An Autumn Hunting

by Tom Callaghan

  I shrugged. Old habits die hard, I guess, and this was one where I might also die quickly.

  ‘Don’t argue,’ I said, and took a couple of deep breaths.

  We burst out of the doorway like Olympic sprinters, albeit elderly, slow and overweight ones. I was waiting for the bullets to punch holes into me, but we reached the Mercedes parked nearby without a shot being fired.

  The car sat heavily on its tyres, thanks to the armour-plating and bulletproof glass Tynaliev would have insisted upon. Once we were inside, we would be safe from anything less than a bazooka. I pressed the button on the key fob, heard the locks retract. A second button started the engine. We were crouching on the passenger side, but I figured a crawl across the leather seats would beat standing up and running around.

  The world takes on a peculiar clarity at such moments, a sense that the regular rules of time and motion have been displaced, replaced by something altogether more vivid and disturbing. Birds are suspended in mid-air, leaves hang as they fall to the ground, the branches of the trees are caught in a perpetual wind that never varies. You could almost see the bullets on their way to take your life, have time to sidestep them and watch them smash harmlessly into the ground.

  All nonsense, of course, but imminent and painful death has a way of clearing out irrelevant thoughts. I waited but only silence came from the treeline. Whoever had fired the sniper shot was probably long gone, with no possibility of pursuit. I heard a car further down the track, looked to see a police car careering towards us, bouncing from side to side as it smashed over the potholes in the road. Presumably, Tynaliev or someone had triggered an alarm system that brought a high-speed rescue.

  It was time.

  ‘Stand up,’ I said to Tynaliev, gesturing with the gun. As he started to rise, I pulled at his collar, dragged him off-balance, and with a sidestep and a twist, I was behind him, one arm around his throat, my gun at the side of his head.

  ‘What the fuck?’ he snarled, trying to get out of my grasp, but I simply tightened my grip.

  ‘Sorry, Minister,’ I said. ‘We’ve been through so much together. But, well . . . orders are orders, as I’m sure you’re the first to appreciate. After all, you’re the one who gave them to me.’

  I fired a shot into the air at random, felt the mechanism jam, snatched Tynaliev’s gun from his hand to make sure I wasn’t unarmed.

  I let go of him, pushed him forward so he stumbled, regained his balance. I dived across the passenger seat, pulled myself forward by the steering wheel, found the pedals with my feet. I started to move out, but not before following the orders I’d been given.

  And shooting the Minister for State Security twice in the back.

  Chapter 8

  I didn’t wait to watch Tynaliev dying, or for the police to start shooting. Instead, I took the road back to the city as if I were escaping a tornado or an earthquake. If a babushka had been crossing the road as I sped through the nearby villages, there would have been one more tombstone in the local cemetery the next day. But I reached the outskirts of Bishkek and slowed down without adding to the day’s casualties.

  My heart pounded, tearing itself out by its roots in my chest, panic tight around my throat, as if I were about to be garrotted. I couldn’t go back to my apartment: it would already be ringed with snipers, and a Spetsnaz team waiting to take me down with maximum commitment. Which would mean doubling my body weight with all the bullets they’d pump into me. I was fucked, not for the first time, but never this comprehensively before.

  The only thing to do, apart from going home to commit suicide by sniper, was to stick to my original plan and head for the Kulturny. I dumped the car with the doors unlocked and the keys in the ignition. It was going to be somebody’s lucky day, at least until they were stopped and discovered they were driving a stolen car involved in a murder. Their day would go downhill very fast after that.

  I didn’t expect a warm welcome, and I wasn’t disappointed. Once I’d got through the steel door and the inept frisking by the duty thug, I walked down the stairs through the delicate aroma of piss, cheap beer and pelmini dumplings. Still thinking I was police, the thug hadn’t tried to take Tynaliev’s Makarov, a dead weight tucked into my belt at the back, pressing into my kidneys. It’s never been a good idea to go into the Kulturny looking as if you’re unarmed.

