Russian Roulette (15 page)

Steps led down from the bridge to a riverside walk, from which many entrances led directly into the park. He sat for a moment on a seat and studied his precious map. In less than two days, it'd had such heavy use that its folds were split, but the part covering the park was good enough to show him the general layout of the main avenues.

Just inside the main gate was a large open space like a parade ground, and from this were many lanes leading to the amusement park, the cafes and the boating lake. He discovered the approximate place where he was sitting and saw if he cut off left, he could approach the inside of the main entrance by a more discreet route.

He stuffed the map back into his raincoat pocket and set off through the rather wild and bushy gardens. Soon the elaborate stonework of the main entrance reared above the next hedge. There were a few people about, mostly old men shuffling about in the sun or playing chess on the park seats, or grandmothers wheeling pushchairs or dragging reluctant children.

He slouched along with his hands in pockets in an effort to look inconspicuous, his eyes rapidly screening the way ahead.

The next corner brought him a view of the large open space inside the gates. It was as big as a football pitch and was covered in loose gravel, not grass. Around the perimeter were benches and banks of shrubs.

He stopped well back from the opening and looked across towards the high entrance. There, tramping up and down the middle of the nearest broad avenue, was a large man in a cheap blue suit, two newspapers firmly rammed under his right armpit.

This must be Gustav Pabst
, he thought, with a sudden quickening of his pulse. Again something restrained him from gambolling joyfully across the gravel to pump the German's hand with delight.

He still had this nagging feeling of a baited trap. He was annoyed and told himself that it was the aftermath of being followed by that militiaman … but the sensation persisted. He looked cautiously around the arena at the other actors in the drama.

Three old men walked slowly down the centre of the open space, at an angle to Pabst. A
babushka
pushed a perambulator in the opposite direction and a few women sat gossiping on benches in the middle distance. A park keeper with a large brush and a peaked cap stood idly with his back to Simon, about fifty yards away. The nearest person was a fairly young man, shabbily dressed and hunched up on a bench not twenty yards to his left, again half turned away from the watcher.

Simon watched the tableau tensely for a few moments, keeping well back in the entrance of the smaller path. He was uneasy and afraid to walk out into the big open space.

Pabst, a big red-faced man, reached the end of his pacing in one direction and turned to start tramping back the way he came. Simon was reminded of a bored sentry from his army days – he half expected the man to do a crashing one-two-three about-turn with his big boots at the end of his beat.

Indecisively, he watched. He had chewed his lip so badly that it bled, and still he could not summon up the courage to walk out and challenge Pabst.

For another two minutes, he watched two thousand pounds' worth of humanity crunch up and down the gravel. Pabst turned again and began walking away from him. As he did so, something made Simon glance at the nearest man on the park bench, a slight movement.

It was the first time he had moved. The man brought up his right forefinger and pointed fleetingly at his wristwatch, then at the back of the retreating German. Immediately his hand dropped and he became immobile again, but Simon had seen enough.

With his heart in his mouth, he melted back into the bushes, not waiting to see the ‘park keeper' raise the handle of his brush slightly in acknowledgement.

Simon dared not rush, but took a few right angle turns at random until he had put a considerable distance between the parade ground and himself. He snatched another quick look at his map, orientated his position and went out of the park the same way that he had entered.

He hurried back to the underground and caught a central-bound train straight to Sverdlov Square and the Metropol.

Without any pretence at evasion, he galloped up the steps and went to his room, not even noticing that his blue-coated friend was back in position in the foyer.

Simon sank into a chair and made a quick mental inventory of the altered circumstances.

One – I've lost my two thousand quid
, he thought, with less distress than he expected – the relief from indecision seemed almost worth it.

Two – Pabst has been rumbled by the Reds and, three – my arrangements for the meeting are also known
.

