The little girl standing next to me started to whimper from nerves, twisting the threadbare material of her ill-fitting dress, a hand-me-down from an older sister. The woman heard the noise and crouched down in front of the child. Her eyes were cruel, probing for weakness, fear. The little girl started to sob, and I smelled the sudden reek of urine as she wet herself.
I don’t know why I did it, but I pushed myself in front of the little girl, shielding her from the woman’s eyes. A flare of surprise crossed the woman’s face for a fraction of a second, before she stood up. Zenish was immediately beside her to apologize, clouting me hard across the face with an open hand.
“Such insolence to our important guest, you’ll—”
“Director, this one at least has some courage,” the woman interrupted, “and defending his little girlfriend does him some credit, does it not?”
Zenish clearly didn’t know whether to keep kissing her ass and risk losing the power he had over us.
“As you say, but we must have discipline, don’t you agree?”
The woman took my chin and wrenched my head up. I summoned up my most defiant stare, the one that had always angered my grandfather’s new wife.
“What’s your name, boy?” she said, and I could hear the menace in her voice. I said nothing, staring harder, trying to ignore the pain as she squeezed my jaw tighter. I was determined I would not cry, would not let tears betray me. The heavy scent of her perfume was strong and sickly, like dying flowers in week-old water. I sensed the curve of her breasts under the tight-fitting dress. I was attracted, the way boys turning into men sense the power of a woman, any woman. But I was also repelled, imagining her as a spider, a vampire, hovering, waiting to strike. I felt my knees tremble, but I made sure my face remained expressionless, my mouth closed. Finally, Zenish could no longer stand the silence.
“Borubaev, Akyl,” he said, spitting the words out like a bad taste in his mouth. “Dumped here by his stepmother as a lost cause.”
The woman continued to stare at me.
“Akyl,” her voice almost caressing, “would you like to come and live with me in my big house? Ride in my big car? Go to a good school and grow up to be somebody important, famous?”
I kept my silence. The thought of escaping the orphanage was overwhelming, the sense of potential freedom intoxicating. But I sensed the cruelty of the woman, her need to control and hurt. And I loved my mother. So I said nothing.
The woman let go of my jaw, taking a handkerchief out of the pocket of her skirt and wiping her hands on it, as if I were something dirty that had soiled her skin.
“You should watch this one, Director,” she said, the steel in her voice a lash on my back. “Believe me, he’ll either kill you or take your job. Or both.”
She started back toward the door, but turned and looked at me.
“Let me tell you something about life, Akyl,” she said. “It’s all about trust. That part’s easy. The hard part is knowing who to trust. And when.”
Her voice was softer, somehow caressing, and for a few seconds, I actually wondered if I’d misjudged her, if she was someone kind, someone to trust as the nights drew near and the shadows lengthened. But then I remembered the way she squeezed my jaw, the cruelty in her eyes. Four-legged wolves can’t sheath their claws, but the two-legged variety can. And they’re the kind you must never trust. So I shook my head, afraid to speak in case a tremor in my voice betrayed me.
She shrugged, turned, shook her head at Zenish as he approached and walked away, her heels tapping on the concrete floor, the sound of nails driven into wood. I stood there for a long time afterward, wondering if my instincts had been wrong, if she really wanted to adopt me, if she might have been the promise of a new life. Questions I’ve never been able to answer . . .
Chapter 44
Saltanat went off into the center of Bishkek to send a message to Albina Kurmanalieva, from another Uzbek safe house, I assumed, one I didn’t know about. Trust, or the lack of it, playing its part as usual. Personally, I thought the whole spy tradecraft exercise was nonsense, an overelaborate hangover from the days of the USSR, when everyone was so busy watching each other no one noticed the country collapsing around their ears. Easier just to make a phone call, grab a pocket full of bullets, and take your chances.
