In the Name of a Killer

Chapter Four

Danilov disliked entering the homes of murder victims. He’d had to do it too many times and always had a sense of awkwardness, feeling he was intruding into the privacy of someone whose privacy had already been too much violated. In the minute entrance hall he said: ‘This isn’t a normal situation. I want everything — and I mean everything — completed now. There won’t be another chance. There must be no damage …’ Nodding towards Pavin, who carried the specimen case, Danilov said: ‘The Major will compile a complete and detailed inventory of anything removed. List it at the moment of collection. I want nothing overlooked, to be complained about later. Understood?’

There were grunts and nods from the assembled men: as if investing him with the responsibility for what might go wrong, they remained slightly behind as Danilov went further into the apartment.

The curtains were drawn, but all the lights still burned, showing an apartment luxurious by Russian standards, comfortable by Western. The wallpaper was heavily patterned, unlike any Danilov had seen in Russia, and the furniture was obviously also imported. There was an extensive stereo system along one wall, with records stacked on a shelf above. All the books in a cabinet against a far wall were English-language. Cushions on a couch and an easy chair fronting a small table were crumpled from the pressure of being sat upon. There were two glasses — one still containing some clear liquid — on the table. Delicately he sniffed and then carefully dipped his finger into the liquid. It was vodka.

Ann Harris’s handbag was on a small occasional table that supported a sidelamp, which was on. The bag was the sort that secured by a snap clasp. The clasp was undone.

With a wooden medical spatula Danilov opened the handbag fully, so that it gaped, and used long-armed tweezers to lift out the contents, one by one. As he did so, he listed the items for Pavin to record. There was a compact, with a fixture at the side, empty, for a lipstick canister. The billfold was Vuitton: it held American Express and Visa cards, American and Russian driving licences, a plasticized embassy ID card, seventy-five roubles and eighty US dollars. There was one photograph, a studio portrait without any background, of a smiling couple, both grey-haired. Danilov estimated their age at about sixty. The address book was very small, clearly designed for a handbag or a pocket. Danilov flicked through, quickly, seeing both American and Moscow numbers. He offered it sideways to Pavin, who held out a waiting plastic envelope. The diary was a slender one, pocket-sized again, with a line-a-day entry. Danilov looked more intently than he had at the address book, realizing at once it was very much an appointments record, with no personal entries. The line for the previous day was blank. That, too, went into a plastic exhibit envelope. Danilov gestured to the fingerprint man for the handbag to be tested.

The kitchen was clean, with no indication of a cleared-away evening meal the previous night. The dishwasher — a dinosaur rarity in a Russian home — was empty. Everything in the store cupboards carried American labels, bought from the embassy commissary. The tins were regimented on the shelves, sectioned by their contents, so that selection would only take moments. Even the perishable goods in the refrigerator, like milk and butter and bread, carried American brand names.

There was an extensive range of alcohol in a cupboard beneath sink level, bourbon and scotch whisky, brandy and gin. The vodka bottle was at the front, half empty. All the labels — even the vodka — showed them to be imported. There were fifteen bottles of wine, a selection of white and red, laid in a rack where the kitchen cabinets ended. All came from California.

The bedroom was at the end of a corridor. The door was half open: Danilov used the spatula to push it further, so they could enter. The bed was in chaos, most of the covers on the floor, the sheets crumpled into kicked-aside rolls.

Pavin indicated the pillows and said, needlessly: ‘Both indented.’

Danilov called back into the lounge for the evidence experts. When they reached him he said: ‘I want this room checked everywhere for prints …’ He nodded to the bed. ‘Search it, now, for fibres or hair. Then take it all to the laboratory. I want any stains checked, for blood, semen, anything.’

