The Best of British Crime omnibus (12 page)

‘He taught at the school I went to when I was a kid,' said Gain sullenly. ‘In Deptford.'

‘And then what? When did he suggest you should come out here?'

‘It was in 1931,' he said, running a thin hand through his untamed hair. ‘During the depression. I was a young chap, a fitter actually, but I couldn't get a job anywhere. You remember what it was like, Mr Verney – two million unemployed and nothing but the ruddy dole. I got interested in Russia, like a lot of others, and went to meetings, and one day I heard Mr Mullett talking about the place and it sounded pretty good, so as I'd known him when I was a kid I went up to him afterwards and asked him what sort of chances there were in the Soviet Union for a young fellow like me. Well, he said there was a fine life for everybody here, particularly for chaps with a trade – he made it sound lovely. So, to cut a long story short, I came out here to work and everyone was so decent I decided to give up my British passport and become a Soviet citizen. That was about a month after I got here.'

‘I see. And yesterday evening, when you saw Mullett again, I suppose you told him it hadn't panned out so well, eh?'

For a moment Gain's eyes glittered, and I thought he was going to let himself go. At some time or other he must have been a man of fair spirit, to take a chance in a new country and burn his boats behind him. Then he glanced towards the door, and the sullen expression came back into his face. ‘I wouldn't say that, Mr Verney – that it hadn't panned out, I mean. Things could be worse. It was just that – well, last night I was a bit fed up with everything, being pushed around and so on, and when Mr Mullett started saying what a lucky chap I was to have had twenty years in Russia I told him I wasn't on a delegation, just quietly, like, and he took offence. But actually things aren't too bad – I wouldn't like you to think I was complaining.'

For a moment I felt profoundly sorry for him. He was too scared to say what was in his mind, but I had a pretty good idea what he thought. I'd seen his type too often. He'd come out in the vigour of youth and the flush of high enthusiasm, full of big ideas about the new Utopia, and by the time he'd found out how wrong he'd been, it was too late to do anything about it. He'd become what almost all these expatriates became once they'd lost the protection of a foreign passport – a sort of half-human, not Soviet and not foreign, not accepted and not rejected, politically just a ‘poor white.' He'd become disillusioned, frustrated and neurotic, and – I suspected – tortured by the thought of what he'd thrown away. He'd become a creature, and the only thing that surprised me was that he'd said anything to Mullett at all. Usually they were too thoroughly intimidated to raise a squeak, and the bitterness just festered.

Such a history commanded sympathy, but it also put Gain high up in the list of suspects. He might well have hated Mullett. He might have followed Mullett up to his room, nursing accumulated grievances, and delivered the record and struck the blow, and dropped the letter in his flight. Motive and opportunity were both good. If the Soviet police had found that letter he wouldn't have had a chance. All the same, I was inclined to believe his story, or at least to give it a run. Looking at him, I couldn't believe that he would have had the guts to hit Mullett. He was too conditioned to subservience. A single bitter retort under provocation – yes, that was possible, but not murder. I certainly had no desire to hand over either him or the letter to the Soviet police.

I was about to say something of the sort to Jeff when the door flew open and Zina burst in unceremoniously. She had a typed sheet of paper in her hand and she looked ready to explode.

‘Mr Clayton,' she said, ‘they've just sent this round from the Press Department. I simply can't believe it.'

We all gathered round. Zina translated for Jeff's benefit and I looked over her shoulders and Gain peered round Jeff's shoulder. What I read left me gasping.

‘As is known,' the announcement ran, ‘Mr Andrew Mullett, who has been leading a peace delegation to the Soviet Union, was found dead last evening in his room at the Astoria Hotel. As a result of swift and efficient police action, it has been established that Mr Mullett was murdered by a waiter at the hotel, Nikolai Nikolaevitch Skaliga, who attempted to cover up a political motive by trying to make it appear that the object of the murder was theft. This secret White Guard and enemy of the Soviet people has now confessed that he committed this abominable crime at the instigation of Anglo-American agents seeking to disrupt peace and unleash a new war. The vile conspiracy is being unmasked with the utmost zeal.'

