‘I’ll question!’ he said, even louder, overriding the uniformed man. Danilov turned, including the American. ‘We’ll question,’ he qualified.
Kosov’s reaction was astonishment, at being corrected. He opened his mouth, to protest, appeared to realize it would be wrong and then shrugged. A wall ornament appeared suddenly to interest him.
‘We have Petr Yakovlevich in custody,’ Danilov announced.
Valentina made a great effort to compose herself, straightening in front of the four men. The man who was speaking now seemed kinder than the one in uniform, who was walking about the apartment, picking up and putting things down, as if he had the right. Which she supposed he did: he was in uniform. ‘Why’s he in jail?’
‘He might have done something wrong,’ said Cowley.
Foreign voice, foreign dress, Valentina identified. The awareness, from the television and the newspapers, came at once, hollowing her out. ‘No!’ she insisted, loud herself now. ‘He didn’t do that! No!’
‘Didn’t do what?’ Danilov picked up. Beside him, Pavin was recording everything, writing surprisingly quickly for such a ponderous man.
‘What you’re saying.’
‘We’re not saying anything,’ said Cowley.
‘He’s better.’
‘Why aren’t you in bed? It’s still night.’
‘Waiting for Petr.’
‘He’s a grown man. Why do you wait up for Petr when he’s a grown man?’ demanded Danilov.
‘You know!’ She pulled a baggy cardigan tighter around her.
‘Tell me.’
‘He’s not a grown man. Not properly grown. Not in his head.’
Neither Danilov nor Cowley looked at each other, but Kosov came away from a small table at which he’d been standing and said: ‘There!’
‘You know he’s done something wrong, don’t you?’ urged Danilov.
Reluctantly Valentina nodded.
‘How do you know?’ asked Cowley.
‘You’ve been coming, for days.’ She was looking down at the floor now, voice sometimes difficult to hear.
‘Did he tell you what he’d done?’
She shook her head.
‘Did you ask him?’ pressed the American.
‘Yes.’
‘What did he say?’
‘Wouldn’t tell me. Said he hadn’t done anything.’
‘Has be brought anything home?’ said Danilov.
‘Is he locked up?’ demanded the woman. ‘In a cell or something?’
‘Yes,’ said Danilov, allowing her initially to evade the question.
‘He won’t like that. He hates being locked up, from the other times.’
‘The other times when he attacked women?’ said Cowley.
‘Yes.’
‘Is that what he’s done now?’ intruded Kosov, wanting to be part of what was happening.
‘I don’t know.’
‘Has he brought anything home?’ Danilov repeated.
‘I don’t understand.’
‘Things he wanted to keep, specially.’ Danilov wanted evidence to come without suggestion from them.
Cowley recognized the approach for some professional integrity, but not much: this interrogation, after what he considered technically to be forcible entry, contravened every American judicial rule and guideline on the statute book governing witness interviewing and possible evidence gathering. A defence lawyer five minutes out of law school with the worst degree in the world could have had it ruled inadmissible in any court in the United States.
‘I still don’t understand, not properly. But no.’
‘Why does Petr carry a knife?’ persisted Danilov.
‘He doesn’t!’ the woman denied, emphatically.
‘He was carrying a knife, in a sheath I guess he made himself, when he was arrested tonight.’
Valentina shook her head again, but slower, sadder, this time. ‘I don’t know about a knife.’
‘What about buttons?’ asked Cowley.
‘Buttons?’ The woman stared up at them, in obvious bewilderment.
‘The sort of buttons on women’s clothes,’ elaborated Danilov. ‘Did Petre collect them?’
‘Of course not!’
‘You’d know?’
‘Of course I’d know!’
‘You clean his room? Look after his things?’
‘Yes.’ She was faint-voiced, obviously lying.
‘Do you look after his room?’ Danilov persisted.
‘His clothes. He won’t let me into his room,’ the woman admitted. ‘But the other officers went in, when they came. They saw it all.’
It was in the report he’d considered utterly inadequate, Danilov remembered. ‘We want to see it again. Now.’
Valentina nodded, dumbly, with no thought of protest. She pulled the shapeless cardigan about her again when she stood up. As she crossed the room to a bedroom door Danilov saw the backs of her slippers were trodden down, like Olga’s, so that she had to scuff to keep them on. At the door she looked back helplessly at them and said: ‘I haven’t got the key. It’s locked and I haven’t got the key.’
‘I have,’ said Danilov, walking forward with the second of the two keys on Yezhov’s ring. It worked.
The bedroom was immaculate, as it had been for the first police examination. As they entered, Cowley commented quietly to Danilov, in English: ‘Everything fits the profile.’
‘I know,’ agreed Danilov, also in English.
Valentina Yezhov hung back as the four men entered her son’s sealed room. Striving for some professional propriety, Cowley said: ‘You must come in as well. See everything that we do: be aware of anything we take.’
Obediently the woman came forward, but still only just put herself inside the door.
They all searched, Kosov roughly until Danilov stopped him and warned they didn’t want anything hidden by the dismissive way the man was throwing things aside. Pavin, the evidence collector, was the one who really led. And it was Pavin who found the secret place — nothing more than a floorboard, sawn through to create a lid over the natural space beneath. Inside were three pornographic magazines, very old and worn, all masochistic, all showing chained and tethered naked women in various poses of apparent suffering. In a lot of the pictures, their breasts were the object of attack.
Beneath the magazines were two cotton purses. They contained, in total, ten buttons of the sort used on women’s clothing.
To Pavin, Danilov said: ‘Parcel up all his clothes, for forensic’ To the woman he said: ‘I want you to come with us. You’ve got to help us talk to him.’
Valentina looked beyond Danilov, to where Pavin was at the wardrobe. ‘Don’t crease his clothes. He doesn’t like his clothes being creased. I have to keep everything pressed.’
Cowley recognized the sort of irrational remark people made under intense, breaking-point pressure. It was also probably very significant.
Chapter Thirty-Six
Refused the lead at Bronnaja, Kosov bustled for control back at his own Militia post, but again Danilov opposed him, accepting the obvious offence although trying to minimize the disagreement as much as possible before the others, his sole concern now to get the investigation properly and professionally concluded. He contradicted Kosov’s announcement that they would resume at once the questioning of Yezhov in his cell, insisting instead that any further interviews had to be in a much larger interrogation room in which the man might feel less constrained and in which Valentina could wait until they were ready. There were other things that had to be set in motion first. Pavin had to contact the Serbsky Institute, to summon the doctor who had been Yezhov’s most recent psychiatrist: the man was to bring with him Yezhov’s complete case history. Danilov himself awoke Leonid Lapinsk, refusing to go along completely with the older man’s instant excitement but agreeing that the circumstantial evidence looked overwhelmingly convincing.
They had taken over the day-room in which Danilov had earlier examined Yezhov’s possessions, to which were now added the clothes, buttons and magazines taken from the apartment. While Danilov telephoned his superior, Cowley sifted carefully through what had been assembled, with a pen tip, not his fingers.