Russian Roulette (19 page)

He opened the door and looked quickly around to make sure that no clothing was lying around. Then he strode to the large wardrobe and pulled it open to see a row of shirts, some pullovers and two suits hanging there. Checking against the scrap of paper that Pudovkin had thrust at him, he ignored everything except the suits. With a grunt of satisfaction, he took down a hanger carrying a mid-grey tweed and folded it unceremoniously over his arm.

Leaving the room without another glance, he hurried back to Petrovka and picked up a vehicle in the transport pool to take his latest trophy down to the Forensic Institute.

‘More brandy, Vasily Sergeyevich – we needn't go back to Headquarters for another hour yet.'

Alexei Pudovkin, relaxed in braces and shirtsleeves, pushed the bottle across the table, while Darya stalked out of the room, disapproval oozing from every pore.

Alexei would not have bothered to have come home at all this evening, but, for the sake of peace, he thought that he had better make some pretence at cohabitation with his wife.

He brought Moiseyenko up to supper with him. Darya, who disapproved of the young man as much as she did any of Pudovkin's militia friends below the rank of major, grudgingly made them a meal before they went back to Petrovka to see the commissioner.

The affair at the Metropol had brought back a lot of life into Alexei. Vasily could see the change in twenty-four hours; the older man was more alert, more alive and even the lines around his mouth seemed less dejected than yesterday.

He had even faced up to Darya over the business of the laundry and told her bluntly that work came first and if she wanted the stuff taken, she could go herself. To cap this, he had even switched off the television in the middle of her favourite programme, when Vasily arrived. She seemed to accept this show of daring independence without much fight – a sulky acceptance seemed to be the order of the day. Alexei began to wonder if there was any truth in the old saying that women like to be dominated – she had even capitulated over the choice of their summer holiday – his Baltic fishing had triumphed over her eternal Crimea.

The meal over, the two militiamen sat at the table with coffee and a bottle of spirits, talking over the latest developments in the ‘affair Fragonard'.

‘I wonder how long Segel will be,' pondered Moiseyenko. He had delivered the suit to the house on Sadovaya Triumfalnaya and the doctor had promised to ring as soon as they got a definite answer, his technicians working on after hours until the job was done.

‘We'll wait for him to ring before going to see Father Mitin,' said Alexei, pouring another drink. ‘As long as it's not later than nine o'clock – the old man likes to go to meet his pals in the Armenia on a Friday night.'

Moiseyenko looked at Darya's elaborate electric clock on the wall.

‘Another hour … I can't understand why the Prosecutor is hanging fire over this one.'

Pudovkin shrugged. ‘I'll ask the Colonel tonight – I've a feeling that there must have been a whisper from over the Kremlin wall about it. But if
tovarishch
Segel turns up with his proof tonight, we'll have no option but to collect Smith and dump him in the Procurator's lap.'

Vasily nodded and Alexei, with an abandon which surprised even himself, yelled to Darya to bring the coffee pot. She appeared in the doorway, looked at her husband with a curious expression that he could not analyse and placed the pot in the centre of the table. Back in the kitchen, the usual thunderous clashing of crockery was strangely muted.

Moiseyenko winked at the older man and grinned. ‘What have you done to her – given her a good walloping?'

Alexei grunted. ‘It's too good to last – she'll probably creep up on me in the night and stab me in the back.'

The phone shrilled suddenly. He could never get away from it, but this time, the call was welcome.

‘Pudovkin … good evening, Gyenka Ivanovich … yes.' There was a long, pregnant silence, then, ‘Yes, yes thank you … goodnight.'

With slow deliberation, Pudovkin dropped the receiver and came back to the table. His lieutenant was almost pop-eyed with anticipation.

‘Well?' he asked.

Alexei picked up his uniform jacket and hung it around his bony shoulders. ‘Let's go back to Petrovka,' he said gravely.

Colonel Igor Mitin restlessly paced his room, glaring at the clock every minute, thinking of his cronies getting a head start on him in the restaurant of the Armenia hotel on Neglinnaya Street. Then there was a rap on the door and Pudovkin loped in. He threw a perfunctory salute in the direction of his chief.