He thought for a moment about how the Fragonard business tied in with this … he couldn't make the two fit together at all. What he was worried about, was the eventual results for himself. The woman in Pabst's apartment block could describe him and identify him if required – and the writing on the note, though unsigned, might be matched with his own, although he
had
used printed capitals.

He was in a fine spot now, he thought desperately – though had he known it, this was the only part of the affair about which he need not have worried.

While he sweated with anxiety upstairs, Lev Pomansky lumbered to the nearest phone to ring Petrovka and a much more unobtrusive watcher slid through the door leading to the cellar under the telephone exchange.

Chapter Ten

Later in the morning, a militia car turned out into Petrovka Street and made its way across the centre of Moscow to the Forensic Research Institute. This stood on the Sadovaya Triumfalnaya, part of the tree-lined boulevard that once encircled the old city. Now it was deep in the heart of the capital but still provided a useful link between the radial roads that streamed out from the Kremlin area.

The Volga dropped the detectives outside an old, two-storeyed building that was mature even before the Revolution. It had probably been a merchant's house, though it had no grounds at all, the front door opening directly onto the road.

Alexei had been there before, but it was new to Vasily, who looked up at its faded yellow walls and old-fashioned shutters with undisguised interest.

They walked into an entrance almost pitch-dark after the outside sun. When their eyes adapted, they could see apparatus, refrigerators and all sorts of scientific paraphernalia lining the corridors. There was a strong smell of chemicals, anaesthetics and rabbits, which was unearthly after the dust and sweat of the Petrovka CID.

A door banged open on their left and the big, hearty figure of Gyenka Segel appeared.

‘Come – have a look at my treasures!'

They squeezed into a small room having two desks, the owner of the other fortunately being absent.

The pathologist got down to business without delay. ‘We haven't had time to do it all yet – the clothing is still being examined – but the tissues from the autopsy are ready.'

He waved towards a small side table where a twin-eyepiece microscope stood with a scatter of glass slides about its base.

‘You can look for yourselves if you like, but I think you'd be wasting your time.'

Alexei perched like an old crow on the arm of a chair.

‘Just tell us,
tovarishch
… tell us everything. I want to get my facts straight before I interview these English people at one o'clock.'

Gyenka beamed and handed round cigarettes before launching into his lecture on the mortal remains of Jules Honore Fragonard.

‘As I see it, this man had two entirely separate groups of injuries,' he began, ‘I suspected this at the autopsy this morning and the microscope confirms it … and also makes the puzzle all the more difficult to understand.'

Alexei dutifully rose to the bait. He knew that to get the best from Segel, one had to keep playing him like a fish on a hook.

‘What's so odd about it, Gyenka Ivanovich?'

The doctor enumerated his points by jabbing a blunt forefinger into the blotter on his desk. ‘One … he had a black eye and a cut on the head, definitely some hours before death. Two … at the time of death – or very near it – he had blows to his chest and arms. Three … he was killed by a blow in the neck. Four … he was dead before he was thrown from that window.' He sat back and smirked with the air of a teacher setting his class a conundrum.

‘How can you be certain of this, comrade doctor?' asked Alexei, bravely.

Segel flung an arm in the direction of the microscope.

‘There … we are using a new technique employing enzyme stains … it came from Finland, quite appropriately, but none the worse for that! It shows that reactions to injury around the eye and head wound were so advanced that at least some hours must have elapsed before death … for death puts an end to all bodily activities.'

‘And the arms and chest?'

‘Nothing! This could mean that they were done anything up to an hour or two before death – or even only five minutes, of course.'

‘Could the neck blow have been long before death?' asked Vasily, incautiously.

Segel made a face at him. ‘My son, if it killed him, it must have been at the time of death, eh?'

Moiseyenko subsided into abashed silence and decided to leave science to the scientists.

Alexei plodded on … he wanted to get all the information he could before he went back to grill the witnesses at the Metropol.

‘And there's no shadow of doubt that he died before he fell from the window.'

