‘Undermine!’ he said. ‘I’ve got it – I might just have got us an angle!’
Reaching the Yeltsin Meditsinskiy Tsentr within thirty minutes, they were braced for the likely obstructiveness. On arrival, McMahon requested a meeting with Mr Pyotr Uglov.
‘Please tell him,’ McMahon said in Russian to the receptionist, ‘that Ptarmigan will call him as a witness in the forthcoming trial unless he comes to see me here, right now.’
Uglov did appear a few minutes later.
‘Thank you for seeing us, Mr Uglov,’ she said softly in Russian, hoping to neutralize the tone of her summons.
The consultant nodded perfunctorily.
‘As Ms Sabatino's lawyer, I am deeply concerned that she is being subjected to a police interview.’
‘The police have made up their minds,’ said the doctor. ‘I am told that this case is of the highest national importance. It has been impressed upon me that as Ms Sabatino is such a key figure in the investigation and the trial, she needs to be interviewed before she is coached to fabricate her memories.’
‘Please tell me, doctor, when did you inform Ms Sabatino that she had been involved in killing thirty-four people?’
There was a pause while Uglov considered his answer.
‘Had you even told Ms Sabatino of those deaths – before our visit to see her – yesterday?’
He shook his head.
‘How would you describe Ms Sabatino's mental, psychological, even emotional condition now – within twenty-four hours of learning that she had been involved with the deaths of thirty-four people?’
Almost as an admission of guilt, Uglov replied quietly: ‘I am not a psychiatrist. Even so, how could I not say: distressed?’
McMahon nodded gently in an acceptance of his admission. ‘I have to confess, while readily declaring that I am no medic myself, I would guess the same.’
McMahon then asked: ‘Since Ms Sabatino learned about the deaths in her accident, Mr Uglov, has she been seen by a psychiatrist?’
The consultant shook his head.
‘Received any form of counselling?’
Another negative.
‘I want to be very clear, Pyotr,’ she said using his first name for the first time, ‘given Ms Sabatino's condition, this police interview is wrong. I can’t speak for the medical considerations, of course, but – morally – I am unable to see this interview as anything other than unjust: nespravedlivyy.’
Mr Uglov didn’t seem unnerved by McMahon's assertions, if anything he gave an impression of accepting them.
‘Let me be clear again, then, doctor,’ McMahon added, her tone shifting subtly, ‘if this interview proceeds, I will have no choice but to call you as a witness in the trial – and have you cross-examined.’
Uglov recoiled slightly.
‘I will have you questioned on your medical procedures. I will have you questioned about the validity of your clinical stewardship of Ms Sabatino as a patient. I will have you questioned about why you didn’t tell her about the deaths; why no clinical assessment was made of any effect that such news might have on her; why you offered her no treatment – support, even – for any effects on her mental or emotional state; why you gave permission for your patient to be submitted to a crucial, legally significant, interrogation with no clinical understanding of her readiness for it. I will have you questioned on whether you would feel – if you were in Ms Sabatino's condition – that you, yourself, would be ready to answer such questions; and whether you would expect yourself to give balanced answers in such circumstances. I will have you questioned on whether you believe such answers would be psychiatrically reliable.’
The consultant looked increasingly pained. After several seconds of awkwardness, he said to McMahon: ‘Come with me,’ and strode off towards the lifts.
They rode up the three floors in silence.
Straker saw the trauma specialist was tense. What did that mean?
They reached their floor. Uglov charged out, striding on ahead down the austere echoey passageway with its harsh fluorescent strip lights and smell of disinfectant.
As they rounded a corner, they could see the armed policemen standing guard at the end of the corridor. Straker wondered how they were going to react. Would they even be let through? Wouldn’t the officers bar their way?
Uglov suddenly broke into a run. He turned round and encouraged Straker and McMahon to do the same.
The consultant shouted forwards to the police.
Straker turned towards McMahon with a quizzical expression.
‘Emergency, emergency. Patient in trouble,’ she translated.
It seemed to work.
Uglov was soon barging into Sabatino's room. In the moment of apparent medical urgency, the police had stepped back, letting the other two in behind him.
Once inside, the consultant started talking loudly and gesticulating. His outburst may have been in Russian, but Straker heard the tone and read his body language: he was clearly calling a halt to the interview.
Sabatino was in the bed propped up on a bank of pillows, wearing the halo brace with the tracheotomy tube still in her throat. Two men in suits were hovering over her, one to either side. Because of where they were standing, Sabatino wasn’t able to see into the face of either interrogator. Her eyes, though, were flashing this way and that between them.
One of the men turned round to face Uglov. He looked indignant, his stature expanding rapidly to mirror that of the clearly agitated consultant. He moved away from the bed, heading towards Uglov.
‘What is the meaning of this?’ said the policeman
‘Your interrogation has to stop.’
