‘I felt like a whore, hanging around the lobby!’
She would have been in competition with a few other genuine professionals: Danilov had positively isolated three in the reception area, fifteen minutes earlier. ‘I’ve said I’m sorry. I warned you it was going to be a problem for me, these next few weeks.’
She smiled down at him, with feigned reluctance, the beginning of forgiveness. ‘It’s cut down the time we’ve got together: they want the room back in an hour.’
Two other hotel receptionists as well as Larissa were involved in affairs and had evolved the system for assignations in a city where there was no such thing as casual accommodation. One used a room awaiting occupation while the others ensured there was no interruption or premature registration by a genuine guest. With Novikov’s material to digest Danilov was glad there was a short time limit. He wondered, idly, who the
bona fide
occupants would be in an hour’s time. And what their reaction would have been to knowing what the room had been used for, immediately prior. Larissa allowed herself to be kissed properly at last, twisting in the chair to put her arms around his neck to pull him to her. His knees were beginning to hurt.
‘I’ve missed you,’ she said.
‘I’ve missed you, too.’
‘How’s Olga?’
He shrugged. ‘Like she always is.’ Larissa wasn’t neglected and untidy, like his wife. The receptionist’s suit was still crisp, with no stains anywhere, and the white shirt didn’t look as if it had been worn all day. She smelt fresh and perfumed and Danilov guessed she had prepared herself for him: her soft red lipstick was fresh and the eye-line was newly applied. On impulse he took one of her hands. The varnish matched the lipstick. He took off one of her shoes. Her toe-nails were painted, too, a slightly harsher colour than Ann Harris had used.
‘What are you doing?’ she frowned, artificially.
‘Nothing.’ He stayed with her foot cupped in his hand. What reason – what fetish – made the killer put the shoes neatly beside the shorn head?
‘I hate Yevgennie!’ she announced, with sudden vehemence. ‘I can’t bear him touching me any more.’
‘Does he touch you?’ Danilov felt a vague stir of jealousy, which was ridiculously hypocritical. Yevgennie was her husband: he had the right.
‘Sometimes. He wanted to last night but he was too drunk.’ She came forward on the chair, parting her legs around him as much as the tight skirt would allow. ‘He was boasting about knowing the Dolgoprudnaya, trying to impress me.’
Organized crime was an unadmitted development of
perestroika
: the Dolgoprudnaya was the most powerful group, openly referred to as the Mafia family controlling northwest Moscow. There had been nothing like it in Danilov’s Militia days. ‘Your husband’s a greedy fool.’
‘You could officially report him, if you wanted to.’
‘I don’t want to.’ Danilov had introduced Kosov to all his grateful black economy contacts before passing over control of the Militia district: it was the way the system worked. Eduard Agayans, the ebullient Armenian, had been the first. They’d drunk the brandy, as they always did. Agayans had winked and told everyone not to worry: he’d look after the newcomer. Kosov had smiled back, telling Agayans not to worry, either: that he’d continue the care he knew Danilov had shown in the past.
‘Why not?’
‘Don’t be silly, Larissa. You know why not.’
‘You could never be incriminated, not after all this time.’
Danilov couldn’t remember telling her of his activities: he guessed her husband had. He said: ‘Nothing would happen: he’d pay off the investigation.’ It was a valid objection; there were probably more corrupt than honest policemen in Moscow.
Larissa eased fully off the chair but stood very close to where he knelt, undressing for his enjoyment. ‘It would be so much better for us, if Yevgennie weren’t around.’
‘I don’t want to talk about Yevgennie,’ said Danilov, thickly. Larissa was naked, her black wedge only inches from his face. She’d oiled herself there, planning what she wanted him to do.
