3

London

Martin Burr, the Commissioner of Scotland Yard, had spent several years of his life in the Royal Navy and had lost his right eye during a vicious skirmish with a Nazi U-boat at Scapa Flow in 1943. He wore a black eyepatch which gave him a jaunty, seasoned appearance. The one good eye, green and bloodshot, surveyed the world with weary intelligence.

Pagan respected the Commissioner. At least he wasn’t a politician. He was first and foremost a policeman and loyal to those he commanded. And if sometimes he was imperiously paternal, then that was almost forgivable in view of his enormous responsibility, which was to keep the peace among the thousands of men – some of them highly-strung – whose careers and destinies he controlled.

Now, as he hobbled around his large office with his walnut cane supporting his bulk, he kept glancing sideways at Pagan, and there was just a hint of explosiveness in the good eye. Pagan, who had returned from Edinburgh by plane only a few short hours ago, still wore the suit that had been made grubby during his scuffle with Romanenko’s killer.

“There will be some form of protest,” said the Commissioner. “No doubt there’s some damned First Secretary from the Russian Embassy already brow-beating the Foreign Minister. They’ll bitch every chance they get, Frank. Bloody Bolsheviks.”

Bolsheviks, Pagan thought. That was a quaint one. He noticed that the Commissioner’s office was without windows. The light in this room was always artificial, issuing from recessed tubes of fluorescence that made objects seem ghostly.

The Commissioner sat down and looked gloomy. He rapped the carpet with his cane and for a second he reminded Frank Pagan of an English country squire. It was deceptive. There was nothing sleepily bucolic in Martin Burr’s character. And his public-school speech patterns concealed a sharp brain and a streak of ruthless determination. “Let’s see what we’ve got here, Frank, before I come up with some bland yarn to feed to the wolfhounds of Fleet Street.”

Pagan longed for a window, a view, a sight of the city. This office oppressed him, despite the collection of sailing ships in wine-bottles and the small models of British destroyers that littered a shelf, the only items of a personal nature in the whole place.

“Romanenko gets himself shot. And I’m not blaming you because a man can’t have eyes in the back of his head, after all. But a lot of people, and I include the press as well as the Russians, are going to think us incompetent idiots. Be warned, laddie – some people are going to say you might have been more vigilant.” The Commissioner looked at Pagan and shrugged. “Some people are already saying it, Frank. When the Yard isn’t solving crimes, it’s doing the thing it does best. I’m talking about gossip. I’m telling you I sit atop a pyramid of bitchery like some bloody pharaoh who’s got nothing better to do than listen to the whining of his courtiers and the moaning of his soothsayers.”

The Commissioner smiled and Pagan wondered if there was some sympathy to be detected in the expression. Sometimes, when he didn’t want you to observe his true expression, the Commissioner had the habit of turning his face to one side so that only the inscrutable eyepatch was visible, which gave him the crafty demeanour of a pirate who possesses one half of the map to the secret place where the doubloons are buried.

“Now the briefcase, Frank. According to the wallahs along Whitehall, it’s theoretically the property of the Soviet Union because Romanenko was a representative of that country. Therefore it has to be returned. However, I’m not in any great hurry to oblige. One doesn’t want to be scurrying around doing the Russians favours, does one?”

Pagan stared at the briefcase, which was propped against the wall. Alongside the case, there lay the contents of Jacob Kiviranna’s backpack and the weapon, the Bersa, that had been used to kill Romanenko. It was a sorry little collection of items and Pagan had some difficulty in associating these things with the violence that had happened only a few short hours ago in Edinburgh. There was a harsh dreamlike quality to the experience now, and yet he could still hear the sound of the gun being fired as if it were trapped inside the echo-chamber of his skull.

“But first,” the Commissioner said, “before you talk to this fellow Kiviranna, let’s examine his cargo.” He hobbled toward the backpack, staring at a couple of shirts, a pair of jeans, socks, underwear, a guidebook to Edinburgh, a rail ticket, two hundred and seven dollars, a prescription bottle that contained several capsules of Seconal, and Kiviranna’s American passport.