  The torn poster on the wall showing a dead-eyed, drug-ravaged teenage girl was still there, with the headline, BEFORE KROKODIL, I HAD A DAUGHTER. NOW, I HAVE A PROSTITUTE. Someone had added a mobile phone number, followed by ONLY $10 FULL SERVICE. Good to know the spirit of enterprise was alive and well, if not free. I tore off the phone number, screwed it up, threw it to join the rest of the rubbish on the floor. Sometimes, small things are all you can do to try to improve the world.

  I didn’t recognise any of the faces clustered at the bar; the informants I’d known in the past were either dead or behind quite another sort of bars. I could still pass for police, unless the word was already out I was now not just little people but a wanted prestupnik into the bargain.

  I walked to the bar, my feet sticking to the beer-sodden floor, waved the barman over. He was new since my last visit, which was probably just as well. But he could recognise what I was, even if not by name, and his attitude announced he didn’t like law in any form.

  ‘Privyet, kak dela?’ I asked, smiling as if looking for a new best friend.

  The barman said nothing, giving me his hardest stare, the one that said, ‘If you weren’t law, there’s a baseball bat under the counter just waiting to kiss you.’ I didn’t give a fuck about that, and he quickly knew it, because he set about wiping a dirty glass which he placed in front of me.

  ‘Nyet,’ I said, shaking my head to the unspoken question. He raised an eyebrow, shrugged, pushed the glass to one side.

  ‘I’m looking for someone.’

  ‘So join a dating agency,’ he muttered.

  ‘You want to join one?’ I asked. ‘How about smashedupface.kg or kickinballs.com? They work for you?’

  He tried for a snappy comeback, decided it wasn’t worth the grief.

  ‘A lot of people come in here,’ he said, turning the dirty glass in front of me upside down. ‘Maybe whoever you’re looking for doesn’t come here.’

  ‘The clientele too upmarket, you think?’ I asked, pointing at two elderly prostis in the corner, at a table of alkashi so far from reality they thought they were sipping champagne in the Hyatt Regency.

  ‘If they can pay, they can drink here,’ he said. ‘This is a free country, last time I looked.’

  You didn’t look very hard or very long, I thought, but then, who does? It pays not to rock the boat. I wondered what the probable penalty would be for killing a state minister. I imagined it would depend on whether he was in favour or not.

  ‘Like I said before, I’m looking for someone.’

  ‘And I can help how, exactly?’

  I didn’t like his tone. I didn’t like the baseball bat under the counter. So I used one hand to seize his shirt and pull him over the bar. He fumbled for the bat, and I shook a finger in his face, scarily close to his eyeball.

  ‘We seem to have got off to a bad start,’ I said, my voice quiet and calm, the way I used it to scare suspects into a confession. ‘I suggest we start again.’

  I looked around the bar; no one seemed to have noticed our little disagreement. But then, when you’re in the Kulturny, someone else’s business is definitely none of yours. Interfere and a world of pain lies in wait.

  ‘Whatever you say, officer.’

  The staff at the Kulturny learn to recognise the look of law very early on. I pushed him back, gave his cheek a condescending little pat.

  ‘That’s much better,’ I said, giving him the Sverdlovsky basement smile. ‘Now, my colleagues needn’t check everything’s legal and above board here. No bottles without tax labels, no smuggled cigarettes, no working girls, that sort of thing. Everything’s peaceful, everyone’s happy.’r />
  I checked out the alkashi quietly working their way through a bottle of the very cheapest stuff. Petrol is less lethal, and probably tastes better. I jerked my thumb in their direction, nodded at the barman.

  ‘Give them another. On my bill.’

  We both knew there would be no bill, but it’s always good to keep an audience sweet, or in this case, oblivious to the world around them.

  ‘I’m looking for Kanybek Aliyev,’ I said.

  The barman flinched, looked around in case someone was keeping an ear cocked at our conversation.

  ‘That’s not a very good name to drop around here,’ he said. ‘Some people like to keep themselves to themselves.’

  ‘And some people like to keep themselves in one piece,’ I said. ‘Preferably not sharing a cell with people who don’t appreciate a loose tongue.’

  I could smell fear coming off the barman, the way a ripe cheese or rotting meat starts to stink.

  ‘You’re afraid of him. I understand that,’ I said, ‘but he’s not here, I am. And you’d do well to be afraid of me too.’

