The bar hadn’t become any more stylish and fashionable since I’d last been there, and the stink of sweat, cigarettes and stale beer was as overpowering as ever. An ear-bursting dance track ensured that everybody had to shout and that no one could hear. But most of the conversations were about prices and times, and they were quickly settled. I kept an eye out for Jamila and Lev, just in case they were running the same scam on another hapless guy in search of a night of love, but they weren’t around.
As far as I could tell, the crowd was much the same as before, a mix of African, Chinese and Russian women, all smoking, all looking bored. Most of the Russian women were really Ukrainian or from the republics of the former USSR, but Natasha had told me they tried to drive up the price by claiming to be from Moscow. They all seemed to take great pride in elaborate tattoos and push-up bras under T-shirts too tight to hide their bellies, plus jeans with ripped legs that revealed pallid bulging flesh.
I couldn’t help contrasting the fast-food flab and beer bellies with Saltanat’s smooth, toned body, remembered her breath hot on my neck, her nails drawing a metro map on my back. I’d seen too many working girls when I was assigned to Vice in Bishkek to be under any illusions, but I guessed most of these girls were hooking to support parents, children, or simply to try to escape from poverty back home. All relatively admirable, I suppose, if the only thing you’ve got to sell is half an hour in the back seat of a car or a fleapit hotel, and the electricity bill is overdue.
I managed to order an orange juice, then I heard a familiar voice.
“I want a Bullfrog. You buy me one?”
Lin, the prostitute I’d met when Kulayev first brought me to the bar. Still with a smear of lipstick, this time dark brown, on her front teeth.
I shook my head. With Kulayev dead, I was running out of money and with no way to get anymore. Besides, I didn’t think Lin would have any information about where Natasha was being held.
“You’re still looking for a Kyrgyz woman? Why, when I’ve got the tightest pussy on the planet?”
I sighed; I could have lived without the constant sales pitch.
“Lin, I think you’re very attractive, very sexy, but right now I may be the only guy in the bar who doesn’t want to take you home.”
Lin pouted, and the effect was to make her look suddenly older, worn, shop-soiled. I know that it’s a hard life working the bars, although not as hard as being out on the streets, walking up and down Ibraimova, posing under the rare streetlights, waiting for a car’s headlights to flash on and off.
In a sudden burst of sympathy, I relented and ordered a Bullfrog from one of the waitresses. Lin stood closer to me, smiling that dead-eyed smile, running her tongue over her lips in a grotesque parody of desire. I could smell the cheap tobacco on her breath, the garlic and ginger and nam pla of her most recent meal. Her breasts nudged my arm like small children trying to attract my attention.
“So you do like me?” she said, pitching her voice lower.
“I’m sure you’re a very nice person,” I said, my impulse toward generosity rapidly wearing thin.
“Where is your friend? He was very hot for me.”
Not as hot as he finally got, thanks to me, I thought, but simply shrugged.
“No idea,” I said, and since I didn’t know where the city morgue was, I was even telling the truth.
We stood without speaking for a few moments, and I watched Lin make short work of her cocktail. Finally she put her mouth to my ear, said something that was drowned out by the music. She repeated what she said, but still I couldn’t hear. Finally, with a look of annoyance on her face, she took my arm and half-dragged me out of the bar, through the lobby and into the night, the heat still sticky and oppressive even at that late hour.
“That Kyrgyz lady you were looking for, you ever find her?”
I nodded.
“And lost her again, I’m maybe thinking?”
I shrugged, noncommittal.
“I can maybe help you find her again,” Lin said, her voice suddenly serious, “for the right price.”
She rubbed her thumb and fingers together in the universal symbol for money. I wondered whether this was yet another scam, if Jamila and Lev weren’t the only ones out to lie and rob. But I didn’t know what I had to lose by accepting her help. After all, I was on the back foot, waiting for the Chechen to call, or not. So I gave Lin a hesitant nod, gave her my number, told her not to expect cash without results. She nodded, beckoned me back into the bar. I shook my head, gestured to one of the waiting cabs, gave the driver the address of my hotel.
I’d had my fill of excitement for one day.
Chapter 34
I’d almost reached my hotel when some instinct told me to go back to the building site. Maybe I realized that I’d left the dead man’s Glock there, and it would make an excellent backup to the Makarov. Maybe there would be some clue to the Chechen’s identity, or a hint of where he might be staying. And perhaps I felt bad about leaving a body there for the laborers to find in the morning, swollen and decaying in the heat. Not for the first time, I wondered if I was getting too old for the job.
I paid the taxi off when we got there, waited until he’d driven off, then pushed my way through the hoardings once more. The pool of blood was still there, black in the moonlight, crusting over and staining the sand. But there was no trace of the body.
I crouched down, touched the blood with my forefinger. Sticky but still liquid. Standing up, I heard my knees creak, reminding me that I was no longer a young, enthusiastic recruit to the police force. Sometimes I wondered if I ever had been, or if that was a false memory.
Someone must have moved the body, and if it had been found, the site would have been surrounded by police cars, arc lights, scene-of-crime forensic officers. The obvious conclusion was that the Chechen had returned and collected his fallen comrade. If so, why hadn’t he scattered the sand, covered up the blood?
