Russian Roulette (12 page)

He cleared his throat and spoke to Gilbert Bynge.

‘I see no reason why you should not continue your tour activities until further notice – what do you do today?'

Gilbert shot nervously to his feet, like a small boy before his teacher.

‘We were – are – going to the Tretyakov Art Gallery this afternoon. This morning was free for shopping or personal activities.'

Pudovkin scratched his bristly chin. ‘Then I would like to see you all here again at one o'clock today, please.' With a curt nod, he turned and clumped to the head of the stairs, followed by his lieutenant and the stolid militiamen.

Deflated by anti-climax, the tourists began the long haul back to their rooms at the other end of the cavernous passage.

The clergyman and the twittering old ladies, bound by a mutual bond of incomprehension, lagged behind, the younger ones trudging ahead in sour silence.

Shaw broke the ice at the first bend. ‘Not seven o'clock yet, and here's me on me bloody feet already!' he growled, shuffling along in a cheap pair of Hong Kong ‘flip-flop' slippers. ‘I should be asking for me money back – some damn holiday this is turning out.'

Gilbert, mouth twitching more than ever, ran a desperate hand through his straw-like hair. His receding chin quivered and, for a moment, Simon thought he was going to cry.

‘It's awful – awful … I'll have to telegraph London Office as soon as the bureau opens. They'll have to notify his family or someone.'

He launched into a hand-wringing monologue of self-pity in which ‘London Office' was repeated over and over like some holy creed.

When they reached the end of the corridor, the other men slunk off to their own rooms with a muttered ‘See you at breakfast.'

Simon hustled Elizabeth Treasure into his own room and shut the door. She had sniffed her way in silence from the lounge and he was dying to consolidate the alibi she had given him.

He kissed her rather hastily on the cheek.

‘Thanks for saying what you did, darling.'

She looked at him with big searching eyes. He had never seen them before without their false lashes and elaborate fortifications of mascara, but they were still very attractive.

‘I don't know why I did, really,' she murmured. ‘It isn't as if he's been murdered or anything, is it?'

He put an arm around her shoulders and squeezed her.

‘Of course not … I can't understand what happened to the old boy … did he commit suicide or just fall from the damn window? We'd all had a drop of the vodka, but none of us was tiddly enough to go falling from windows!'

They sat on the edge of the bed and Simon took her hand.

‘What did he want, when he came here last night?' she asked.

Simon had been waiting for this. He furiously beat his brains for some reasonable excuse – what came out was no gem of inspiration.

‘Writing – we'd been talking on the boat about it.'

‘At midnight, after a beat-up like that meal?' she said incredulously.

He shrugged. ‘He was a funny bloke – but had some publishing connections in Geneva. I've been thinking about writing a book about Cyprus.'

She sniffed again – he wasn't sure whether it was a head cold or just plain disbelief. ‘You never mentioned it before – and why would the Swiss be interested in a book about the British Army … and who was that Kramer he mentioned?'

Simon cursed inwardly as he got deeper into the mire. ‘Kramer – oh, he's a literary agent in London.'

Elizabeth was silent for a moment. ‘So there was no need, really, for me to tell lies to the police just now?'

He squeezed her hand in panic. ‘Yes … it saved such a lot of trouble; you know, all that “you were the last person to see the dead man alive” business. They would pester the life out of me, and all for nothing … Fragonard was alive and kicking when I left him.'

Alive maybe, but certainly not kicking
. The doubts that he really was responsible for the death of the fat man kept floating across Simon's mind.
Had
that crack on the head from the skirting board confused Fragonard so much that he'd later staggered blindly about the room and fallen out of the window – perhaps whilst trying to get some air?

Simon looked at his own window again and was reassured by the height and width of the sill. But suicide seemed out of the question – an aggressive psychopathic killer would be ready to take other lives, but certainly not his own.

Liz suddenly got up. ‘I must go and put some clothes on – God, I feel awful. Must look a sight too.'

She stood up and swayed a little. Simon rose and kissed her, but her response was listless.

