In the Name of a Killer

Chapter Thirty-Nine

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

‘We compiled it together,’ Cowley agreed.

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

They did. With the same result.

‘It doesn’t make sense,’ complained Pavin, the man of absolute accuracy.

‘There’s one way it could,’ Danilov suggested.

‘It’s unthinkable!’ blurted Cowley.

‘Find another explanation.’

There was a further silence, then: ‘I can’t.’

The Moscow offices of the New York Times are on Ulitza Sadovo Samotechanya, about a mile from the American embassy, so it was convenient for them both to stop en route to taking Cowley to the US compound. The visit only took minutes. Afterwards, they agreed to meet again that evening: by then they would both have guidance. Danilov was quite open about going back to the Lubyanka.

With so much to transmit to Washington — and certainly verbally to discuss as well, on a secure line — Cowley set out at once for the FBI office. But almost at once he paused, changing his mind to make the simple detour. Pauline opened the door, smiling curiously.

‘Barry asked me if I’d make sure there were no problems, remember?’ Cowley said.

The agreement to a meeting had been instant, as before, but Danilov entered the suite of Kir Gugin more confidently on this second occasion.

Danilov said at once: ‘I know how you used me. Congratulations. It worked very well.’

Gugin shook his head. ‘You confuse me.’

Danilov was impatient with the charade. ‘I want you to use me again. There was more, wasn’t there? You hadn’t finished.’

The Colonel, whose intended disruption had itself been disrupted by the seizure of Petr Yezhov and who had been seeking a way to recover, smiled cautiously. ‘Why don’t we talk about it?’

‘Why don’t you just give me what I want?’

The effect would be what he wanted, Gugin reflected: the other man deserved the resentful independence, having realized the earlier manipulation. ‘Why not?’ he agreed.