An Autumn Hunting

by Tom Callaghan

  Down the street, I could see the two circular hemispheres of the municipal banya, the bathhouse where you could get everything from a scalding shower and a choice of steam rooms to a brutal massage and a vigorous beating with birch twigs to help the circulation.

  I’d avoided the banya ever since I’d drowned an assassin sent there to kill me. It hadn’t exactly been a fair fight because he wore a plaster cast on his hand, thanks to the earlier encounter we’d enjoyed. That had evened things up a little. I’d watched his body sink to the bottom of the ice-cold pool, thankful he was dead, guilty I’d done nothing to help him in the moment when his anger turned to terror as the water flooded his lungs.

  I may be paranoid but it made sense to stay away from the scene of the crime, in case my presence triggered someone’s memory and they ran through the exterior CCTV tapes once more.

  I didn’t think it was likely. So it came as a surprise when they picked me up as I was outside the entrance to my apartment building, activating the electronic door chip.

  They were good; they had me bundled into an unmarked, windowless van before I’d had time to protest or throw a punch. No uniforms, but you can’t disguise that flat-faced impassive stare. It wasn’t the first time I’d ridden in a police wagon, but never wearing handcuffs before, one cuff on my wrist, the other locked onto a steel D-ring set into the bare metal seat. I didn’t know either of the officers who sat on my right and left; the senior ment sat opposite and practised his most terrifying stare. I was meant to feel intimidated.

  The air was thick with the sweet perfume of piss and sweat, with an underlying note of puke inadequately hosed out at the end of each shift. Perhaps it got the passengers prepared for the stink of the cells.

  I fumbled for my cigarettes, awkwardly reaching over for my pocket because of the handcuff on my wrist. The ment opposite shook his head. ‘Ne kurit,’ he said, and emphasised the point by lighting up himself and blowing the smoke in my face. I wasn’t sure which smelt worse – the cheap nicotine or his sour breath. Sometimes the clichés are so great you have to smile, but you keep the grin to yourself in case the arresting officer decides you’re laughing at him, takes offence. That’s usually when all grinning stops.

  ‘Sverdlovsky, I suppose?’ I said, not expecting an answer. Sverdlovsky station is where the soundproof basement works wonders in solving cases, usually with the guilty party confessing to whatever’s on the table. It’s not always easy to understand what they’re saying, due to splintered teeth, split lips, dislocated jaws. Broken fingers don’t make it easy to sign statements either. But everyone agrees it’s a very effective way of bringing down the crime rate.

  I glanced at my watch, which had rather inconveniently stopped. I’d been in the van for three or four hours, yet the watch lied and said less than ten minutes. But even ten minutes should have been more than enough time to get to Sverdlovsky station; we were going somewhere else. I shut my mind to the possibility we going to pull up in a side road between Bishkek and Tokmok, where an unploughed field would have an Akyl-sized hole waiting to be filled. Better to assume I was currently too useful to be disposed of.

  Either we’d left a main road or the potholes had got a great deal deeper, because the van began to bounce and veer from side to side. With my wrist held tight by the cuffs, and with no way of bracing myself against the shocks, my back would look as if I’d been worked over by experts. Assuming that wasn’t about to happen anyway.

  Finally, the van stopped, the driver’s door opened, a fist pounded against the back. The sunlight dazzled me for a few seconds, as the cuff attached to the D-ring was opened, snapped on my other wrist. At least my hands were in front of me, so I was able to balance myself as I was pushed into the open air.

  I recognised where we were straight away: in Ala-Archa National Park, up in the start of the Tien Shan mountains, some forty kilometres south of Bishkek. We were at the point of the gorge where the road runs out and the backpacking trails begin, parked outside the area’s only hotel, a curious building shaped like an inverted V. Whoever built it obviously liked the look of the Alpine hotels in Switzerland and had tried to replicate them without spending any money. The exterior looked worn and shabby, with an air of having tried and given up. I felt pretty much the same.

  At this altitude, the air felt thin and crisp, even though the sun burnt down on us, the metal of the van’s sides warm to the touch. Two months later, and the first snows would have already started to make the journey longer and more difficult, and by the end of the year, the hotel would have closed until the spring, its staff back in their home villages.