When Saltanat returned, I didn’t bother asking her where she’d been, who she’d spoken to, what she’d said. It was as if a sheet of glass had been thrust between us, like visiting a convict in prison. Except I didn’t know which one of us was the prisoner. We sat in silence, and smoked too much, for two days that felt like two months, the minutes slouching along on crutches of fear and boredom.
I was beginning to wonder whether anything was going to happen, and on the morning of the third day, I decided I’d had enough.
Saltanat was asleep when I left the safe house, walking for half a kilometer to where the morning marshrutka minibus was waiting to take people from Tungush into the center of Bishkek. The bus was already crowded, so I stood for most of the journey, hanging onto a seat back as we jolted and bounced over potholed tracks. The early morning sun bathed the Tien Shan mountains with a soft golden light that highlighted the year-round snow-covered peaks and shone through the branches and budding leaves of the trees lining our route. The air was crisp and clean, defying petrol fumes and the smoke coiling out of chimneys. As always, I thought of the beauty of my country, how it deserves better people than the ones who live here. But perhaps that’s true of everywhere.
Finally, we reached the smoother roads of central Bishkek and as people got off the bus, I managed to snag a seat, keeping my hand on my wallet in case of pickpockets. When we reached the public sauna baths on Ibraimova, I squeezed my way to the front, paid my nine som to the driver, and alighted. From there, it was a ten-minute walk south to my apartment block. I wanted to see if the place was still under police observation, and, if not, to collect a couple of items I’d stashed away there. I bought a meat samsi at the stall on the corner of Ibraimova and Moskovskaya, eating it as a cover for staring at the entrance to my Khrushchyovka block. The prefabricated concrete sections at the front were worn and stained from years of scorching summers and brutal winters, and some teenage wit had spray-painted his girlfriend’s name across the metal entrance door. But the apartments inside were solid and warm; better than living in a yurt, that’s for sure.
I checked my watch. Just before seven o’clock. By now, Saltanat would be awake and cursing me. But every day we did nothing, I was in greater risk of being caught by my colleagues—I still thought of them as my colleagues, and knew Tynaliev’s instructions to downgrade the case against me would have set many people wondering if I had been framed. And more importantly, every day’s delay meant some poor soul might be in Graves’s basement, suffering the torments of the damned while a video camera captured every last drop of blood and every plea for mercy.
I couldn’t see any police cars parked nearby, and I was pretty sure no average ment was going to be standing out in the cold. I wiped the last of the grease from the samsi on my sleeve, spat out the inevitable piece of gristle, strode up to the entrance door.
The trick is always to appear confident to anyone watching, show the world you have nothing to fear and even less to hide. Look furtive or worried, and even if the law doesn’t spot you, some sharp-eyed babushka with nothing better to do than spy on her neighbors will call it in.
I keyed in the four-digit number on the electronic lock installed after one of the tenants on the third floor was found stabbed to death, pushed open the door. Security might have been tightened since then, but half the lightbulbs on each landing were still either dead or missing, and the elevator was the same cramped and stinking toilet it had always been.
I took the elevator up to the floor above mine, and walked down the stairs to my front door. A thin ribbon of crime scene tape was still attached to the frame, but there was no sign of anyone guarding the place. I knocked on the door, just in case
some ment was hoping to earn promotion, and when no one appeared, let myself in.
Chinara would have been horrified at the mess, but it was nothing more than I’d expected. Chairs overturned, drawers emptied out onto the floor and left open, the bed tipped to one side, with a couple of diagonal knife slashes across the mattress for good measure. Maybe with all the porn they’d found, the crime scene officers had decided to mark the spot with an X.
The poetry books Chinara had loved, had scrimped and saved to buy, littered the floor, spines twisted or broken, pages bent or torn out. I remembered the consolation she had sought and found in these poems, wondered how poetry could save the world when it couldn’t even save itself. I picked up a book at random, looked at one of the final poems.
Dying: nothing new there these days,
But living, that’s no newer.
