Then he read the overnight report of a two-man team engaged on another aspect of the inquiry, and in his initial excitement Pavin lost all concern about the psychiatric report problems.
Before telling Danilov he would have time to carry out the other inquiry the man had ordered, after seeing Vladimir Suzlev’s widow again. It was all coming together!
Chapter Twenty
With a lot to crowd in before the press conference, Danilov got up early, slipping out of bed with practised ease to avoid waking Olga. There was a clean shirt in the drawer, although it wasn’t very well pressed, but they hardly ever were. It took a long time going through kitchen cupboards and shelves to find black polish, to cover the neglected tear in his shoe. When he found it, the polish was hard and atrophied, oddly topped with a white powder. It didn’t achieve much of a shine but the tear was less visible. While he waited for water to boil for tea, he wetted his hair and at once regretted doing so: it was so short it stuck up, like wheat in a wind. It would dry before the conference and the inevitable photographs. Olga hadn’t stirred by the time he left the apartment, the carefully removed windscreen wipers wrapped in paper.
He was ahead of the morning rush hour, reaching Petrovka sooner than he expected, which made him even earlier than he’d planned: the Militia building was in transition between night and day shift. His floor was deserted. In his now brightly lit office Danilov wrote out the morning schedule, beginning with Pavin and running through the other preparations as he waited for the American to arrive to be taken to meet Lapinsk and the Federal Prosecutor, in advance of the actual conference. Finally he sat considering the conference itself. He’d never attended such an event before and didn’t know what was expected. The reason for the advanced encounter with the Director and the Prosecutor, he supposed. All he’d have to do was take their lead. Particularly about both murders. Were they going to disclose the connection today? Danilov smiled, suddenly, at his own question. The reservation about the possibility of an embassy involvement still existed. Would an apparent insistence upon making a linking announcement today force the American into some sort of disclosure? It might be worth trying. In which case he’d have to brief Lapinsk and Nikolai Smolin in advance, to ensure their proper response. Definitely worth a try, he decided. Danilov was reaching forward, to make an unnecessary reminder note on his pad, when Pavin entered the office: he never completed the note. Pavin, who never moved quickly, positively flustered in, his normally dour face broken by an expansive grin. The expression was so unusual that Danilov saw for the first time that the man had a gold-edged filling on an eye-tooth.
‘I’ve got the restaurant and the man,’ announced the Major. Across the desk he offered the security agency’s reception photograph of Ann Harris with her hand on the arm of Paul Hughes.
Danilov smiled up at his assistant, in what appeared to be matching triumph but which included a lot of relief. ‘No doubt?’
‘Absolutely none. The restaurant is called the Trenmos: it’s a combination of two names, Trenton, in New Jersey, and Moscow. Very American and very popular with the embassy. They ate there a lot: were well known. And the reservation, for that night, was actually in Hughes’s name. And there’s even more. I took the photograph this morning to Suzlev’s taxi firm, when I made the check you ordered. Three other drivers remember Hughes as one of Suzlev’s regular customers. He used to practise his Russian, just like the wife said.’
Danilov went back to the photograph before him. ‘We’ve got him! … Shit! It was there and I missed it! Look!’
‘What?’ said Pavin, astonished by the outburst.
‘I even thought something was odd at the mortuary but I didn’t see it was,’ said Danilov. ‘And that was it — see! How could I have missed it?’
‘What?’ repeated Pavin, bewilderment replacing astonishment.
Instead of replying Danilov offered back the photograph. ‘Look at him!’ he insisted. ‘Look at the hand!’
‘The finger’s twisted!’ isolated Pavin, instantly.
‘The index finger of the right hand,’ agreed Danilov, more calmly. ‘It will obviously need to be confirmed forensically, for courtroom evidence. But it’s twisted so that it couldn’t give a proper impression. Just as none of the lateral pocket loop prints in Ann Harris’s apartment have a proper impression of the right hand that held the vodka glass. Or made prints in the bathroom. Hughes’s prints and those we found will match! I know they will!’ Danilov no longer felt inferior. That was, he conceded to himself, just how he had felt from the moment of Cowley’s arrivaclass="underline" inferior in scientific facilities and personal ability and in personal training and even — the most uneasy admission of all — in how he looked and dressed, compared to the American. But not any longer: not completely. In appearance maybe, but not on any other level. He’d drawn even, professionally proving himself equal. Now he wouldn’t have to stage any phonily rehearsed disclosures at pre-conference encounters. Because now he knew. So how would he handle it? He wasn’t sure, not at that moment.
‘That’s what the American would have been doing in the evidence room,’ Pavin guessed. ‘Checking the fingerprint sheets.’
‘Most probably,’ Danilov accepted. What he’d just learned might carry the investigation on. But, like so much else in the case, it created as many questions as it provided answers. There was far more political implication than before. And what was the Russian jurisdiction? Could he, a Russian investigator, enter the US embassy to question an American diplomat? He was sure he couldn’t. Whatever the result of any questioning, could Hughes invoke diplomatic immunity? Probably. Did what they had discovered really incriminate the man in murder? Not necessarily. Or merely extend a suspicion heightened by the telephone transcripts that the Cheka had reluctantly made available and which showed Hughes to be a liar? Maybe nothing more than that.
‘Now we’ve got to take it forward,’ said Pavin, prescient as always. ‘It’s the complication everyone was frightened of. It won’t be easy.’
‘It’s never been easy.’
‘You going to tell the American?’
‘I haven’t decided, not yet.’
‘It doesn’t look as if he was confiding in us.’
‘One of us is going to have to tell the other sometime,’ pointed out Danilov. ‘Otherwise it becomes ridiculous.’ So much was ridiculous.
‘Do we have enough to make an arrest?’
Danilov examined the question. ‘Maybe if Hughes were Russian. Certainly enough to bring a Russian in for questioning: people are always nervous, being interrogated in a police station. Stalin’s best legacy to the Russian legal system.’
‘Stalin’s unintentional legacy,’ disputed Pavin, with rare cynicism. ‘And Paul Hughes isn’t Russian.’
‘Then no.’
‘What about the press conference?’
‘An intrusion now,’ said Danilov.
‘You’re not going to say anything there?’
‘Not publicly,’ said Danilov, although an idea began to germinate. ‘Far too early for that. But Lapinsk must know. The Prosecutor, too.’
‘What about postponing the conference?’
Once more Danilov examined the Major’s question, acknowledging the point and wondering whether he had been right in thinking, as he was sure he once had, that Pavin would forever remain at his current rank. Danilov said: ‘It would be convenient. But wrong. It would convey the impression of a sudden development: build up expectation.’