I threw up, uncontrollably, emptying my guts. And I remembered how Chinara would vomit after each treatment, her body shaking with the retching that overwhelmed her, how I would hold the bowl up to her mouth, and wipe the rank sweat away from her face.
Syrgak had both hands covering his eyes and cheek, working out just how ruined his face was.
I still had one hand cuffed to the table, but I used my free hand to pull the leg chain towards me, making sure it didn’t touch the water on the floor. I grasped it about a metre from the business end, and got ready to swing it once more if Syrgak came over to finish me off. The adrenaline was hurtling through me; one of these two shitheads must have butchered Shairkul, Yekaterina, Gulbara – and who knew who else?
But if I killed Syrgak, the trail died. And this wasn’t just about avenging the dead women.
I gripped the chain tighter, picturing how the heavy steel links would coil around Syrgak’s face, and I realised I wanted to flog the sooksin and flay every inch of skin off his worthless hide.
Once he’d told me what I needed to know.
Syrgak let out a bellow of pain and rage as his fingers told him he’d never be a male model, and he glared at me with his one remaining eye. Unless he was armed, it was a stand-off – at least, until one of us was overwhelmed by pain.
I thought of Saltanat lying dead and butchered upstairs at the hands of these two, and began to wonder if revenge wasn’t enough of an ending. Fuck catching the big guys.
That was when the door swung open again.
Chapter 43
‘I thought you were dead,’ I said, as Saltanat staggered through the door.
‘Sorry to disappoint,’ she rasped, her voice sounding torn and ripped. She looked like shit, a long streak of blood smearing her cheek and around her mouth. Her shirt was ripped and her bra hung in two halves, dangling where it had been torn apart. There was a purple bruise on her forehead and the knuckles of her left hand were swollen and dislocated. She was also naked from the waist down.
There was no time to swap anecdotes, because Syrgak lumbered towards her, face streaming blood down his cheek. He swung at Saltanat, who ducked, pivoted and lashed out with her foot. She connected with Syrgak’s groin and, as he doubled over in pain, grabbed his shoulder, slammed him head first into the wall, once, twice, and then brought her elbow down on to the nape of his neck.
Syrgak’s vertebrae splintered and cracked like twigs snapping in a midnight frost. As he collapsed to the floor, his face dragged down the wall and left a vivid red smear, like a child’s first attempt at painting. And then the only sound to be heard in the room was the breathing of the two people left alive, and the sizzle of flesh cooking on the grill.
‘Handcuff keys are in his jacket pocket. But careful, he’s hooked up to the mains.’
Saltanat grabbed a chair and threw it against the generator, dislodging the bare wires and breaking the circuit. She checked one pocket, rolled Leather Jacket’s corpse over with no sign of disgust, and found the keys. Half naked, dazed, bleeding, she still seemed more focused and professional than half the uniforms I’ve worked with.
Once she’d freed me from the cuffs and ankle chain, I made a tentative move to hug her. Not out of desire but to offer some comfort, for myself as much as for her. But she held up a warning hand, palm towards me, and I let my arms drop by my side.
Saltanat seemed to realise for the first time that she was almost naked, and looked around for something to cover herself. Streaks of blood on her face dripped down, and I saw that she was crying.
‘Is Azad . . .?’
‘He won’t bother us.’
‘You killed him?’
Saltanat wiped some blood from the corners of her mouth, then nodded.
‘Did they . . .?’
‘Yes.’
Her voice flat, expressionless.
‘Let’s find you a blanket, or something.’
‘I’m not going back upstairs.’
I nodded, understanding. If you’d just been beaten, raped and God knows what else by two psychotic thugs, the last thing you’d want to do is revisit the scene.
‘I’ll go.’
I edged past the bodies on the floor, held out my hand, but Saltanat stared down, totally absorbed. It doesn’t matter how many times you kill a man, whether in the line of duty or not, the dead stay with you, visit you in the long hours before dawn and in the brightest of sunlight. Their eyes stare at you from the reflections of shop windows, car windscreens, ripples on water. They live with you like elderly relatives with nowhere else to go, sneaking up on you unawares with a tap on the shoulder or a half-heard question. All you can do is remind yourself it was them or you, and keep on keeping on.
