’t begin to imagine what the Americans will want.’ At that moment he didn’t even want to imagine.

‘It would have been easier in the old days,’ said Pavin, with a stab of nostalgia. ‘When we didn’t have to cooperate.’

‘There aren’t any old days, not any longer.’ He paused and then added: ‘Supposedly, that is.’ Danilov had once been enthusiastic about glasnost and perestroika — still would have liked to be — but after all the unmet promises and expectations he was resigned like everyone else to their failure through obstructive bureaucracy and latent Russian inefficiency. Even in the old, uncooperative days this would have been a bastard, if she was American. ‘Does Novikov know I’m the investigator?’

‘He guessed, because of the other one. He said you’d have to take your turn: there are other autopsies ahead of you.’

‘What about forensic?’

‘Finished just before you arrived.’

‘Anything?’ Pavin would have told him already if there had been: he still had to ask the hopeful question. Pavin would expect it.

‘Nothing immediate.’

Danilov gestured to the dark, glowering buildings all around. ‘No one hear anything?’ That was an even more hopeful question: Pavin would have produced any witness by now.

‘It’s mostly office buildings. I thought we’d start the house-to-house when it’s light.’

Danilov nodded agreement. ‘Photographs?’

‘All done. The ambulance is ready, when you close the scene of the crime.’

For several moments Danilov remained silent, gazing down at the now frozen and mistreated body of the young woman. Who are you, once-pretty girl? What hidden things am I going to find out about you that no one else knows? If they don’t matter, I’ll try to keep your secret. But how — dear, much doubted God how! — am I going to find whoever did this to you? Who made you so ugly? Not for the first time since joining the murder section of the serious crime squad Danilov was glad he and Olga could not have children, for him to live in deeply wrapped apprehension that one day another policeman might stare down at the battered and maimed remains of his own son or daughter. He was never able to think of a dead body just as a dead body: to remain utterly detached. Always he thought, as he was thinking at this moment, that this ugly, brutalized thing at his feet had once been a living person with feelings and fears and sadnesses and joys. Professionally wrong, he supposed. Or was it? Didn’t the fact that he did care make him more determined than most others at the Militia headquarters at Petrovka who he knew sneered and even laughed at him, on their way with open pockets to get favours returned for favours granted, Militia officers for the money-making opportunities the job presented, not because they were dedicated policemen? Danilov halted his own sneer, refusing the hypocrisy. Different now, since he’d joined the murder division. But what about before? What about Eduard Agayans and all the other grateful operators? He’d rationalized his own excuses, but he had no grounds, no right, to criticize other policemen. To criticize anybody. Allowing Pavin his scene-of-the-crime expertise, Danilov said: ‘Is there anything else?’

‘Not here I don’t think.’

‘Let’s clear up then.’

Pavin gave the summons, which was answered within seconds by the strained-gear sound of the reversing ambulance. Danilov wished they’d shown more care, loading the body on to the stretcher. He said: ‘I want all the occupied accommodation in the street checked, before anyone leaves for work. There’s no doubt what we’re looking for: I don’t suppose there was before. I want every psychiatric institution in Moscow checked for discharged patients who might have indicated any of these tendencies.’

‘Every one?’ frowned Pavin.

Danilov nodded after the departing ambulance. ‘If she’s American, I’ll get all the manpower I want.’

‘Do you want me to push Novikov?’

‘I’ll do that.’ The problem between himself and the pathologist was an irritating, unnecessary hindrance in any investigation: certainly not an added complication he needed this time. Danilov normally confronted major difficulties himself, rarely delegating, but maybe this was an occasion to seek superior authority.

‘Where are you going, if I need to get in touch?’

It was a discreet, friend-to-friend question. There were some times during the month when Larissa slept all night at the Druzhba Hotel and was happy to be awakened. Tonight, because of the shift change, she would have been home hours ago: she would be asleep now, turned away from the booze-soaked breath of Yevgennie Kosov, the Colonel-in-charge of Moscow Militia district 19, Danilov’s old command. And now Kosov’s personal fiefdom, which he ruled like a Tsar accepting tribute. Danilov guessed the man had gone far beyond the introductions he had provided, in the last days of the hand-over.

Danilov looked at his watch in the harshly white, deadening light. It was four thirty. ‘Home. I’ll call Lapinsk from there.’ Leonid Lapinsk was the General commanding the murder investigation division at Petrovka: he was only two years from retirement with an undisguised ambition to see that time out as quietly as possible: tonight was going to set his ulcers on fire.

‘He’ll kill again,’ predicted Pavin, gazing down at the chalked outline of where the body had been. It was a distant remark, the man practically talking to himself.