For a moment I was too thunderstruck to speak. It was so utterly, incredibly, ludicrously monstrous! The idea that Nikolai, the mild, gentle, senescent Nikolai, would have hit Mullett on the head with a bottle was just a
grotesquerie.
Never, in a long experience of Soviet announcements, had I known a more fantastic allegation.

It was Gain who spoke first. ‘Well,' he said, ‘that seems to let me out.'

I swung round on him in a fury. ‘You damned fool! You don't believe this tripe?'

He shrugged, and it was apparent that he was quite ready to believe anything which removed suspicion from himself. ‘He's been arrested – he's confessed.'

‘Confessed!' My fingers itched to strike him. ‘You little swine, have you never heard of the M.V.D?' I regretted having wasted even a moment's sympathy on him. ‘And anyway, if that's you're attitude you've got quite a bit more explaining to do.'

He took a step back. ‘I don't see what,' he said, and swallowed. ‘I've told you everything.'

‘You told us that when you knocked at Mullet's door the first time, you heard English voices inside, and that one of them was probably the murderer. Remember? Well, whoever was with Mullett then, it certainly couldn't have been Nikolai, because he doesn't speak a word of English. It seems to me, Mr Gain, that you are going to be the leading witness in Nikolai's defence! You can work out for yourself how long it'll be after that before the police decide you were a participant in this precious conspiracy.'

The blood slowly drained from his face, and his eyes glittered in caverns of shadow. He stood stock still, his active, twisted mind groping for a plausible explanation. Finally he found one.

‘As a matter of fact,' he said, watching us, ‘what I told you about hearing someone inside the room when I first went there wasn't true. I made it up because I was afraid you suspected
me.
The truth is that I didn't hear anything when I knocked.'

‘You rat!' muttered Jeff.

‘What about Miss Manning?' I said.
‘Did
you go to her room, or was that a lie, too?'

‘It was true – I did go. Honestly, Mr Verney.'

‘And she wasn't there?'

‘No, she wasn't. There wasn't a sound. I wouldn't tell you a lie, not now, really I wouldn't.'

I went and opened the door for him. He gathered up his things. ‘What about the letter?' he whined.

‘What about it?'

‘If it isn't delivered, I'll get into trouble.'

‘I'm sorry for you,' I said. ‘As sorry for you as you are for Nikolai.'

He made one last effort. ‘You won't let the police know – please, Mr Verney.'

‘Get out,' I said.

‘I guess we need a little fresh air,' said Jeff, and opened the
fortachka.
‘Okay, Zina, thanks for the good tidings!' He gave her shoulder a friendly slap of dismissal and she went out looking unusually subdued.

I sat down, feeling pretty sick. The thought of those thugs carting off old Nikolai in the middle of the night and getting to work on him in one of their underground cells just about turned my stomach.

‘If he was a sensible guy,' said Jeff, seeming to read my thoughts, ‘he'd tell them what they wanted to hear without arguing. Maybe he's not come to much harm – not yet.'

I wasn't reassured. ‘They don't like things to be that easy,' I said. ‘They like to beat it out of you.'

I picked up the announcement and read it through again with mounting indignation. It wasn't merely the contents but the tone of it that made me see red – the laconic way in which it stated outrageous improbabilities as though they were established facts – the contemptuous ‘take-it-or-leave-it' attitude, as though it had been prepared by cynics for morons. Finally, I threw it aside in disgust. ‘The damned effrontery of these people! Why, they don't even take the trouble to make it
sound
likely.'

‘They don't have to,' said Jeff, ‘while they've got the four-letter boys to persuade doubters.'

But this is for the outside world as well – they expect
us
to swallow it. It's probably been put out on the radio already. Why, the thing's an insult to the human intelligence. Who do they think we are?' I paced up and down, hardly able to control myself. ‘God, I wish there was something we could do about it.'

Jeff gave a wry smile. ‘I guess there's nothing short of war, chum.'

