“Inspector Akyl Borubaev, Bishkek Murder Squad.” Saltanat made the introductions.
“Privyat,” I said, held out my hand. He took it, nodded, his face thawing slightly.
“And you are?” I asked.
“Rustam,” he answered, his accent Uzbek. He gestured at the fridges behind the bar, stocked with bottles of pivo and vodka. “Help yourself. I’ll organize food,” and with that, he walked toward the hotel’s side entrance.
I turned away from Saltanat, looked down at my hands. They didn’t shake or tremble; a bit late in the game, perhaps I was getting used to killing.
“Who do you think that guy was?” Saltanat asked. Her hands were as rock-steady as mine.
“Two thoughts,” I said. “Either just some gopnik layabout in a tracksuit getting rid of the day’s pivo when we walked in. Or . . .”
“Or?” she prompted.
“You were set up by Kamchybek’s call. You were meant to go there, and get hit. But they didn’t expect I’d be with you. Or that Lubashov would try to avenge his brother. That made it all turn to shit.”
“Which do you think it was?”
“I look like I believe in coincidence?”
“Who would set it up?” she asked.
I shook my head; better to assume everyone was against us.
“And the iPhone? Why bother if they were going to put me down?”
“A good way to find out just how much you knew, how much you might have reported back, before putting one in your ear.”
I didn’t want to tell her I thought she wouldn’t have been killed, not just then. She would have been dragged somewhere quiet, where the occasional scream goes unnoticed and people pretend a gunshot is a car backfire. The same sort of place where Saltanat had been raped, probably the same kind of people.
I put my hand on hers, just for a moment, then uncapped a bottle of Sibirskaya Korona, pushed it toward her. She hesitated, then drank.
“It helps me relax,” she said. “You should try it.”
“You think I can’t relax unless I’m halfway down the hundred grams?”
“You used to drink.”
“And now I don’t.”
“Forever?”
I shrugged, pretended nonchalance I didn’t feel.
“For today will do, for now.”
Saltanat considered this for a moment, smiled, nodded. Once upon a time, in my drinking days, before Chinara, this would have been when I kissed the evening’s girl, smelled lemon shampoo in her hair, felt the heat of her skin, the softness of her lips.
But those days are dead and buried deep. And I don’t think they’ll be coming back, at least, not for Mrs. Borubaeva’s boy. It’s the death all around that’s corroded me, not the drink.
Saltanat leaned back, finished her beer, said, “Time to eat.”
I thought, Time to kill.
Chapter 20
Saltanat and I sat under the shelter of the sloping bar roof, the rain cascading down around us. We’d eaten the vegetable pelmeni and bowls of lagman Rustam had brought out to us, wondered if the storm would ever end. Up in the mountains behind us, occasional rolling peals of distant thunder punctuated our conversation as we planned what to do next.
I thought I knew the streets and alleys of Bishkek better than most tacsi drivers, but I’d never heard of the Umai Hotel. And judging by the apparent absence of any guests, neither had anyone else.
“How do you know about this place?”
Saltanat lit a cigarette and sucked down the first smoke, then let it merge with the fine gray mist of the rain.
“I was at school with Rustam’s daughter. Anastasia. We knew each other, not well, enough to say hello. When she was at college in Tashkent, she was attacked by three men.”
She paused, stared at me.
“I helped catch the men who did it. One of them was killed trying to escape. By me.”
Her look challenged me to disagree with her. I simply raised an eyebrow.
“I’d do it again. Rustam knows that too. So I stay here at his insistence, every time I’m in Bishkek. I can’t pay for anything. Embarrassing, really.”
After a final draw on her cigarette, she threw the still-lit stub out onto the grass, listened to its half-hearted hiss before dying.
“I don’t think your people—your ex-people—know I use this place, but we’d better keep on the move, just in case.”
I followed her to the car. From the hotel porch, Rustam raised his arm in farewell, jacket collar turned up against the rain. As the Lexus started to move toward the gates, Saltanat turned to me, her face impassive, betraying nothing. Her voice was calm.
