The door was closed again.
The files still lay on the table like a paper echo: debts, asbestos, fictitious assets; figures that were not merely accounting entries, but broken promises. Fox stood motionless before them for a moment, as if assessing which of his theories had just died and which merely needed further evidence.
Then he opened the door.
Ilya Rozanov entered.
As always, he moved without any visible haste, but not with the calm of a relaxed man. Rather, with that of a man who wore control like a coat: not because it was warm, but because without it he would have been naked.
Fox gestured to the chair.
“Captain Rozanov.”
Ilya sat down.
Unlike Shane, no impatience; unlike Cemil Arslan, no closed-off hardness; unlike Luc Moreau, no decorative style. Ilya simply sat down, as if this interrogation were just another test of composure.
Fox remained standing.
“While you were waiting outside, our evening grew even uglier.”
“That doesn’t surprise me.”
“Franklin was bankrupt. The scholarship money didn’t exist. The evening’s donations had already vanished into old debts.”
Ilya barely reacted.
“Then he has failed not only as a man,” he said, “but also as a sponsor.”
Fox noted the sentence without using a pen.
“You don’t sound affected.”
“Should I?”
“A man has died in front of you. And the scholarship money—twenty million, no less—doesn’t exist. For your team, the first prize alone was supposed to mean sixteen million in foundation assets. Or as you’d say: nearly two quadrillion roubles, depending on the exchange rate and propaganda needs.” Fox tilted his head. “Don’t you feel sorry for the young Russian players?”
“Soviet,” said Ilya.
“Of course.”
Then Fox walked over to the table. He didn’t lean on it, just stayed close enough that the distance became uncomfortable. This one would be harder to crack than Shane. Shane had too much emotion beneath the discipline. Ilya had discipline where other people would first suspect emotion.
“You were in the corridor.”
“Yes.”
“You heard something.”
“Yes.”
“And unlike Hollander, you’re not going to tell me again that it just sounded tense.”
Ilya steamed his gaze with his exhaled breath as he laughed.
“No.”
Fox waited.
Ilya took a moment to decide which truth was more dangerous.
“I heard Franklin and the doctor talking to each other. The doctor spoke of a boy, of pictures, of rumours, of something one could hint at without having to prove it.”
Fox pressed: “A British boy?”
“I don’t know.”
“Hollander?”
“No!”
“I thought you didn’t know.”
Ilya’s gaze remained hard. “He didn’t say the name. But Hollander is famous here, at least in Illinois. He would certainly have said his name.”
“You’re not from Illinois. It now seems more logical to me that the tournament doctor wanted to blackmail Franklin with pictures of either his son or his bastard: how would it look if the father handed over the scholarship money from the others’ donations to his son, whether Arslan or Moreau.”
For a fraction of a second, Ilya’s expression changed: anger at himself, not at Fox.
“Then wherever this village thinks it’s important.”
Fox took a slow step around the table. “Why are you here?”
“Because I’m Russian and my name catches your eye more than the imperialist Takamura’s, and because people like you in countries like this build up guilt faster than logic.”
Fox watched him very closely.
“Is that the only reason?”
Ilya said nothing.
Fox tried a different angle.
“Your grandfather.”
Now the change was there. A subtle flicker across his face, like a shadow passing too quickly across the screen.
“What about him?”
“Officially an Olympic coach. Unofficially closer to Soviet structures than sport alone would suggest.”
Ilya looked at him, and this time his composure was no longer quite perfect.
“My grandfather was the ice hockey coach for the Russian national team. And he was an officer in the Red Army.”
“KGB.”
“That’s an insinuation.” Ilya’s voice remained quiet, but for the first time there was a sharp edge to it. “I knew him. He got me onto the ice. Against my parents’ wishes. He said I had the talent my father lacked.”
“We know he worked for the KGB,” said Fox. “Did you know that Franklin appears in those same old files?”
Now came genuine surprise.
“No.”
Fox took note of it. For the moment, he found it credible.
“Not at all?”
“I knew who my grandfather was. Not who he was involved with.”
“And what did you know?”
Ilya answered this time without putting up a defence.
“That he was officially a coach. That unofficially he worked with people who never took sport seriously for sport’s sake, but to boost the Soviet Union’s standing abroad. And I know that’s precisely why my father joined the police.”
Fox raised his eyebrows slightly.
“The police.”
“In Omsk.”
“To distance himself? From sport, or from the Red Army, or from the KGB?”