Pagan picked up the document and stared at the photograph. It showed a man with a rather sulky expression, a petulant set to the lips, hair drawn back tightly against the sides of the head. The ponytail couldn’t be seen because of the direct angle of the shot.

“He entered London at Heathrow three days ago. It’s the only stamp.” Pagan flipped through the blank pages in the manner of a man scanning a murder mystery to reach the denouement without having to wade through the locked rooms and the poisoned sherry and all the other red herrings. “And somewhere along the way he acquired the Bersa.”

The Commissioner said, “And since it’s damned near impossible to smuggle a weapon into any country these days, it stands to reason he had an accomplice who provided him with the weapon. So what are we dealing with, Frank? And who the hell is Jacob Kiviranna anyway? Is he part of some bloody mad right-wing cult? And did he really expect to shoot our Soviet friend in broad daylight and make an escape? These are questions we need to have answered, Frank. And I’m tossing it all, lock stock and bloody barrel, into your court.”

Where else could it be tossed? Pagan wondered.

The Commissioner continued. “Besides, what was so important about Romanenko that he deserved to be shot? As I understand it, he was nothing more than the First Secretary of the Communist Party in some Baltic Soviet Republic, which is not exactly a place where hot-shot Party comrades make a name for themselves. And all he came here for was to discuss some humdrum business proposition pertaining to computers, for heaven’s sake. It isn’t quite the kind of thing that marks a man out for assassination.”

Frank Pagan replaced the passport alongside Kiviranna’s other possessions. It was Romanenko’s briefcase that absorbed his attention now. He wanted to open it, but he realised he was going to have to wait for the Commissioner to give him permission. The Commissioner seemed to be savouring the closed briefcase, wandering around it, and once actually prodding it with his walnut stick.

“I wonder if there’s anything in this case that might suggest a reason why Romanenko was shot,” Burr said.

“I’ve been wondering myself.”

Burr paused a second, then said, “Do the honours, Frank.”

Pagan picked up the case, which was of good brown leather. It was locked, but he easily forced it open with the use of the Commissioner’s sharp brass letter-knife. He dumped the contents on the desk. Papers, files, documents in Russian, a schematic diagram of a computer which looked like a maze in a child’s book of fun. There was a packet of Player’s cigarettes, a disposable razor, a hairbrush, and a shirt, purchased in the Burlington Arcade in London, that was still enclosed in its original cellophane wrapping. There was also a sealed envelope with no address on it.

The Commissioner sifted through the papers. “It’s a pathetic assortment, Frank. Apart from what looks to me like business documents, it’s just the kind of stuff a man might carry if he plans a quick overnight stay in another city.”

Pagan spread the papers on the desk. He knew no Russian at all and he felt, as he always did when he encountered a language with which he was unfamiliar, that he’d been stripped of a vital cognitive sense. He might have been staring at a complicated code. He was also touched a little by sadness, because he’d liked Romanenko. Pagan had always had an affinity for people who courted excess.

The Commissioner, whose own Russian was limited to the word nyet, looked perplexed. “We’re going to have to call in one of the smart boys from the Foreign Office. Otherwise, this is gobbledygook. And I’d personally like it translated before we turn it over to the Soviets.” The Commissioner sniffed. “I’d like to know what’s inside that sealed envelope, though.”

Pagan picked up the envelope and held it up to the light. He longed to tear it open.

The Commissioner asked, “Do we use a steam kettle? Or do we simply slice the thing with a knife?”

Frank Pagan grinned. “Go for broke,” he said, and he ripped the envelope open. It contained a single sheet of yellowing paper covered in a language completely alien to him. Disappointed, he stared at the strange words, written in faded blue ink, as if they might be made to yield up some kind of sense simply by an act of concentration. The Commissioner peered at the sheet with a look of frustration on his face. He even pressed his nose close to it, sniffing the old sheet of paper which smelled musty, like something stored for many years in a damp attic.

“What language is that?” the Commissioner asked.

“I haven’t got a clue,” Pagan said. He glanced at a couple of words – Kalev, Eesti, tooma. The handwriting wasn’t very good. “Danus Oates is something of a linguist.”

