Kings of Many Castles cm-13

by Brian Freemantle

  In advance of any professional protest Charlie said, “I accept the difficulties, asking you to work like this. I’m looking for something a bit more positive than the Russians are prepared to agree.”

  “I need properly to examine the body, of course,” said the pathologist. “And there’s virtually no scene-of-crime material whatsoever, but I’m prepared to agree with you that she was much more likely to have been manually strangled than suffocated by her own hand in a botched attempt to hang herself ….” He paused, looking down at the photographs with Charlie beside him. “Look at those closing sutures, after their examination! She’s almost been nailed back together. I’m always offended by the lack of respect in stitching like that.”

  “Vera Bendall was someone who didn’t get any respect in life, either,” said Charlie. “But you were saying …?”

  “The post lividity bruising, as you said in your notes, is the most obvious. That and the complete neck-encircling bruising, with the crushing of the cricoid cartilage of the larynx. But look here …” he demanded, isolating four photographs. “I’ve done a comparison betweenthe bruising on either side of the neck. See, it’s heavier on the right side than it is on the left. To have garrotted her as totally as this, her killer would have had to stand behind her pulling right to left, left to right. That heavier bruising, to the right of the neck, shows in my opinion that her killer was left handed: that’s the stronger pressure. And here …” He picked out two more photographs. “See those two slight, side-by-side bruises, above the ligature mark? I’ve seen those before, in these sort of strangulations. They’re made by the killer’s thumbs, where he drove them into the neck for additional leverage. And you’re right, in my opinion, about the shoulder blade markings. That’s where she was pulled back against the knees of the man strangling her …”

  “Can you give me that, in a report?”

  The man shook his head, dislodging the mayonnaise to add to the stains on his already marked coat. “Not to be produced in any court. I haven’t personally examined the body. There is no scene of crime material …”

  “Not to be produced in court,” interrupted Charlie. “All I want is a contrary, more positive opinion than the Russian pathologist is giving.”

  Robertson remained doubtful. “I’d have to qualify it, make it clear that it was entirely an opinion based upon the photographs.”

  “But that opinion would be what you’ve just told me?”

  The man nodded, slowly. “I suppose I could say that.”

  “Please say it,” encouraged Charlie. “And there was the blood sample?”

  “It showed 200mg,” said the bulged man, too glibly and without consulting his side-desk preparation.

  “Spell it out,” insisted Charlie, satisfied more than surprised.

  “The legal alcohol limit beyond which someone is incapable of being in charge of a moving vehicle is 80mg per 100ml of blood,” said the doctor, literally responding to Charlie’s demand. “Bendall was two and a half times over that limit.”

  “Drunk?” persisted Charlie.

  “By our legal driving standards, yes.”

  “Those readings are incontrovertible?”

  Robertson appeared surprised. “They’re scientific!”

  “Which I can have, in written analysis, to take back with me to Moscow?”

  “I don’t know what the legal alcohol limit is to drive in Russia,” protested the man.

  “I’d guess it’s nonexistent but I’m not investigating a drunk driving offense,” said Charlie.

  Robertson’s laboratory was in north London but Charlie still managed to get back to Millbank by mid-afternoon. Spence told him the director-general did not want to see him unless there was a positive development and that he could use the same temporary inner courtyard office that he’d been allocated the previous day. Charlie reached Donald Morrison on the basement incident room extension.

  The younger man said, “A lot seems to be happening, but I don’t know what it is. When Kayley and I got to the cemetery the exhumation had already taken place. There was just an empty grave and a militia guard who wouldn’t talk to us. Kayley said he wanted to speak with you but he was called upstairs about an hour ago and hasn’t come back.”

  “So the investigation’s stalled?”

  “Has it ever started?”

  Charlie smiled at the cynicism. “Our pathologist’s just agreed Vera Bendall was murdered. And George Bendall was drunk when he fired.”

  “Surprising that he hit anyone.”

  “That’s what I’m thinking.” It had been automatic professionalism for Charlie to bring back from Moscow not just the Russian ballistic evidence but actual firing tests conducted by the Americans using the rifle recovered from George Bendall. Now he was glad he had. It was probably fortunate, too, that offended prima donnas at Woolwich Arsenal had staged their go slow.

  “Can I tell Kayley?”

  “No!” refused Charlie, at once. “I need to discuss it with others first.” Not others. Only Anne Abbott preparing George Bendall’s seemingly impossible defense.

  “Nothing’s come from re-interviewing the witnesses but the personneldirector at NTV confirms it was Vasili Isakov who got Bendall the job. Anything else you want me to do? I feel a bit like a spare prick at a wedding, hanging around with nothing to do.”

  Charlie smiled again, this time at Morrison’s too obvious, oneof-the-street-boys’ ribaldry. Aloud he said, “There aren’t supposed to be any spare pricks at a wedding.”

  It wasn’t a convenient-safe-time to call Natalia. There was more than enough time, though, to go present-buying. Charlie actually thought he’d received a few presents himself that day. But they were in kit form, he had to assemble them himself.