‘Of course he will,’ said Danilov.

The apartment, off Kirovskaya and conveniently close to the metro at Kazan for someone who did not currently have a car, was in the twilight of approaching dawn when Danilov got back. He considered vodka but dismissed it at once. He couldn’t be bothered with coffee, which — in contrast with his now spurned gift-receiving days — was Russian, not imported: powdered grains that floated on top of the cup, like dust, no matter how hot the water. And tea was too much trouble.

Danilov settled, head forward on his chest, in his personal but now lumpy-seated chair, just slightly to the left of the ancient and constantly failing TV that had been a grateful present from Eduard Agayans when he had commanded his own Militia district with such personal discrimination, before the transfer to Petrovka.

The investigation had been difficult enough already. But this morning — this gritty-eyed, cold, gradually forming morning — the murder of an unknown American girl was going to compound his problems in ways he couldn’t even guess. There was one easy surmise, though: Pavin was probably right about the Cheka or the KGB or whatever they wanted to call themselves. They wouldn’t consider an investigator from the People’s Militia — even the senior investigator with the rank of Colonel — qualified to head an inquiry like this. Domestic homicides or quarrel killings, maybe: they were ordinary, unimportant. But the murder of an American was different: that became political, exterior: something possibly to focus international attention upon Moscow and the disintegrated Soviet Union. What if they took over? Danilov confronted the possibility. If it was an official decision, there was nothing he could do to oppose it. But if it stayed just below that authoritative level he would resist any attempt to shunt him aside. In Russian law, the law that almost miraculously was increasingly being the law, despite the failures of the other reforms, the stabbing and the defilement of a dark-haired, brown-eyed girl of about thirty was the indisputable responsibility of the homicide division of the duly appointed Criminal Investigation Department of the Moscow Division of the People’s Militia. His responsibility. The most difficult case of his life, Danilov thought again. Did he want such a responsibility? Wouldn’t the safest way, professionally, be to surrender, after a token protest, to pressure from the Federal Security Agency, just as he’d always taken the easy way in other directions when he’d been a uniformed, more persuadable officer? Undoubtedly. So why didn’t he just back off? He didn’t want to, he decided. The old, look-the-other-way days had gone and the benefits with them. And he didn’t mourn or regret their passing. Rather, he enjoyed the self-respect, a self-respect he knew no one else would understand, with which he felt he ran his life at Petrovka.

It was barely five fifteen. Still too early to disturb his commanding General. Larissa would be stirring soon: this week she was on early shift. It would be difficult for them to meet as regularly as they normally did if he was allowed to remain in charge of the investigation. He’d be under too much scrutiny for unexplained, two- or three-hour disappearances. What about the hypocrisy of sleeping with another man’s wife? And the deceit of cheating his own? Where was the integrity and honesty in that? Not the same as work: quite a different equation. One he didn’t want to examine.

He wished he wasn’t so tired. He needed to be alert for all the unknowns there would be before the day was out. Instead, before anything had really started, he felt exhausted. It would be better when those unknowns became known: the adrenalin would flow then, to keep him going. He hoped. Wise, upon reflection, not to have taken any vodka. Alcohol would have dulled him even more.

Olga’s voice startled him and Danilov straightened almost guiltily in the chair, realizing he’d dozed. ‘What?’

‘I said what are you doing in the chair?’ She was standing at the bedroom door, her brown hair dishevelled and her face still puffed from sleep. She hadn’t tied the robe around her and the nightdress beneath had a dark grey stain over her left breast. The slippers were partially split at both heels: she had to scuff to keep them on when she walked.

‘I was called out.’

‘I didn’t feel you get up.’

‘I didn’t want to disturb you.’ It was seven fifteen: almost time to call the Director.

Olga shuffled towards the kitchen area. ‘I’ll make tea.’

‘That would be good.’ He still felt tired, despite the doze.

‘Who was it?’ She had her back to him in the kitchen annex, filling the kettle to brew the tea and prepare the Thermos, the modern Russian equivalent of the samovar, to keep the water hot.

‘A girl.’

‘Bad?’

Could a murder ever be good? ‘We think she’s American.’

Olga looked across from the stove. ‘That’s going to be complicated, isn’t it?’

‘Yes.’

‘Where?’

‘In the street: near Gercena.’

‘How?’

‘Stabbed.’ He wouldn’t tell her of the connection. Or the details. He didn’t think she would be interested anyway.

‘Sexual?’

‘It doesn’t seem so.’

‘That’s something at least.’

But not much, Danilov thought. He watched his wife filling the teapot, wondering what the stain was on her nightdress.

‘Do you want your tea there?’