‘Took your time, Alexei Alexandrovich,' grumbled Mitin. ‘Sit down and let's have a nice quick version of what's been going on – nobody tells me anything; of course. I'm always the last to know.'

Pudovkin crouched on a small chair opposite the obese colonel and gave a succinct account of the day's activities. He knew quite well that Mitin had been getting reports on everything except the latest development, but it was part of the fat man's act to pretend to be neglected by his staff.

The news about Simon Smith's suit made him sit up and drop the façade of the forgotten chief. He quietly took out a packet of cigarettes and slid one over to Alexei, who explained the findings at the Forensic Institute.

‘Segel said that they found some tiny grey, black and white fibres on the front of Fragonard's woollen dressing gown, over the chest and waist area. They were totally different in colour and texture to any of the dead man's clothing, so we took a chance on looking at Smith's suits. The waiters in the Metropol restaurant remembered vaguely that he had a grey suit on last evening, so Moiseyenko collected the only grey suit in his wardrobe and we took it to Gyenka Segel.'

He paused to light his cardboard cigarette.

‘Segel's men now say that the fibres are identical – the ones from the suit exactly match the ones from Fragonard's body – some were wool and the rest were a synthetic fibre the English call Terylene. The colour, thickness and chemical properties were identical and the cloth is totally different from anything we make in the Soviet Union – naturally, we've got plenty of synthetic fibres, but they're not the same as this stuff.'

Mitin bobbed his head over his four chins – he had even forgotten the clock for the moment. ‘So the front of Smith's suit was pressed against Fragonard's dressing gown,' he summarised.

‘Yes – either when he struggled with him or when he lifted the body to throw it from the window.'

‘Or both,' added Mitin unnecessarily.

Pudovkin scratched his chin ‘I suppose so – yet it seems extraordinary – a man comes a couple of thousand miles from his home to kill another total stranger in circumstances where he's bound to be caught. No one could say that we've overtaxed our brains today – the forensic people have done all the work.'

Mitin heaved his great shoulders and scratched his ear. ‘That's not our worry, Alexei Alexandrovich … we've got to take him now.'

Alexei nodded ‘I can't see anything to stop us arresting him now – we'd be wrong not to, I suppose. Trouble and violence seem to follow him around.'

‘The sooner the better,' agreed the colonel, picking up his phone.

‘I'll get on to the Prosecutor's Office and tell whoever is on call. They won't do anything until the morning, but at least they can't say that we didn't tell them as soon as we knew.'

While he waited for the official to be traced, Alexei sounded Mitin out about the background.

‘There's something odd about this case – we've no idea about a motive and I feel sure that the boys from The Centre are not far behind us.'

The Commissioner sniggered. ‘Behind us! … they may well be way out ahead.'

Pudovkin's eyebrows went up. ‘Have you heard anything, then?'

The colonel did his jowl-shaking routine again. ‘No, not a sound from that direction, but I know that the Prosecutor had word from the Ministry of the Interior yesterday that he was not to take any action on that pistol from the ship until further notice.'

‘What's that mean – do we have to stay clear as well?'

Igor Mitin was so engrossed with the problem that he actually put his forefingers in each of his ears and wiggled them around, to Alexei's profound revulsion. Then he picked up the phone again as he was connected with the Prosecutor's Office.

When the call was finished, he returned to the same topic.

‘I guess that the KGB were waiting to jump on somebody over that gun and didn't want us blundering into their ambush. I might be wrong,' he added virtuously.

Alexei was more interested in immediate action. ‘So can we go ahead? This man Smith needs picking up tonight, though my old police nose tells me that something smells here.'

Mitin drew careful circles on his blotter. ‘Carry on, Alexei … the Ministry told the Prosecutor, not us – we're not supposed to know. I only got it on the grapevine. And that was only about the ship affair – there hadn't been a murder then. Let the cloak-and-dagger men sort it out later.'

Pudovkin muttered agreement, and Mitin began to look anxiously at the clock again. ‘I've got an important meeting in a few minutes, so if you don't mind …' He was perfectly well aware that Alexei knew where he was going – he had gone to the Armenia every Friday night for years past, but his detective captain gravely nodded as if he didn't know the boss was itching to get off on his night with the boys.