Written by someone called Esenin, apparently. I wondered if he was still alive, if he’d be interested in meeting up one evening. With that attitude, I thought we’d get on just fine. Then I flipped to the frontispiece, and learned young Sergei had hanged himself at the tender age of thirty, in the Hotel Angleterre, St. Petersburg, back in 1925. So no meeting of minds then.
I picked the books up off the floor, put them back on the shelf where Chinara had always kept them. I wasn’t going to bother tidying the rest of the apartment. As far as I was concerned, the place where she and I had made our home no longer existed.
I looked around for the framed photo I’d kept of her, laughing, her hair caught in the wind as we rode the Ferris wheel in Bosteri, on the shore of Lake Issyk-Kul. It wasn’t in its usual place, but then I spotted it, face down, half-hidden under a pile of clothes.
The frame was intact, but the glass was broken, and someone had ripped Chinara’s photo in two. Checking to see if anything was hidden behind the picture, I guessed. I held a piece in each hand, and brought the ragged edges together, trying to make her whole, hoping to bring her back to life. But some things are impossible; life pins you down, picks your pocket of all the happiness and comfort you’d ever hoped for. Life had made my wife die, and made me her murderer. And knowing I’d simply brought her inevitable end nearer didn’t make me feel any less guilty.
I put the two pieces of the photograph in my jacket pocket, remembering why I’d come back to the apartment, went into the tiny kitchen. As I expected, the cooker and the refrigerator had been searched, and the doors left open, which accounted for the sweet aroma of decaying food. But no one had bothered to search properly under the sink. Years before, I’d constructed a false back with a space of five centimeters between it and the concrete wall. You never know when you might not be able to get to your major arms dump. I’d painted over the cracks on either side, so only the closest inspection would spot it. And nobody had.
I used a screwdriver to pry the false back away, and reached inside. My fingers found the thin plastic-wrapped package inside, surprisingly heavy for its size. My knees creaking to remind me I wasn’t getting any younger, I stood up and slipped the package into my pocket. I checked my watch; half an hour since I’d arrived. It was time to get out of the apartment; I’d been there too long already. I listened at the door before opening, but the landing outside sounded deserted. I pulled the door shut after myself, the click of the lock sounding as final as anything I’d ever heard. An end to my old life, I told myself. The only question was if there would be a new beginning.
I took the stairs two at a time, managing to avoid the piles of litter that had accumulated at each turn. We Kyrgyz are house-proud when it comes to the inside of our apartments, but communal space is a different matter altogether. Maybe that’s why the lightbulbs are always missing.
I was in a hurry, and the stairwell was dark, which was why I didn’t spot the empty Baltika bottle until I stood on it. It rolled away under my feet, taking me with it. I staggered and waved my arms about like one of those Soviet circus clowns that used to make holidays so miserable, then smacked my head against the wall.
I was only unconscious for about three minutes, but apparently that was enough. Because when I came to, and tried to touch my head where I’d attacked the wall, I found I couldn’t move my hands. And I was blind.
Chapter 45
Somehow in the fall, I’d managed to lose my shoes and socks, and pull some kind of sack over my head. I’d taken two of those little plastic ties that hold computer cables together to attach my thumbs together. I’d also done the same with my big toes. I must have looked as if I were practicing a particularly strenuous yoga exercise. Except I wasn’t.
“You always have to be careful just how tight you make those restraints,” a woman’s voice said, so close to my ear I would have jumped, had I been able to move.
“Too loose and your captive might just be able to wriggle their way out of them,” she continued. “Too tight and the blood gets cut off and after a few hours, it’s amputation time. Just be grateful I didn’t put one around your dick.”
“They don’t make them in that big a size,” I said.
“If you’re going to mouth off, then I’ve got some other toys I like. You won’t, but that’s the least of your problems,” the woman said, her mouth against my ear. I could smell her scent, floral, powerful, but somehow reminding me of decay. Her voice rasped, as if she’d been kicked in the throat a long time ago and never quite recovered. She didn’t need to whisper threats to sound terrifying.