“So he wouldn’t become the same man as Grandad.”
Outside, someone walked past the club room. Footsteps, then muffled voices, then silence again. The hall was still waiting for full answers, but for the time being it was getting only better questions.
Fox walked back to the head of the table.
“Did you think Hollander had killed Franklin? Because Franklin was a defector who’d found refuge here. Someone who’d betrayed his homeland to live in luxury. Someone who isn’t like you?”
Ilya looked surprised for a moment.
“Why would Hollander be interested in the Soviet Union? Or Japan or France. He doesn’t think any further than the Mexican border. ”
Fox let the sentence sink in. “Amazing what you know about your rival.”
Ilya didn’t reply.
“Did you have contact with Franklin before the collapse?”
“Yes. At the tournament.”
“Before that?”
“No.”
“The doctor?”
“No. I don’t need an American doctor. I have a Soviet doctor.”
“Hollander out of the game?”
Ilya answered too quickly.
“No. Why would I contact the competition?”
Fox remained perfectly calm.
“You’d lie better if you took your time.”
Ilya’s face grew even more impassive.
“Did you kill Franklin?” asked Fox.
“No.”
“Did you want to?”
This time there was a pause. Ilya looked at the files on the table.
“I wanted him to stop using people who didn’t understand what they were getting themselves into. And if he was someone who wanted to blackmail others, then perhaps it was better that he died.”
Fox let his gaze wander over the room.
“That’s not a clear answer.”
“I didn’t kill him.”
Fox believed him on that point, too, for the moment. Just as he was about to ask the next question, the door opened.
Dana entered.
She had her folder with her again. Her hair lay slightly differently, as though she’d run her fingers through it several times whilst walking without realising. Her focus had sharpened. With Dana, that almost always meant: better data.
She glanced briefly from Fox to Ilya.
“I hate to interrupt.”
“You only do that when I’m on the verge of believing something wrong.”
Dana ignored the attempt at charm.
“The samples have been provisionally analysed.”
Ilya suddenly fell completely silent; not visibly nervous, but fully attentive.
Fox sat up straight.
“Captain Rozanov, wait outside. Stay away from the others until we’ve gathered them back together.”
Ilya stood up. His gaze fell for a moment on Dana’s folder, then on Fox. He said nothing. That was probably wiser than anything he could have said.
He left the room and closed the door behind him.
Dana placed a piece of paper on the table.
“None of the four captains show any contamination with a relevant toxin. Neither on the skin nor in the rapid saliva, blood and semen tests. No indication of contact poison in Moreau, Arslan, Hollander or Rozanow. And the half-brother thing is correct; I was able to establish that with a high degree of probability from the rapid genome comparison of all four.”
Fox looked at the note. “That doesn’t mean Franklin wasn’t poisoned.”
“No. Just that our four captains weren’t the carriers of any obvious contamination.”
Fox nodded slowly.
That immediately shifted the structure of the case. Four young men remained of interest, but in a different way: less as hands, more as feet.
Dana didn’t sit down. “If poison was involved, then it must have happened differently. Or perhaps we’re looking at something natural after all. In any case, for the moment it exonerates these four in a certain way.”
“Good,” said Fox. “At least we now know who didn’t send Franklin to his death with their bare hands.”
Dana replied dryly: “That’s not a medically elegant way of putting it, but yes.”
She opened the folder and pulled out a second sheet. “For Franklin, we need an autopsy to be able to definitively establish possible poisoning. And I’d like to see the trophy again.”
Fox looked up.
“Not the doctor?”
“Him too.” Dana’s voice grew cooler. “But Franklin had an irritation on his hand. The trophy had contact with Franklin. The trophy had contact with Ilya. If Ilya is clean and Franklin isn’t, then either the contact was different than we thought — or someone changed something very quickly after the decisive moment.”
Fox glanced towards the door behind which Ilya had just disappeared.
“Toolidle?”
“Perhaps.”
“That tournament doctor was too quick onto the ice.”
“And too slow with the right questions, medications or therapies.”
Fox took the note and placed it next to the financial files.
Debts. Asbestos. Non-existent scholarships. No contamination of the captains. A former Vladimir Frantzusov who had died as Walter Franklin. A tournament doctor with too many convenient answers.
“Our evening is going to be far more exciting than coffee ever could be,” he said.
Dana looked at him.
“And clearer.”
Outside, the captains were waiting. Inside, the first solid gaps lay on the table.
For Fox, that was almost better than evidence.