My hand throbbed as I climbed the stairs up to the ground floor, and then the bedrooms. It was already swollen up to twice its normal size, and the burn marks looked etched in. The muscles and tendons had tensed up, turning my fingers into a set of hooked claws, and I knew that if I didn’t get medical attention soon, the hand would be next to useless. I tried to remember if it said anything in my employment contract about disability pensions. But since I was weaponless, that wouldn’t matter if there was someone else up there waiting for me.
I followed a trail of blood spots back to an open door. I could see the edge of a bed and, just beyond that, a foot. It didn’t move, and I suspected neither would the body it was attached to. I looked round the doorframe but there didn’t seem to be anyone waiting to attack. There was a washbasin in the corner, with towels hanging from a row of hooks. As I took them, something crunched under my feet, and I looked down to see shards and fragments of a water glass, streaked and stippled with blood. That wasn’t all that was lying there.
I took a quick look at the thing that had been Azan, and saw that his shirt and hair were drenched in blood. I didn’t know who had made the terrible scream I’d heard earlier, but my money was on Azad.
Back downstairs, I handed the towels to Saltanat, looking away as she knotted them around her waist. They looked like a rather stylish multicoloured skirt, at least from a distance.
‘Mobile?’
‘No. You?’
‘Smashed.’
‘And a gun?’
Saltanat shook her head. So we were without weapons, wounded and in pain, unable to call for help, we’d just killed three members of the most ruthless gang this side of the Caucasus, and I had no idea where we were.
I knew we’d have to get moving, find shelter somewhere. Leather Jacket’s best friend might be on his way over to share a finger or two of the good stuff, and maybe cook one of my fingers into the bargain. I went through Leather Jacket’s leather jacket and came up with a set of car keys. I waved them at Saltanat, with a look of triumph I was very far from feeling, and started to head for the front door.
‘Wait,’ she said, ‘we should search the place.’
‘You’re keen to wait for their friends to arrive?’
She looked at me without blinking, and I discovered again how her eyes had no end to their depths.
‘You’re Murder Squad. Maybe we might stumble across a clue or two?’
I paused, nodded.
‘Five minutes, then we’re out of here.’
In fact, it didn’t take five minutes to search the entire house. All the rooms were empty, except for the basement, which neither of us wanted to revisit, and the bedroom. Under the bed was a black holdall, containing tightly wrapped packages full of a rust-coloured powder. Krokodil, I imagined, maybe twenty thousand dollars’ worth, enough to take a lot of addicts in Bishkek to a painful grave. There was also a gallon-sized plastic jar with a handwritten label in Chinese, full of thousands of small red and yellow capsules. I broke one open, and a grey-green powder spilt out. I sniffed at it, but there was no smell, and it wasn’t a drug I recognised.
I zipped the holdall closed and checked my watch; time to get out of there before the rest of the gang rolled up for their share of rape and torture.
I pushed the door open and a shaft of pure sunlight darted through the gap. As we stepped outside, I saw that we were only a few blocks away from my apartment. The sunlight was brutal, and my eyes throbbed in sympathy with my hand. A bus clanged past, startling us as we looked for the car.
Saltanat pointed at a beige four-door Audi. I pressed the lock control, and then we were speeding down Ibraimova. Five minutes later, I parked up the street, a discreet distance away from my building, and we headed for my apartment. A passing babushka stared at Saltanat’s unusual skirt, spotted the guns in our hands, and decided that none of this was any of her business.
Once inside, I locked the door and edged a chair against the handle for extra protection. Saltanat walked into the bedroom and took the stack of towels from the wardrobe. While she was showering, I laid some of Chinara’s clothes on the bed, wondering for the hundredth time when I was going to give them away, thankful that I hadn’t.
