He led the way for about five minutes, weaving down alleyways and across streets, until he seemed satisfied we weren’t being followed. Suddenly he ducked into the side entrance of a hotel. I followed and turned a corner to see him walking into a bar. The air conditioning was just as fierce as everywhere else, and my shirt immediately turned cold and wet. I wandered into the bar, trying to make it look like I was one of the guests.
Kulayev was ordering a beer. He raised an eyebrow.
I shook my head. “Water.”
“You don’t drink?”
“Not today.”
Kulayev gave the shrug I was beginning to expect and dislike. We took our drinks and went over to an empty table on the far side of the room. I looked around as we sat down. International hotel vapidity, the sort of decor that offends no one and appeals to no one either. Fake carved English pub signs, 1920s posters for French cigarettes and Riviera holidays. Thirty seconds after leaving this place you wouldn’t remember a thing about it.
The place was virtually empty, apart from a table of men, each with a beer in front of him. All sitting engrossed in their smartphones, they looked almost cloned, a collection of photocopies.
Kulayev took a long swallow of his beer, and decided to lecture me about Dubai.
“If you’re a foreigner, Dubai is about money. Nobody cares where it comes from, how it’s spent, as long as it’s here and stays in someone’s pocket.”
Kulayev smiled, then looked serious. Lowering his voice, he turned to make sure no one was listening. The furtive way in which he did this meant that, if nobody had been watching us, they would be now. If Kulayev had been any more obvious leading us here, he’d have dipped his shoes in luminous paint. I sometimes wonder if I’m the only one who ever learned any tradecraft.
“You said Atanasov is dead?”
“Butchered would be a better description, especially since someone scrawled ‘Pig’ on the wall in his own blood.”
“Shit, shit, shit,” Kulayev muttered. “What about the equipment I ordered for you?”
“In my pocket.”
He nodded, relieved; he wouldn’t want to be tied into the discovery of a gun at a murder scene. I gave him details of the mutilations, asked him what he thought.
“There’s a lot of people will raise a glass on hearing he’s dead,” Kulayev said, “but it makes things a lot more difficult for you.”
“Could it have been one of his girls?” I asked. “Calling him a pig seems pretty personal to me, and who would know him better?”
“But the stuff with the ears, eyes and tongue?”
“You’re a Chechen,” I said. “You know what women can do.”
He nodded, lit a cigarette. “I saw stuff in the war,” he said, and his face grew taut with memory. “You wouldn’t think it was possible for a woman to walk into a shopping mall and detonate a bomb that killed everyone within twenty meters. The maternal instinct? Blood instinct, more like.” He stubbed out the cigarette. “Mind you, the Russian Spetsnaz were just as happy to shoot women prisoners as men. Only after raping them, naturally.” He rubbed at his eyes, as if the smoke from his cigarette had irritated them.
“Someone you knew?” I asked.
“My sister,” he said, took another mouthful of beer. We sat in silence for a couple of moments. Sometimes you learn things about people that may not make you like them but do help you understand them.
“History,” Kulayev said, “and you can’t change that.”
But you can rewrite it, I thought, remembering the lies and deceptions I’d gone along with on Tynaliev’s behalf in the past. The only things life guarantees are death and taxes. I don’t earn enough to pay tax, but death and I are acquainted all too well.
“We need to work out a change of plan for you,” Kulayev said, looked at his watch, an expensive one, maybe a Rolex. I wondered where the money came from.
“It’s one o’clock now,” he said, “so a lot of the bars will be winding down about now. They close at two thirty here. But I know somewhere we could try. By two o’clock the girls are wondering if they’re going to snare a customer, and the prices drop faster than a closing-down sale in Osh bazaar. Which also means they’re more likely to talk.”
I paid for his beer and my water, handing over note after note until the waitress nodded. She didn’t return with any change. In Bishkek I could have bought us both a meal and several drinks for the same money. Tynaliev’s three thousand dollars wasn’t going to go very far.