“Have you ever noticed how someone walks when they’ve had their toes cut off? You wouldn’t think it would make much difference, such small bones, with hardly any meat on them. And it takes very little effort, it’s like trimming your toenails, only a little further down. But, believe me, it does. People shuffle as if they’re drunk, or they’ve only recently learned to walk. They walk round obstacles rather than over them, they can’t manage stairs, and they’ll never play football again.”
I said nothing.
“You must think us very simple, Inspector Borubaev. Or is that ex-Inspector? Haven’t you become one of the little people now? Looking over your shoulder in case some ment keen on glory spots the wanted child pornographer, puts two between your shoulder blades and gets a quick promotion?”
I could feel her staring at me, imagined her head cocked to one side.
“Sometimes people like you just make it all too easy. Like filling in all the hard answers in a crossword puzzle. I knew you’d come back here sooner or later. We put a little locator on the top of your front door. When you opened it, the connection broke and told us you were back. Fifteen minutes later, we were here, parked outside, about to come up when we saw the lights go out. You had your little stumble in the dark, we picked you up and dusted you off.”
I felt hands pick me up, heard the slam of the apartment block’s metal door as it clanged shut, then I was being carried face down. A car trunk opened, and I bounced off the spare wheel as they dropped me inside. I felt the vibration as the car doors opened and closed, and the grunt of the engine as it turned over and fired.
The journey was uncomfortable, but at least it was on roads, which gave me a faint hope I wasn’t being taken to the mountains for a quick scenic tour followed by a bullet in the back of my head. Or worse.
I did my best to shift my weight off the spare, tried to get more comfortable. But comfort is a relative term when you’re tied up. I could feel the rim of the wheel pressing against my knee, and heard my trousers snag and tear as I levered myself backward. I moved around a little more, and rolled forward slightly, until I could place my thumbs against the wheel rim. Cold metal, a sharp jagged edge maybe a centimeter long, where a stone or rock must have hit it. One of the unexpected benefits of living in a country with potholed roads. I rubbed my thumbs against the cold metal, felt it scratch and tear at my skin, drawing blood. It wasn’t much of a chance, but it was all I had.
I shifted position once more, until I was lying face down, ass up in the air, my thumbs against the metal. I started to saw at the plastic res
traint tying my thumbs together, wondering how much time I’d have. Every time the car took a corner, it threw me backward, and I had to scramble back into position and start again.
In the darkness, it was hard to guess the exact spot, and after a few minutes, the metal was slick with blood. The pain was a fire biting into my flesh with each stroke of the metal against plastic. But I carried on sawing away. Maybe I’d lose the use of my thumbs, but that was the very least of my worries. God only knew what I’d done to my toe, but then I wasn’t planning on playing football anyway. But I sawed on for what felt like a couple of hours, until I felt the restraint suddenly fall apart. I sucked at my thumb, my tongue running along the length of the gash, my mouth filling with blood and skin.
With my hands free, I pulled off the hood, took out my cigarettes and matches. I resisted the temptation to light up, struck a match instead.
It took a couple of matches before my eyes got used to the sudden flare, and I was worried about setting fire to a petrol can, so I made sure each match was safely out before I lit another.
I’d never taken a ride in a car trunk before, and it wasn’t anything anyone would want to write to relatives about. The usual debris lay in a heap to one side, including a couple of blankets. I was a little pissed off no one had thought to spread them out to make my journey a little less uncomfortable. I was definitely going to complain to the tour operator. A tire lever looked like a suitable way to make my point, but I quickly decided against that. Whoever opened the trunk wasn’t going to be standing there, wondering what I was doing, as I clambered out, tire lever in hand, and took my best shot.
Instead, I reached for the package I’d found back in my apartment and started to pick at the tape I’d used to seal it. What was inside was going to get me out of that car. Not a lockpick, not a saw. Two knives, but not just ordinary kitchen knives.
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