We drove on for three or four kilometers, and then, rounding a bend, we saw the motorcycle lying on its side, wheels still slowly spinning. The rider lay face down a few feet away, one arm thrown out above his head, the other folded beneath his body. The only way we could pass was by driving into the ditch on either side of the road.
Graves swore, and applied the brake, so we slowed to a halt about five meters away.
“You stay here,” he ordered, opened the car door. As his foot touched the ground, the motorcyclist rolled over, producing a gun from underneath his body, aiming it in our direction.
Graves scrambled underneath the driver’s seat and came up with a Makarov. I ducked down as a bullet shattered the windshield and embedded itself in the driver’s headrest. I managed to twist around and grab the door handle. Graves crouched behind his open door, returning fire, but by now the assassin was shielded by the cover of his bike. I heard a bullet thud into the door; time to go. Another bang, and the car lurched forward and sideways; the gunman must have hit one of the front tires. I threw myself out of the passenger door, landing and rolling onto my bad shoulder. I struggled to my feet, ran for the safety of the ditch. It was only a few feet away, but my shoulder blades tensed, waiting for a bullet to rip through my spine. A lifetime later, I was face down in mud and sheep shit, wondering how to get the handcuffs off.
I didn’t know whether the gunman was out to get Graves, or me, or both of us, so I decided my best plan was to stay where I was and hope they’d forgotten me in the turmoil. I risked a quick look, saw Graves pull the trigger on an empty magazine. As he reached inside the car to reload, I seized my moment, levered myself up onto my feet, ran toward the shelter of some birch trees.
I looked back to see the motorcyclist jump up, pull the bike back onto two wheels, and race in hot pursuit. Graves was back behind the wheel of the car, the engine stalled, or maybe hit by a not-so-stray bullet. There didn’t seem much point in trying to outrun a motorbike, so I tried to make myself invisible behind the trees. If that didn’t work, maybe I could throw my remaining shoe at him.
The motorbike came toward me, rider crouched over the handlebars, weaving from left to right to be less of a target.
“Climb on!” the rider yelled, twisted the throttle. I stood still for a few seconds, and then ran forward and hoisted one leg over the pillion. Even before I was properly balanced, we set off over rough ground that had me bouncing up and down. We didn’t stop until we were well out of range, braking so suddenly my nose slammed into the leather jacket in front of me.
I watched as gauntleted hands removed the helmet.
“Do I have to do everything for you, Akyl?” the voice demanded. Honey spilled over vanilla ice cream.
Chapter 50
“I was really pissed off with you when I found out you’d gone,” Saltanat said, sipping at a cup of hot chai. We were sitting in a small coffee shop in Tungush, on our way back into Bishkek.
“I was pretty sure you would have gone either to the Ibraimova apartment or to keep watch outside Graves’s house. So I borrowed a motorbike, well, stole it, arrived at your apartment just in time to see Kurmanalieva supervising two of her thugs dumping you in the trunk of her car. I couldn’t tell whether you were dead or unconscious, so I followed them back to Graves’s house, waited outside.”
Saltanat took another sip, then lit a cigarette, watching the smoke rise upward.
“I wasn’t going to storm the house. I had no idea where you were, how many people were there. So I waited, put in the call to Kurmanalieva. I saw her drive away, waited some more. Then Graves drove out, so I followed you. You know the rest.”
Saltanat had snapped the linking chain of the handcuffs, but I was still wearing fancy bracelets. The waitress had noticed them as she brought us our tea, and I’d made some joke about a bet gone wrong. She didn’t laugh, simply looked at me as if I was crazy, slapped down the chyoht and walked away. Saltanat didn’t laugh either.
“I’m beginning to think you’re a liability, Akyl,” she said, staring at the tip of her cigarette, her eyes refusing to meet mine. I felt my heart stop, kick-start, and turn over, my throat suddenly parched and sore.
“That sounds like the start of a familiar song,” I said. “One of those traditional songs about parting lovers, and eternal tears and all that stuff.”
