An Autumn Hunting

by Tom Callaghan

  The idea made me shudder; a few years ago, the Kyrgyz prison system made worldwide headlines when the prisoners stitched their mouths closed with wire to protest at their conditions. How could a Thai prison be worse? I wondered, then decided I never wanted to find out.

  ‘What have you done?’ I asked, slightly terrified at the deviousness of the mind of the woman I loved.

  ‘About two hours ago, someone sent an anonymous email to the chief of police here in Bangkok. From an untraceable address via a privacy-guaranteed foreign server.’

  ‘Go on.’

  ‘There were several grainy photographs attached, all of which showed a very well-known and powerful drug dealer at home. Taken from a distance with a telephoto lens, without the subject’s knowledge. Terrible photographs, but at least they’re in focus.’

  Saltanat held her hand up to her mouth and did her best to look shocked, and I couldn’t resist a smile myself.

  ‘They won’t show them on TV, for obvious reasons: they would risk criminal charges themselves. Photographs of Quang proudly standing in front of a poster of the King and Queen, on which someone had given them both a huge moustache and beard. Another which showed the King’s head transposed onto the body of a porn star at work. A female porn star. And others; you get the idea. Completely offensive, completely insulting, completely fake.’

  ‘All Photoshopped?’

  ‘What do you think?’

  ‘The police will act upon this?’

  ‘They have to, since the email also went to the editors of all the leading newspapers, including the Royal Thai Government Gazette, with the threat to send them to foreign newspapers if Quang wasn’t arrested.’

  ‘And the images were Photoshopped? By you?’

  ‘Do I look like a computer geek to you?’

  Saltanat gave me another of her ‘what an idiot’ looks, then bestowed her most ravishing smile at the approaching waitress, pointed at the TV, asked for the news channel. The sound was muted, but since we didn’t speak Thai, that didn’t matter: the images were more than clear enough.

  Chapter 45

  A tank lumbered up to the gates of Quang’s villa, looking like some squat metallic elephant, and didn’t stop when it got there. The gates disappeared under the tank tracks as if made of butter, and the walls on either side disintegrated. Two trucks filled with armed policemen pulled up and we watched as Quang’s villa was stormed with all the methodical precision of an invasion. The tank reversed away, and more of the walls shuddered, shook, collapsed.

  A senior army officer held his hand up in front of the broadcaster’s camera, then decided to let the crew continue to film. After a few moments, Quang was led out of the rubble surrounding his home, handcuffed and wearing shackles around his ankles. His normally immaculate suit looked stained and torn, and a bloody bruise on one side of his face suggested he’d been subdued ‘while resisting arrest’. He was frogmarched to the nearest truck, manhandled into the back, disappearing from sight under the green canvas. Several soldiers jumped in after him, and the truck rolled down towards the motorway and out of sight.

  ‘I don’t think Quang will be looking for you for a while.’ Saltanat smiled. ‘A few nights in Klong Prem Central Prison should keep him out of your hair. We should be long away by then.’

  I was silent, wondering just how many bridges I’d burnt, how many I could still cross.

  ‘You’d better hope you’re worth more to Aliyev alive than dead,’ Saltanat added, putting down her half-drunk champagne. ‘Who knows, you might even be part of their future deal; your head in exchange for a handshake.’

  It wasn’t a reassuring thought.

  A screen on the wall told us it was time to board our flight. We showed our boarding passes and headed down the tunnel to find our seats. For me, it was still a novelty to turn left on a plane instead of right, but Saltanat handled it with the effortless charm that suggested she’d been born to wealth and privilege. I knew the truth about her growing up in an orphanage, but had to admire the way she slipped into a role with no hesitation. I also wondered if I would ever truly know what lay behind all the façades she adopted to protect herself.

  My heartbeat slowed from a frantic drumbeat to a relaxed rhythm as I heard the wonderful clunk of the aircraft door being shut. I watched through the porthole as we slowly began to reverse from the terminal. Even so, I didn’t feel at ease until I felt the wheels rise up from the runway, saw the million lights of the city sprawling below me.