‘So much better,’ she repeated, thrusting the scented feast for him to eat, which he did. It was good, which sex always was with Larissa. She made love with complete abandon and in every way, with no inhibitions, anxious to exchange every pleasure, arching beneath him when she finally climaxed in time with him. Danilov grimaced at the pain of her nails driving into his back, fearing she had marked him. He’d have to be careful, later. Danilov moved off her, propping himself on his side. Her look-at-me breasts sprouted proudly upright, demanding approval. Seeing him look Larissa said: ‘They’re yours.’
Danilov kissed both nipples. ‘We have to go, soon.’
‘Your fault for being late that we can’t do it again.’
Danilov wasn’t sure he could have done it again. Her hair, long and richly brown, was disordered on the pillow, framing her face. Abruptly remembering where she lived, he said: ‘How will you get home?’
Larissa frowned. ‘Walk, of course. I always do.’
It would mean her passing completely through the area where Vladimir Suzlev and Ann Harris had been murdered. ‘Don’t,’ he urged. ‘Take the bus. Or the metro. A taxi, even.’
The woman brought herself up on her arm, to face him. ‘The buses and the metro will be crowded.’
‘The murder I’m working on. It’s bad. Quite near your area.’
She became serious. ‘You mean I should be especially careful?’
‘That’s exactly what I’m telling you.’
‘Shouldn’t there be a warning, in the newspapers or something?’
Maybe he should discuss the matter of a public alert with Lapinsk. ‘Just be careful.’
‘You are going to catch him soon, aren’t you?’ demanded Larissa, smiling uncertainly. ‘He’s not going to get away? Roam the streets?’
At the moment that was probably what he was doing, thought Danilov: roaming the streets, seeking another victim. ‘I’m going to catch him.’ It was a personal promise.
‘I’ll take a bus,’ she decided. Quickly, her mind butterflying, she said: ‘When we were at the cinema Olga suggested we all get together soon. Said we hadn’t done it for a long time.’
This was how the affair with Larissa had grown: two Militia colleagues introducing their wives, dinners reciprocated in each other’s apartment, bribery-equipped flat compared to bribery-equipped flat, bored Larissa flirting, he first surprised, then flattered. ‘What did you say?’
‘That it would be nice. It would, wouldn’t it?’
‘Yes,’ said Danilov. He wasn’t sure that it would be.
‘I should clean your room.’ Valentina Yezhov was a big-bodied, domineering woman who had convinced herself her husband had deserted them through his shame at fathering a mentally disturbed son, which was not true. The man had come to detest her, during the marriage.
‘I’ve cleaned it myself. It’s all right.’
‘What have you got in there?’ she asked suspiciously.
‘Nothing,’ insisted Yezhov.
‘Why can’t I go in?’
‘I don’t want you to.’ In the hospitals nothing had been private, the nurses and the guards opening everything, poking into everything, as the fancy took them.
‘What do you
do
, when you go walking at night?’
‘Just walk.’
‘I don’t want any more trouble.’
‘I’m better.’
She’d been foolish, not getting a duplicate of his bedroom key before giving it to him. ‘I’d just clean. I wouldn’t pry.’
‘It’s all right.’
‘Please don’t do anything silly again.’ The little-girl plea sounded odd, from such a big person.
‘I said I’m better!’
Chapter Ten
Danilov recognized this as continuing the familiar part of an investigation: the part where there was still so much to read and so much to assimilate but from which, hopefully, an inconsistency would suddenly flare up to illuminate a pathway, a brief light in the dark tunnel. At the moment he still felt enclosed in blackness.
Already waiting for him when he got back to his office were the promised forensic findings and a sealed envelope upon which Pavin had written Telephone Log. There were additional notes from his assistant, reporting that the evidence room had been equipped as requested, all the evidence containers deposited there and every known room key in the building surrendered, to prevent unauthorized entry. The cleaners had also been warned off.