“Then let’s fetch the lad,” said the Commissioner.

“He’s somewhere in the building,” Pagan said. “Last time I saw him he was swallowing Valium in the canteen. Events in Edinburgh unsettled his delicate constitution.” As they had unsettled his own, Pagan thought, which was a lot less sensitive than Danus Oates’s.

“Fat lot of good Valium’s going to do him,” said the Commissioner. “In the meantime, you ought to have a word with our American friends in Grosvenor Square, Frank. See if they’ve got anything on this Jacob Kiviranna. The fellow to contact over there is a chap called Teddy Gunther. See what you can get from Kiviranna first, although from what I hear he’s either rather surly or two bricks shy of a load.”

Pagan arranged Aleksis’s papers in a neat pile.

The Commissioner said, “So far as Romanenko is concerned, if you want to find out if there’s anything that made him a suitable candidate for assassination, the man to see is Tommy Witherspoon. He’s got something to do with the Foreign Office, though if you ask me that’s only a cover. I think Tommy really liaises between the FO and some of our intelligence agencies. Tommy lives and breathes Russia. I’ll give him a call and tell him you might have a question or two for him.”

Pagan looked down at Romanenko’s papers a second. The dead man’s effects. The bits and pieces of a life. A life that had been blown away right in front of his own eyes. He felt acutely depressed, as if he might have done something to prevent the catastrophe. It was too late for regrets – but then when were regrets ever timely? He remembered the hours he’d spent drinking with Romanenko, how the Russian’s booming laughter filled the hotel room, the conspiratorial way Aleksis had said You will see differences, Frank Pagan, such as you have never dreamed of. Big changes are coming. The biggest change so far had been Aleksis’s murder, which was surely the last thing Romanenko had had in mind.

“By the way, if the press gets on your arse, you’ve got nothing to tell them. Keep that in mind.” The Commissioner paused a moment. “Whole thing’s a bit of a bloody mess. But you’ve had worse, haven’t you, Frank?”

Frank Pagan looked up at one of the fluorescent tubes which, slightly flawed, blinked now and again. “Maybe,” he answered. He moved towards the door. “Don’t you want to sit in on my interview with Kiviranna?”

The Commissioner shook his head. “As I said, Frank, I’m leaving it entirely to you. In any case, I’m sure to have some Russians to deal with very shortly.” He adjusted his eyepatch. “One last thing. Change your suit first chance you get. You look like something the cat dragged in.”

Jacob Kiviranna was being held in an interrogation room on the second floor, a bare chamber with no windows, a table, a couple of uncomfortable chairs. He chain-smoked, tilting his chair back against the wall and blowing rings up at the ceiling. He’d undone the ponytail and now his long brown hair fell around his shoulders. He had a glum expression on his face, disturbed only by the occasional tic of a pulse beneath his right eye. Pagan’s impression was of a man whose life was a closed book which, once you opened it, would contain a drab little story of childhood neglect, lonely adolescence and fruitless adulthood, a serial of failures and pitiful vignettes.

He glanced at the young uniformed policeman who stood, arms folded, in the corner of the room, then sat down facing Kiviranna and tossed the US passport on the table. It fell open at the photograph. Pagan wondered about the ethnic origin of the name Kiviranna.

“Jake or Jacob?” he asked.

“I don’t care,” Kiviranna replied. He had a flat, lifeless voice, like that of a man whose verbal interplay with others has been strictly limited.

“Let’s start with the biggie, Jake. Why did you kill Romanenko?”

Kiviranna didn’t answer. He dropped a cigarette on the floor, crushed it with his ragged sneaker.

“It’s going to make my life a whole lot easier if you answer my questions, Jake,” Pagan said.

Kiviranna shut his eyes, placed his arms on the table, then lowered his face. His mouth hung open and he made exaggerated snoring noises. Bloody comedian, Pagan thought. He glanced again at the cop who stood in the corner. The young man looked about nine years of age. Every year’s influx of new recruits seemed younger than ever and they made Pagan, at forty-one, feel old and weatherbeaten.

“Let’s try another question,” Pagan said. “Where did you get the gun?”