  I pushed myself away from the bar, made for the door.

  ‘I’ll be back in a couple of hours. Make a quiet phone call, suggest a meet. It’s to everyone’s advantage. Especially yours.’

  And with that, I headed towards the stairs, wondering how to stay out of trouble for the next two hours.

  I walked up to the Russian Embassy on Manas Avenue, found a seat in Sierra, the expensive coffee shop next door. I figured the last place people could find me would be sipping cappuccino, nibbling at a slice of over-moist, overpriced cherry tart. Being so close to the embassy might even be a bonus; not that I could seek asylum, but the embassy guards might deter manic gunplay.

  The coffee shop was packed with smartly dressed customers all staring at their expensive smartphones or even more expensive laptops, a world away from my usual existence. Perhaps the corruption and vice and murder I dealt with on a daily basis took place on another planet in a distant galaxy, where ‘hit me again’ didn’t mean add another shot of espresso. But it wasn’t a world where I could ever belong. The dead have too much claim on my time, and they don’t carry laptops.

  The coffee did nothing to steady my nerves, and I relived the moment when Tynaliev’s bodyguard died at my feet, the stink of his death still fresh in my nostrils. You should never get used to it, even as a Murder Squad inspector; if you do, then it’s time to look for a new career. In an abattoir perhaps.

  Finally, I couldn’t bear the waiting any longer, flagged down one of the taxis waiting outside, and headed for Time Out, a restaurant on Togolok Moldo, two or three minutes’ walk from the Kulturny. He wasn’t pleased at the short ride, but then there’s never any pleasing Bishkek taxi drivers. A short fare and they grumble about leaving their favoured spot; a long journey and they complain about not getting a fare back. Every few months, a taxi driver is found dead at the wheel, shot or stabbed or strangled. I’m only surprised it’s not every week.

  Outside the restaurant, we went through the ritual haggle about the fare. As he drove away in a gust of bad-tempered blue-black exhaust smoke, I made the call.

  ‘Da?’

  I recognised the barman’s voice, unwelcoming as ever.

  ‘Tovarich,’ I said, keeping my voice neutral. He knew who was calling, because I heard the phone clatter onto the bar, listened to the buzz of gibberish and swearing they call conversation in the Kulturny. After a moment, a new voice came on the line.

  ‘You want to speak to someone?’

  ‘To meet someone,’ I said. ‘Not the same thing.’

  I’d expected the voice of a thug, foul-mouthed, barely articulate, hoarse from a hundred cigarettes and a daily bottle of vodka. Instead, I heard the calm, soothing tones of a late-night radio host or a therapist advising his patients to relax and consider their problems from a new perspective. The voice told me I was up against someone considerably more intelligent and dangerous than I’d hoped for.

  ‘A philosopher, I see. A mind capable of making distinctions. Not one of the usual Kulturny clientele. Most of them can’t distinguish between reality and delirium tremens.’ He paused. ‘Of course, that is reality for some of them.’

  ‘I want to meet Aliyev. Alone,’ I said. No humour in my voice.

  ‘So do a lot of people. A popular fellow, Mr Aliyev.’

  ‘I’ll be outside the Derevyashka bar in seven minutes. I’ll wait for three.’

  ‘I’d love to oblige, but without an introduction, I’m sure you understand the difficulties. Problems of security, timing. Impossible.’

  ‘Tell him Akyl Borubaev will be waiting for him,’ I said, adding a little menace to my voice.

  ‘The Murder Squad inspector?’ The mocking tone was gone.

  ‘Your seven minutes starts now, don’t waste it,’ I said, and broke the connection.

  It’s only a couple of minutes’ walk from Time Out, and one advantage of choosing Derevyashka as a meeting place is that it stands to one side of a small park with a few sparsely spread out trees and bushes, a single road running past the one entrance. A statue of the writer Maxim Gorky, wearing a moustache whose bushiness would have made Stalin jealous, looks down on the proceedings with an air of indifference. Perhaps he knows better than to get involved.