To the line of documents already set out on the desk Danilov added the pathology report and sat for several moments staring down at it all, unsure where to begin. And then didn’t begin at all, not immediately. Olga responded on the third ring. He said he still had a lot to do and would be late. There was some bortsch she would leave on the stove, for him to heat if she was already in bed. He said he wasn’t hungry but agreed he might be, later. There had been a letter from the supplier, confirming their order for the Jiguli was still on record but there was not yet any date for the car’s delivery. The washing machine in the basement was repaired but two other women in the block were ahead of her: she wasn’t sure if she’d get the shirts done that night, but she was going to try. The film she had seen the previous night with Elena and Larissa had been good. Danilov said he was glad. The union restaurant afterwards had been good, too: she’d have to take him there sometime. Danilov said he’d like that.
‘Got the murderer yet?’ The interest in Olga’s voice was about the same as her intonation when she’d discussed the soup she’d leave on the stove for when he got home.
‘Not yet.’
‘The taxi was expensive last night: nearly six roubles.’
‘I’m still glad you took it.’
‘If you used some influence like you did in the district we’d have our own car. Look how easy things seem to be for Yevgennie and Larissa. I’ve arranged an evening with them, by the way.’
‘I …’ started Danilov, unthinking. ‘Fine,’ he concluded.
‘At their flat. Not here.’
‘If you don’t want to do it, say so!’
‘I want to do it.’
‘I probably
will
be asleep when you get home.’
The pathology account first, he decided: the Americans held a copy, so it was the likeliest source of immediate discussion. He had to be prepared. Danilov’s instant impression was that Novikov had rewritten and redrawn the entire report, after the warning the previous day of the victim’s identity. The presentation was faultless, with none of the written-over mistypings with which Novikov was normally prepared to let his documents be distributed. There were margin sub-headings, too, another innovation.
Danilov was particularly careful to check the details of the wound against Novikov’s verbal account, convinced the man would have checked every note and supposition after learning of the American involvement. The depth of the wound was now given as nineteen and a quarter centimetres and the thickness wad qualified as just under five millimetres at the back of the knife but with minimal evidence of sideways cutting at the other edge, indicating extreme, easily entering sharpness. So as well as being sharply pointed the blade had been honed, as well. There was an abrupt change of opinion, needing another reminder pad notation, about the direction of the entry wound. During their conversation, Novikov had said the knife had entered in a
slightly
upwards trajectory. Now he stated categorically that having entered between the eighth and ninth rib, the wound graduated upwards to be a whole centimetre higher at the point of contact with the heart from the place of entry into the body. Danilov broke away, scribbling on his pad, noting beside it that Ann Harris had been one point six five metres tall and writing ‘killer height?’ and encircling it.
Danilov felt a jump of irritation, reading on, at something Novikov had not told him the previous day. Then just as quickly refused the annoyance: without the intriguing references in the correspondence that only he had read, the significance would not have been obvious to the pathologist. Novikov had found contusions to both breasts, the more severe to the right, near the nipple, where the skin had been broken. The man judged the bruise to the right breast consistent with a bite. There was further contusion, to the right hip, again with evidence of teeth marks. None of the marks showed post-mortem lividity but were recent, within hours. What were bite marks to the breast if not sexual assault? thought Danilov. As quickly as before he stopped the criticism. His question to the man, the previous day, had concerned sexual assault at the scene. If the bruising had occurred before death, then it probably happened in the apartment on Ulitza Pushkinskaya, during the lovemaking which had left the woman with a semen deposit in the vagina. Novikov had found additional contusions to both nostrils and to the central nose cartilage, extending for six millimetres on to the upper lip. There was also a small laceration inside the upper lip. Danilov added the new information to his pad, with the reminder to check the autopsy report on the first victim, wondering how much of the injury would have been visible if he had brought himself properly to look at Ann Harris’s body.
Shortly before her death, Novikov estimated not more than four hours, Ann Harris had eaten a meal. The stomach contents disclosed undigested pork and some apple and grape skin. There was also the presence of acetic acid, consistent with the consumption of wine, in addition to the traces of stronger alcohol, which Danilov took to be the vodka which he knew the girl and her companion had drunk in her flat.