Hughes remained behind the desk. There was no smile of greeting, either. ‘Barry Andrews told me you were coming, but I don’t know what I can do to help you,’ he announced at once.
There was a pervading smell of tobacco in the room. The man was smoking a cigarette and there were several butts already in an ashtray on the desk. Paul Hughes’s features were striking, thin-faced but with a beaked nose and pure white hair combed forward. The striped blue suit was impeccable, clearly hand-made with a lapelled waistcoat across which a gold watch-chain linked two flapped pockets. Had Hughes chosen straight diplomacy and not economics, Cowley guessed the man would have already been short-listed for an ambassadorship. Cowley said: ‘Ann Harris was a member of your staff: you must have known her well.’
‘Reasonably.’
‘Did you get on, personally?’
‘This is a small department of an embassy in an unusual environment,’ lectured Hughes. ‘It’s essential to be compatible: things would become unworkable otherwise.’
‘I’m not completely sure I understand what you’ve just said.’
‘It’s necessary to make a conscious effort to get on well with everyone.’
‘Did it need a conscious effort to get on with Ann Harris?’
‘Not at all. She was a very pleasant girl.’
‘How would you describe things between you? Division controller to employee? Or friends?’
Hughes gazed unspeaking across the desk for several moments, and Cowley was caught by the stillness with which the man held himself. Finally Hughes said: ‘Neither. There was always the proper degree of respect between us but there was not a rigid distancing: as I said, that wouldn’t work here. But I would not go as far as to say we were close friends.’
‘I didn’t actually ask if you were close.’
‘It was amicable,’ allowed Hughes.
‘Did you mix socially?’
‘Everyone mixes socially: it’s an enclosed society.’
‘Regularly?’
Hughes shrugged. ‘As and when. There’s usually something organized here at the embassy every week, but people don’t go every time. There’s a fairly active dinner circuit.’
‘Ann Harris has dined with you?’
‘My wife and I.’
‘And you with her, at Pushkinskaya?’
‘I think so: yes I’m sure we have.’
‘But not recently? If you’d been there recently you would have remembered more easily?’
There was another unblinking stare. ‘No, not recently.’
‘Where do you live, Mr Hughes; you and your wife? In the compound or outside?’
‘Outside.’
‘Isn’t it difficult to get outside accommodation? I thought it was at a premium.’
Hughes brought both hands up on the desk, leaning forward to light another cigarette from the butt of the old. They were French, Cowley saw, identifying the packet. Hughes said: ‘Is a conversation about the accommodation problems of Moscow going to help find Ann’s killer?’
Now it was Cowley who hesitated, looking at the man and the way he was craning forward, ‘I don’t know. At the moment we’re a long way from finding the killer. Where is your apartment?’
Hughes sighed. ‘Pecatnikov. We were lucky enough to take it over from my predecessor. I really can’t see the point of this conversation.’
‘Do you want to help find Ann Harris’s killer?’
‘Of course I do!’ said Hughes, indignantly. ‘That’s an absurd question.’
‘I’m sorry, if it’s upsetting you.’
‘It’s not upsetting me! That’s absurd also! Your questions simply seem obtuse.’
There was colour to Hughes’s grey face, and Cowley thought that everything he was doing that day was making embassy staff go red. It didn’t seem to be achieving much, though: so far no one had lost their temper sufficiently to make any unguarded remark. ‘I’ll try to be less obscure,’ he promised. ‘Who was Ann Harris’s lover?’
‘I’ve no idea. I didn’t even know she had one.’
‘Not in this narrow, enclosed society?’
‘No.’
‘You want to reflect on that, Mr Hughes?’
‘What are you saying? Suggesting?’
‘Just that you reflect on what you’re saying.’
Hughes came further forward over his desk. ‘I’ve agreed to help you — I want to help you — but I won’t tolerate this sort of questioning. The inference is obvious and I reject it completely.’ The man’s voice was even, just occasionally snagging on words in his anger. The cigarette was stabbed out, forcefully.
‘What inference is that, Mr Hughes?’
The other man’s hands were clenched in front of him now, some of the knuckles even whitening. ‘That I am being less than honest with you.’
‘But you are, aren’t you? Being honest with me?’
Hughes pushed himself back into his chair. ‘I’ve helped you all I can. I’d appreciate it if you left, right now.’
‘I’d appreciate something else,’ said Cowley, settling further into his chair. ‘I’d appreciate your telling me why, from her apartment in Pushkinskaya in the month prior to her death, Ann Harris made sixteen telephone calls to you.’
There was a twitching movement through the other man’s body, as if he were wincing from a blow, but that was the only reaction, although the knuckles stayed white. ‘How do you know about telephone calls made to me? What, about telephone calls?’
‘You’ve said you want to help me. I’d hoped you’d help me about those, particularly.’
The movement that went through Hughes’s body this time was more of a shudder. ‘She was attached to this department. It is not at all unusual for members of my staff to talk to me on the telephone after normal working hours.’
‘Staff that work for you throughout the day?’
‘Yes. Why not?’
‘Was Ann Harris efficient?’
‘Of course she was. She wouldn’t have been assigned here if she hadn’t been efficient.’
‘You never had cause for complaint about her work?’
‘Never.’
‘Yet during the month before she was killed she remembered sixteen things to talk to you about that she’d forgotten during the day when she was here with you and which couldn’t wait until the next morning.’
‘Is that a question?’
‘If you like. I find it curious, don’t you?’
‘No.’
‘Do other members of your staff consult you, after working hours?’
Instead of replying, Hughes depressed a button on a flat keyboard close to his computer complex. Cowley heard the door open behind him. Hughes smiled up and said: ‘Pam. Come in, won’t you?’
The girl who entered Cowley’s view was slight and dark-haired, bobbed short. She wore black-framed glasses which she removed as she approached. The twin-set was fawn, with a knitted-in flower motif which was picked up in the skirt, completing the ensemble. She looked curiously between the two men and Hughes said: ‘Pamela Donnelly, my other senior economist. William Cowley.’
From all the material he had read, Cowley knew Ann Harris had been twenty-eight years old: he guessed Pamela Donnelly to be the same, maybe a year or two older. Not knowing the reason for her summons, Cowley said nothing. Neither did the girl. Both looked at Hughes.
The finance controller said: ‘Cowley’s investigating Ann’s murder. Seems to think there’s something unusual about us talking together after we leave here at night. How often do you and I talk, out of hours?’
The girl gave a shoulder movement of uncertainty, ‘I don’t know. Once or twice a week maybe: sometimes more, if there’s some particular thing going on.’
‘Why?’ Cowley asked the question of the girl but was conscious of the other man smiling, in expectation.
‘The time difference,’ explained the girl. ‘Mr Hughes very often stays on for queries coming in from Washington: if it’s important we speak to each other, if it’s something we’ve been involved with during the day …’ She hesitated, finally smiling back at the financial chief. ‘Mr Hughes likes to keep things up to date: we work an action-this-day system …’ There was another pause. ‘I still can’t believe what happened. Have you found who did it?’