We walked back outside into the heat, the air hanging wet and heavy, shimmering and dancing in the streetlights. Everywhere was as brightly lit as a big evening match in the Spartak Stadium back home. Kulayev waved at a taxi slowly driving past. We got in and the driver switched on the meter. Twelve dirhams, about two hundred and thirty som. I could have traveled halfway across Bishkek for less than that.
Kulayev saw the look on my face and laughed.
“Don’t worry. If you run out of money, we’ll find more. I’ll even call Tynaliev and tell him to send a couple of thousand dollars.”
You’ll be lucky, I thought. And you’re not the one who’s going to have to explain where the money went.
I pictured Tynaliev receiving the request: it didn’t reassure me. We drove past Burjuman and back in the direction of my hotel.
“You’re married?” Kulayev asked.
“Not anymore,” I said, unwilling to talk about Chinara with a stranger.
“Girlfriend?”
“Sort of,” I said, thinking of Saltanat, wondering if I’d ever see her again.
“You’re the faithful type?” Kulayev smiled. “Shame. There are some real beauties where we’re going.”
Chapter 7
The taxi pulled up outside a low-rise building, nondescript-looking apart from the purple neon sign above the entrance that said VISTA HOTEL. A few Indian or Pakistani men shuffled around in the car park at the side of the building, smoking and joking with their friends in a low-key way. A line of taxis was parked ahead of us, obviously waiting for the bar to close, the customers to select the evening’s companion and head home.
I got out as Kulayev paid the driver, looked around. There was the same electric tension in the air as on Ibrahimova Street in the Soviet days, when it was called Pravda, and the working girls sat in cars with their mama-sans, their bosses, waiting for custom. Men desperate for sex, women desperate for money, hoping that the client they ended up with wouldn’t cheat them, wasn’t violent, wasn’t crazy and would come quickly.
We walked into the hotel lobby and headed toward the stairs. A burly black security guard with biceps the size of watermelons saw Kulayev, waved us through. The music went from merely very loud to ear-splitting as we went up two flights of stairs and through a wooden door. The room was very dark, and at first I could only see the lights of the illuminated beer pumps on the bar in the far corner. Then, as my eyes adjusted to the light, I started to make out shapes which gradually resolved themselves into men and women.
“Water?” Kulayev shouted, trying to be heard over the strangled disco beat. I nodded, and he pushed his way through the crowd toward the bar. I took the opportunity of his absence to take stock.
The room stank of cheap tobacco and cheaper perfume, lust and failed ambitions, despite the very best efforts of the extractor fans rattling overhead. The noise was deafening, a song I didn’t recognize played past the level of distortion. But clearly the patrons knew it, judging by their energetic moves on the dance floor. Everyone hopped from foot to foot, as if the floor was electrified. The walls were wood-paneled and featured shelves like those outside mosques. But instead of shoes, these were filled with handbags. The male customers all seemed to be in their forties or fifties, with the usual beer bellies and bald heads, most of them clutching glasses of beer. Drooping jowls, piggy eyes, jeans twenty years too tight and too young for them, last season’s trainers or shoes with heels that gave them an extra inch of height.
And dancing arou
nd them, smiling, flirting, holding cigarettes up to be lit, desperate for eye contact, a smile, anything that held the promise of five hundred dirhams to send home to feed their children, the women. Almost exclusively Asian, mainly Chinese or Vietnamese, with the occasional African or Slavic face standing out in the crowd, there must have been twice as many women as men crammed into the room. All dressed to show off their best assets, all teeth and cleavage, mascara heavy as black paint, lipsticked and lipglossed, miniskirted and booted.
Kulayev appeared, clutching a Corona and a bottle of water which he handed to me. I unscrewed the cap and drank. It was lukewarm and tasted of tin.
“What do you think?” Kulayev shouted.
“Great,” I lied and gave a smile that must have looked as false as those all around me. I’d been a police officer for a long time. I’d worked Vice for a couple of years, hitting the brothels and the freelancers, but I’d never seen so many working girls in such a small room. It didn’t make the job of finding Natasha Sulonbekova look any easier.
