Breath and pain screeched from Yezhov. He jack-knifed, and as he doubled up Kosov kneed him in the side of the head, sending him reeling back on to the bunk. His head hit the wall as he collapsed.
Kosov went forward, fist raised, but Danilov said: ‘No more! You’ve controlled him! No more!’
Panting, Danilov still having difficulty in breathing properly, both men backed into the corridor. Kosov crashed the door furiously behind them, automatically looking back in through the sliding peep-hole. ‘Can you imagine the strength of that bastard? He’s like a fucking gorilla!’
‘He was very strong,’ Danilov agreed. Lydia Orlenko had made a point of her attacker’s strength. And the American medical opinion was that the killer had to be extremely strong, to drive the knife into his victims as he had done.
‘But we’ve got him!’ Kosov insisted, leading the way back towards the front of the building.
‘I want to see what he had on him,’ said Danilov.
‘All waiting,’ said Kosov, efficiently.
Everything was already in a plastic evidence bag, a list attached. Danilov picked out the contents for himself, itemizing them against the list, and creating a pile on the table in the day-room from which he had earlier imagined hearing a noise. There was a comb, with several teeth missing. Two keys, on a ring. Three unidentified white pills, in a paper twist. And fifteen roubles. Danilov halted at the workbook from which Yezhov’s name had been obtained.
Left in the bag was a knife, in a homemade, roughly stitched leather sheath. And two buttons, one white, one brown, large and ornate, the sort used on women’s clothes. Danilov withdrew the knife. The blade was single-edged, the honed edge extremely sharp. Without actually measuring it, Danilov judged the blade to be about twenty-six centimetres long, possibly five centimetres across at its widest part, near the hilt, and five millimetres thick at its back. He guessed it would have perfectly fitted the wounds of each victim.
He looked back up at Kosov. ‘I need a telephone.’
Cowley and Pavin joined him at the Militia station in less than an hour, arriving separately, the American first. The prepared explanation, initially for Cowley’s benefit but intended to be the official version, was that Yezhov had been detained after being routinely questioned in the street by a Militia patrol officer curious at the man walking so late at night. Several times Kosov offered unnecessary details, which Danilov wished he hadn’t. He realized Kosov regarded himself as part of the investigatory team, intending to come with them to the Bronnaja apartment. Cowley snorted a laugh, shaking his head, and said it was difficult to believe the whole thing could be sorted out like this, almost by accident. Pavin immediately recognized the name, as quickly as Danilov had earlier, and said he’d been to Bronnaja twice the previous day without getting a reply on either occasion. The neighbours, recognizing him as officialdom, had denied knowing anything about the family, apart from confirming that the apartment was occupied by a mother and her son.
They trailed back to the rear of the police station and individually regarded Yezhov through the spy-hole, not trying to enter. The man was bunched on the bunk once more, arms hugging his legs tightly to his chest. He was rocking back and forth and making the whimpered, barking sound again. There was blood on his hair-patched head, where he’d hit the wall upon being knocked back from his attack. His face was puffed from crying.
As they went back to the front of the building, Kosov jerked his head towards the American and said: ‘Tell him it was good, solid police work.’
‘I understand what you’re saying,’ Cowley advised. ‘It seems like you’ve done a good job.’
‘Got him, when no one else could!’ declared Kosov, proudly.
As Danilov expected, Kosov strode from the building with them, towards the car. Maybe, Danilov reflected, a uniform would be a useful encouragement to the mother.
Pavin drove, knowing the way. Cowley wondered what they were going to do if there was still no reply at the apartment. Danilov held up the keys that had been in Yezhov’s possession and said it wouldn’t matter now. Danilov didn’t bother to reply when Cowley asked about a search warrant. Like the American, he was surprised by what could be the abrupt simplicity of it all. Unable to follow normal and practical police methods, because the killings were motiveless, this was always how the investigation had to be resolved, by chance. It was what he and Cowley had always expected. Yet, so soon, he found it hard to accept. Illogically he felt cheated, denied the opportunity to prove himself as a professional criminal investigator. And there was, additionally, another, different personal feeling. If Yezhov was the killer, it hadn’t been solved quite by chance. It had been solved by Kosov, using crooks: law-breakers, at least. Which wasn’t how it should have happened. What sort of reflection was that, he demanded of himself at once. A pompous one, he conceded. There was actually jealousy there, too. The need was to arrest a maniac, wandering, murdering. If Kosov was responsible for that, however he was responsible, then Kosov deserved the recognition and the credit: the convenient means justified the successful end. No one else was going to be murdered.
It was still not properly dawn when they got to Bronnaja, but Valentina Yezhov saw the car draw up below her apartment: she’d spent a lot of the night there, sleepless, anxious for the first movement that might have been Petr returning from wherever he’d been. Since the initial visit of the Militia and their subsequent, evaded, calls she had never slept until Petr was safely home. Four men, she saw, staring down with her hands to her mouth, nibbling at her knuckles: one in uniform, someone important. Petr had done it again — something again — and it was going to be like before, stared at and shunned, unsigned letters left in her box telling her to get out because everyone else in the block didn’t want a sex monster living there. It wouldn’t do any good, not to answer the door: they’d keep coming back, like they were doing now. She still wouldn’t answer, though: she wouldn’t know what to do or say, if she had to face them.
The bell sounded, stridently.
Valentina didn’t move.
It sounded again, longer.
She didn’t move. They’d go away. What else could they do, if there was no one there?
The lock turned. She cried out, more in disappointment at their catching her out than fear of their actually confronting her.
The door had opened at Danilov’s first attempt with the keys the detained man had been carrying. The interior of the apartment was in deep darkness, but her crying out identified Valentina. She blinked, unable to see in the first few seconds of brightness, when Kosov found the light switch. She was sitting on a flat, backless couch which clearly made up into a bed during a normal night. She had her hands nervously around her knees, so very much like her son back in the police cell.
It was Kosov who moved further into the room ahead of any of them. He began, too loudly: ‘OK, let’s not …’ before Danilov intervened.