Kosov quickly ensured they were still by themselves. ‘You heard any syndicate names yet?’
‘No.’
‘You won’t forget to tell me, if you do?’
‘Of course not.’
‘Have you spoken to Agayans?’
‘No.’
‘I think he might feel less pressured.’
‘That’s good,’ said Danilov. He’d make another visit to Leninskii Prospekt soon. But not to seek an outright gift. He’d insist on paying Agayans’s price for whatever he wanted. He guessed Agayans would want dollars, though, not roubles.
Danilov rode back to Petrovka beside the chauffeur-driven General. Lapinsk said: ‘It’s a very successful conclusion to my command.’
‘I’m pleased it’s worked out as it has.’
‘I’ve only got another fifteen months to go.’
‘Let’s hope it’s quiet.’
‘Before you arrived this morning I was talking with Smolin about my successor.’
Danilov looked across the car, beginning to concentrate on the conversation. ‘Who is it to be?’
Lapinsk smiled. ‘A final decision hasn’t been made. But you’ve impressed a great many people, Dimitri Ivanovich. I personally don’t have any doubt who it will be. So, in advance, congratulations.’
Danilov said: ‘I’m very pleased,’ and wished he were more so.
Danilov had been in his office for an hour when the convenient direct-dial telephone sounded. Larissa said: ‘You looked very good on television. Better even than last time.’ She sounded subdued.
‘I thought Yevgennie was good.’
She ignored the remark. ‘I didn’t know you actually fought the murderer.’
Convicted without the formality of a trial, thought Danilov: he was glad Yezhov’s name had been withheld. ‘It was really quite different from how it sounded.’
‘Olga watched with me. She seemed surprised you hadn’t told her.’
‘She said she was coming.’
‘She asked me, outright.’
The unease stirred through Danilov. ‘What did you say?’
‘I wanted to tell her it was true. And that I loved you. But I didn’t. I said she was being silly.’
‘Did she believe you?’
‘I don’t know. I miss you.’
Danilov supposed he was missing Larissa. ‘It’s best this way.’
‘I don’t think so.’
Danilov didn’t respond.
‘Are you still there?’
‘Yes.’
‘I’ve called several times before.’
‘I’ve been out of the office a lot.’
‘I’m sorry. For how I behaved before.’
‘It doesn’t matter.’
‘If I hadn’t been like that, Olga wouldn’t have suspected.’
Danilov supposed she was right, it’s too late now.’
‘I don’t want it to be too late. To end.’
‘We both decided it had to.’
‘I didn’t decide. You did. Come to see me at the hotel. Just to talk.’
‘There’s no … it wouldn’t achieve anything.’
‘I promise not to be like I was before.’
‘No.’ He shouldn’t give in: as much as he wanted to, he shouldn’t give in.
‘And I won’t go on about your leaving Olga and my leaving Yevgennie. I won’t make demands. We can just be together, whenever you want.’
He didn’t want her to talk like this; to prostrate herself. This wasn’t Larissa. ‘There’s a lot to do. Tidying up.’
‘I said whenever.’
‘Maybe I can telephone? We could talk on the telephone.’
‘I meant what I said. About loving you. I really do.’
Danilov refused to respond as he knew she wanted. ‘I’ll telephone,’ he repeated.
‘It won’t become difficult, not again.’
It would if he let it, Danilov decided, replacing the telephone. He thought he knew now what was giving him the unsettled, anticlimactic feeling. The telephone jarred into the office again, breaking any further reflection.
Cowley said: ‘All the forensic stuff has come in overnight.’
‘We may as well assemble it today,’ suggested Danilov. He might even be in time to present it to the Federal Prosecutor, although there was hardly any hurry.
‘That’s what I was thinking,’ Cowley agreed. He couldn’t imagine his having to stay in Moscow more than another few days: there was nothing more to do. He wondered if Pauline would accept an invitation for them to have dinner together before he left.
Chapter Thirty-Nine
All Petr Yezhov’s clothing tested in America was returned with the detailed forensic report, which meant Cowley had to transport two suitcase-sized containers to Petrovka, where all the evidence had been collected and logged. Two taxis raced each other to get to him outside the embassy in response to the Marlboro signal, imagining a trip to the airport. At Petrovka, Pavin helped him carry it up to the exhibit room, for the separate findings to be compared and finally assembled, as they would be for any presentation in court. All three of them were relaxed, the hard grind over.
‘We’ve got to make a proper submission to the Federal Prosecutor,’ Danilov disclosed, repeating that morning’s instructions from his briefing with Lapinsk. ‘They’re going to take the formalities as far as they properly can.’ He smiled. ‘The world has to see true Russian justice in action,’ he added, providing his own judgment. ‘We will never lose the Stalin guilt.’
‘We’d have probably done the same, in the circumstances,’ Cowley accepted, going along with the cynicism. ‘Everyone likes to capitalize on a success.’
‘There may be an open statement before a judge. The problem is publicly naming Yezhov: the Prosecutor’s reluctant to do that.’
‘I think he’s right,’ said Cowley. He wouldn’t have to wait around, for either a formal submission or a later court statement: if his presence was thought necessary for either he could fly back. He wondered if Pauline would still be in Moscow.
They considered the Russian findings first, Danilov reading through it aloud, Cowley following on his own copy. The clothes division had left for Russian scientific analysis a jacket, two pairs of trousers, a pair of work dungarees, three shirts, two sets of underwear, a pair of workboots, a very worn pair of training plimsolls and the knife.
From the clothing a number of hairs had been recovered. They had been visually and microscopically compared with hair samples taken from all the victims and in only one instance, a single blonde hair discovered on the jacket, was there any possible similarity. It was with the blonde hair of Nadia Revin. The opinion refused to call it a definite match. There had been minute blood samples recovered from the underwear, both B Rhesus Positive, which was Yezhov’s grouping. No samples taken from the workboots had matched with any dirt, mud or dust at any of the murder scenes: although the ground would have been frozen at the actual time of the killing, particular attention had been paid to the soil around Nadia Revin’s garage. The knife was single-edged, twenty-seven centimetres long, five centimetres wide at its broadest and five millimetres thick at its unhoned edge. It was a very common type of work or kitchen knife. The width and thickness could be presented as being consistent with the entry wounds: none of the killing thrusts had been identical in depth, but the narrowing of the wound as it progressed through the bodies could again be consistent with the leading, pointed part of the blade. The knife had held no blood traces. There were deposits of citric acid, obviously left from the cutting of fruit. The home-made sheath had been opened, for the inside to be examined. There had been four haem deposits on the inside of the leather. All had proven to be animal blood. There were more traces of citric acid, a minute amount of whey, analysed to be from goats’ cheese, and minute particles of nail and skin debris — probably the result of nail paring — again from Yezhov.
Danilov came up from the file. ‘And the knife itself.’
‘“Consistent with,”’ Cowley qualified. ‘That’s not conclusive. Would you go to court with that?’
‘The decision of the Federal Prosecutor,’ Danilov recalled, partially side-stepping. ‘On balance I think we probably would.’ Avoiding no further, he said: ‘But I’m glad you’ve got more.’