Cowley sat in the oasis of calm diplomatic equanimity, speculating how it would all fall apart if he revealed to the complacent man the unarguable connection between a murder of a drunken Moscow taxi driver and the killing of Ann Harris. Maybe the State Department would inform Hubert Richards, despite his specific overnight mesages to FBI headquarters that he be allowed to work on the embassy leads before any disclosure or alarm. Cowley supposed there would eventually be a complaint from the ambassador, for not being told. He was satisfied there were good professional reasons for withholding the link at the moment.
Gently encouraging, Cowley said: ‘I’m curious, sir, if you’ve come up with anything: particularly about any male friend she might have had here at the embassy. That becomes even more important now: forensic examination of the apartment rules out it being a Russian she went to bed with on the night of her murder.’ Was it right, even to approach the ambassador first? It would be, if Richards gave him something positive. The man moved an ornate silver paperweight around the blotter on his desk and Cowley thought the ambassador’s colour was starting to grow.
‘Didn’t expect a girl like Ann to sleep with a Russian, did you?’ said Richards, pompously.
‘I don’t know what to expect at the moment,’ said Cowley. ‘I’m extremely anxious to find out who the man was.’
‘Don’t know,’ said the ambassador, close to childlike shortness.
‘No one could give you any indication at all?’
‘None,’ insisted the diplomat. ‘Ann was a gregarious girl, well liked socially. But properly so, if you know what I mean. Postings here to Moscow are invariably accompanied, wives stationed with husbands.’
‘I do know what you mean,’ assured Cowley. ‘And I told you yesterday I’m not interested in morals or embarrassments.’
‘I have asked,’ Richards insisted, ‘I have been told of no one, married or otherwise.’
The silly old fool was lying, guessed Cowley, angrily. But probably not lying directly. From his previous embassy postings Cowley had learned that diplomats avoided accusations of evasion or deceit by failing to discover unpalatable things: what they didn’t know they couldn’t impart. It was Cowley’s definition of diplomacy. It had been wrong, to bother with the ambassador first. ‘If a relationship within the embassy were to be discovered by the Russians — and if their investigation ended in what we would regard as the worst possible conclusion — any embarrassment would be compounded, don’t you think?’
‘I do not need that pointed out to me. Neither do I consider it worthy of a response.’
‘An American involvement would be better contained — better handled — by an American,’ Cowley persisted.
‘You are repeating yourself! And impertinently!’ said the other American.
A very definite waste of time, Cowley accepted. It would even be pointless getting annoyed about it. ‘We are discussing a murder. The murder of someone with rather important connections.’
‘I will not have impertinence in my embassy, sir!’
‘Let’s hope, Mr Ambassador, that you don’t have a murderer, either.’
Richards’s face was blazing. Through tight lips he said: ‘I have an extremely busy schedule. Is there anything else you feel it’s necessary for us to discuss?’
‘Not at the moment,’ said Cowley. ‘But if you do hear something you will tell me, won’t you?’
‘Of course,’ said Richards.
Success of some sort, thought Cowley: he’d trapped a diplomat into telling a direct lie.
Barry Andrews was at his window with the scrap-yard view when Cowley walked into the FBI office. Cowley’s overnight messages were lying on the man’s desk.
‘What the hell have we got here?’ Andrews demanded loudly. ‘You saying she’s the victim of a serial killer?’
‘That’s what I’m saying.’
‘Jesus! The waves this is going to make!’
‘I haven’t told the ambassador. I don’t intend to, yet.’
‘Sure that’s wise?’
‘The bastard is snowing me. I’ve got to talk to people here at the embassy today and I’m going in cold: they can bullshit me all they like and I wouldn’t know it. So what about it, Barry? You tell me about Ann Harris. Someone’s got to.’
Andrews shrugged, pouring them both coffee from the Cona machine by the window. ‘I told you already. Attractive girl. Knew she had Uncle Walt back home in Washington, playing short stop. Aloof. Nice enough kid, though.’
‘Barry, someone was fucking her! And it wasn’t a Russian because there wasn’t a trace of anything Russian in that apartment. So who was it?’
‘I don’t know. Maybe it was somebody from another embassy: there’s fraternization with friendly allies, you know.’
Cowley sighed. ‘In a letter the Russians took from her apartment, she calls life here a prison. I would have thought relationships would be pretty obvious to everyone.’
‘It’s not that enclosed.’
‘Tell me about Ralph Baxter,’ Cowley demanded.
‘Ralph? What’s he got to do with it?’
‘I just want to talk to him. About something odd he said. So what about him?’
Andrews sat with his coffee-cup held before him. ‘He’s OK. Baseball fanatic. High flier: already served a lot in Asia. If he had more friends in Washington, I guess he’d have his ambassadorship by now.’
‘He married?’
Andrews nodded. ‘Nice girl. Jane. Great cook. She and Pauline swop recipes and techniques a lot.’ He smiled. ‘Pauline’s still the Goddess of the kitchen.’
‘Would Baxter have been screwing Ann Harris?’
‘Ralph!’ Andrews laughed, aloud. ‘I doubt it. Jane keeps those kitchen knives close to hand: poor little Ralphie is a much oppressed spouse. If Jane suspected he was waving it around, she’d cut his pecker off and put it in the stew.’
‘What about Paul Hughes?’
Andrews put down his coffee-cup, to hold up shielding hands. ‘Let’s ease up a little here, Billie boy. I want to know what’s going on. I need to be filled in on a few things.’
Cowley didn’t like being called Billie boy, but if he expected Andrews to help, he supposed he had to offer some explanation. ‘There appears to have been a lot of telephone contact between him and the girl.’
‘What’s so surprising about that?’ demanded Andrews. ‘She worked for him. Paul Hughes heads the economic unit here. Actually seems to like the place, if you can believe that! Ballet buff. My regular racquet ball partner in the embassy gym; he’s a hell of a player. Always needs to win, every time. Speaks pretty good Russian.’
‘Married?’
‘Angela. Their two kids are at school back home but Angela takes a kindergarten class for the young children who are with their folks here. She was a teacher originally, in Seattle.’
‘What about Hughes? He a special friend of the dead girl?’
There was a gap, before Andrews replied. ‘They’d obviously be closer than Baxter: you think he was the guy in her apartment the night she died?’
Cowley shook his head. ‘I don’t know. Did Ann Harris get involved with the social life of the embassy?’
‘She attended some things … national holiday celebrations, stuff like that. But she wasn’t at the club every night. Lived outside, of course: no way of knowing what she did away from the embassy.’
‘She never talked about it?’
‘Not to me. But then she wouldn’t. I didn’t know her that well.’
‘Who did? What about one of the women here? She have a particular friend among them?’
‘Not that I know of.’
‘What about the scuttlebutt? Everyone must be talking about her, since the murder. What are they saying?’
Andrews shrugged. ‘Nothing that helps, I don’t think. Everyone liked her. Can’t understand what she was doing out in the street, at that time of night; street muggings happen in Moscow, but not particularly in that area.’
‘What about Russian male friends? You ever hear her linked with a Russian man?’