A slightly overweight woman in a low-cut black wraparound dress came over and kissed Kulayev on the cheek very enthusiastically, wrapping her arms around his waist and nuzzling his neck. Up close, I could see that she was in her mid-thirties, with acne scars painted over with thick makeup. One of her front teeth was slightly crooked, smeared with traces of lipstick. Her breasts looked as improbably large as those of the woman I was looking for; maybe they shared the same implant surgeon.
A nearby table came free as a very drunk shaven-headed Lebanese-looking man lurched toward the door, swearing in Arabic, two tiny Chinese girls in tow. We sat down, and I sipped my water as Kulayev patted the woman’s thigh.
“Akyl, this is my very dear friend Lin, from Ho Chi Minh City.”
I smiled, nodded, slightly taken aback when Lin offered me a formal handshake. I took her hand in mine, noticing the roughness of her skin, the way her lipstick made a narrow mouth look generous, the coal-black eyes framed with mascara that gave nothing away. Her perfume was very strong, as if the top had come off the bottle. She flicked her shoulder-length black hair away from her face, then placed her hand on my thigh.
“You have a cigarette?”
Her voice was low, her Vietnamese accent strong, but I could recognize the sensuality—real or fake—promised in her voice. I offered her one of mine, but she looked at the pack and shuddered. Obviously Classic was not a brand she favored.
“You buy me Marlboro Light?”
I nodded and waved to a waitress. When the cigarettes came, I gave the waitress twenty dirhams. Again, I didn’t expect any change, and I wasn’t disappointed. Lin pushed the pack toward me. The false talons at the ends of her fingers were reserved for better things than opening cigarettes. I stripped the cellophane, tapped the bottom of the pack. Too hard. Half of the contents spilled out onto the table, quickly soaking up puddles of beer.
Lin and Kulayev both laughed at my clumsiness, which was exactly what I’d wanted. I’d revealed myself to be an out-of-touch, out-of-town boy, what we call a myrki in Kyrgyzstan. I’ve often found that playing simple can be the smartest thing you do. It lowers people’s guard, elevates their opinion of themselves. And you learn more than by appearing smart.
I lit one of the surviving cigarettes for her. She held my hand to steady the flame, inhaled, jetted twin gusts of smoke.
“Akyl’s looking for a girl.”
I tapped Kulayev’s shin with the side of my shoe, warning him not to say too much. Lin looked at me, appraising clothes, haircut, the potential thickness of my wallet. I wasn’t sure if I passed muster or simply that the hour was getting late.
“Handsome man like this, he’s no need to look; women will find him,” she said, patted me on the cheek, returned her hand to my thigh. This time she gripped it tighter, so that I could feel her fingernails pressing into my skin.
“I’m from Kyrgyzstan, Lin, just in Dubai for a few days. I wondered if there were any Kyrgyz ladies I could spend some time with?”
I looked round for Kulayev, but he had got up and was already whispering in the ear of a girl wearing a blue dress and a bored expression, his arm around her back, fingers assessing the curve of her breast. As I watched, she transferred her gum from one side of her mouth to the other and carried on chewing. Who says romance is dead?
“You buy me a drink.”
It wasn’t a question, but delivered in a regal tone that told me how lucky I was to be sitting with her. So I simply nodded.
“Bullfrog.”
I had no idea what a Bullfrog was, but I ordered one. The tall cocktail that arrived was a radioactive blue, lethal-looking and obviously strong. I was surprised that it came with a straw, but when I looked around, all the women seemed to be drinking through straws, even those with glasses of beer. Maybe it was so they wouldn’t smudge their lipstick; maybe it was practice for later on.
“You have a wife, children back home?”
“No.”
The grip on my thigh moved up an inch.
“Girlfriend?”
Her hand was now perilously close, so I simply shook my head.
“You like me?”
I cleared my throat, gave a passable smile. She smiled back, and I saw that her lipstick had spread to both front teeth. It made her look as if she’d recently killed something. Perhaps she had.
“Of course.”
“Five hundred dirhams.”
I smiled again. It wasn’t the first time I’d heard this conversation, but never with claws that could castrate me so close to my balls.
“I’m staying with friends. It wouldn’t be right,” I explained, did my best to look heartbroken. Her hand released its grip as if she’d been shot. Her face hardened as if set in plaster.