“Eighteen months later, Anastasia killed herself.”
And then we were through the gates, tires sending up a black spray against walls on both sides.
Chinara always said I felt too deeply for the victims in the cases I handled, that my emotional involvement would lead me to make mistakes, to follow one line of investigation excluding all others. At the same time, she knew it was the only way I could operate. My unconditional need for her and my need for justice for the dead were what made me the man I was. But things change, and so did I.
“Love weathers all storms”? Perhaps. But I’ve learned that without love, nothing shores our lives up except rage, darkness, death. The story Saltanat had shared gave me one insight; we both endured the same sense of loss on behalf of the dead. Chinara had been my soul mate; Saltanat was my mirror image.
“Our plan?” I asked.
“We go somewhere no one will look for you. You can’t hide in Bishkek; too many people know you. And my contact down in Jalalabad can deprogram that phone’s security features.”
“It’s the only lead we’ve got,” I agreed. “But wouldn’t it be better if we split up? Why should you get involved with this?”
“Because I want whoever killed Gurminj,” she said.
“And those children.”
“Yes. And those children.”
Which meant heading southwest toward Jalalabad, snowcapped mountains rising up on either side of us, soon to be stained with the setting sun’s blood.
Chapter 21
We have a legend in Kyrgyzstan that at the world’s beginning, God handed out countries to all the different races. However, the Kyrgyz man was asleep, probably after a long night on the vodka, and when he woke up, all the earth had been given away. “But where am I going to live?” he asked, I expect in a whining, rather resentful voice. God considered the matter for a moment, said, “There’s one country I’ve been saving for myself. So beautiful, with flowing rivers and lofty mountains, clear air, rich grass, splendid trees. I suppose you’d better have that.” And that’s how we Kyrgyz ended up in Kyrgyzstan.
I couldn’t help remembering the story as we negotiated the hairpin bends that wind up into the Tien Shan mountains on their way to the south of Kyrgyzstan, toward our second-biggest city, Osh. The narrow road climbs to three thousand meters above sea level with terrifying drops down into the valleys below. The air is crisp, cold, so your chest aches and your head feels giddy. Splashes of snow still lined the roadside, and every few miles Saltanat would have to steer past debris left from the winter’s rockfalls. But I felt alive, in a way I hadn’t felt for a long time. Most people think life is about seeking joy, or making and spending money, or fucking and drinking yourself into oblivion. But for me, it’s about justice, providing endings. And when I’m at my least cynical, it’s about love.
The road is a hard drive, even in the summer months, let alone in spring. But I wouldn’t risk a commercial flight to Osh, and no way was I going back to Karakol. Halfway between Bishkek and Osh, Jalalabad was near enough to the Uzbekistan border to make an illegal crossing possible, if I needed to. But first I had some deaths to avenge.
“You were in an orphanage as a child, weren’t you?”
It wasn’t something I shared with most people, but I shouldn’t have been surprised that she knew.
“U
zbek security work overtime on my files?” I asked.
Saltanat laughed.
“I think you exaggerate our skills,” she said. “No, Gurminj told me, said you were there while your mother was working in Siberia.”
I felt my chest tighten. Saltanat was entering a dark part of my life, stirring up memories I tried to keep buried. I needed a moment to decide what to reveal, what to keep concealed.
“Can you pull over for a moment? Piss stop.”
Saltanat stopped the car, I got out, walked to where the side of the road ended in a drop of hundreds of meters. The slope was bare of everything but scree and the odd patch of sparse grass. I kicked a pebble over the edge, watching it bounce and spin until it was lost from sight.
I pretended to urinate, then walked back to the car. By the time we were moving again, I’d made up my mind what to tell Saltanat.
“I was tucked away in the orphanage for two years. My grandfather’s second wife didn’t like me living with them, and with my mama away, well, you know how that fairy tale goes. The wicked stepmother. And my grandfather didn’t need the earache she gave him.”
I paused, surprised at how strong my memories were.