Perfume, skin-care creams and cleansers were ordered along the glass top of the dressing-table. In addition there were three framed photographs. One was of Ann Harris taken in Moscow, against the background of the onion domes of St Basil’s Cathedral. The second was of the couple whose picture had been in her handbag. The third was of a man standing in such a way that the Capitol in Washington was in the background: the photograph had been taken low, but even without that trick for elevation the man appeared large. The dressing-table drawers held carefully folded underwear, sweaters and scarves, each in allocated places. Danilov sifted through, with the spatula: nothing was concealed between the folds of the clothes. The closets were just as carefully arranged, first suits and then dresses and finally separate skirts. There were twelve pairs of shoes, in a rack at the bottom of the closet. Danilov guessed there were more clothes than Larissa or Olga owned between them. Reminded, he thought he would have to contact Larissa sometime: she’d have to be told how difficult it was going to be for a while. How long, he wondered.

There was another framed photograph of the large man, this time with Ann Harris beside him on Capitol Hill, on top of a cabinet to the left of the bed. The upper drawer held a blank pad of paper and a pencil, a jar of contraceptive cream, a packet of contraceptive pessaries and Ann Harris’s American passport. The larger cupboard beneath held only a padded silk make-up bag. With some difficulty Danilov eased the zip open with the tweezers. It contained a battery-driven vibrator and a small jar of lubricant jelly. Danilov’s fresh discomfort was neither from surprise nor criticism but once again at the intrusion: this had been her business, her intimate pleasure, something to which she’d had the right of privacy. Invariably there were secrets, he reflected, recalling his mental promise to the dead girl in the alleyway. I’ll go on trying, he promised again.

He found her correspondence in the cabinet on the other side of the bed. She had kept her letters in their envelopes and held packs together, about ten at a time, with elastic bands. At the back — he couldn’t decide whether they were intentionally hidden or not — was a thicker bundle, different-sized sheets of paper without envelopes.

‘Everything,’ decided Danilov. Pavin offered one of the largest exhibit bags.

The adjoining, American-style bathroom was as well kept as the rest of the apartment. There was an abundance of chrome and glass with more cleaning creams in tight lines. The cabinets contained analgesics and shampoos and hair conditioners, a proprietary brand of American cough linctus and, surprisingly, a small phial of mosquito repellent.

Back in the bedroom Danilov said to the fingerprint expert: ‘There are a lot of good surfaces in the bathroom. And in the kitchen cabinet there’s a vodka bottle I want checked. Anything so far?’

‘Two different sets on the glasses back in the lounge. On the door here and the dressing-table, too.’

‘I’ll get her elimination prints from the pathologist later today,’ undertook Danilov. To Pavin he said: ‘We’ll take the glasses.’

‘There are a lot of shoes,’ the Major pointed out.

‘Some women like lots of shoes.’

‘They seem important to the killer, too.’

‘Anything we might have missed?’ Danilov asked the man of routine.

Pavin considered the question, looking around the apartment. ‘Not obviously.’

‘That’s the problem,’ said Danilov. ‘Nothing’s obvious.’ He became uncomfortable at the banality. He looked reflectively at the dishevelled bed, then gestured towards it. ‘Apart from that, which looks as if she got up in a hurry, it’s an extremely well kept apartment. There’s virtually no dust, anywhere: everything in the bathroom is highly polished.’

‘Yes?’ agreed Pavin, questioning.

Danilov didn’t respond at once to the curiosity. Instead he said to the technicians: ‘Let’s see what’s on the plastic of the telephone receiver. I particularly want to know if the prints are new.’ Coming back to his assistant, Danilov said: ‘She got up and left urgently: not even covering the bed, which someone as neat as she was would almost automatically have done. Maybe she was called out, in a hurry.’

‘Knowing her killer?’

‘It’s possible.’

Pavin remained frowning. ‘Why call her out?’

‘To make it seem as if she didn’t know who it was.’

Pavin’s doubtful look remained. ‘There would be no way to trace a call, if it was incoming. Some outgoing calls might possibly be registered.’

‘Check the exchange to see what’s available,’ ordered Danilov.

‘Just the exchange?’ queried Pavin, heavily.

Danilov smiled in understanding. ‘I’ll do it,’ he decided at once. ‘Or try to persuade Lapinsk to make the inquiry. Certainly the Cheka monitored diplomats’ telephones in the past. I’d guess they’re still doing it.’