She slurped the remnants of her Bullfrog, pushed the glass toward me. “Buy me one more Bullfrog.”
“Later,” I said, trying to be reasonable with Tynaliev’s money. “First, Kyrgyz ladies?”
Her lips narrowed even further, if that were possible. “Bullfrog.”
I sighed, caught the eye of the waitress, pointed at Lin’s empty glass. The waitress arrived with the drink, left with a hundred-dirham note.
Lin reached for the glass, but I was quicker. Holding it out of her reach, I asked again. “Kyrgyz ladies?”
Lin scowled and pointed to an alcove between two pillars. “They sit there. But they all left, one hour past. You come tomorrow; they’ll be here.”
Then she snatched at her drink, gave me a scornful glare, headed off to seduce someone else. I sighed. It looked as if tomorrow would be another fun evening in the Vista Hotel.
Chapter 8
After I’d managed to get a drunk Kulayev and his sober new girlfriend into a taxi, I decided to walk back to my hotel. It was still ferociously hot, as if a celestial oven door had been left open, but a breeze coming off the creek made it slightly more bearable. And I do most of my best thinking when I’m walking. But thinking doesn’t mean I get distracted.
I’d noticed the tail almost as soon as I left the bar, sometimes out of the corner of my eye, sometimes reflected in shop windows as I passed. I’d been followed before, and by experts. This guy was strictly amateur hour.
I deliberately hadn’t told Kulayev where I was staying, so I wondered if he’d set someone up to follow me. But I imagined he would have enough contacts all over the city to trace me to the Denver easily enough. And if I was being followed, that meant I’d stirred something up. All I had to do now was stand back and find out what that was.
I walked up toward the docks, then crossed the road to the taxi line in front of the Ascot Hotel. I climbed into the first taxi, told him to head toward Burjuman. I saw my shadow waving at the next taxi, trying to catch his attention, not succeeding. Tradecraft again.
At the second set of traffic lights I handed the driver a twenty-dirham note, got out, crossed the road as the lights changed, and headed down the first alleyway I saw. I took a left, then a right,
until I emerged by the creek, where I could get my bearings.
The air was fresher here, away from the stink of petrol fumes. I sat down, lit a cigarette, stared out across the water, thought about the last couple of hours. If I was prepared to admit it to myself, my thoughts kept returning to Lin’s hand on my thigh, her nails raking my skin, the promise of a warm body underneath mine in exchange for just a few pieces of paper. It wasn’t the thought of sex so much as the idea of someone being close. For years it had been Chinara, until the cancer snatched her away from me. And then it had been Saltanat, who remained a mystery to me, even when we were lovers.
I didn’t know where Saltanat was, if she wanted to see me, if she was even alive. I didn’t enjoy being on my own, but I couldn’t think of a way to solve the problem. I thought about the girls I’d seen in the bar; I don’t believe there’s any man who’s never considered sex without responsibility, sex you can just walk away from, leaving a handful of notes on the bedside table. Maybe it’s not safe sex, but I don’t believe there’s ever been such a thing.
My old boss, the chief, now resting in an unmarked grave somewhere thanks to Tynaliev and his men, always said, “You don’t pay a hooker to fuck you, you pay her to fuck off afterward.” I don’t know about that. But when the woman you love is taken from you, it leaves a scar nothing can heal.
I threw the butt into the water. The streets were empty now, just an occasional taxi with its VACANT sign on cruising for customers. This wasn’t an area where the rich all-night-party people lived; the residents were all asleep, preparing to put in twelve hours at some mundane, low-paid job in the textile souk or in an electronics shop. The little restaurants that served Punjabi thali meals on metal trays had all closed, the souvenir stores had pulled heavy metal shutters down over their windows as if they sold diamonds and gold instead of plastic models of the Burj Khalifa.
I wondered if Saltanat ever thought of me, if I’d just been a diversion for her, a way of passing the time. I thought about trying her mobile, decided a 4 a.m. call would not be appreciated. So I was brooding on the desert called my love life when I let my attention wander.
A Summer Revenge Page 3