Kiviranna opened one eye. He smiled at Pagan but remained silent. He had brown teeth misaligned in his dark gums. Pagan studied the man’s combat jacket, the Mickey Mouse patch on one sleeve, the small US flag on the other. He gazed at the beard, which was shapeless. He had the feeling he was peering into the past, confronting a species that, if not extinct, was at the very least threatened. You rarely encountered hippies these days. Now and then an old DayGlo van would chug past you on the street and it would be plastered with faded peace signs and weathered bumper-stickers bearing mellow messages, or you’d see some clapped-out forty-year-old flower-child sliding quietly along the sidewalk – but they didn’t seem to come in bunches any more. Pagan remembered a time when he’d admired the lifestyle, before it became ugly and drugged.

He wandered around the room, pausing when he reached the door. “I wish you’d talk to me, Jake,” he said. “If it’s something simple, if it’s just that you don’t like Russians and you think the only good Commie’s a dead one, I wish you’d say so.”

Kiviranna sucked on a cigarette. There was some tiny response just then when Pagan had mentioned the Russians, a very slight thing, a small change in the man’s expression.

Pagan decided to pursue the opening. “By the way, Jake, they want you. Did I mention that already? They’d like to talk to you. In the circumstances, I can’t say I blame them.”

“Who wants me?”

Pagan went back to the table and sat down. “The Soviets. They’d like me to turn you over to them. They’re being pretty persistent about it. And I’m not sure I can prevent it.”

“You’re out of your mind,” Kiviranna said. “No way would you hand me over.”

Pagan shrugged. Sometimes when you interviewed a person you got lucky very quickly and you managed to touch a little nerve of fear. And it was apprehension that showed now on Kiviranna’s gaunt face.

“I don’t know, Jake. You shot one of their own. They’re not happy with you. Come to think of it, I’m not exactly delirious about you either. Take your pick. Either you talk to me, or you take a short car ride to the Soviet Embassy, where you get to sit in a dark room and they shine lights in your eyes and smoking isn’t allowed. You’ll meet some men whose coats seem just a little too tight and who make loud noises with their fists.”

Kiviranna sat upright now. “I killed the guy on British soil. I know the law, man.”

“You think you know the law, Jake. But when it comes down to tricky stuff like the death of a Russian, it starts to get pretty complicated. Diplomatic considerations raise their ugly little heads, chum. Her Majesty’s Government might owe the Soviets a favour, let’s say, and that favour might just turn out to be you.”

Kiviranna leaned back against the wall. “I set one foot inside that Embassy and I’m history. I’m past tense.”

“Right, Jake. It’s not a healthy prospect.”

“It’s a fucking political game. And I get shuffled like a pawn.”

“Pawns don’t get shuffled, Jake. You’re thinking about cards.” Pagan smiled, and leaned across the table so that his face was a mere six inches away from the other man’s. “Let’s just talk, okay? No more rubbish. Let’s start with motive.”

“Motive?”

“Why did you kill Romanenko? Money? Political conviction? Or was it something else?”

“He was a fucking asshole, man.”

Breathtaking. Pagan had expected some high-flown political cant, the kind of platitude assassins and terrorists so enjoy, that overblown rhetoric which was ultimately meaningless. He was a fucking asshole, man wasn’t the kind of thing he’d anticipated at all. He stared at Jacob Kiviranna for a while before he said, “If that was sufficient cause to blow a man away, the streets would be practically empty.”

“Okay. He sold out to the Russians. Is that enough for you?”

“Exactly how did he do that?”

“You name it. He carried out Kremlin policies in Estonia. He kissed all the Russian ass going. Guy was never off his fucking knees. An order came down from Moscow, Romanenko was the first to implement it. Didn’t matter what it was. He’d get the job done. He was the Kremlin’s rubber stamp. It didn’t matter he was born in Estonia, he was the Kremlin’s boy through and through. Which made him a goddam traitor.”

Pagan listened to the man’s toneless voice, then picked up the US passport, flipped the pages. “You’re an American citizen, Jake. How come you give a damn about Romanenko anyway? I don’t see how he could have affected your life.”