  Petr Tikunov’s second press conference since the shooting was again overwhelmed by the international media. The burly communist presidential candidate accused Okulov of stealing his party’s idea of an investigatory commission. But Okulov’s enquiry would be a cover-up, he insisted, conducted by puppets personally selected by Okulov himself. In answer to repeated questions about Okulov’s former association with the KGB, Tikunov said he left the public and the voters to judge the man’s previous connection with the intelligence service, the majority of whose officers, he knew, resented the disbandment and reorganization imposed by the existing government, disbandment and reorganization which had allowed the rise in crime culminating in the attack upon the two presidents. After his reelection, fighting crime-and seeking the FSB’s assistance in doing so-was going to be his immediate priority.

  “If the need was for someone intimately aware of all the facts to bridge the two situations I should have been the one appointed!” protested Zenin.

  Olga wondered if she would ever get properly to know this man. “You weren’t for the very reasons Okulov gave: it needs someone knowing every facet of the case but factionally above it. She is. You’re not, you’re the one who initially proposed an enquiry into the FSB!”

  “Are you sure she’s factionally above it all?”

  “Aren’t you?”

  “She was KGB, before all the changes! Just like Okulov.”

  “Which Okulov specifically referred to, from what you’ve told me. Referred to as a benefit.” Olga wished she were with him, instead of talking on the telephone. But everything was far too new to make demands upon him. The very thought surprised her. When had she ever been the one to seek and hope in a relationship! Lovers danced to her tune, not her to theirs. Until now. Exactly the time to get things in proper-normal-balance then. Spend at least one night apart: they weren’t, after all, rutting teenagers, discovering sex for the first time. But was it only-just-sex? That thought didn’t even deserve an answer.

  “I think we should be extremely careful we don’t in some way fall victim,” said Zenin.

  Precisely what she’d warned him about in the very beginning! remembered Olga. “We can be.”

  “How did the exhumation go?”

&nbs
p; “I advanced the timing, as you suggested. It was over before anyone else arrived. The tissue samplings were delivered to the laboratory by mid-afternoon. Kayley called six times during the day, trying to make contact.”

  “What about the British … their new man?”

  “Nothing.”

  “Let’s talk tomorrow, early.”

  “I’m missing not being with you,” she blurted and at once regretted it, wishing she could bite back the words.

  “What …?” he started, just as unthinkingly but instantly recovered. “Yes! I’m sorry. There’s things … tomorrow? Tomorrow night, I mean. If you’re free?”

  “I’m free,” said Olga.

  As always, Charlie let Natalia talk first, knowing her need was greater and afterwards kept his account brief and factual.

  “Well?” she prompted, when he’d finished. She hadn’t mentioned the inference of the FBI possibly being expelled, not wanting to trample over ground already muddied by being walked on too many times before.

  “You couldn’t be better protected, against our situation becoming known,” assured Charlie, sure that was the point of her question.“You’re spanning everything, knowing everything.”

  “And attracting enemies in doing so,” she said. “I’ve convened the first session for tomorrow. Summoned the FSB chairman himself, along with all the rest.”

  “Above any enemies, looking down at them,” out-qualified Charlie. “You can dispose of them before they can endanger you. You’re ahead, whichever which way you want to look at it.”

  “You’re actually taking things forward professionally, as a criminal investigation,” Natalia allowed.

  “I wish I’d known about the Pentathol before seeing the pathologist.” It would mean a second visit, he supposed. “What state is Bendall in now?”

  “Still sedated.”

  “It was a good suggestion you made about a visitor’s log,” praised Charlie. “I hadn’t thought of that.”

  “What’s it like, being back there?”

  The moment for guilt, Charlie recognized. Nothing came. “I’ve been too busy to do much else but work and appear before committees. I did get time to buy Sasha a doll. It wets itself and has to have its nappy changed.”

  “She’ll like that.” He’d forgotten buying Sasha the same on a previous recall to London.

  “I hope you’re looking after her,” he said, with insufficient thought.

  “I was looking after her very well a long time before you reappeared on the scene,” came back Natalia, at once.

  His mistake, Charlie accepted. “Best of luck for tomorrow.”

  “Yes.”

  “I hope to get back the day after.”

  “You told me already.”

  “Goodnight then.”

  “Goodnight.”

  She hadn’t told him she loved him, thought Charlie. But then he hadn’t told her, either. He was still by the telephone when it rang.

  Anne said, “That was a hell of a long call! I’m in the bar, waiting. Liberace’s look-alike ghost is about to make a pass at me.”

  “If it’s Liberace’s ghost, you’re safe,” said Charlie.

  Charlie had again to filter what he could tell the lawyer from what he shouldn’t have been in a position to know but there was sufficient for Anne to remark that he seemed to be working hard to provide her with a TV soap opera defense. Short of that being available, however, the decision had been made to have Bendall examined by two independent Russian psychiatrists to formulate a plea of mental impairment or even outright insanity, depending upon their diagnosis. But all that hinged on what sort of recovery the man made. It would also help if the court psychiatrists had access to Bendall’s previous psychiatric history that Vera had mentioned. A Russian lawyer necessary to lead Bendall’s defense had been engaged by fax that afternoon from the list Anne had brought to London with her.

