Free No Time for Heroes by Brian Freemantle Page B

marks of torture or resistance. He’d try for fingernail scrapings, but he wasn’t hopeful there, either. He’d do his best to help forensic get usable fingerprints but the best chance of provable indentification would be dental records, although the teeth were extensively damaged. The mouth shot had been inflicted in the car, which was how the shell jacket came to be in the trunk: the slug would be found, among the head debris.
    Cowley went to the police car where the exhibit officer was packaging the recovered articles, and signed for the passport, managing to open it to the photograph by working on the outside of the plastic envelope. The parking ticket was in a separate sachet. The date automatically registered by the entry machine was the day Serov had died, the time 20-45. Cowley gave Rafferty the opened passport and told him to take the Key Bridge and return through Georgetown to confirm Michel Paulac had been the man with Serov.
    As Cowley turned to Johannsen, the detective expectantly said: ‘You’d like to know how many flights left National after eight forty-five? And to where?’
    â€˜And get the passenger lists and credit card slips for tickets that were bought that night,’ completed Cowley. He stopped, looking around the assembled policemen. Trying as always to be diplomatic among different forces, he said: ‘Anything else?’
    â€˜You’re going to get your photograph taken again when we leave,’ cautioned Rafferty. ‘So you’d better wipe that shit from under your nose. Your look like Son of Hitler.’
    Rafferty was thirty minutes behind Cowley returning to Pennsylvania Avenue, and arrived with more than confirmation of Michel Paulac being Petr Serov’s dinner companion four nights earlier.
    â€˜Worked the visa pages open through the plastic,’ he reported. ‘Paulac’s been here every month since the beginning of the year. Never for longer than one week, according to date stamps.’
    â€˜You’ve got the credit card number to work from,’ said Cowley. ‘He should have listed his hotel on the visa form.’
    â€˜On my way,’ said Rafferty.
    In his written report to the FBI Director, Cowley undertook fully to brief the protocol office at the State Department, before sending a detailed request for all possible information about Michel Paulac, of Rue Calvin, Geneva, to the Swiss police through Interpol.
    Robertson was on the telephone precisely on the promised hour. The casing recovered from the car trunk was from a 9mm bullet of Russian manufacture for a Makarov pistol. Hammer markings were identical to those on the casing of the bullet that killed Serov.
    Johannsen’s was the last report, which he came back to make in person, leaving the rest of the squad at the airport. There had been sixteen departing flights after 8.45 p.m. on the night in question, three of them the last shuttles to New York and Boston. Four had been international – none direct or intermediate to Moscow – the rest internal. All credit card slips had already gone to the respective companies for payment, and flight manifests had also been filed. The airlines and the card companies had warned it was going to take a long time.
    â€˜And maybe get us nowhere,’ pointed out Johannsen. ‘Because Paulac’s ticket was out of Dulles, we’re assuming our killer drove out to National for his escape, right?’ He raised his hands against interruption, wanting to finish. ‘Why can’t the Ford being dumped at National be a wrong steer, to send us in more circles than we’re going around in already? Or if he flew in , he could have had a return ticket, or he might have bought his ticket with cash, so the credit card slips are going to tell us nothing. There’s a passport check against ticket names for international flights, but there were only four of those. Any ticket for a flight within America could be in