‘Not at my passionate best, sweetie,' she murmured and tottered away to put on a face for the day.

Simon lay on the bed when she had gone.

He clasped his hands behind his head and stared at the ornate cornices of the ceiling. He thanked his lucky stars that he had thought of dumping Fragonard's pistol in the ‘loo' – as long as some nosey militiaman didn't find it.

It slowly dawned on him that not only the gun, but Fragonard himself was permanently out of the way.

His threats about Simon keeping clear of Gustav Pabst no longer held any meaning. As long as this accident didn't stir the militia up into too much curiosity, a quick bit of footwork would clear the whole matter up inside a few hours.

Simon fumbled for a cigarette and lay back to inhale with satisfaction. For the first time, something had at last gone in his favour.

Chapter Eight

‘Where have they taken the body, Vasily?'

‘To the Sechenov First Moscow Institute of Medicine – the mortuary of the City Service is out of commission – laying new drains or something'

‘The Sechenov First … that's down Pirogovskaya way, isn't it?' grunted Pudovkin.

‘Yes – a bit this side of the Lenin Stadium.'

Most of Vasily's landmarks had some connection with sport. Both the great football arena and one of the medical colleges were down in the south-west part of the city, in the district formed by a great bend in the Moskva River.

The two detectives were sitting in the main CID room of Petrovka. It was twenty past seven and only two of the night staff and a couple of cleaners were in the big office.

Pudovkin ran a bony hand through his hair. ‘I'd better speak to the Old Man about the autopsy.' He reached for a phone and dialled Colonel Mitin's home number, whilst Moiseyenko wandered off to refill their cups from the communal coffee pot on its gas ring near the door. While he waited for his chief to finish speaking to the commissioner, he looked around the big room that was the focal point of his life as a detective. The steel filing cabinets around the walls, the untidy, busy desks, the papers and folders, the faded maps on the walls, noticeboards with half-forgotten standing orders, dog-eared reference books and well-thumbed copies of the Criminal Code … all these were as familiar as the inside of his bachelor room at the militia hostel. He had no way of knowing it, but he was looking at a replica of almost any CID office in the world.

Alexei dropped the phone and Vasily hurried over to him.

‘Our Fat Father agreed with me,' announced Pudovkin, sounding satisfied. ‘He thinks this is a case with a difference, so we'll play it carefully. I'd never forgive myself if those vultures from The Centre
⁶
took it over and found holes to pick in our work.'

‘So what do we do now?'

Vasily reminded the older man of a sprinter waiting for the gun.

‘I'm treating it as a murder until proved otherwise – all this business with Smith … a very special murder too. So I'm asking the Forensic Research Institute to do the autopsy.'

Alexei got up from the borrowed desk and rubbed his hands in suppressed excitement. ‘Come into my office and bring your book – we've got some organising to do.' A fleeting vision of Darya and the bag of laundry passed through his mind, but he threw it out. He promised himself then that he would get a divorce, even if he had to sell his precious cameras and fishing tackle to help raise the money.

They went through into Alexei's cubicle and while Vasily frowned at the untidy jumble in his notebook, Alexei dialled another phone number. The conversation was short and apparently satisfactory, as Pudovkin was actually grinning when he put the receiver down. His ulcer seemed to have undergone a miraculous cure.

‘Going like clockwork, Vasily Sergeyevich!'

Moiseyenko pointed at the phone. ‘I thought the Research place didn't do routine work – only high-powered consultative stuff?'

His captain nodded. ‘Usually so, yes – but if they're asked from high enough up – like our Commissioner – they'll oblige.'

Alexei and his assistant spent a few minutes making administrative arrangements about this and some other current cases, so that the day ahead would show some semblance of order and routine. Then Pudovkin got up and rubbed his eyes, which still carried early morning sleep.

‘Come on, let's get back to the Metropol and see how the Incident Squad are making out … I said we'd be at the autopsy room by nine.'