It was then that I heard a noise coming from the entrance to the building. A harsh, sour wheezing, thick, wet coughing and sobbing. The sound of someone in terminal pain. I remembered how, in the days before Chinara’s death, she had made just such a noise, turning my heart sick with anguish at my inability to help. And when I finally plucked up the courage to help her on her journey, it was only to spare her the last few moments of agony.
It was then that I noticed furrows in the sand, as if something had been dragged back into the building. Two furrows, made by heels, leading into the darkness.
I followed them, reluctant but needing to know their significance. The furrows ended at the concrete steps leading into the lobby. It was so dark inside that I paused to let my eyes adjust to the moonlight shining through the glass doors piled against the wall, ready to be installed. I started up the stairs once more, wondering if that was where the body had been dumped.
Then, as I looked up, a figure appeared at the top of the stairs, mouth gaping in a voiceless scream. As it toppled toward me, I saw the blood splash against the walls, jetting in spasms from a half-severed neck. Even as I stepped back, the figure grabbed at me, threw its arms around my neck in a hideous parody of friendship, blood drenching my shirt in seconds.
And as we fell backward, a patch of moonlight showed me the face pressed close to mine.
It was my own but greatly changed.
Dreams have great importance to Kyrgyz people, even city-bred ones like me. For the people in the villages, it seems only proper to view the vastness of the mountains as affecting everyday thoughts and actions. Earthquakes become warnings, avalanches act as punishments. These are the old ways, the old gods, whose sacred trees and rocks are remembered from generation to generation, although rarely talked about. The manaschi, the men who recite our poetry, do so in a trance, often claiming to be inspired by dreams. Perhaps when you live in a small country where both summer and winter can be equally brutal in different ways, the gap between the everyday world and the realm of the spirits is narrower than most.
Or perhaps it was foretelling my death.
Still shaken by the intensity of the dream, I got myself a glass of water from the tap, sipping at it while I wondered what to do next. My watch said 3 a.m., the low point of the dark hours, the time when the old and the sick finally give way and join the ranks of the dead. Too late to call Saltanat, too early to eat breakfast. There seemed nothing else to do but go back to bed and try to sleep.
Four hours later I was still awake, feeling restless. After getting dressed, I made my way downstairs and out into the early-morning daylight. I could see men and women practicing yoga in the small park next to the hotel. I wondered if this was how people coped with living in a city where the car rules, where there’s nowhere to walk and no mountains at which to gaze.
I walked to where I was out of earshot of the bellboys and valets, who were busy even at this hour, and called Saltanat.
“Where shall we meet?”
“Coffee? The same place?”
“In an hour.”
Then she hung up. No farewell. No one could ever accuse Saltanat of wasting time on pleasantries, but somehow that made the memory of our lovemaking the previous night more vivid, deeper. Perhaps it was nothing more than scratching an itch for her, but for me it felt like a reconnection to life after a collision with death.
I walked to the main road, flagged down a passing cab and gave him the address of the Dôme. I spent the journey wondering when—if—the Chechen would call. Ten million dollars was surely too much to pass up, even if there wasn’t also blood to avenge. The stain on his honor would be too great to contemplate if he didn’t take my life in exchange for those of his countrymen. There are men in my own country who also think that way.
At the Dôme my usual waitress greeted me with a smile and led me to the furthest booth. I gave her my order, black coffee, and sat back to wait for Saltanat. The caffeine would kick-start my brain and we could start to plan.
The whirlwind that blew in through the door could only have been Saltanat. In the space of a few seconds, she’d sat down across the table from me, ordered a large espresso, pulled out her cigarettes, only to put them away when she remembered the NO SMOKING sign. Dressed as always in black, she looked fearsome, focused, beautiful.
“No affectionate peck on the cheek?”
She looked at me as if I was hallucinating. I smiled to show that I hadn’t taken offense and sipped my coffee. That didn’t stop me remembering the sweetness of her body.
“You’ve heard nothing from the Chechen?”
I shook my head. “They’re not going to rush into anything, two men down, and I have an accomplice they haven’t identified yet.”
“Only a matter of time.”
“Time we can make work for us, I hope,” I said.
Saltanat drained her espresso in a single gulp, waved to the waitress to bring another.
“We’re in a city with some of the most advanced surveillance systems in the world,” I explained. “The authorities can monitor Internet traffic, phone calls, watch all the roads. They have the expertise, the manpower, the drive to make this one of the safest cities anywhere.”
“Doesn’t that apply to us as well?” Saltanat asked.
“So far we’ve done nothing wrong, at least nothing that the police know about. But these guys are a team, and that’s suspicious in itself. You’re just a tourist getting ready to work on your tan and do a little shopping therapy; I’m here to try to drum up business for Kyrgyz products. I even have a diplomatic passport to prove it, if anyone asks.”
I didn’t mention that Tynaliev would revoke my status in thirty seconds if I didn’t find his money or his girl.
Saltanat took another hit of caffeine with no indication that it was having any effect. My nerves would have been snapping and lashing out of my body like enraged serpents.
“So we just sit and wait and hope they call?”