  “So you’ve finished?”

  “Everything discussed and decided,” she agreed.

  “You going back tomorrow?”

  She frowned, in mock offense. “You in a hurry to get rid of me?”

  “No,” said Charlie. “Not at all.”

  “Good. And I haven’t done any shopping.”

  They’d eaten again at a restaurant of Anne’s choice in Notting Hill and they had a nightcap again in the hotel bar and went unquestioningly to his room. Afterwards she said, “We’re getting very good at this. Maybe we should take it up professionally.”

  Charlie said, “I thought we had.”

  The bag containing Sasha’s doll was by the wardrobe, “toys” prominently printed against the name of the shop in which Charlie had bought it. Anne said, “You’ve already managed to do your shopping?”

  “Some,” said Charlie.

  He waited for the obvious question but she didn’t ask it.

  16

  Natalia Fedova had triumphed in a jungle of human animals for a long time before Sasha’s birth and for three years afterwards and in doing so, like Charlie, had perfected a number of survival rules. One-unknowingly again like Charlie, with whom she’d never discussed it-was never to be pulled down by the mistakes and misjudgments of people who imagined they knew better than she did. Which she anticipated, without needing proof, would be the attitude of both Yuri Fedorovich Trishin and Pavl Yakovlevich Filitov and why she set out from the very beginning to impose the control inherent in her appointment. She recognized the danger of the strategy and hoped Charlie was right in his assessment of her strength.

  Befitting their presidential credentials they were allocated a suite of rooms, with a five-strong secretariat, within the Kremlin itself and Natalia summoned both men to it an hour before their scheduled start supposedly to brief them upon everything that had come before the crisis committee. She did so with two of their secretaries at the prepared apparatus, determined that everything be recorded. Filitov was just slightly ahead of the chief of staff with the authority-challenging protest that he’d thoroughly assimilated all that had come before the committee, with which he’d been provided overnight but Natalia talked them both down, insisting upon her agenda that their initial concentration be upon the missing KGB dossiers, extended only to what the succeeding FSB might have taken from the Bendalls’ Hutorskaya Ulitza apartment. Because of her intimate knowledge of the former KGB structure-as well as her personal knowledge of the crisis committee discussions which might not be reflected in its written material-she intended leading the questioning but of course expected them both to contribute. It was not until Natalia said she would seek Filitov’s advice before invoking theirimprisonment provisions that she got the impression they were beginning to defer to her, although the prosecutor’s reaction at first was more one of undisguised surprise.

  “I don’t think we should lose sight of the rank and importance of people with whom we’re dealing,” cautioned the lawyer.

  Nor, suspected Natalia, of the clear threats Petr Tikunov had made at yesterday’s press conference. “It’s precisely because I’m aware of the rank and importance that we’re discussing the provision now.”

  “An opinion surely based upon a personal experience which ended several years ago?” suggested Trishin. “I don’t believe the acting president intended the recourse to be used lightly.”

  “It won’t be,” assured Natalia. “We won’t forget, though, that it exists.”

  Trishin attempted to restore his prerogative by querying Natalia’s full understanding of the other terms of reference, which she’d anticipated and not only answered without hesitation but corrected two that he misquoted. Filitov remained silent until that day’s witness list was brought in by the registration clerk.

  The Federal prosecutor said at once, “We were not consulted about the summoning of the FSB chairman himself!”

  “Do you have a problem with it?” Natalia was glad she hadn’t discussed it.

  “Of course I do.”

  “Why ‘of course’?”

  “Yesterday yo
u talked of premature reactions,” reminded the lawyer. “This is inappropriately premature until we’ve had the opportunity to judge the compliance.”

  “Do you feel it’s inappropriately premature?” she asked Trishin.

  The chief of staff looked uncertainly towards the recording bank. “I think prior discussion would have been advisable.”

  Now Natalia indicated the silently turning apparatus. “Your dissent has been noted.”

  “I didn’t say I dissented,” Trishin quickly insisted. “If we are to reach a combined opinion, which is in the terms of reference, we’ve got to come to combined decisions upon the conduct of the enquiry.”

  Perfect politico-speak, Natalia recognized. “Combined decisions? Or majority decisions?”

  Their exchanged looks answered Natalia’s question before Filitov did. The lawyer said, “Our primary term of reference is speed. Which requires majority opinions, in my judgment.” The man paused, to establish the mockery. “Dissent can always be noted.”

  After politoco-speak, legal-speak, acknowledged Natalia. And each-rarely-as illuminating as the other. She hadn’t expected to benefit so much-be warned so quickly-from this pre-session encounter. She was glad she’d orchestrated it as precisely as she had. She hoped she could continue the momentum, although again she didn’t foresee the quickness with which that would come about.

  There was still ten minutes to go before the official opening when their registration clerk reentered the chamber and initially bent to Natalia’s ear with his copy of the witness list.

  “We all need to hear,” demanded Filitov.

  “An unscheduled witness whom we’ll hear at once,” announced Natalia. “First Deputy Director Gennardi Nikolaevich Mittel.”