‘It would mean the Cheka officially admitting they’re continuing to eavesdrop,’ warned Pavin.

‘That could be easily hidden,’ dismissed Danilov.

‘It could be the excuse for the KGB to involve themselves.’

Danilov wondered why the other man used the old, official title for the first time. ‘We still don’t know yet whether they’ll be ordered to take over. They might not even need an excuse.’

‘I would have expected the Americans here by now.’

Danilov looked at the forensic team: the fingerprint expert was already in the bathroom and the other man was delicately folding the sheets and pillows, edges inwards to hold anything trapped inside. As Pavin held the exhibit bags open, Danilov said: ‘Anything?’

‘No blood that’s obvious. Some staining that could be semen. Or might not. What looks like make-up traces, on both pillows. Head hair and some pubic’

The fingerprint specialist emerged from the bathroom at the end of the conversation. ‘The two sets of fingerprints are in there, too.’

‘How much longer?’ asked Danilov.

The men exchanged looks. The technician with the bed linen said: ‘I think we’re pretty well finished.’

Pavin said suddenly, ‘Knives! We didn’t check kitchen knives.’

‘Go on back with what you’ve got,’ Danilov ordered the technicians, anxious to get them and the exhibits away.

Pavin was standing beside a knife rack attached to the wall above the cooker when Danilov reached the kitchen. He pointed, saying nothing. The rack had hollowed-out, grooved positions for seven knives, graduating small to large from left to right. The middle, fourth position was empty.

‘Everywhere you can think of!’ Danilov was annoyed with himself at the oversight: Pavin was invaluable. It took fifteen minutes to search all drawers and possible put-aside places where the knife might have been carelessly discarded by a girl who didn’t, from the condition of the flat, do anything carelessly. They didn’t find it. Danilov said: ‘I’ll go through the rest of the apartment. I want the most precise measurements: length, width, thickness. Don’t try to do it here: take the whole thing as an exhibit.’

Danilov didn’t find the knife anywhere else in the flat. By the time he returned to the kitchen, Pavin had released all the wall screws and was putting the knife rack into the specimen case. It fitted snugly without the apartment-sealing equipment which Pavin removed. Pavin said: ‘The make of the knives printed on the rack isn’t Russian.’

‘It wouldn’t be,’ anticipated Danilov. ‘It says “Kuikut”.’

It took a long time for Pavin to bolt to the outside of the apartment door the fixings for the cross chain for which there was only a Militia key, to criss-cross the further barrier of adhesive tape and to insert the blocks into the existing keyholes, to render them inoperable. Pavin held a cigarette lighter sideways to melt the wax which Danilov positioned to drip on to the ties of the official notice, declaring the apartment secured against unauthorized entry. Danilov was impressing the official seal into the wax when the Americans arrived.

‘What the fuck …!’

Danilov turned to the sports-jacketed man he’d encountered earlier at the embassy and guessed to be FBI. Baxter was slightly behind in the corridor.

The leading American said: ‘Oh Jesus! Oh dear Jesus now the shit’s really going to hit the fan in every which way! Just wait until Washington hears about this!’ He was shaking, either from suppressed rage or nervous energy: maybe a combination of both.

‘What right do you think you’ve got, intruding on to diplomatic property?’ demanded Baxter. ‘I want that seal taken …’

‘… They don’t understand English,’ interrupted the other American. ‘We’ve got to get back to the embassy and bring down some heavy pressure about this. I’m going to have his ass for this! Christ am I going to have his ass!’

‘We can’t just walk away like this!’ Baxter protested. ‘I want to know what they’ve been doing in there!’

‘Don’t you think I want to know the same thing?’ demanded the second American.

‘We’re trying to catch a murderer,’ said Danilov, quietly.

‘I don’t care what you’re trying …’ began Barry before the realization registered.

‘You bastard!’ he said, although quietly as well, someone unable to believe what had just happened. The shaking worsened.