  I was relieved we weren’t parked outside the back entrance to Sverdlovsky station, but that didn’t mean my troubles were over. You can torture someone anywhere, and it doesn’t take much equipment to get results. A pair of pliers, a sliver of wood, a plastic bucket half-full of water: use those and you’ll get the answers you want. It only depends on what you’re prepared to do to get them. And permanently disposing of a problem is even easier. The only hard bit is getting rid of the body.

  The senior ment jerked his head towards the hotel. His two sidekicks each seized an arm, led me to the front door. I wondered about trying to break free and head for the treeline, dismissed the idea. You can’t outrun a bullet. It struck me that perhaps these weren’t policemen at all, that I was stumbling towards my execution. A wave of fear tugged at my belly – no one wants to be shot with their trousers full of shit and terror. I must have tried to pull back, because the two men tightened their grip, started to drag me forward. Once I would have welcomed the prospect of dying, ending the grief caused by Chinara’s cancer. But you move on, live with loss the way you survive with a missing limb, the absence of an eye. And at that moment, nothing had ever smelt as fresh and sweet and alive as the cold air sweeping down from the mountain.

  ‘Don’t fuck me about,’ the ment snarled. In that moment of clarity, I noticed one of his eye-teeth was missing; it gave him the look of an unpredictable dog debating whether or not to bite. ‘If we were going to do you, you’d have been roadkill an hour ago.’ His smile didn’t reassure. ‘No one’s going to hurt you,’ he added. ‘Unless we have to.’

  He pushed the hotel door open, and I was thrust inside with all the dignity of a sack of winter coal being delivered.

  The lobby was dark, the lights turned off, the hotel obviously commandeered for the day. Even the clock behind the reception desk had downed tools and gone to sleep. Tynaliev sat at a long low table, flanked by two more guards whose hands never strayed far from their weapons. He sipped at a cup of coffee, pulled a face at its bitterness, added three more sugar cubes. I stood there, waiting for him to speak, to shout, to give the order to hurt me.

  ‘You’re an arsehole, Inspector. But you already know that.’

  Tynaliev never let anger and disappointment creep into his voice; he instilled so much fear he didn’t need to. The Kyrgyz people learnt that lesson during Stalin’s time, when people ‘disappeared’ and ended up tumbled together in a burial pit in Ata-Beyit. But there are times when you have to speak out, even if it costs you everything. And this was one of those times.

  ‘Minister, I respectfully suggest your bodyguards withdraw out of earshot. After all, it’s not as if I can do you any harm.’

  I held up my handcuffed wrists, to prove my point. Tynaliev stared at me, assessing how much of a threat I could pose, before nodding at his guards. After a brisk yet thorough frisking, the guards walked outside, leaving the senior ment far enough away not to hear but still able to watch my every move.

  ‘You say I’m an arsehole, Minister. Very possibly – no, almost certainly – you’re right.’

  Tynaliev said nothing, simply stared.

  ‘But then that makes two of us,’ I said. I knew the risk I was taking in insulting the minister, but I didn’t see any other way out of my situation. Buckle under, cave in, and I knew I wouldn’t be returning to Bishkek, unless it was to check into Hotel Usupov,
rooms always available.

  ‘A rather dangerous conclusion to reach, wouldn’t you say?’ Tynaliev said, the menace in his voice silken and smooth.

  I shrugged, gave a half-smile.

  ‘You’re not a man who lets his heart rule his head, Minister. I’ve been useful to you in the past, and from where I’m standing, I still am. But all this handcuffs and back of the van stuff, it doesn’t scare me or impress me. You either had me brought here to kill me or to brief me. And I can’t see you going to all this trouble just to put one in the back of my head.’

  I paused, tried to control the shaking in my legs, the shaking in my voice. Tynaliev stared, shrugged in his turn.

  ‘You’re not important enough to kill, Inspector,’ he said, ‘but you’re what Lenin called a useful idiot. You have a certain number of skills I can use. After that . . .?’

  It was his turn to shrug, then gesture to the guy who’d brought me in, made an unlocking motion with his fingers.