“No,” Saltanat said, and I could see she was choosing her words with great care, “I’m not saying that. But we have to end this, Akyl. I don’t just mean nailing Graves for the murders, avenging Gurminj. But we go two steps forward, one step back, one step forward, three steps back.”
It was as close to a declaration of sorts that I’d ever heard her make.
She paused, stubbed out her cigarette, started to reach for another, then put down the pack.
“Give me your wallet,” she said. I picked up the chyoht and looked at the total.
“I was going to pay,” I said, starting to count out a handful of som notes.
“No, give me your wallet,” she repeated, and then plucked it out of my fingers.
“This is what I’m talking about, Akyl,” she said, flipping past the slots for my non-existent credit cards. She pulled out a passport-sized photograph, and held it up for me to see. Chinara, on the Ferris wheel.
“I won’t compete with a dead woman,” Saltanat said, and I could hear the determination in her voice.
I took the photo from her and started to tear it up, but Saltanat reached over the table to stop me.
“Nice gesture, I appreciate you making it,” she said, “but you need to decide what is important to you.”
“What do you want me to do?” I said.
“You’re the detective, solve the mystery,” she said. “And anyway, it’s not about what I want you to do, it’s what you want to do. I’m not looking for a lapdog.”
I nodded, afraid words would fail me if I tried to talk about her, about Chinara, what they both meant to me. Can you love two people without betraying each of them with the other, even after death? I didn’t have an answer. I wasn’t even sure there was one.
We stood up, and I put the money for the bill on the table.
“Just a couple of things; where are we going to stay tonight? The safe house is out, my apartment’s out, the hotel’s out. And more important,” and I held up my wrists, clanking the handcuffs together, “when can I get rid of the jewelry?”
Chapter 51
“You’re such a dead shot, why didn’t you put two into Graves when you had the chance?” I said, pouring champagne for Saltanat, mineral water for myself.
“Wouldn’t you rather he stood trial, be exposed for the monster he is?” she replied. “I want him to know his empire and his reputation are crumbling around him.”
“Nice idea, but who knows how many judges and lawyers and politicians are on his payroll,” I said. “So he has a dungeon in his basement? He’s an adult. The films? He knows nothing about them, they’re probably fakes anyway. The thugs he surrounds himself with? He’s a rich man in a poor country, he needs security.”
I looked around at the suite Saltanat had booked at the Hyatt Regency, the best hotel in Bishkek, and the most expensive. I assumed Uzbek state security were picking up the bill; Saltanat had argued no one would expect a fugitive from justice to hide out in such a palace, that we were more likely to find anonymity here than in some backwater where the management were paid to make tip-offs to the police. I didn’t know whether she was right or not but it had to be better than staying in Penitentiary One for fifteen years.
“So what now?” I asked.
“We wait,” Saltanat said. “Albina is bound to get in touch with me. Graves will have told her you escaped, and that gives us an opening we can exploit.”
I would have liked to take the initiative ourselves, but sometimes it’s better to allow the enemy to commit themselves. Then you can see an opening to strike back.
“Why don’t you call her?” I said.
“The
re’s nothing that will aggravate her more than thinking I’m ignoring her,” Saltanat said. “And if she’s annoyed, she won’t be thinking clearly. And that’s to our advantage.”
I could see the feud between the two women had become Saltanat’s main concern, but mine was still with Graves.
“Shouldn’t we deal with Graves first?”
Saltanat shook her head.
“Graves with Albina is a lot more dangerous. Getting rid of her puts him on the back foot, removes some of his protection.”
“You’re going to kill her?” I asked the question, but I already knew the answer.
“If I don’t, then she’ll kill me. And then you. You’ve already had a taste of what she can do. It’s a matter of survival.”
“You realize that when she calls you, she’ll be setting up a trap?” I asked.
“It’s only a trap if we let it be,” Saltanat replied. “It doesn’t take much to make sure your opponent’s foot gets snared, not yours.”