“It wasn’t a bad place, I suppose. Somewhere to sleep. Get fed. They even tried to teach us, although God knows we were a mixed bunch. But it was never home, never a place where you felt secure, loved, wanted.”
Saltanat stared ahead as she drove, listening intently to every word.
“I ran away twice. First time after a couple of weeks, missing my grandfather, the smell of papirosh tobacco when he hugged me, pinched my cheek, told me what a fine boy I was. I don’t know what I was expecting when I got back to the farm. A loving welcome, I suppose, plov on the table, a cup of hot chai, and the rasp of Grandfather’s stubble on my cheek as he kissed me. Surprise, it didn’t work out that way. His wife had me back in the orphanage the next day, but not until she’d whipped me with a belt while my grandfather looked on, helpless.
“So the second time I ran away, I had a little more of a plan. Hitchhike to Bishkek, find a job in a restaurant, or unloading the lorries that come over the Torugart pass from China. But it’s almost four hundred kilometers from Karakol to Bishkek, and I didn’t even manage to get to the eastern shore of Lake Issyk-Kul before the traffic police saw me and delivered me back.”
I paused and stared back out of the window.
“And after that?” Saltanat asked, twisting her head slightly to look at me.
“Long story,” I said, hearing the rasp in my throat, as if I’d swallowed a peach stone. “Boring too.”
“We’ve got a long drive,” Saltanat said. “It’ll pass the time.”
I paused as the memories came back, unstoppable, rising in my mind the way vomit rises in your gullet.
“What you have to know about the orphanage is that it wasn’t a bad place to be. It was clean, warm, and the food was okay. We slept in dormitories, boys in one, girls in another. That’s not to say that the older boys didn’t try to sneak in with the girls after lights-out, but there was always a staff member on duty, so that was pretty much a no-no.
“There was a certain amount of bullying, nothing too serious, the sort of thing I was used to from school, bigger boys trying to prove who was top dog by hitting the little ones. And again, the teachers did their best to stop it happening.”
Saltanat waited for me to carry on, but I simply stared out of the window, at the snow on the mountain caps, smeared by the red stain of the setting sun. Like blood blooming against a white tiled floor.
“Toward the end of my second year at the orphanage, I was pretty much resigned to living there, at least until I was sixteen, in two years’ time. Treading water, you might say. Then a new boy arrived, Aleksey Zhenbekov. He was tall, maybe fifteen, with the sort of muscles you get on a farm where the only machinery is in your arms and your back. His face was almost black from the sun, and his temper was just as dark. From the beginning, he was determined to cause trouble, show the world he wouldn’t tolerate any disrespect. Especially from the younger ones, the weak ones, the ones who’d never learned to fight.
“He called it ‘discussion.’ With fists as enduring as rocks, slaps like being struck by a shovel. Like all bullies, he could smell fear the way a cadaver dog can lead you to the dead.”
I paused, my mouth suddenly dry. This was a story I’d always thought should be left unspoken, its details covered over with earth and quickly forgotten. Sensing my mood, Saltanat pulled over to the roadside and stopped. We got out and walked in silence to the drop-off. With dusk almost upon us, shadows growing thicker, the air this high up had a bite as savage as the wolves that live in these mountains. I felt we were balanced at the edge of the world, that a sudden wind could sweep us away into darkness.
“There was one boy, Adilet, the same age as me. One of those boys who spoke only when spoken to, who tried to shower on his own, who didn’t join in any of our playground games.
“Adilet was a godsend to Zhenbekov, someone with whom he could conduct his ‘discussions.’ So we’d find Adilet with bruises on his face, arms, legs. If we ever saw him in the showers, he’d have fist-sized dark brown marks that slowly turned purple and yellow. And over the weeks, Adilet spoke less and less, sat on his own in the classroom. At night, we sometimes heard him weeping in his bunk. And what did we do? Nothing.”
I lit a cigarette, stared out into the gathering dark.
“Of course we were scared of Zhenbekov. None of us wanted to replace Adilet as an object of discussion. But we could have ganged up on him, kicked eight kinds of shit out of him. Or just reported him to the staff. But we didn’t. We were cowards, simple as that.”