  With just over two hours to go before we landed in Malaysia, the tension emptied out of my body, and I fell asleep even before the plane had reached cruising altitude. Saltanat woke me a moment later as we started to descend. For a second I wondered if we’d had to turn back to Bangkok, if there would be a police reception party waiting for us on the tarmac. But Saltanat nodded towards the window. ‘KL,’ she said, and smiled. Perhaps she was as relieved to be out of Bangkok as well.

  The diplomatic passport got us through immigration in quick time, and with no bags to collect, we were in the taxi rank in just a few moments. Just to be on the safe side, Saltanat let three people behind us take the next taxi, before crossing the road, with me in tow, and taking the second of the black limousines that hoped for rich customers. I would have been content with a regular taxi, but I knew Saltanat was cautious about any possible danger. The fact she was always alert impressed me yet again.

  In the limousine, she made a hotel reservation, using the driver’s phone, with what looked like a black credit card to pay for the booking. I sat back and shivered in the air conditioning, knowing that once I was outside, I’d be drenched in sweat in minutes. The constant changing from tropical to sub-zero temperatures was exhausting: at least in Kyrgyzstan I understood the changing seasons.

  ‘I need to eat,’ Saltanat said as we paid off the limousine and walked into the elegant lobby of the Concorde Hotel. ‘You?’

  I shook my head, the rush of adrenalin had left me too exhausted to do anything but fall onto a bed and pass out into a coma. She spoke to the concierge, received an envelope, headed to the lift, beckoning me to follow, not looking behind to see if I did. And I did; perhaps I really was that tame.

  In the lift, I stared at the haggard man who gazed back at me. An ill-fitting suit that looked as if I’d slept in it (which I had), cheap shoes, hair that needed cutting, dark circles under despairing eyes. I was amazed the hotel had let me through the revolving door.

  My mood wasn’t improved by the opulence of the suite we let ourselves into. It brought home to me the bitter truth I’d spent my entire career sleeping in flea palaces, paying for tasteless food out of my own usually empty pocket. The Uzbek Security Service obviously had a more generous attitude towards expenses than the Bishkek authorities, maybe because they were guarding rich and influential people. I just spent my time hunting down nobodies who’d murdered other nobodies, usually for the most stupid or trivial of reasons.

  I lay on the bed as Saltanat announced she was going to shower and disappeared into the bathroom. I felt exhausted; more than that, sick at heart. I felt I was on a ride that could only end in death at someone’s hands. Too many enemies and too little worth fighting for. Even if Saltanat decided to keep our child, there was no way we could ever be a family. Too much blood and too many deaths, including my own, stood between us and any future. Neither of us were likely to change our ways. Perhaps I’d abandoned any chance of that when I joined the police force. The best I could offer Saltanat was to keep away from her, and I suspected that would suit her just fine.

  Out of curiosity I looked at the envelope Saltanat had placed on the bedside table, noticed the flap had come undone. I looked inside, half expecting to see what was there. I wasn’t wrong. A PSM pistol, presumably fully loaded. Saltanat must have had amazing contacts to get an illegal gun delivered to her so quickly. But then, if you’re an international assassin, how else could you do the job? I put the envelope back on the table, lay down on the bed once more
.

  The sound of the shower running was soothing enough to begin to lull me into sleep when there was a knock on the door. Room service; Saltanat had clearly ordered food. I pulled myself up, opened the door, dazed with sleep. Found the very last person I expected to see.

  Achura.

  Chapter 46

  ‘Pleased to see me?’ Achura said, pushing her way into the room, kicking the door shut behind her. She was wearing some kind of maid’s uniform, presumably so she could walk around the hotel without attracting attention. I wondered if a naked dead woman was stuffed into a laundry basket deep in the bowels of the hotel; that would be Achura’s style. She kicked off her black stiletto heels, flexed her feet and started to walk towards me.