  The ment wasn’t too happy with that, but no one profits from arguing with the Minister for State Security. He did as he was told, making sure he wrenched my arms as he took off the cuffs. I smiled at him, gave him one of those winks that hints at meeting in a dark alley when there’s no one around and time for payback. His scowl got a little darker as he stomped back to the door.

  Tynaliev gestured at a nearby chair, watched as I dragged it over, a curious smile on his face.

  ‘You’ve got balls, Inspector, I’ll grant you that,’ he said. ‘There aren’t many people who’ve had the nerve to call me an arsehole.’ He paused, stared up at the ceiling. ‘In fact, I think you may be the only one. Still alive, that is.’

  Tynaliev lit a cigarette, blew smoke over his shoulder, pushed the packet towards me as an afterthought. I shook my head, not wanting my hands to betray me.

  ‘I had you brought here so we can avoid inquisitive ears. I have my enemies, as you know. This is a secure place to brief you on your next mission.’

  He paused, gave me the death stare.

  ‘If it leaks to anyone – the press, your friends, the man in the number 122 marshrutka, you can sleep easy, knowing that if the people I’m sending you up against don’t kill you, I will. Not quickly or painlessly either.’

  He stubbed out his cigarette on the table top. I could smell the acrid fumes of the burnt varnish. I knew Tynaliev was serious as death.

  Chapter 7

  For the next two hours, I listened as Tynaliev worked his way through a pack of cigarettes and most of a bottle of Kyrgyz Aragi. He knew me well enough not to offer me a shot. By the end, he was twenty-five per cent drunk and I was a hundred per cent horrified. The odds against me surviving even a couple of weeks under his plan were so slender I would have been better off walking down Chui Prospekt and jumping off the top of the Tsum shopping mall. Painful, but at least quick.

  Finally, Tynaliev screwed up the empty cigarette pack and threw it over his shoulder, not caring where it landed as long as it was nowhere near him. Probably the same attitude he had towards me.

  ‘Well. What do you think?’ he asked.

  ‘Frankly?’ I said.

  Tynaliev nodded.

  ‘It would be easier to shoot me now, save some time and a lot of money.’

  ‘That’s not the answer I want, Inspector,’ he said. ‘And . . .’

  ‘And it’s not as if I have a choice,’ I said, finishing his sentence. ‘Because you have the evidence that links me to the death of that paedo, Morton Graves.’

  ‘The murder of that wealthy, foreign, well-connected businessman, Morton Graves,’ Tynaliev corrected.

  ‘And if I don’t do what you want . . .’

  Tynaliev nodded, gave another of his wolfish smiles.

  ‘Exactly,’ he said. ‘I’ll see Penitentiary One has a special welcoming committee for you.’

  Tynaliev then surprised me by standing up and extending his hand towards me. I took it, felt my bones squeeze together under his grip. Middle-age and a desk hadn’t softened him any. They hadn’t softened his attitude either.

  ‘Look at it this way,’ he said. ‘You’re a widower, and no woman is going to take on an obvious candidate for a burial shroud. You get laid only when your Uzbek lady friend – probably an enemy of the Kyrgyz people, in case it had escaped your notice – decides she wants a quickie and can’t be bothered to find a real man. You live in a shitty apartment, you’ve got no friends, you’re broke. What have you got to live for that’s so special?’

  Tynaliev let go of my hand and cracked his knuckles, the sound oddly loud in the room. I wondered how they would sound against my face.

  ‘This way, you have a bit of fun, spend some money, maybe even come back in one piece,’ he continued. ‘What’s a career in Bishkek Murder Squad compared to that?’

  I could only nod my agreement, but couldn’t help wondering what Saltanat would make of my latest capitulation, for that was how she would see it.

  ‘Let’s head back into town,’ Tynaliev said. ‘Time you loosened up, moved on from mourning your wife. You should go and eat, even have a few drinks. I’ll introduce you to some very entertaining girls, if you like. Even you can’t live like a monk for ever.’

  Eat, drink and fuck, I thought, for tomorrow I turn into fertiliser. It seemed a pathetic ending to a life where I’d at least tried to make a difference, to help the dead find some sort of peace in their graves, brought those responsible to justice, however flawed.

