A Killing Winter

by Tom Callaghan

  Saltanat flashed me a warning glance, but I was sick of pretending that we were in an ordinary interrogation. Right then, I wanted him to move, stand up, say something, anything that would allow me to beat him to death with my naked hands.

  Aydaraliev stared at me.

  ‘I’ve butchered men who’ve spoken to me with more respect than that. But,’ and he gestured towards the two guards, ‘it’s easy to be brave when someone else can pull the trigger for you.’

  ‘I’d put one between your eyes if I thought I’d hit anything human in there, not just a lump of tissue floating in shit.’

  ‘We’ll discuss this another time, Inspector,’ he said, his voice calm and emotionless, ‘when things are a little more evenly balanced.’

  I spat, with all the contempt I could show. I thought of all the dead bodies that Aydaraliev had put into the ground, of the agonies of withdrawal from the drugs he’d smuggled, young women he’d pimped dying of AIDS because he refused to let them use condoms with their customers. I put my face close to his, staring into his eyes.

  ‘Think of your granddaughter when they rip up her insides, screaming for her grandfather to come and rescue her. Begging them to stop, no, please, don’t, please. And the knife, moonlight shining off the blade, cold metal stinging against her skin, trimming and slicing away. Because that’s what you had done to a nineteen-year-old woman carrying her first child.’

  ‘Inspector,’ Saltanat said, ‘your outrage isn’t getting us anywhere. And I still want to know what’s behind all this.’

  Aydaraliev shrugged, and dropped his cigarette to the floor, grinding it out with his shoe.

  ‘I told you, I didn’t ask, they didn’t tell.’

  He smiled, and I wanted to take a hammer to his face.

  ‘Is this something to do with Chinese medicine? Smuggling? Supplying raw materials?’ Saltanat asked, and I knew she was thinking about the stories of vitamin pills coming over the Tien Shan Mountains, the ones that contained ground-up human foetuses.

  Aydaraliev laughed.

  ‘You think the Chinese don’t have enough dead babies on their hands? With their one-child policy? They scrape out enough mistakes to fill a thousand pharmacies. No, it was done to create fear. Uzbeks fearing Kyrgyz. Kyrgyz fearing Uighurs. Uighurs fearing Chinese. A circle of mistrust and hatred, you could call it.’

  ‘What could you hope to achieve?’ Saltanat asked, and there was genuine disgust in her voice.

  ‘What did I achieve? I got paid, that’s what I achieved,’ the old man said. ‘Don’t ask me what anyone else was hoping for. You want answers to that, talk to them.’

  ‘So you murdered two women on behalf of the Circle of Brothers?’

  He nodded.

  ‘The other two, I didn’t order their deaths, someone else decided to perform a clean-up.’

  I wondered for a moment who he meant, then remembered Shairkul and Gulbara, butchered in their homes, women barely more than girls, who’d not known much else than abuse in their lives, hoping for very little and receiving even less. Shairkul, shivering in the cold outside the Kulturny; I felt a wave of shame at having threatened her. And Gulbara, a nobody who found a body, stole a handbag and ended up with her body hacked in half. I closed my eyes, and wondered if this would ever end.

  ‘They were working for you?’ I asked.

  ‘Every pussy you can buy in Bishkek puts a few som in my pocket,’ he answered, ‘it’s the way the world turns. Men pay money to fuck, women fuck to get money. But their deaths were not at my hands.’

  I pushed the two prostitutes to the back of my mind, a case to solve in the future.

  ‘I understand that you killed Umida to . . . harvest her. But Yekaterina? She wasn’t pregnant. And you must have known who she was, the shit storm it would bring down upon your head.’

  ‘She was the one that the contract was taken out on,’ Aydaraliev explained. ‘The other girl, well, it could have been anyone in the same condition, that didn’t matter.’

  ‘How much was the contract worth?’ Saltanat asked.

  ‘Two hundred fifty thousand US.’

  Even to a pakhan like Aydaraliev, it wasn’t small change.

  ‘And now, unless there’s anything else, you can drive me back to the Kulturny.’

  Saltanat considered for a few seconds, then nodded.