‘“Amateur night”,’ quoted Danilov, verbatim. ‘“Win a balloon and a lollipop if you get past the first clue.” Who’s Dick Tracy? I don’t know who Dick Tracy is.’

Both Americans became momentarily speechless. Stiffly again, Baxter said: ‘I know there has already been a formal protest, about your attitude at the embassy. This time the protest is going to be much stronger: possibly from the ambassador himself. I demand, with the authority of the government of the United States of America, that you unseal these premises and return into the custody of the United States embassy anything you might have removed from Ann Harris’s apartment.’ The heavy moustache quivered.

‘You smart-assed son of a bitch!’ said sports jacket, through tight lips. ‘You just don’t know the league you’re getting into, do you?’

It was quite true, conceded Danilov. He said: ‘As I tried to explain this morning, I am investigating the murder of an American national. This apartment remains sealed. Mr Baxter knows my office number.’ He moved, to walk down the corridor. The first man squared up, blocking the way. He was about the same size as Danilov: there was the aroma of sweet cologne, clashing with tainted breath. Danilov wondered which of them was the most apprehensive of what might develop: he was very nervous but he was glad he wasn’t shaking like the other man. He felt Pavin’s bulky presence close behind and was glad about that, too. Danilov stared directly at the American and said: ‘Don’t be ridiculous,’ grateful that his voice remained even.

‘Back off, Barry!’ warned Baxter.

‘Why don’t you do that, Barry?’ demanded Danilov, and wished he hadn’t attempted the tough-guy mockery.

Barry stood reluctantly aside, face aflame. He was having difficulty in controlling his hands. ‘Wait!’ he hissed, lips tighter than ever. ‘Just wait!’

Danilov walked easily by, emboldened by Pavin’s presence behind: relieved, too, that his assistant did not speak until they got down to street level.

‘What happened back there?’ said Pavin.

‘They were upset,’ said Danilov. He knew the American had wanted to hit him: he felt lucky the whole stupid episode hadn’t ended in a brawl.

Danilov expected a protest gesture, but not what Novikov staged at the pathology division. From Novikov’s office he was directed downstairs where an attendant further guided him to the examination theatre. The smell when he got there — a collision of formaldehyde and disinfectant and stale human body waste — clogged in his throat; it was even worse when he pushed through the door, to enter. Novikov wore a stained gown and a cotton protective hat which made him look hairless. He stood at the sink, washing his hands, a mask pushed down around his throat. A sheet, also stained, covered the body of Ann Harris.

‘I was sure you wouldn’t mind coming here,’ said the pathologist, without any tone of apology. ‘I realized from your having Lapinsk intercede that it was incredibly urgent so I knew you wouldn’t want to wait upstairs. You could have asked me yourself, of course.’

Novikov was a large, fleshy man, bulbous-nosed and thick-lipped. His hands were large, the fingers sausage-like. He didn’t even look like a surgeon, Danilov thought: surgeons should have delicate, tender hands. He supposed it wasn’t necessary to be tender with a dead body. He said: ‘I don’t mind at all,’ which wasn’t true.

‘Some people haven’t got the stomach for dissecting rooms.’

Fuck you, decided Danilov. ‘I said I don’t mind.’ Coming through the door he’d had to swallow against the smell: he wanted to do so again but didn’t.

‘Tough policeman, eh?’

‘I need the preliminary report.’ He didn’t want to spar and score debating points. He wanted to learn things that might help him trap a madman. And get out as quickly as he could, away from the smell and away from this man who had hands like a butcher.

‘I suppose senior colonels get all the most important cases.’

Danilov waited. His stomach felt loose. He made himself go further into the room, closer to the covered body. One foot protruded from beneath the sheet: she’d painted her toe-nails a pale pink. Danilov liked the colour. Larissa painted her nails sometimes: Olga never did. Olga even forgot to cut them.