I looked around at the enormous flat-screen TV, the elegant table and chairs, the king-sized bed. Western businessmen must have used this room to plot fortunes, deals, lies, and deceits. Upmarket working ladies earning in an hour what I made in a month. Caviar on a plate and mistrust in the air. It seemed a very odd setting to be discussing a woman’s death, avenging rape and murder, but maybe not so odd after all. Suddenly I felt restless, out of place, wanting to get back to the streets and grimy bars, where I understood what was going on, knew how to deal with it. The hotel suite was as alien to me as the far side of the moon.
Saltanat looked at me, sensed my mood, knew what I was thinking.
“The police are still looking for you; is it smart to go wandering around town?”
I shrugged.
“I’ll wear dark glasses,” I said, hoping to make her smile. It didn’t work. “I’ll go crazy, just sitting around here, I’m not going to shout my name outside the White House. I just need to walk around, decide what I’m going to do next.”
If Saltanat noticed I hadn’t said what we’d do next, she didn’t show it.
“I’ll call you later,” I said, shrugging on my jacket. Then it was Saltanat’s turn to shrug. It felt as if any possible relationship was doomed to capsize before it had begun. My fault, I imagined. Too much pain, too many memories, the fear of loving and losing again. I nodded and walked toward the door. I didn’t say goodbye.
As I walked down Chui Prospekt, the young women who worked in the parliament building were out in force, enjoying the spring sunshine and the chance to show off their summer dresses. I went past several groups, laughing, chatting, mobile phones held like talismans, charms to ward off the twin dangers of growing old and being alone. None of them noticed me; it’s what happens to men when they see middle age staring at them like the barrels of a shotgun.
I tried to shake off my melancholy, strolled through the park, past the swings and rides, listened to children shrieking in their excitement. They sounded like birds returning in flocks to settle in the upper branches of the trees. I walked past the roughly carved stone statues that peered out from behind bushes or crouched down among long grass. They looked elemental, timeless, as if they had been here long before the city, and would be long afterward, staring out across broken walls and burned-out cars.
I sat down on a bench, stared up at the sun through the canopy of leaves. The light made everything dappled, camouflaged, and mysterious. I felt as if I’d lost my way in a dark wood, the path uncertain, my journey pointless. I knew Graves was too well connected, with money and contacts. They would keep him out of a courtroom, out of a cell. Before, the thought of him getting away with murder would have enraged me. Now, it simply seemed the way of a world that ignored all the ways of living in which I believed. Cynicism or realism? Perhaps they’re both the same.
I sat there for an hour or so, trying to wipe my mind clean of the tiny bodies I’d unearthed, the films I’d sat through where blood splashed the walls, and eyes and mouths screamed silently for a help that didn’t arrive. But if I was hoping for peace, it didn’t come. Too many bodies, too much suffering. The pretty girls and old men and dancing children never see my world, if they’re lucky. I’m the man in black who squats in the corner of people’s lives, unnoticed, an undertaker for souls.
A cloud passed over the sun, wind shaking the leaves. Spring holds the promise of summer, but the memories of winter are never too far away. I walked back to Chui Prospekt and made a call on the way. I suggested a meeting place, then walked unseen past laughing children and their watchful mothers.
Chapter 52
The banya at the far end of Ibraimova is one of the better legacies from our not-so-glorious days as part of the Soviet Union. Recently renovated, it’s a great place to relax, with two different sauna rooms, massage tables, and a circular ice-cold pool under a white tiled hemisphere. There’s even a snack bar where you can buy horse-meat sausage and cold beer, and if you want to get a haircut, there’s a small salon run by two women whose indifference to the naked men who use the banya suggests they’ve seen everything, from long and tall to short and small. It’s the ideal place to meet if you want to make sure no one’s hiding a gun or a tape recorder.
I undressed, put my clothes in one of the lockers, and making sure no one was looking, slipped some papers onto the top of the lockers. I walked into the shower room, where I paid a thickset middle-aged woman for a thin cotton sheet, wrapping it around my waist. She looked at my damaged shoulder, at the blood-crusted furrow whose edges were already starting to look inflamed, infected.
“You can’t go in the pool, not with that,” she said.