They walked the few blocks to the hotel and called in on the manager before going up to the fourth floor.

The poor man was grey with worry … a death under any circumstances was bad enough, but the suspicious death of a foreigner already under double surveillance was ten times worse. He wondered what fate had sent him here instead of to the Ukraina or the National across the square.

‘Are you going to arrest them all and take them out of here?' he asked hopefully.

Alexei's cheeks crinkled like old leather. ‘All of them,
tovarishch
? D'you think they set on this man like a pack of wolves and tossed him out of your window, eh?' He stopped grinning. ‘Now, who was on floor duty at the desk before that old woman Elena Anokhina … I've already spoken to her.'

The manager churned through a pile of papers on his desk and turned up two names.

‘Have them here at noon, I want to see if either of them heard or saw anything during last evening on the fourth floor … and I'll be sending another woman detective around this afternoon, so give her a uniform and a brush and let her hang around as a chambermaid.'

They went on up to Room 514, leaving the manager wishing that he had never left Voronezh.

The corridor outside the room was awash with detectives and technicians. The door of the bedroom was covered in grey fingerprint powder and a man with a large camera on a tripod was in a foul temper, cursing as people kept passing in front of his lens.

Inside, another photographer had just finished and was packing up his kit. Another pair of laboratory men were crawling about the floor, putting wisps of fluff into cellophane packets.

A thickset lieutenant, almost as old as Pudovkin, came across to meet them. He was the Incident Squad leader, in charge of the organised chaos that was going on around them.

‘See here, comrade captain, along the wall and skirting board.' He pointed to the high fascia board running along the base of the wall adjacent to Michael Shaw's room. On the blue emulsion paint of the wall as well as on the varnish of the wood, there were some splattered brownish stains, quite small, but numerous.

‘Blood all right – and quite fresh – the colour is due to the stuff it's landed on.'

Alexei looked at the communicating door and the blood spots for a moment, then walked to the open window. He looked out and saw the Chinese Wall curving towards the hotel slightly to his left.

‘There's something on the sill, captain.' The squad leader pointed to some fresh scratches on the white-painted wood. They passed right across its width, reaching the outer glazing frame.

‘They're black – look like toe drag-marks from a pair of shoes,' observed Pudovkin.

The lieutenant nodded. ‘I thought so, too – I'll get the whole board cut out and sent to the laboratory.'

Alexei turned around and looked at the room again. ‘Anything else?' Several men shook their heads.

‘What about his luggage?'

‘Nothing obvious … fancy shirts and a couple of suits. A camera and a couple of decadent picture magazines – all fast cars and half-dressed women.'

‘Send the camera to have the film developed, just in case'

Pudovkin made his way to the door, with Moiseyenko in close pursuit.

‘What do you think about it,
tovarishch
captain?' asked the squad man.

‘I don't think anything until we've got some facts … but if you jump from a window, you shouldn't leave toe marks across the sill … and when you hit the ground, your blood shouldn't spurt up four floors and come in through the window, eh?'

He motioned to Moiseyenko and they made their way down to the rear of the hotel, through the passage Simon Smith had used the previous day, to emerge on the waste ground. A militia patrolman was standing watch over a chalk mark on the hard earth about four metres from the wall of the hotel. He saluted as they came up.

Alexei looked at the ground, then up at the cliff-face of the Metropol, pierced by rows of windows.

‘Slightly off to one side – that's 515 up there,' Vasily pointed to the head of one of the Incident Squad which was poking through a window. It was hastily pulled back.

Pudovkin looked down again at the mute, but expressive chalk mark.

‘He couldn't have drifted this far during the fall unless he bounced.'

They searched the surrounding area and it soon became clear that Fragonard had hit the ground a few feet nearer the wall than his body's final resting place. There was a dent in the ground and some weeds were crushed in the hollow.

‘No blood anywhere, in spite of that upstairs,' said Alexei thoughtfully.

‘One of the men upstairs said he had a cut on the back of his head – he saw it when they were putting the body in the ambulance.'