‘I'll get over to the Metropol and bring this Smith in, then.' He spoke as if he hoped that Mitin would countermand the order even at this eleventh hour, but the commissioner merely waved him away with his blessing.

‘A good day's work, Alexei Alexandrovich – we'll make a detective of you yet, before you retire!'

He waddled across the room to get his cap and Pudovkin retreated backwards to the door.

‘I'd better tell the British Consul – and the Swiss one, I suppose.'

Mitin lumbered across the room, literally forcing Alexei through the door. ‘Yes, you do that … tell me all about it in the morning.'

Even Pudovkin's thick skin could hardly turn aside the impression that the interview was over, so he went downstairs to his office to collect Moiseyenko.

The lieutenant was waiting for him with a message.

‘Lev Pomansky rang a few minutes ago.'

‘He hasn't lost Smith again?!' asked an anguished Pudovkin. ‘Not now!'

Vasily hastily reassured him. ‘No, the opposite, in

fact. He's gone to the Moskva Hotel in Marx Prospect, with the woman, the courier and the man Shaw. They left the Metropol about half an hour ago and now Pomansky says they're having a meal and some drinks in the restaurant of the Moskva.'

Pudovkin found his own finger straying to his ear and hastily snatched it down. ‘We'd better wait until they come back to their own hotel before we collect him … another hour won't make any difference, as long as we know where he is. I want to get them all together when I snatch Smith … if there's any collusion, it may scare the partner into doing something rash.'

He paused. ‘What's Lev doing now?'

‘Hanging about the Moskva looking as inconspicuous as an ostrich in a chicken run, I expect!'

‘He's got a good heart, Vasily … it's just that his feet are too big and his brain is too small. Is he going to ring in when they leave?'

‘He said he would.'

‘Then we'll sit it out here – go and put the pot on the gas.'

In the gloom that settled over the main characters in the Metropol affair after dinner that night, an unexpected twinkle of life came from Michael Shaw.

‘Let's have a walk over to the Hotel Moskva,' he suddenly announced, as they sat aimlessly around the cleared table. ‘A writing pal o' mine from Cork stayed there and reckoned it beat this old mausoleum hollow.'

No one seemed in the least bit keen. Simon pointedly ignored him; he was too preoccupied wondering when Pudovkin was going to decide to arrest him – and wondering what the hell had happened to his best suit!

Elizabeth Treasure still carried traces of the desperate defiance that she had displayed to Simon when the saga of the smuggled fivers was played out that afternoon. Gilbert Bynge was perhaps the least troubled, though his tic remained bad and he seldom let an opportunity pass to wring his hands and wail about what ‘Head Office' would be saying by now.

Shaw continued to nag about going off somewhere else for a drink, and eventually Gilbert gave in and agreed to join him. ‘We'll have to have another bite to eat if we do, but it'll be a change.' He added his persuasions and, for the sake of peace, Simon and Liz agreed, mainly because they had nothing else to pass the evening.

The Moskva was within sight of the Metropol, just across Revolution Square on Marx Prospect. It was a far more modern building, being a great triple block with a colonnaded front, towering above the lower end of Gorky Street. It was well-known, not only for its more elegant atmosphere, but because its picture adorned the label of every bottle of Stolichnaya vodka!

They walked to it in three minutes and soon were sitting in the restaurant. Like the building, this was a far more modern place than their own dining room in the Metropol.

The atmosphere of the group seemed to have gained nothing by the change of air … they sat around in strained silence until the waiters finally arrived. Even when they had acquired something to drink, conversation was sporadic and banal until the alcohol seeped into their systems and at least made each other's company bearable.

Simon and Liz played a half-hearted game of footsie under the table again, and Gilbert, with his usual facility, found a girl acquaintance in the shape of an Intourist guide to talk to on the next table.

Shaw seemed content to sit and drink in silence most of the time. They felt obliged to order some food but, as they had just eaten, they merely picked at a salad and some soup.