  I’ve always believed the notion that events fundamentally change who we are is too simplistic. Yes, we’re not the same person at forty as we were at fifteen, but to say that experience alone is responsible doesn’t accept that we might have ‘progress’ built into us. We might not want children when we’re teenagers, yet crave them in our thirties; change is our only constant.

  Shooting Tynaliev may not have been my smartest idea, but we reach our own conclusions about morality and codes of ethics without realising it, until circumstances call upon us to act on them. And it would be that morality and code of ethics that would determine how I dealt with the Circle of Brothers mafia, their stranglehold over organised crime, the Bishkek police, anyone else with an interest in seeing me dead.

  It would be impossible for Aliyev to arrange an ambush in such a short time, just as hard for his men to appear without my spotting them first. It may not have put the odds in my favour, but at least it wasn’t an attempt at suicide on my part.

  I lit a cigarette, swore yet again to quit, leant against a wall hoping to look like someone waiting for his blind date to show. I’d been there nine minutes, having smoked my way down to burnt fingers, and was ready to leave, call and make another assignation, when Aliyev appeared at the far end of the park. I’d read his file at the station, remembered his photograph, taken through a car window as he entered a smart restaurant, bodyguards beside, before and behind him. He’d taken a detour, away from the direct route from the Kulturny, and I gave him extra points for caution.

  He wasn’t a blind date exactly; his eyesight was fine. But he walked with a limp, his left leg doing a drag and a twist with each step, as if caught in a net. He used a thin black cane to support his weak side, and I wondered how he’d managed to gain the top seat in the Circle of Brothers. Brains, I decided, uncertain whether they were a good or a very bad thing as far as I was concerned.

  As he approached Derevyashka, he’d spotted me, made me as law. But I admired the way he walked past, not giving me a second glance. Just a middle-aged cripple out for a couple of beers, a bowl of pelmini soup, and a ‘whatever happened to’ chat with the regulars.

  I waited until he’d pushed the door open, then followed him inside.

  Chapter 9

  Derevyashka means ‘wood’, and when you see the place, you understand why. Imagine a mad Siberian’s attempt at building a log cabin, designed under the influence of some particularly potent vodka laced with magic mushrooms. Aliyev had taken one of the tables furthest from the door, facing the room, close enough to the exit into the beer garden to provide an escape route if it all turned tits up. I sat down opposite him, slid my gun onto my lap, gave a barely per
ceptible nod. Seeing him close up, he seemed fragile, insubstantial. Most of the Circle of Brothers crew I’d encountered over the years had been big guys, fists like boulders, bellies like barrels, hair shaved down to stubble, prison tattoos staining mottled flesh as a testament to their crimes. I’d obviously been dealing with the lower orders.

  I ordered coffee, Aliyev asked for green tea. For once, the service was immediate, and I didn’t think it was because of my presence. We sat in silence until the drinks arrived, which gave me the chance to inspect him more closely. Obviously Russian by family, which made his position at the top of the tree even more unusual. Once Kyrgyzstan got its independence, a lot of Russians decided there’d be better pickings back in Moscow or St Petersburg or Novosibirsk. And since crime, just as much as nature, abhors a vacuum, the local element quickly rose to the top, did their best to make sure they stayed there.

  Aliyev’s eyes were the washed-out blue you see in the sky above the mountains, on those clear sun-blasted autumn days that feel brittle and fragile, ready to snap at the slightest movement. The lobe of his left ear was missing, possibly a punishment cutting from his youth, but he wore his hair swept back, making no attempt to hide the missing flesh. Strong jaw, clean-shaven, no surplus fat on his face. A mouth as thin and brutal as a carp, elderly and cunning.

  His hands were heavily veined, the nails trimmed back, with long thin fingers that looked as if they would be equally at home chalking algebra equations on a blackboard or tightening around a rival’s throat. He could have been any age between forty and sixty, and it was clear he hadn’t stayed alive this long by being stupid. I didn’t know what he could tell about me; not even my mirror tells the whole truth of who I am. But he didn’t blink, look away, or drop his eyes. He had the gaze of a surgeon or a psychopath, impossible to read.

  My coffee was watery, bitter, and Aliyev’s tea didn’t look any more appetising. I didn’t add sugar, didn’t want him to think I couldn’t take whatever was served to me.