“I got family left over there,” Kiviranna said. “Cousins, a couple of uncles, aunts.”

Revenge, Pagan wondered. Did it come down to a motive as basic as that? “Had Romanenko threatened your family? Had he done something to them?”

Kiviranna didn’t say anything for a time. He smoked another cigarette and the small windowless chamber clouded up and the young cop by the door coughed a couple of times. Kiviranna gestured with the cigarette and looked very serious. “He didn’t have to do anything personal to them, man. He was a Communist and a traitor to his own people. That’s enough. We’re talking about evil. I eliminated evil. That’s the only thing that matters. You see evil, man, you wipe it out. The more evil you get rid of, the more good there is in the world. That’s what it’s all about. It’s logical.”

Evil – now there was a fine melodramatic word you didn’t hear a great deal these days unless you frequented certain extreme religious sects or moved in mad terrorist circles, where it was used to describe anyone who didn’t believe in either your choice of a God or your cause. Pagan studied Kiviranna’s face again, wondered about his background. Had this wild-eyed character, who impressed Pagan as the kind of man you saw speaking to himself in the reading-rooms of public libraries, come three thousand miles to commit a murder because he believed that Aleksis Romanenko was evil? Was he driven by a missionary sense of bringing goodness and light into the world? Had he planned this killing all alone? Had he walked around with a dream of death in his head for weeks, perhaps months on end? An obsessive, a sociopath, the kind of guy who suddenly pops up with a handgun and makes a name for himself by killing a person of some standing in a political system he thought deplorable. I eliminated evil. Jake the avenger, the equaliser, the mad angel of light.

“So wiping out this evil was your own idea, Jake? Is that what you’re telling me?”

“You got it.”

Pagan was unhappy with this reply. It didn’t answer the question of how Kiviranna had come into possession of the gun. Somebody had presumably passed the weapon to him after his arrival in Britain, and when you had two people you had a conspiracy, and so much for a lone killer theory. For another, Pagan had the feeling, which he couldn’t readily explain and which surfaced in his mind at the end of a chain of unanalysable instincts, that Jake, albeit lonely and out of touch, was basically a gullible soul, and that the killing of Romanenko was an idea that had been encouraged in him. It wasn’t a conclusion he’d reached without some kind of assistance, some kind of persuasion.

“How did you know Romanenko was going to be in Edinburgh, Jake?”

“I read it in a paper, I guess.”

“An American paper?”

“I guess so, I don’t remember.”

Pagan’s eyes were watering in the smoky room. It was hardly likely that Romanenko’s visit to Britain had been mentioned in any US newspaper. It wasn’t entirely newsworthy in America to print a story about an obscure Communist Party official making a quick business trip to the United Kingdom. It was even less likely that any press item would mention something so utterly unimportant as the side-trip to the Edinburgh Festival. So here was another question: how had Jake come across his information? There was only one answer – it had come from the same person or persons who provided the gun.

Pagan got up from his chair and walked round the room.

“Let’s go back to the weapon. How did you get it, Jake?”

“I bought it here in London. I don’t remember the store.”

Pagan wheeled around quickly and strode back to the table. “You don’t just walk into a shop and buy a gun in this country, Jake. You fill in forms, there’s a waiting-period, the police run a thorough check on applicants. You haven’t been in England long enough to acquire a weapon legally.”

Kiviranna looked down at the surface of the table. His hands shook, and he pressed his palms together to keep them steady. “I need a favour,” he said.

“Let’s hear it.”

“I had some medication in my backpack. I’d like it.”

Pagan nodded at the young policeman, who went out of the room to fetch Kiviranna’s medicine.

“Nerves trouble you, Jake?”

“I have some problems, man. I’m getting over them.”

Pagan looked sympathetic. “Back to the gun, Jake.”

Kiviranna shut his eyes and rocked his body back and forth for a time. “Okay. I got it in Soho. I went into a club, I asked around, guy sold me the gun. It was easy.”

“You’re trying my patience, Jake. You don’t walk inside some club in Soho, a complete stranger, an outsider, and find somebody to sell you a gun. It doesn’t happen that way. You need an inside track. Think again.”