‘I’ll speak to Lapinsk first.’

The commanding General picked up his receiver on the second ring. ‘Something difficult?’

Danilov recounted the similarity before disclosing the possibility of the girl’s nationality.

When he was stressed Lapinsk would punctuate his conversation with short, throat-clearing coughs. There was a burst now. He said: ‘That couldn’t be worse.’ There was another rattle of coughing. ‘There’s no question of it fitting the pattern?’

‘The buttons are something new.’

‘It’s the same man,’ the General accepted.

‘I want to approach the American embassy: I need it arranged, through you. Do we have to clear it with anyone? A ministry?’

There was another series of short coughs. ‘I’ll advise the Foreign Ministry. And call the embassy at nine.’

‘What about the Cheka?’

‘They’ll probably try to take over,’ agreed Lapinsk.

‘It’s our jurisdiction.’

‘Rules can be changed.’ Lapinsk sounded hopeful.

Danilov felt some pity for the Director. Lapinsk despised and habitually derided the former KGB for its arrogance and imagined superiority. But with so little time before retirement it was easy to understand the man’s anxiety to avoid a murder inquiry like this. Everyone searching for the easy life, thought Danilov: the Russian way. He said: ‘It’s already an established, ongoing investigation.’

‘Tell me the moment you have an identity,’ Lapinsk parried.

‘Novikov is the pathologist.’

‘Bugger!’ Lapinsk knew of the antipathy.

‘I want the autopsy today: he told Pavin there are others ahead of me.’ Danilov didn’t enjoy asking for further intercession.

‘I’ll fix it. Be careful at the embassy. I don’t want any problems beyond what we’ve already got.’

‘If she’s not a diplomat, it might be difficult getting an identity. She could be officially registered at the embassy, but it’s not a requirement.’

‘What if she’s not?’

‘We’ll check the Intourist guides and the foreign visitor hotels first. Then the visa records, for a photograph. The death pictures will be unpleasant.’

‘Too bad to publish in newspapers to get an identity?’

‘Probably,’ warned Danilov. That death snarl would be a further denial of dignity for whoever she had been: they could wait, he supposed, until the rigor relaxed.

‘I’ll clear my diary, after talking to the embassy. And be in the office all the time. If there is any difficulty, call me.’

Olga had poured the tea, despite being asked not to: it was cold by the time he sat down opposite her at the kitchen table. She hadn’t cleaned off the previous day’s make-up, heavy blue around her eyes. He added more water from the prepared Thermos, to warm the tea.

‘Lapinsk will be shitting himself,’ Olga said.

‘Your nightdress is stained.’

Olga looked down curiously, seemingly aware of it for the first time. She rubbed at it, half-heartedly. The stain remained. ‘It’s an old nightdress. I used to be able to get them from the importer, remember?’

Without payment of course, Danilov recalled. Like the television set that had now developed picture slip that couldn’t be corrected. He’d personally liked Eduard Agayans, the moustachioed, fiercely nationalistic Armenian who’d always insisted on toasts in his republic’s best brandy before any favour-for-favour conversation. The document-switching entrepreneur had maintained his largest warehouse in Danilov’s old Militia district and was always generously grateful for Danilov’s guarantee of unimpeded delivery of double the quota registered on the import manifest it was the Militia’s duty to check. ‘Why not buy more?’

Olga laughed derisively. ‘Which of the hundred well stocked designer shops in Moscow would you suggest I try first?’

‘Why not just look around,’ suggested Danilov, indifferently.

Olga continued to examine the stain. ‘It looks like oil. But it can’t be.’

Danilov saw she’d spilled tea — or something — on another part of the nightgown, near her waist. ‘Why not wash it?’

‘The communal machine isn’t working. And our own is broken: you know that.’

Their personal machine had been another gift from Agayans, who had been his chief source of unobtainable luxuries. ‘You could handwash it.’

‘Do you want anything to eat? Breakfast?’

He never ate at the beginning of the day, but this day had begun a long time ago. He still wasn’t hungry. ‘I don’t think so.’

‘Elena wants me to go to the cinema tonight. It’s a war movie: I don’t know which one. She’s asked Larissa, as well.’

Larissa had already warned him: told him she was going because the hotel shifts were convenient. Elena was the supervisor in the Agriculture Ministry post-room where Olga was a typist. ‘Why don’t you do that? I’m involved now, day and night.’

‘We might eat afterwards. Elena says she knows somewhere you don’t have to wait: one of those trade-run cafes, a writers’ place.’

Danilov had heard of such restaurants, set up by craft unions whose members no longer accepted the delays of ordinary Moscow eating houses. ‘Get a taxi home.’

