There was another blaze of light from the media pack and Cowley turned to see two cars being allowed through the yellow tape by a uniformed patrolman. Rafferty and Johannsen were in the first, Brierly and Robertson in the second.
‘Jesus!’ said Rafferty, nose wrinkled, as he joined them.
Brierly was zipping up a protective all-in-one as he followed. He took a tube of highly mentholated emulsion from his examination bag, smearing it on his upper lip, directly beneath his nose, then offered it generally to the group. Cowley took some but the bear-like Robertson, who was wearing the same lumberjack workshirt of the previous day, shook his head. Rafferty said he wasn’t curious enough to want to look and Johannsen said he wasn’t, either.
Cowley had never before seen a body in such an advanced state of putrefaction. It was grossly swollen and the skin had split within the constriction of the clothing. Most of the face and hands were black. The body lay on its back, with the legs twisted sideways and the arms tightly above the head, to fit into the trunk. The smell began to get past the barrier gel and Cowley backed away, his stomach bubbling. He kept the white smear of emulsion under his nose, not caring if he looked ridiculous, although he pointedly kept his back to the cameras when he returned to the upwind group. Hal Maine had briefed the two DC detectives during his absence.
Johannsen said: ‘First Russian, now Swiss. And all in America. Could be a job for a UN peacekeeping force.’
Cowley didn’t join in the professional cynicism. To Rafferty he said: ‘So where was Serov the night he was killed?’
‘The French cafe near the Georgetown Mall,’ announced the man. ‘Waitress named Mary Ann Bell made a positive ID. Puts him there around six thirty, before the place properly filled up. Thinks he left around seven forty-five: she’s pretty definite about that, because that’s the time her shift ends and she handled the check.’
‘Alone?’ queried Cowley.
Johannsen shook his head, taking up the story. ‘One other guy. Foreign accent, although not like Serov’s. She remembers the second one better than Serov. The kid’s working her way through college, like they all are. She’s pretty: black hair and a tight ass. The guy came on strong and she was flattered. He promised to come back to see her again. She puts him around thirty, thirty-five. Says he dressed welclass="underline" thinks it was a brown suit. Lightweight. Had a nice cologne. Good-looking guy.’
Cowley indicated the Ford. ‘He’s wearing a brown suit.’
‘Pity about the cologne,’ said Rafferty.
‘Anything unusual while they were in the cafe?’
There was another head shake from Johannsen. ‘When the second guy wasn’t trying to hit on Mary Ann there was a lot of head-together stuff. She says they were serious.’
‘Serov had eaten fish, just before he died,’ reminded Rafferty. ‘The special that night was scrod. They both had it.’
‘With a bottle of Californian chardonnay,’ completed Johannsen.
The huge scientific co-ordinator lumbered back from the Ford. Behind him Cowley saw the masked technicians manoeuvring a black body bag into the boot.
‘Lookee here!’ demanded Robertson, when he reached their group. The man held up a glassine bag with a brass shell casing in it.
‘Makarov?’ asked Cowley.
Everyone else looked between him and Robertson, without comprehension.
Robertson said: ‘I’ll tell you within an hour of getting back.’
Brierly followed immediately afterwards. He said the autopsy would be more difficult because of the decomposition but it looked like an exact copy of the first. Unless there were bone injury, it would be hard to find any marks of torture or resistance. He’d try for fingernail scrapings, but he wasn’t hopeful there, either. He’d do his best to help forensic get usable fingerprints but the best chance of provable indentification would be dental records, although the teeth were extensively damaged. The mouth shot had been inflicted in the car, which was how the shell jacket came to be in the trunk: the slug would be found, among the head debris.
Cowley went to the police car where the exhibit officer was packaging the recovered articles, and signed for the passport, managing to open it to the photograph by working on the outside of the plastic envelope. The parking ticket was in a separate sachet. The date automatically registered by the entry machine was the day Serov had died, the time 20-45. Cowley gave Rafferty the opened passport and told him to take the Key Bridge and return through Georgetown to confirm Michel Paulac had been the man with Serov.
As Cowley turned to Johannsen, the detective expectantly said: ‘You’d like to know how many flights left National after eight forty-five? And to where?’
‘And get the passenger lists and credit card slips for tickets that were bought that night,’ completed Cowley. He stopped, looking around the assembled policemen. Trying as always to be diplomatic among different forces, he said: ‘Anything else?’
‘You’re going to get your photograph taken again when we leave,’ cautioned Rafferty. ‘So you’d better wipe that shit from under your nose. Your look like Son of Hitler.’
Rafferty was thirty minutes behind Cowley returning to Pennsylvania Avenue, and arrived with more than confirmation of Michel Paulac being Petr Serov’s dinner companion four nights earlier.
‘Worked the visa pages open through the plastic,’ he reported. ‘Paulac’s been here every month since the beginning of the year. Never for longer than one week, according to date stamps.’
‘You’ve got the credit card number to work from,’ said Cowley. ‘He should have listed his hotel on the visa form.’
‘On my way,’ said Rafferty.
In his written report to the FBI Director, Cowley undertook fully to brief the protocol office at the State Department, before sending a detailed request for all possible information about Michel Paulac, of Rue Calvin, Geneva, to the Swiss police through Interpol.
Robertson was on the telephone precisely on the promised hour. The casing recovered from the car trunk was from a 9mm bullet of Russian manufacture for a Makarov pistol. Hammer markings were identical to those on the casing of the bullet that killed Serov.
Johannsen’s was the last report, which he came back to make in person, leaving the rest of the squad at the airport. There had been sixteen departing flights after 8.45 p.m. on the night in question, three of them the last shuttles to New York and Boston. Four had been international – none direct or intermediate to Moscow – the rest internal. All credit card slips had already gone to the respective companies for payment, and flight manifests had also been filed. The airlines and the card companies had warned it was going to take a long time.
‘And maybe get us nowhere,’ pointed out Johannsen. ‘Because Paulac’s ticket was out of Dulles, we’re assuming our killer drove out to National for his escape, right?’ He raised his hands against interruption, wanting to finish. ‘Why can’t the Ford being dumped at National be a wrong steer, to send us in more circles than we’re going around in already? Or if he flew in, he could have had a return ticket, or he might have bought his ticket with cash, so the credit card slips are going to tell us nothing. There’s a passport check against ticket names for international flights, but there were only four of those. Any ticket for a flight within America could be in whatever name the guy wanted to use.’