I called Usupov at the morgue, and explained to him that I was going to need the morning-after pill, some retrovirals and the strongest antibiotics he could lay his hands on. He agreed and didn’t ask why; his interest is only in the dead.
I bandaged my hand as best I could, made a couple more calls, put my gun on the kitchen table within easy reach, and waited.
It was almost an hour before Saltanat appeared, and the sight of her in some of Chinara’s clothes was an ice pick in my heart. Wearing something other than her customary uniform of black top and jeans, she looked more vulnerable, somehow younger. I had to remind myself that she’d just put down two of Bishkek’s most violent criminals.
‘How do you feel?’
She shrugged, opened the fridge door and pulled a face. A batchelor’s provisions: stale lepeshka, a couple of elderly tomatoes and a bottle of vodka. She took the top off the vodka and swilled some around her mouth before spitting it into the sink. She repeated this a couple of times, then recapped the bottle.
The rape hung between us like a curtain. I felt powerless, uncertain what to say or do. I’d seen more than a few sex crimes, but they’d always ended in murder. I didn’t know how to deal with a victim who’s still breathing.
‘I’ve organised some medicine,’ I said. ‘We can pick it up later. Or I’ll go and get it now, if you want.’
She said nothing, stared out of the window.
‘You want to call someone? To take you back to Tashkent?’
Still nothing.
When she did speak, it was in a flat, emotionless tone, as if describing the plot of a boring film peopled by bad actors in which nothing much happens.
‘The big one held me down while the other one ripped off my jeans.’
‘You don’t have to tell –’ I began, but she held up her hand to silence me, and continued to stare out of the window.
‘While he was inside me, he kept telling me about how they’d killed Yekaterina, how they’d just snatched her off Chui Prospekt when she was getting into her car. Outside a club, people walking past, but nobody did anything to help. They already had the foetus, in a Beta Stores plastic bag, like a joint of meat they were taking home to make shashlik. They’d driven from Karakol that morning, after killing the village girl. Their boss had told them who they were supposed to target. The Minister’s daughter, she was picked out to be the victim, she wasn’t a random choice.
‘He kept pushing and pushing in me, and he got faster and faster as he was whispering to me how he stabbed her, and how when they’d both had as many turns with me as they wanted, they’d cut me the way they’d cut her. And the big one kept sniggering, the way people do when they hear a dirty joke, and telling the other one to hurry up.
‘And he was telling me about how they sliced open Yekaterina’s belly, how hard it was to cut through the muscle, and then the knife just slid in and her blood spilt out over his wrist, hot and steaming in the night air. And she wanted to scream, as he took her life and spat it away, but his hand was over her mouth, and she could feel the cold snow against the back of her thighs start to melt as her blood warmed it, and her hips were pushing upward against the cold. And then it all started to go dark for her and the stars started to go out, slowly at first and then faster. And finally they peeled her open and dumped the foetus inside, the way you’d throw spoilt meat into the garbage, and that’s when he came inside me.
‘And I kept telling myself that at least he hadn’t tried to kiss me, to force his filthy tongue inside my mouth.’
I said nothing, but couldn’t help thinking that they hadn’t died hard enough, or slowly enough, or with enough excruciating pain. My hand hurt, and I realised I’d clenched it into a fist.
‘He rolled off me, and the big one moved to take his place. But he couldn’t get hard, so he pushed it against my mouth. He pulled my jaw open, forced himself in. So I bit down, as hard as I could. And he screamed, he was punching the side of my head, and I had to let go. The other one dived at me, and I grabbed the glass on the bedside table and held it out. He tried to pull back, but the glass broke in his face. I slashed at his throat and missed, and he tumbled off the bed. So I used the glass on the big one, and I cut at his neck and suddenly there was blood spurting through the air, and he took his hands away from me and put them to his neck, but the blood kept spurting through his fingers, and down his shirt and on to the bed. He was grunting and choking, bleeding out, his eyes open with panic, and I kicked him away from me.