Kiviranna was silent. He stroked his beard. “I got a real bad headache.”

The door of the room opened and the young policeman stepped inside, handing the brown prescription bottle to Pagan, who laid it on the table and rolled it back and forth as he studied Jake’s anxious face.

“Tell me about the gun and you get one of your pills.”

Kiviranna was silent a moment. “Okay. The gun was in a luggage locker at that station – what’s it called? King’s Cross?” He stuck a hand out towards the bottle, but Pagan covered it quickly with a palm.

“How did you know the gun was going to be there, Jake? Who told you? Who gave you the key to the locker?”

Kiviranna didn’t take his eyes away from the bottle in Frank Pagan’s fist. The look on his face was one of subdued desperation and Pagan, clutching the pills Jake was aching for, felt a surge of sympathy for the man and a slight disapproval of his own cruelty.

“He was an old guy I met in New York.”

“Did he just walk up to you on the street? Did he say here’s a key, fly to England, fetch the gun, shoot Romanenko?”

Kiviranna shook his head. “He got my name from somewhere, he called me. We met a few times. I never knew his name, and that’s the truth.”

“How come he approached you, Jake? What made him choose you?”

“I guess he heard I had certain sympathies.”

“Were you offered money?”

“Expenses, that’s all. I wasn’t going to take money for ridding the world of a guy like Romanenko.” Kiviranna sounded a little offended by the suggestion. “We met a few times, we talked, I agreed to do the job.”

“Where did your meetings take place?”

Kiviranna was speaking more frankly now. “Different places, man. Sometimes Manhattan. Sometimes Brooklyn. One time we met at Coney Island, next to the old parachute jump. Another time the boardwalk at Brighton Beach.”

“Tell me the man’s name, Jake.”

“I don’t know it, I swear. He wasn’t anxious for me to know, and I wasn’t anxious to find out.”

Pagan took the cap off the bottle. “Why did he want you to kill Romanenko?”

“Because he felt the same way I did.”

“Tell me more about this mystery man.”

Kiviranna’s forehead glistened with sweat. “What’s to tell? He was maybe seventy, in there somewhere. He spoke with a thick accent. Shabby clothes. He didn’t look like he had two nickels to rub together. But I guess he got money from somewhere, enough for my expenses anyway. I don’t remember much more.”

“And even if you could remember more, you wouldn’t tell me,” Pagan said. He tilted the bottle and a few capsules slid on to the table. He examined them carefully, checking the name of the manufacturer, Lilley, imprinted on the side of each one.

“I’ve told you everything,” Kiviranna said.

“I don’t think so, Jake.” Pagan pushed one of the pills across the table to Kiviranna, who picked it up quickly and tossed it into his mouth. “Enjoy. We’ll talk again tomorrow. Maybe you’ll find your memory has improved after a good night’s sleep.”

Pagan put the medicine bottle in his pocket together with Kiviranna’s passport, stood up, walked towards the door. He was struck by fatigue but he knew that it was something he was going to have to carry around with him for some hours yet.

“What if I don’t have anything new to tell you in the morning?” Kiviranna asked. “What then?”

Pagan turned, looked at the man, smiled in a thin way. He didn’t answer the question but hoped that his smile, so devoid of mirth, suggested an unspeakable threat. Closing the door, he went out into the corridor and dipped his face into a drinking-fountain, letting a jet of lukewarm water splash against his eyes and forehead. A gun in a left-luggage locker, a nameless man in New York who’d sent Jake all the way to England – maybe it was all very simple, nothing more than a straightforward political assassination planned by Jake’s anonymous acquaintance and carried out by Kiviranna who, through his own strange filter, saw the world in terms of black and white, evil and good. Maybe that’s all there was to the affair.

But there was a dark area at the back of Pagan’s mind, a room in which assorted problems lay like unlit lightbulbs awaiting a surge of electricity to illuminate them. And in this room there lived Pagan’s muse, his own inner policeman, his personal inspector, who was rarely satisfied with simplicity and who hated darkness passionately. He loathed puzzles too, such as the plain white envelope, sealed and unaddressed, that Aleksis Romanenko had carried in his briefcase.