Novikov spent a long time drying his hands and took off the protective hat, releasing a fall of lank hair, before he spoke. ‘White female Caucasian, aged between twenty-five and thirty. Weight, 54 kilos. Brown eyes. Black hair. Cause of death a puncture wound, from the rear, between the eighth and ninth ribs, under the scapula. Clean entry, with no bone contact. The weapon entered from the right side, through the intercostal muscle and lung, severing the aorta before penetrating the heart. There were superficial wounds to the head, which did not contribute to the cause of death …’ He paused. ‘I’m not going too fast: you’re managing to assimilate all this?’

‘I’m managing.’ Danilov almost retched after just two words.

The pathologist smiled, as if he realized. ‘No organic disease. Appendicectomy scar, lower right abdomen. As I told your man at the scene, it’s difficult to establish a precise time of death: I’d estimate between eleven and one o’clock. How’s that?’ He smiled again.

It was inadequate to the point of being absurd: the bastard was forcing him to stay in the room and ask questions. ‘Depth of the wound?’

‘Nineteen and a half centimetres.’

‘Blunt or sharp instrument?’

‘I said a clean entry.’

‘Pointed then?’

‘What else could it be?’ Novikov smiled, a magician arriving at his best trick. ‘Why not see for yourself?’

The sheet came back with a flourish. Ann Harris lay on her back. The rigor had left the body, which had a wax-like sheen and like wax appeared to be melting, bubbled and flaccid. Only the snarl remained, more horrifying than before. Novikov had examined like a butcher. The body incision, from neck to crotch, was carelessly jagged, the subsequent stitching uneven. Nothing had been swabbed clean, after being sealed.

‘You’ll have to help me turn her over.’

‘Cover her,’ said Danilov, tightly, not looking. When was the mutilation of Ann Harris going to stop?

‘I thought you wanted to see?’

‘Cover her.’ Strangely, Danilov’s stomach was settling, despite Novikov’s charade. When the pathologist didn’t move, Danilov himself pulled the sheet back over the disfigured corpse. Even-voiced he said: ‘So it was a tapered wound?’

Novikov’s disappointment was visibly obvious, a vein pumping in the man’s right temple. ‘It was a tapered wound,’ he agreed.

‘Width, at the point of entry?’

‘Five centimetres.’

‘Thickness?’

‘Five millimetres, at its thickest: the back of the knife.’

The other man shifted, with apparent impatience, and Danilov thought, your game, you bastard: now you stay and play it. ‘Any surface tearing of the skin at the point of entry?’

‘Why didn’t you look for yourself?’

‘Any surface tearing of the skin?’

‘I said it was clean!’

‘A sharp knife then?’

‘Yes.’

‘Especially sharp?’

‘How can I answer that?’

‘By telling me if there was any fractional indentation of the skin immediately around the wound.’

‘There wasn’t.’

‘Which would indicate the knife being especially sharp?’

‘It’s a reasonable assumption.’

‘Any indication that the knife blade was serrated?’

‘Smooth-bladed. No serration.’

‘It could have been a kitchen knife?’

‘It could have been.’

‘Anything to show a struggle?’

‘I told your man last night.’

‘Tell me!’

‘There was bruising to the left thigh and buttock. It was postmortem lividity: that means it occurred after death.’

‘I know what it means. What about fingernail scrapings?’

‘Nothing. Death was practically instantaneous.’

‘Sexual assault?’

‘None.’ Novikov hesitated, then said: ‘But there had been recent sexual intercourse.’

Danilov sighed, exasperated. ‘Which you haven’t thought important enough to tell me until now?’

‘It would have been in my complete, written report.’

‘I don’t want to wait until your complete, written report!’ The obstructiveness was back-firing, making the man himself appear incompetent: Danilov wished there had been others to witness it, like before.

‘There was semen, in the vagina.’

‘Sufficient for blood grouping?’

Novikov nodded. ‘B. Rhesus Negative.’

The most common, Danilov reflected, bitterly. ‘What was her group?’

‘B again. But Rhesus Positive.’

‘Why are you sure it couldn’t have been rape?’

‘Rapists don’t replace tights and knickers. She was properly dressed. There was no vaginal bruising.’

‘Was there bruising around the wound?’

‘Very slight.’