‘The other one got up off the floor so I lunged at him with the glass, and he turned and ran out of the door. I didn’t know where you were; I didn’t know if you were dead. So I went over to the big one and I stabbed him in the eyes, and then he stopped whimpering and started screaming like an animal again, and I had to shut him up so I jabbed at his throat and he still wouldn’t stop so I cut his throat again with the jagged edge of the glass, and then he stopped.’
And then neither of us spoke for a long time, as she stared out of the window.
We watched the sky darken and turn all the different shades of blue into night.
Chapter 44
It was completely dark when we headed out. The pain from my hand throbbed like ice and fire over my wrist, and I knew that if I didn’t get to a hospital soon, infection would race up my arm and finish what Aydaraliev’s men hadn’t. But I was pretty sure the hospitals would be watched, and there’d be no percentage in me saving my arm if the rest of me ended staring sightlessly up on a slab.
There are no street lights outside my building – precious few in Bishkek – so we had the advantage of cover, even if it also shortened the odds of someone creeping up on us without being spotted. But I figured the pakhan’s remaining forces would be in disarray after the call I’d made to the station, saying where to find the bodies and suggesting the three dead gang members were the victims of a takeover bid. An anonymous call: I didn’t know who I could trust, and the last thing I needed was to tell some krisha hoping to earn a few som exactly where we were and what we’d done.
There was enough snow to show us the path but, even so, I was cautious as we walked down towards the street. Then, as we reached the row of bushes beyond the path, twin headlights snapped into action, turning our shadows into elongated stickmen lying in the snow.
Saltanat had her gun up and ready to shoot in a second, but I pushed her arm down. A gang hit, and we’d already have been sprayed with a dozen rounds.
‘Relax, it’s fine,’ I said, but Saltanat kept her finger on the trigger.
We reached the SUV, where Kursan was grinning at us through the windscreen. He beckoned for us to hurry up, then killed the headlights; anyone watching would be momentarily dazzled. We clambered in and set off at speed for Chui Prospekt, Kursan switching the headlights back on only when we reached the first intersection. He hurtled around a matr
ushka minibus, crashed a red light, left a string of curses in his wake. Saltanat kept watch out of the rear window, until she was reasonably certain we weren’t being followed.
At the Metro Bar, Kursan pulled a hard right, heading down towards Frunze, past the University. He finally parked opposite the Grand Hotel, a new building that already looked as if it had seen better days. Even though we were only a few blocks from the White House, the streets were deserted.
‘I booked a couple of rooms here, fourth floor. As long as no one knows where you are, no one can kill you, right?’
Kursan stood watch while we checked in, strictly cash, adjoining rooms. I was certain Saltanat wouldn’t want to share a bed, or anything else, with a man for a long time.
We inspected each room in turn, and then headed back to the lobby. Kursan had moved the car further down a side street, so that it wasn’t visible from the main road, and he was waiting for us in the Dragon’s Den, the small restaurant and bar on the corner. We joined him and I ordered chai for myself, vodka for Kursan, coffee for Saltanat.
We sat away from the couples at the bar, so I could watch the street. I’d come here with Chinara, during our last summer. The European owner had gone to some trouble to make the place attractive: art photographs of Kyrgyz scenes on the red-painted walls, a long wood-topped bar and a display of bottles on the shelving against one wall. Chinara always claimed that the vegetarian pelmeni soup and manti dumplings were better there than anywhere else in Bishkek. And for all I knew, she might have been right. I could picture her, at the bar, drinking Baltika beer and dipping her portion of manti into chilli sauce with her fingers, flicking her hair back away from her face.
I shivered, not with the cold. Bishkek is a city of ghosts for me.
‘So what’s your plan?’ Kursan asked. ‘You get any further sorting this shit out?’
I told him about the men we’d respectively emasculated, electrocuted, stabbed or executed in the past forty-eight hours. His eyes opened wide when I told him about the death of the pakhan. He’d heard the news but, like everyone else, had assumed it was a gang war or an internal job.
A Killing Winter Page 21