I flung myself back into a chair. ‘It's such a bloody shame to pick on Nikolai. Why, you wouldn't find a gentler old boy if you searched for a year. “Instigating a new war… !” What claptrap they talk!'

‘The whole thing's screwy, if you ask me,' said Jeff. ‘What do you suppose is in their minds? What's the idea?'

‘God only knows. I suppose they're sore at having Mullett bumped off on their territory and they've pulled in the first handy person as a scapegoat.'

But why all this baloney about a conspiracy? Theft would have sounded a darned sight more likely.' I shrugged. ‘I suppose they found out that Nikolai was tied up with the old régime and they couldn't resist the temptation to make political capital out of the case. I don't know – perhaps I've got it all wrong, but I can't think of any other explanation.'

Jeff got up. ‘Well, I guess I'll go down to the Press Department and see if they've got anything to add. Are you going to file?'

‘Not now,' I said. ‘If I wrote what I'm thinking I'd be given forty-eight hours to leave. Besides, what's the use? – you know they won't pass a line.'

‘Okay, bud – see you later.'

I lit my pipe and wandered over to the window. I don't think I'd ever felt more depressed. It was the sense of helplessness that was so hard to take – the knowledge that an unspeakable injustice was being done and that there was absolutely nothing that we or anyone else could do for Nikolai. He'd ‘had' it – and if I knew the ways of the Russians, it wouldn't be long before his son Boris and Boris's family were roped in too. Even if we'd been in a position to produce irrefutable evidence that some other person had done the murder, it wouldn't have made any difference. Nobody would listen now, because nobody wanted to listen. For reasons of their own, they'd decided that Nikolai was the man, and Nikolai it would have to be. Unless they needed a public confession from him to bolster up charges against other people, or decided to stage one of their demonstration trials, he'd probably never be heard of again. As far as the Russians were concerned, it seemed likely that the Mullett case was closed.

That didn't mean it was closed for me, of course. I no longer felt academic about the murder – I felt violent. I might be able to make a bit of trouble for someone, even if I couldn't help Nikolai. Nothing would give me deeper satisfaction than to be able to confront the real murderer with solid evidence of his guilt. At least I might as well make a few inquiries.

I suddenly saw myself as a kind of ‘private eye' in the Soviet Union, and the notion was so absurd that, for all my distress, I had to laugh.

All the same, there
were
one or two small matters that called for attention. I had a little business with Perdita, for instance. I went along the corridor and found her room – 470 – and she opened up at once in response to my knock. She was wearing rather more make-up than usual, but otherwise the shattering events of the night seemed to have had remarkably little outward effect on her.

‘May I come in for a moment?' I asked. ‘I've something to give you.'

She seemed somewhat surprised, but she was quite affable and I followed her in.

There was a typed sheet on her table, similar to the one Zina had brought to us, and she had evidently been studying it with the help of a dictionary. No doubt a copy had been sent to each of the delegates.

I handed over the letter. ‘I met a chap from the Radio Station and he asked me to deliver it,' I told her.

‘How sweet of you.' She opened the envelope without noticing that it had been tampered with. I glanced casually round the room. It was smaller than mine, but – as Gain had said – it was quiet. The narrow lane below the window was a pleasant contrast to the roaring square. Some of her photographs lay scattered around, and on her dressing-table were two small china busts of Lenin and Stalin. ‘Presents from Moscow,' I thought. It was a wonder they didn't make rock.

She said, ‘Well, that's all right,' and put the letter down, and then she smiled at me in her infuriating way. ‘So they've found out who killed Mr Mullett!' There was a challenge in her voice. There always was, either political or sexual. She just couldn't resist being provocative.

I said, rather wearily, ‘I suppose you believe that twaddle?'

‘Naturally I believe it. You don't imagine they'd have published a thing like that if it hadn't been true?' ‘Why not? A few weeks ago they said American airmen were dropping Colorado beetles on eastern Germany! They'd say anything if it suited them –
anything.
Black's white, and all men have four legs. You know that.'

‘Nonsense! Anyhow, this waiter confessed.'