‘Was it a stab? Or was the knife driven in?’

‘Driven in.’

Abruptly, again, Danilov realized a further important omission. He gestured to the covered body. ‘You didn’t say how tall she was.’

‘One point six five metres.’

‘And you didn’t tell me the direction of the wound. Was it upwards? Downwards? What?’ The pathologist swallowed and Danilov doubted the man had properly checked.

‘Across, from right to left: slightly upwards, perhaps.’

‘So the killer could be approximately the same height? Or slightly smaller. If he were taller it would have a downward direction, wouldn’t it?’

‘Yes.’

‘It didn’t come into any contact with bone?’

‘I already told you that.’

‘How difficult is it to thrust a knife into someone and get cleanly between the ribs?’

Novikov considered the question. ‘Someone did it: she’s dead.’

‘Help me!’ demanded Danilov, exasperated. ‘You know the problem! You did the first autopsy!’

Novikov smiled, pleased at the other man’s outburst. ‘There’s usually some bone contact.’

‘There wasn’t last time: there hasn’t been now. So could it be someone who has medical knowledge?’

The pathologist shook his head. ‘I can’t help you. On a darkened street, presumably walking, it would be incredibly difficult for anyone even with medical knowledge to avoid any bone contact.’

‘Meaning?’

‘That missing any bone was a fluke: that you shouldn’t attach undue significance to it.’

Danilov decided he couldn’t ignore it, either. A wash of fatigue, a recurrence of that morning’s tiredness, swept over him. He began to put out his hand, to support himself against the dissecting table upon which the sheeted body lay, but stopped when he realized what he was about to do. ‘When can I have your written report?’

‘A day or two,’ the pathologist dismissed.

Danilov was suddenly furious at the other man’s posturing. ‘What reason did Lapinsk give for wanting the autopsy today?’

‘Just that it was urgent.’

‘She’s an American,’ Danilov disclosed. ‘The niece of an important politician in the United States. People in the White House here and in America are going to be watching this.’

‘Oh,’ said the other man, the obstructive arrogance fading.

‘I want the report by tomorrow,’ demanded Danilov. ‘Two. The Americans will want their own copy.’ He looked at the covered body, then back to Novikov. ‘They’ll see the way you carried out the autopsy when the body is released.’

The pathologist made as if to speak, to argue, but didn’t. Instead, after a pause, he said, dry-throated: ‘I’ll make two copies.’

‘Is there anything you haven’t told me? Something that’s going to be in your written report that I should know now?’

‘I don’t think so.’

Danilov held out his hand. ‘I need her fingerprints.’

Novikov’s throat moved. ‘They’ll come with the report.’

So he hadn’t taken them yet. ‘Don’t forget anything else, will you?’

‘But it’s been almost a fortnight,’ Larissa protested. He’d reached her from a street kiosk.

‘This is different: unusual.’ He hadn’t given her any details, just that it was a murder.

‘Tomorrow?’

‘I’ll try.’ He thought she might have asked about an unusual murder.

‘You don’t sound very interested.’

‘You know that’s not true! And I don’t want to argue.’

‘I want to see you!’

‘I really will try tomorrow.’

‘Don’t let me down.’

‘I won’t,’ said Danilov. I hope, he thought. Or did he?

There are four psychiatric clinics in Moscow. The best known is the Serbsky Institute for Forensic Psychiatry, in Kropotkinskii Street: during the oppressive, population-controlling era before the second Russian revolution, it was the place in which the KGB detained political dissidents, claiming they suffered paranoid schizophrenia.

Major Yuri Pavin personally led the record-searching team on its first visit, to explain their needs to the white-coated principal. The man was shaking his head before Pavin finished talking.

‘It would need a computer to do a thorough search,’ the psychiatrist protested.

‘Your records aren’t computerized?’

‘No.’

‘How long could a physical search take?’

‘Months, to be completed properly.’

Pavin looked to the other two detectives with him: both were already frowning at the potential task ahead of them. The search wouldn’t be conducted properly, Pavin knew: here or anywhere else.