  ‘If there’s anything you haven’t told us, and I find out about it, then we’ll be having another little chat. With your granddaughter’s head listening in.’

  ‘Listen. I’m not a sadist. I don’t take any pleasure in having anyone extinguished. It’s business, understand? My men were under strict instructions: a swift kill, painless as possible. The rest, the cutting and so on, well, the dead don’t feel what’s done to them. I was asked to cause terror and confusion. Which I did. And that’s all I can tell you.’

  Aydaraliev smiled; he knew he’d played his Get Out of Jail card.

  Saltanat nodded at the guards, and they started to lead the old man out of the room. At the door, he paused and turned.

  ‘Tell me, Inspector, have you ever taken a woman? I mean, really taken her?’

  My face must have reflected my disgust, but he carried on.

  ‘I don’t mean rape her,’ he said, ‘that’s for low life. But to pound into a woman, give it to her like she’s never had it before, over and over, however you want it, until you’ve broken her spirit, until you just have to snap your fingers and she’ll roll over and face the pillow and present herself. The way you tame a dog, or a horse. By breaking the core inside of them to your will. Until they surrender themselves because there’s nothing left of them that isn’t subservient to you.’

  He raised an eyebrow.

  ‘Perhaps that’s how it was with . . . what was your wife’s name? Chinara?’

  ‘No.’

  My answer was flat, deliberately emotionless, but I wanted to kick the brains out of the back of his head. I wanted to see the walls spattered with the filth that lay between his ears, and then I’d stamp on his foul carcass until I’d shattered every bone in that wrinkled old flesh, ripped every sinew apart.

  ‘Well, if you ever took a woman like that, you’d know what power feels like. Like the best orgasm you could ever have. But better than sex, controlling destiny, the little people, all under your sway.’

  I said nothing.

  ‘You’ve held a gun on a man, Inspector, decided if his life is worth the squeeze of a trigger or not. You’ve sent men to hell with the twitch of a muscle. Maybe that’s how you see power, how you achieve it. Are we so very different?’

  I remained silent. The trouble is, I know the feeling of invulnerability that a gun gives, knowing you can make people do what you want simply by being the one with the power to kill. Some detectives never fire their weapon in their entire careers; others, like me, only shoot when they have to. But there are one or two just waiting for the wrong move to unholster and start blasting. They’re the ones you don’t want minding your back.

  ‘The more power you have, and then you lose it, the more you’ll do to restore it, the more you need terror and confusion.’

  Another word and I’d slaughter him with my hands, fuck the consequences.

  ‘I hope we don’t meet again, devochka, for your sake,’ he said to Saltanat, and then turned his gaze on me.

  It was like staring into the heavy-lidded eyes of a crocodile, unblinking, hungry and totally amoral.

  ‘And you, Inspector? That I look forward to.’

  And with that, he adjusted the hang of his jacket, straightened his shoulders, and walked out of the door, his sneer announcing that, once again, he’d won.

  Chapter 36

  We sat without speaking until the front door closed. Silence hung over us like an axe poised to descend.

  ‘You know he won’t rest until he comes after you?’ I said. ‘And if he doesn’t manage to find you, then the Circle in Tashkent will track you down.’

  ‘I don’t think so,’
Saltanat replied.

  ‘He’s going to take you threatening his family and just shrug it off?’

  ‘Of course not. I know he’s not a man to leave a threat or an insult unavenged. He’d have cut my head off right now, if he’d had the chance.’

  ‘So why won’t he set his team on you?’

  Saltanat consulted her watch.

  ‘Because in about twenty minutes, he’ll be lying face down in a snowdrift outside the Kulturny. Two taps, one in the back of the head to show he was executed, one in the mouth to say he’d talked.’

  She raised an eyebrow, the scar curled like a question mark.

  ‘No one saw me take him, no one knows I had anything to do with his disappearance.’ She pointed an elegant finger. ‘But his gang will remember he had a meeting this evening. At the specific demand of a Bishkek Murder Squad inspector. Think there’ll be any prizes for guessing who they’ll come looking for?’

  She was right; a bullet or a blade or a simple hit and run would be just a matter of time. But there’s one thing she didn’t know. I really didn’t care. I stared at the bare room, the peeling wallpaper, the stained chairs, and I couldn’t imagine a more accurate portrait of my life.