“No,” I said. “We keep asking around.”
“That sounds like an excuse to hang out in a hooker bar,” Saltanat said.
“I don’t even drink, remember?” I said, doing my best to look a little hurt. “And as for sex, how quickly you forget.”
“There wasn’t much to remember in the first place,” Saltanat said, but gave me a smile that suggested she was only teasing me, hoping to puncture my masculine ego, I imagined. I didn’t bother to tell her there wasn’t much of that left.
Suddenly I felt the desire to make, if not a confession, at least a declaration. Perhaps I was goaded by the dream or the need to establish some kind of emotion between the two of us. I drank more of my coffee, but I wasn’t sure if it helped.
“When you left Bishkek with Otabek,” I began, my voice scratching my throat, “I know you thought I’d given in, that Graves had won, that the realities of wealth and power had managed to buy me.”
Saltanat held up her hand to silence me.
“Akyl, all that upset me was that you seemed to have betrayed all the values that made me like you in the first place,” she said. “Honesty, integrity, a vision of the truth and the determination to uphold it. Shit like that.”
She waved for another espresso, and I wondered if her heart was going to burst. If mine was, come to that.
“Otabek is . . . healing,” Saltanat said. “You’re here, I’m here, doing what we have to do. I’m not saying there’s a common purpose. But there is trust, at least for now. And let’s leave it at that.”
I wanted to say more, maybe even use the terrifying word that begins with L.
But then I was saved by the bell.
Or to be precise, the ringing of my mobile.
Chapter 35
“It seems we underestimated you, Inspector.”
“It’s pretty common,” I replied.
“I think we should consider last night a trial run, a failure that allows us to work out a more appropriate course of action.”
“Natasha is still alive?”
“Of course; she’s worth considerably more to us that way. And to you.”
“It’s good of you to think of my financial welfare,” I said, “but I still don’t know your name, and it’s hard to do business that way.”
The Chechen laughed, the same unamused way he had used before.
“You may call me Boris, if that makes you feel any more comfortable. And I may call you Akyl?”
“I think Inspector will do nicely, for the moment.”
The Chechen repeated his strange gurgling laugh. “Do you have a suggestion about how we might proceed . . . Inspector?”
“I do,” I improvised, “but I need a few hours to find out if it’s feasible. Let me call you this afternoon . . . Boris.”
“Da.”
And then he broke the connection.
Maktoum Bridge was the first structure to be built across Dubai Creek, joining the two districts of Bur Dubai and Deira. Before that, the only way to cross was by abra, the small, shabby and uncomfortable boats that still ferry people across the water, the drone of their engines a constant reminder of slower, simpler times. As well as being a six-lane highway, the bridge has a footpath that pedestrians can use. And it was there that I planned to meet Boris.
Saltanat was skeptical when I told her that I would set off from the Bur Dubai end, meet Boris and Natasha in the middle and broker the deal.
“Like swapping spies in Berlin during the Cold War?” she scoffed. “Walking through Checkpoint Charlie at dawn with the autumn mist creeping around your legs? I think you’ve been watching too many movies.”
“Maybe,” I replied, “but there’s a twist.”
I’d made the call, persuaded Bor
is that a highly visible yet secure location was the best way to get a result that would please both of us. I’d pointed out that in the heat of a Dubai summer it was extremely unlikely that anyone else was going to be walking across the bridge. It wasn’t the greatest plan anyone had ever had, but we were all operating under stress. I didn’t know what information the police had, but I was sure they had digital CCTV recordings of me during the mall shoot-out. The bridge was also bound to be monitored but that was a risk for both sides.
At six o’clock that evening I was standing on the Bur Dubai side of the creek, near the heavily guarded TV station. The events of the Arab Spring had shown governments the importance of keeping tight control of their media. Once dissidents in any country can broadcast their version of events—and prevent the government from showing theirs—then the existing regime is well on its way into the history books. I’d seen it happen in Kyrgyzstan, knew it could happen anywhere.
The concrete was hot beneath my shoes, proof of the brutality of a Gulf summer, and I had to squint to defeat the worst of the sunlight, even as the dusk crept up on me. I knew the risk I was taking, of a double-cross or a bullet, but I had to draw the Chechen out into the open. The only point in my favor was that I didn’t think he knew that it was Saltanat who was working with me.
Shortly I was above the water of the creek, and even with the perpetual whine of the traffic passing just a meter away, there was a curious kind of peace. It felt as if, among the skyscrapers and luxury cars, the endless roads and the expensive shopping, the water was one of the elements that hadn’t been tamed, just as it was a permanent battle for Dubai to keep the desert sand at bay.
The gun was heavy in my pocket, and the metal bumped against my hip with every step. I knew I couldn’t carry it in my hand—that would have brought immediate and unwelcome official attention—but the same would apply to Boris. Another reason why I’d suggested the bridge as our rendezvous.
The creek looked murky, uninviting, and I couldn’t help contrasting it to the sparkling cold water of Lake Issyk-Kul. Then it was time to forget my past, the joys, the pain, love and sorrow, and focus on the now, the minute, to make sure that minute wasn’t my last.
A Summer Revenge Page 14