Segel pounded his desk with a fist like a ham. ‘No, no, no! I tell you, if he had been alive, his heart would have pumped blood from those torn arteries and soaked half a square metre of earth, as well as his horrible pyjamas.'

Pudovkin nodded silently as he orientated the facts in his mind.

‘So – someone beats him up twice, kills him and then drops him from the window to try to conceal the murder.' Gyenka Segel nodded. ‘A few hours between the beatings – that should help to time the death. I presume no one noticed a black eye before he left the restaurant?'

Moiseyenko came back into the conversation. ‘No … I interrogated the hotel staff – they saw him in the English party up until about eleven o'clock, and there was nothing wrong with his face then.'

The doctor sniffed loudly. ‘Eleven o'clock,' he murmured thoughtfully. ‘Add at least three hours for these reactions to develop … that gives the earliest time he could have died as two in the morning – even assuming that he was beaten up immediately he left the dining room.'

Pudovkin shook his head in bewilderment ‘Gets worse and worse … he was probably assaulted late at night, but killed halfway to the dawn … very odd!'

‘Have you got any other information?' asked Segel.

‘Damn all! None of the staff heard anything – the old woman on the floor desk swears that no one passed her during the night, so it must be one of the party in that corridor.'

‘We know pretty well who it is,' added Moiseyenko darkly.

Segel's face made a big question mark and Alexei told him their background interest in the young man, Simon Smith.

‘Seems open-and-shut to me,' commented the pathologist. ‘The little Swiss man tries to kill Smith – God knows why – when they were in Finland, so the Englishman retaliates and kills him – intentionally or otherwise.'

Alexei slowly rocked his head back and forth. ‘Not so easy as that … I don't think this Fragonard could have attacked Smith. The differences in size and strength are too great.'

Gyenka snorted. ‘Don't you believe it … I've seen so many things in the last thirty years that I never say nothing can happen now … a dwarf can throttle an Olympic athlete if the circumstances are right.'

The senior detective looked unconvinced. ‘Why all this business of the three hours between the two lots of bruises then?'

Moiseyenko, determined to make his mark, came in again. ‘Maybe Smith attacked Fragonard first, then later the Swiss came back to get his revenge and was hit again and killed.'

‘In that case, he should have fallen from Smith's window, not his own,' objected Alexei.

‘Not if Smith had any sense,' countered Segel. ‘With the difference in their physique that you keep talking about, he could easily have taken Fragonard back to his room and tossed him out of the window.'

Alexei still scowled his disbelief. ‘I can't see all this happening in the middle of the night without someone hearing something.'

‘Only the English were around and they'll stick together and keep their mouths shut,' said Segel.

Alexei got up, grim-faced. ‘Then I'll have to find a way to open them – right now,' he growled and led the way to the door.

Slowly and reluctantly, the players in the drama assembled in the fourth floor lounge. It was just on one o'clock and the militia had not yet shown up.

The twittering old ladies, whose names Simon could never recall, were there first. They sat primly and nervously on the edges of two upright chairs – the reverend gentleman came close on their heels and submerged himself apprehensively in an overstuffed velvet armchair.

As Simon and Liz Treasure came down the last stretch of passageway from their rooms, they saw Gilbert Bynge bound with nervous energy up the stairs.

‘The Bow Street runners are just coming up in the lift,' he brayed.

A moment later, the grim old woman crashed her gates aside to let out three militiamen. Pudovkin and Moiseyenko had another stolid patrolman with them, who took up the customary position with his back to the lift shaft and stairs. What he was supposed to do, Simon couldn't quite see – none of them had anywhere in which to escape and, so far, no one seemed on the verge of arrest.

The detective captain advanced to the half circle of chairs and settees grouped around the closed television set and nodded a stiff ‘Good day' to them.

‘Mr Shaw is not here, I see?'

Moiseyenko stepped over to the desk woman and spoke to her. She used her telephone, then shook her head.