  Chinara wasn’t the only one who died that day; I just didn’t stop walking. The weight of death is too great a burden. It had only taken the deaths of five more women for me to discover that.

  Yekaterina, Umida, Shairkul, Gulbara, Marina; they were all watching me, just outside my vision, waiting, wondering if I would avenge them. We have an obligation to the dead, a chance at redemption, the price for continuing to live. Six bullets in the Yarygin, one to avenge each of them, and one to spare. And I knew who it was for.

  Saltanat surprised me by placing her hand over mine, her touch shockingly warm in the chill of that desolate room.

  ‘I owe you an apology, Inspector,’ she said, and her voice was, for the first time, hesitant. ‘You understand that I couldn’t know whose side you were on. Everyone can be turned, you know that. For revenge, fear, greed. And for love.’

  ‘It’s a corrupt world,’ I agreed. ‘Why should I be any different?’

  ‘I sent Tyulev to find out what you knew, to send you in the wrong direction if I thought you were getting too close to us. I told Lubashov to keep an eye on things. I shouldn’t have relied on a fuckhead like that. He saw Tyulev all secretive and confidential with you, jumped to conclusions, started shooting.’

  One mystery solved; I’d thought that I’d been set up by Yekaterina’s murderer, that it might even have been Lubashov, acting under Tyulev’s orders. That still didn’t make me feel any better about killing him.

  ‘That’s not all,’ Saltanat added. ‘The bullet left in your coat; a warning to dump the case and leave it to us. We didn’t know where you stood in all this, what you’d been ordered to do.’

  I felt a quick wave of anger smash down on me, as if a snow-laden branch had suddenly spilt its burden.

  ‘And my wife’s photo?’

  Saltanat winced at the venom in my voice.

  ‘Safe. Look on the top of your fridge when you get home. It never even left your apartment. I’m not that much of a bitch. But I had to warn you off, to be sure.’

  I reached for my phone, and she took hold of my hand.

  ‘Who are you calling?’

  I smiled, but she could see that it didn’t reach my eyes.

  ‘I’m Murder Squad, remember? If your boys haven’t already killed him, it’s my job to stop them. Face down? If he’s already dead, I want him facing Usupov on the slab.’

  ‘He killed a lot of people, Inspector, some of them your own. Isn’t Bishkek a better place with him gone?’

  ‘I’m not an executioner, Saltanat. It’s not for me to say whether he dies or not.’

  ‘I don’t think the two dead women he had butchered would think that way,’ she replied, pulling her hand away.

  Silence flooded the room again.

  ‘Let’s get out of here,’ she said, getting up and heading for the door.

  ‘How exactly? With Aydaraliev in the car, getting ready for his trip to the morgue?’

  She laughed.

  ‘What sort of safe house would this be, if there wasn’t more than one escape route? We’ll go to your apartment.’

  As she reached the door, she turned.

  ‘You can make sure your wife’s photograph is still there.’

  Chapter 37

  From a decrepit shed behind the safe house, Saltanat hauled out an elderly Ural motorcycle that looked like a relic of the Great Patriotic War, and probably hadn’t been used since then. Maybe not the quickest getaway vehicle, but I supposed the Uzbek Security Service had as little money as its Kyrgyz equivalent.

  She handed me a pair of gauntlets and a pair of goggles, so I pulled my ushanka down over my ears and almost broke my foot trying to kick-start the bike. Eventually, the engine grumbled into life, and I ferried the two of us back into Bishkek, the Ural bucking and twisting as we rode over potholed and broken roads.

  By the time we reached my apartment, I felt as if I’d been frozen deep into the heart of an iceberg. With no sensation in my fingertips, I fumbled with the key until Saltanat took pity on me and opened the door. A welcome blast of warm air hit me, thanks to the city’s central pipes.

  ‘Drink?’ I asked, heading for the window sill, wondering if Kursan had finished all my vodka. Saltanat walked into the kitchen, returning a moment later with Chinara’s photograph. I replaced it, looked at Chinara’s hair caught in the wind, tried to remember the moment.