  ‘I’ll skip the party,’ I said, gestured towards the door. ‘But I would prefer not to ride back in the shit wagon with those three clowns.’

  I could sense the ment by the door stiffen with anger, but there was nothing he could do about my insult, not in front of the minister. Tynaliev nodded and gestured towards the door.

  ‘Sir’s limousine awaits,’ he said, his face deadpan. I wondered if he had a sense of humour after all. Maybe it only crawled from under a rock once every ten years.

  At the door, the ment held up his hand, wanting us to wait while he checked everything was clear outside. After a few seconds, he was back, a puzzled look on his face.

  ‘Strange. No sign of the officers. At least one of them should have been outside the door at all times.’

  Almost before the words had left his mouth, he yawned. One of those cavernous gaping affairs that suggest you haven’t slept for a week, or you’re monumentally bored. Or at least, for a second or so, it looked like a yawn. Then a noise like an unexpected cough was followed by a thick crimson rope that belched out of his throat and across the doorframe.

  I was first to react to the ment having been shot: I pushed Tynaliev hard against the wall, out of sight of the windows. The wounded policeman lay sprawled at my feet, his jaw hanging by his ear, torn away by the impact of the bullet. His left heel drummed a relentless tattoo against the floor, his chest snatching at the air in a vain effort to breathe, as the blood pumped out of his neck and the light faded in his eyes.

  ‘An ambush?’ Tynaliev said, more to himself than to me.

  ‘Well, it’s not a group of walkers on a nature tour, looking for rare tulips,’ I snarled, trying to focus beyond the shock and horror of the man dying at my feet. ‘Who knew you were going to be here, without your usual protection squad?’

  Tynaliev shook his head, shock already replaced by a look of calculation.

  ‘No one that counts,’ he said. ‘No one who could organise something like this.’

  ‘Only one answer then,’ I said, and pointed down at the body. ‘He knew, sold you out, arranged for a team to be waiting here.’

  Tynaliev considered that for a moment, reluctantly nodded. He aimed a kick at the man’s stomach, careful not to get blood on his shoes, then gathered up phlegm and spat on the broken face. The thud of shoe leather against dead meat made me want to retch, but I knew there was no time for indulgences. I took the man’s Makarov from its holster, trying not to get his blood on my fingers, only partly succeeding.

 
; ‘We’ve only got a few seconds, Minister,’ I said, pulling him away from the body. ‘Is there another way out of here?’

  ‘How the fuck would I know?’ Tynaliev said, anger raising his voice. ‘My team work out such things. I have more important things to do.’

  It might have been unimportant to you once, I thought, but it could be a lifesaver now, and not just his life but mine as well.

  I pointed at the gun on his hip, a Makarov like the one in my hand.

  ‘You can use that?’ I asked.

  I saw a fleeting glimpse of uncertainty on Tynaliev’s face, as he wondered if I was part of a team sent to kill him. Then his jaw set in the suppressed rage that had terrified so many people in the Sverdlovsky basement. If he was about to die, he was determined he wouldn’t be the only one.

  ‘It’s been a while,’ Tynaliev said, ‘but you don’t forget how to point and pull a trigger.’

  ‘Maybe it’s not you they’re trying to kill,’ I suggested. ‘After all, I was the one they think shot the pakhan, not you. Maybe I’m the target.’

  ‘Does it matter?’ Tynaliev shrugged. ‘You ever hear of the Circle of Brothers leaving any witnesses alive?’

  I nodded; our home-grown mobsters make the Italian Mafia look like teenagers celebrating the end of the school year. We had no way of knowing how many men we were up against, or where they were. Perhaps on the slopes on either side of the hotel, hidden in the treeline, or maybe across the road, crouching beneath the vehicles we came in. There was only one way to find out.

  ‘You’re parked nearby?’ I asked. ‘And you’ve got the keys?’

  Tynaliev shook his head, pointed down at the body. I fumbled through the dead man’s pockets. Keys in hand, I stood up, edged towards the open door. I could already feel cross-hairs on my forehead.

  ‘When I say “Run”, move as fast as you can. And keep behind me.’

  ‘You want to shield me?’ Tynaliev asked. ‘Why? You’re not my bodyguard. You’re not even police any more.’