I felt the taste of tobacco in my mouth, the smoke curling out into the evening air as if the fire of my life was slowly dying down.
“What happened?” Saltanat said, and I saw sympathy in her face, a shared understanding that life is an obstacle course.
“It was one of those summer days where the heat gives way to a sudden shower, clouds coming down from the mountains, warm rain, sweet, gentle on your face. The kind of soft rain the land loves to drink. And suddenly, we were all called out into the yard, to stand there while the rain plastered our hair down into cowlicks and formed puddles in the earth beneath our feet.
“We stood in silence as a police van entered the yard, parked beside the shower block. After half an hour, the rain stopped, and we watched as two policemen struggled out with a body on a stretcher, placed it in the back of their van, drove off.
“We were all herded back into the orphanage, told the police would be questioning us over the next two days. I looked around, realized I didn’t see Adilet anywhere. The boy who’d almost perfected the art of invisibility was missing.”
I threw the butt of my cigarette over the edge, and watched the glowing spark tumble and disappear into the dark.
“That evening, I sneaked into the shower block. The staff had made a pretty good attempt to swab up the blood, but I could still see a few droplets and spatters on the tiled floor.”
“Did you ever find out who killed Adilet?” Saltanat asked.
“You’ve got it wrong,” I said, scowling at the memory. “It was Zhenbekov who’d lost his final discussion. Adilet had waited with a length of rusty steel pipe, smashed it into Zhenbekov’s skull. Three times. Adilet didn’t kill him, but Zhenbekov wasn’t going to be bullying anyone again. The police picked Adilet up about five kilometers from Karakol. We were told he didn’t say a word, either then or at his trial.”
The sun had almost set, and I could see our breath spilling out into the air, backlit by the moonlight.
“Years later, I found out that Adilet’s twin sister had been murdered by their stepfather, beaten, kicked to death, for who knows what? Not sweeping the floor to his satisfaction? Spilling a cup of chai and scalding his fingers? Struggling when he tried to enter her bed? Adilet did what he did to regain the control he’d lost when his sister di
ed. No matter that you can’t always avenge the dead.”
I felt Saltanat reach out for my hand, felt her palm press against mine, sexless, supportive. And then we were silent as we walked back to the car and continued our journey.
Chapter 22
We spent an uncomfortable night in the car, having turned off the main road and down a track leading to one of the narrow rivers that saunter through the valley. In two or three months’ time, there would be other cars here, tents perhaps, a base for people who wanted to hike through the mountains. But in early spring, the weather is still too cold, and we had the place to ourselves.
Saltanat had cold meat samsi and water for us, even a couple of blankets, and I managed to get two or three hours of uncomfortable half-sleep, filled with images of the gun fight in the Kulturny. The wound in my shoulder felt as if I’d been burned, but it had stopped bleeding some hours ago. Saltanat had done her best to clean and bandage it from the first aid box under the spare tire, but she had nothing to give me for the pain. So while she slept beside me, I stared out of the windshield at the sheet of stars above us, and wondered what to do next.
The dawn crept up over the mountains, a burglar on tiptoe, each movement imperceptible, gradually swelling and filling the sky with the lightest of blues. I looked at Saltanat as she slept, then stared at myself in the mirror. Damaged, bruised, still in mourning, without a future as far as I could tell. So instead I watched the sun begin to color the snow a deceptive gold . . .
By noon, we were only a few hours from Jalalabad. Earlier, I’d left Saltanat asleep and went to wash in the Naryn River as it danced and kicked its way downstream. The brutality of the snow-cold water on my face punched me into wakefulness, so I unwound the dressing on my shoulder and looked at Maxim’s handiwork. The flesh around the wound was red and inflamed, and I knew I’d have to get some antibiotics. I could feel the muscle tug, and resisted the temptation to pick at the raised dark-brown scab. I’d probably need stitches, but asking a doctor not to inform the local menti of a gunshot wound would need either a big bribe or a quick getaway.
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