  When you’re the one left behind, memories splinter into fragments, until the most real thing about your dead wife becomes the pictures you keep on the shelf, the scent of her perfume fading in an empty drawer.

  I took the Makarov bullet and held it up between thumb and forefinger for Saltanat to see.

  ‘The strong medicine you promised me. Still got my name on it?’ I asked.

  Saltanat had the grace to look ashamed. She shook her head and, for an instant, her beauty lit up the room. Then she caught the bullet I tossed to her, and she became the ice lady again.

  ‘Bathroom,’ Saltanat said, pushing me towards the tub. ‘A hot bath, thaw out, and then we work out our next step.’

  I was reassured by the ‘we’; I hoped it meant that she didn’t plan to kill me any time soon. But remembering how calmly she’d ended Illya’s career, I waited until she left the room before taking my Yarygin from its hiding place and tucking it underneath a towel by the side of the bath.

  Just in case.

  *

  Steam swelled and billowed up to the ceiling as I lowered myself into the tub, gritting my teeth against the heat. I could barely see across to the door, so I hoped that Saltanat didn’t decide to change her mind.

  Lying there, the heat seeping back into my bones, I thought back to what the pakhan had said.

  ‘I was asked to cause terror and confusion. Which I did.’

  I felt tired beyond exhaustion; all I wanted to do was sleep, with no dreams, none of the recent dead opening their eyes and beckoning to me.

  Terror and confusion.

  The key to all this. But a key I was incapable of turning.

  So I started on the long slide into sleep, deep and safe in the embrace of the water.

  I was more than half asleep when the bathroom door opened, and I felt a hand on my chest. For a second, I thought it was Chinara, come to tell me it was time to go to work. But then, as the hand pressed down harder and was joined by another, I realised where I was.

  Saltanat’s weight bore down on me as I struggled to sit up. Unable to move, my arms thrashing by my sides, I started to panic. But I was held fast.

  ‘Relax,’ Saltanat murmured, and I felt her hands move down from my chest and over my stomach.

  I tried to sit up, water spraying everywhere, and it was only then I discovered she was as naked as I was.

  Her hands moved lower down, taking hold of
me.

  ‘Don’t tell me you didn’t think of this when we were back in Osh,’ she said. ‘That you didn’t want me to do this.’

  And then she leant forward, and kissed me, and I was lost, as surely as if I was in a dark and lonely forest with no path to follow and no guide to lead me.

  *

  Later, after we’d stumbled to the bed, her never letting go of me, dragging me on top of her, we lay with arms and legs as entangled as the sheets, and I started to drift off into fitful sleep. A sense of guilt washed over me; the last time I’d slept with a woman in this bed was with Chinara, the night before her final trip to the hospital. I’d held her close, both of us unwilling to admit this was the end, knowing it all the same. But I’d still gone to bed with Saltanat, willingly, eagerly. Perhaps that’s another part of surviving; seeking warmth and comfort, in the arms of a stranger, even an enemy.

  I checked my phone. As I’d expected, a whole string of missed calls beckoned me, all but one from the Chief. I anticipated him ripping into me, screaming and wanting to know why the fuck I was still messing around on the Tynalieva case, one sorted out to everyone’s complete satisfaction with the corpses of Tyulev and Lubashov.

  Pointless to try to explain that they hadn’t done it. Even if I told him that the Circle of Brothers had put out a contract on her, he’d only tell me that they hired the dead men to carry it out. And if I was honest, I didn’t know how to move the case forward.

  Or if I’d see Saltanat again.

  Or, more probably, if she’d want to see me.

  I unravelled myself from the sheet and her legs, rolled over, facing away from her. The dull ache in my back reminded me that I hadn’t done this for a while. And then everything flowed into sleep and the comfort of a woman’s body beside me.

  When I woke up, I was alone, the radio playing softly in the other room. That was where I found Saltanat, a towel wrapped around herself, inspecting the spines of half a dozen well-thumbed books.

  ‘I didn’t think of you as a poetry lover, Inspector.’

  ‘Not me, my wife. You know she’s a . . . was a teacher. Physics. She always said that there were laws science couldn’t explain, but poetry could.’