‘Why?’

‘It’s safer.’

‘I’ll need some money.’

Danilov handed twenty roubles across the table. Olga smiled acceptance and put it into the pocket of the loose dressing-gown. There were no thanks. ‘Definitely get a taxi home,’ insisted Danilov. A long time ago he’d discovered Olga hoarded money he gave her: he pretended not to know about the leather satchel in which she kept it, in the box that contained all her family memorabilia.

‘All right,’ she said, too easily.

Danilov pushed aside the tepid tea, half drunk. He looked down at himself as he stood from the table. Slumping in the chair — and then dozing — had concertinaed his suit: he guessed the back of the jacket would be worse than the trousers. Be careful at the embassy, he remembered: it would be careful to dress smartly. ‘I have to change.’

‘Why?’

‘It’s necessary.’

His other suit, the grey one with the faint stripe, was jammed at the far end of their shared closet, crumpled where one lapel had been bent backwards by a dress of Olga’s being thrust in too closely against it. Danilov tried to smooth and then flatten it out: it was better but the crease mark was still visible. His black shoes needed cleaning and he wasn’t sure if there was polish back in the kitchen: he hadn’t noticed before the actual tear in the paper-thin leather on the left toe. Black polish would cover it. Danilov unsuccessfully searched the top level of the chest of drawers where his shirts were kept and then checked, equally unsuccessfully, the drawer below. The second drawer held Olga’s blouses, crisply folded: there was one, patterned in red check, which reminded him of the shirt the dead girl had been wearing. When he returned to the main room, Olga was still sitting at the kitchen table, both hands around the tea which now had to be completely cold.

‘I can’t find a clean shirt. I need a clean shirt.’

‘There should be one.’

‘There isn’t.’

‘I told you the communal machine isn’t working: they promised it would be fixed by tomorrow. People stuff too much in.’

Although the apartment was theirs alone, they had to share certain facilities. A basement washing machine was one. ‘So I haven’t got a clean shirt?’

‘Not if there isn’t one in the drawer.’

Each shirt in the laundry bag was as badly creased as the other. He took a blue patterned one with the cleanest cuffs and collar and said: ‘Could you press this for me?’

‘It’s not washed.’

‘I know. I’ve just got it from the dirty bag.’

‘I’ll be late for work.’

‘Fuck your being late for work!’

Olga looked at him in astonishment. ‘What the hell’s wrong with you!’

‘Please! I just want a shirt ironed.’ He wouldn’t bother about the shoes: it was only a tiny tear.

Begrudgingly Olga got up from the table and noisily took the ironing board from its crevice between the cooker and the store cupboard. Searching for an attack point, she said: ‘The cuffs are frayed: the left one, at least. You need more shirts: shall I look while I’m choosing nightdresses?’

Danilov didn’t want to fight. ‘The fray won’t show.’

Abruptly, confusingly at first, she said: ‘Would it have hurt: what happened to the girl last night? Would it have hurt?’

‘Horribly.’

‘I’ll definitely get a taxi.’

Danilov supposed he should have warned Larissa, as well. He’d have to remember to do so.

The hum was discordant, high and low, high and low, without a tune: it was good to hum. He liked it. It was noise: noise was safe. Not always, of course. Not just before it happened. Noise was dangerous then. Had to be quiet, like a shadow. Only safe to hum afterwards. Like now. They said it was an indication to hum, all those experts, but they were wrong. About humming anyway. He wasn’t mad. The opposite. Clever: always clever. Clever enough to know all the signs but stop them showing.

The hair had this time been more difficult to tie neatly in its tiny, preserved bunch, like a wheat sheaf: kept slipping out, before the cord was properly secured. All right now. A neat, tidy bunch — always important, to be neat and tidy — with the top cleanly trimmed completely flat. Perfect match with the other one. It had been right to take the buttons. She’d been a woman: got it all right last night. Especially the buttons. A neat and tidy pattern, red ones and green ones and a brown one, all assembled in their perfect arrangement on the special souvenir table, together with the hair-clipping scissors. Always had to have buttons, from now on. And always a woman then. Important to plan for the future, always to stay ahead. The knife had to be sharpened, stropped like a razor, to slide in like silk. That was the good part, the way the knife slid in. Just like silk. That and buttons. Felt happy, to have got the buttons. There’d be the challenge, soon: a hunt. There had to be a hunt. That was going to be the best part: what he was looking forward to. Look, fools, look! But they never would. Not properly. Just a little longer, touching the souvenirs. Holding them. Exciting, to hold them. Then put them away. Safely, for later. Another one soon. Always women, from now on. And buttons.