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.