In the Name of a Killer Read Online Free Page A

for work!’
    Olga looked at him in astonishment. ‘What the hell’s wrong with you!’
    ‘Please! I just want a shirt ironed.’ He wouldn’t bother about the shoes: it was only a tiny tear.
    Begrudgingly Olga got up from the table and noisily took the ironing board from its crevice between the cooker and the store cupboard. Searching for an attack point, she said: ‘The cuffs are frayed: the left one, at least. You need more shirts: shall I look while I’m choosing nightdresses?’
    Danilov didn’t want to fight. ‘The fray won’t show.’
    Abruptly, confusingly at first, she said: ‘Would it have hurt: what happened to the girl last night? Would it have hurt?’
    ‘Horribly.’
    ‘I’ll definitely get a taxi.’
    Danilov supposed he should have warned Larissa, as well. He’d have to remember to do so.
    The hum was discordant, high and low, high and low, without a tune: it was good to hum. He liked it. It was noise: noise was safe. Not always, of course. Not just before it happened. Noise was dangerous then. Had to be quiet, like a shadow. Only safe to hum afterwards. Like now. They said it was an indication to hum, all those experts, but they were wrong. About humming anyway. He wasn’t mad. The opposite. Clever: always clever. Clever enough to know all the signs but stop them showing.
    The hair had this time been more difficult to tie neatly in its tiny, preserved bunch, like a wheat sheaf: kept slipping out, before the cord was properly secured. All right now. A neat, tidy bunch – always important, to be neat and tidy – with the top cleanly trimmed completely flat. Perfect match with the other one. It had been right to take the buttons. She’d been a woman: got it all right last night. Especially the buttons. A neat and tidy pattern, red ones and green ones and a brown one, all assembled in their perfect arrangement on the special souvenir table, together with the hair-clipping scissors. Always had to have buttons, from now on. And always a woman then. Important to plan for the future, always to stay ahead. The knife had to be sharpened, stropped like a razor, to slide in like silk. That was the good part, the way the knife slid in. Just like silk. That and buttons. Felt happy, to have got the buttons. There’d be the challenge, soon: a hunt. There had to be a hunt. That was going to be the best part: what he was looking forward to. Look, fools, look! But they never would. Not properly. Just a little longer, touching the souvenirs. Holding them. Exciting, to hold them. Then put them away. Safely, for later. Another one soon. Always women, from now on. And buttons.

Chapter Three
     
    Pavin drove the car, drawn from the Militia pool. He did so meticulously, as in everything else, observing all the signals and keeping strictly within the speed restrictions. He did not, however, attempt to use the central reserved lane, which they could probably have done as an official car on official business, automatically waved through every possible junction obstruction by the GAI police in their elevated glass control boxes, like goldfish out of water. Not that there had been obstruction: it had been nearly ten o’clock before Lapinsk returned the authorizing call to go to the American embassy, so the morning traffic had cleared. As they made their way towards Ulitza Chaykovskaya, Pavin said the house-to-house inquiries hadn’t found a single witness. He was still trying to work out how many extra officers it would need to carry out the search of psychiatric hospital records: it would be a lot.
    ‘Novikov is being ordered to do the autopsy immediately,’ said Danilov.
    ‘That’ll annoy him.’
    ‘Everything annoys him,’ dismissed Danilov.
    They turned into Chaykovskaya, towards the embassy. Pavin nodded ahead and said: ‘It’ll be difficult for me to keep a proper record, without the language.’
    ‘We’ll stay in Russian,’ Danilov decided. ‘If the man we’re going to see doesn’t speak it