“I’m only going to use the heat,” I replied. My answer seemed to satisfy her; I was only grateful she didn’t look down at my foot.
“How did you get that, anyway?” she asked, nodding at my shoulder.
I shrugged, did my best to look browbeaten. It wasn’t too hard.
“The old woman, she’s got a temper on her. Tatar,” I explained. “And maybe I’d had a couple of beers too many, got home late.”
The attendant pursed her lips.
“You’d have gotten worse from me if you were my husband,” she said, and turned away, convinced once more about the fecklessness of men. I nodded, decided not to buy a bottle of Baltika, in case she hit me with it.
I was early, so I took a long hot shower, then endured ten minutes in the hottest of the steam rooms, surrounded by naked men, most of whom were slapping themselves or each other with birch twigs. We have some strange customs in Central Asia. Some of the men were also wearing tall kalpak felt hats, which must have added to the heat. The wooden slatted floor was littered with leaves, and they stuck to my feet when I finally couldn’t take the heat any longer. I was pouring buckets of cold water over myself when a voice behind me called my name.
“How are you, Akyl?”
“Well, you know,” I said, turning to face Kenesh Usupov, Bishkek’s chief forensic pathologist. “There’s nothing I like more than getting myself into deep shit, then trying to get out of it. So I thought I’d give my old friend a call, arrange a reunion.”
“I didn’t expect to hear from you again,” he said, wiping his face dry with a towel. “Not until you’d sorted out all that business about child porn in your apartment.”
“I’m working on that,” I said, “but things keep getting in the way. Like being beaten up, tortured, being hunted by my former colleagues, having old friends turn their faces away from me.”
To his credit, Kenesh looked ashamed for a few seconds.
“I have to think of my family first, Akyl. And how could I help anyway?”
I nodded; if I wanted Kenesh to help me, I had to show him I wasn’t one to bear a grudge.
“I got the word, from someone very senior,” I said, not wanting to mention Tynaliev by name. “They said the Be On The Lookout for me was being unofficially scaled down.”
“There’s talk you were set up,” Kenesh
said. “Maybe by people who supported the chief before he went away. You know, revenge.”
I knew that wasn’t the case; the people who’d backed the chief wouldn’t have rolled him in a snowdrift if he’d been on fire. Those people move on, to the next deal, the next scam, the next ass to kiss.
“I want you to do me a favor,” I said, and watched as Usupov immediately looked cautious. “Don’t worry, you can see I’m not wearing a wire.”
“Not unless you’ve hidden it in a very uncomfortable place,” Usupov said, in a rare flash of humor.
“Well, if I was, you don’t want to speak into the microphone,” I said, and the tension in the air seemed to ease. I scooped another bucket of cold water out of the tub, poured it over my head. The shock was like a punch in the face, but it gave me a moment to work out how to convince Usupov to do what I was about to ask.
“We should leave separately,” I said, “but before you go, there’s something I want you to collect from my locker.”
“What is it?” he asked.
“Nothing to worry about,” I reassured him, “but I’ve done a lot of digging about the dead children we unearthed. I’m pretty sure I know what happened to them, and why. But in case someone’s digging a hole for me, I’ve made some notes, and I want you to hang onto them.”
I paused, staring into Usupov’s eyes to reinforce the seriousness of what I’d just said.
“Then if I don’t turn up, or if they find me after someone’s given me a Makarov kiss, send them to the editor of Achyk Sayasat. You know how antigovernment they are; they’ll publish right away, and you can’t close all the mouths. An anonymous tip-off. You won’t be implicated.”
“I suppose I can do that,” he said. “But why don’t you just send the information to Tynaliev? You’d get rehabilitated, the porn charges would go away, you’d have the minister backing you all the way.”
I didn’t want to let Kenesh know Tynaliev was possibly involved in the murders; he’d be out of the banya and down Ibraimova without stopping to get dressed. I told him where I’d hidden my notes, watched as he headed toward the changing room. I decided to give him ten minutes before leaving, just enough time for one more shower to ease some of the stiffness out of my joints.
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