  ‘Clever trick with Quang. But I’m not stupid. I knew you were coming to Malaysia ten minutes after you checked in. We have friends at the airline, in immigration, even at the front desk downstairs.’

  I noticed the singsong pidgin had vanished, replaced by an American accent. Clearly, I’d underestimated Achura’s determination and loyalty, dismissed her as a kathoey and therefore of no importance. It was a mistake that was probably going to kill me.

  I backed away and rolled onto the bed, landing on my feet on the other side. Achura advanced with all the effortless grace of one of the snow leopards that hunt in the Tien Shan mountains. The sticking plaster across her nose gave her the look of some ancient tribal warrior, wild and untameable. She touched the tip of her nose, grimaced.

  ‘I didn’t expect this. And yes, it hurts. But nothing compared to what you’re going to suffer. I know you’re expecting it. Then once I’ve dealt with you, I’ll see to that bitch in the shower. I’ll show you just how kind and considerate I can be; she won’t even know what hit her. Just blackness for ever.’

  I looked around for something to throw, a vase, a lamp, anything to slow her down, found nothing. Saltanat was quietly singing in the shower, the water drowning any noise I could make to alert her. In a few seconds Achura would kill me, then Saltanat would emerge from the bathroom to meet the same end.

  Achura feinted a few blows at my face, a kick to my chest, but I could tell she was toying with me, the way a cat does when killing something weaker and smaller. Achura sidestepped the punch I threw as if I’d blown smoke at her, kicked me again. I felt a rib crack, knew that in a couple of minutes it wouldn’t matter.

  ‘Maybe I should break your nose,’ Achura wondered, jabbing at my face with those merciless fists. ‘Or kick your balls up into your spine. Gouge out an eye.’

  I retreated for a couple of steps, felt the edge of the bedside table on the back of my legs, prepared to die.

  And that was when my hand touched the envelope.

  I’ve never moved as quickly as I did then, knowing that if I fumbled the envelope, knocked it to the floor, I was dead. But years of practice had given my muscles the memory to grab the gun and aim it at Achura’s face.

  ‘Kick my balls up into my spine?’ I managed to say. ‘I’m sure you’d like yours removed altogether.’

  I resisted the temptation to point the gun at Achura’s crotch and fire. It wouldn’t be immediately fatal, and that would give her all the time she needed to kill me.

  ‘I don’t think you’ve got the guts to kill a woman, Borubaev,’ she said, her voice low, hypnotic.

  ‘Wrong,’ was all I said, and pulled the trigger.

  The shot took her just above her left cheek, a sudden red-black hole appearing as if by magic. The look of anger drifted into nothingness as she fell back to the floor. The sound of the shot had been appallingly loud, and Saltanat rushed out of the bathroom. She took the situation in at a glance, grabbed the TV remote, found an action movie and turned up the sound so more gunshots echoed around the room.

  Saltanat stared at the corpse, then at me. Her look was accusing.

  ‘Why didn’t you call me?’

  ‘I was a little busy,’ I said, pissed off her first response had been to criticise me. She must have recognised I had a point, because she didn’t reply, knelt down beside Achura.

  Apart from the hole in her forehead, there was remarkably little blood. Low calibre bullets tend to create a small entry wound, then bounce around inside the skull, turning the brain into porridge before coming to rest.

  ‘You ever think of looking before you open the door?’ she asked, switching on her mobile and uttering a string of instructions in Uzbek.

  ‘Let me get dressed, we go and eat. When we’re back here, she won’t be. Another mess of yours my people have to clean up. And we need to talk about the rest of this mess as well.’

  ‘I don’t want to disagree with you,’ I began, ‘but you decided we would come to Kuala Lumpur, decided which hotel we would stay at. And if Achura had killed me, what would you have done, unarmed and naked?’

  ‘If you want to argue, you can stay here,’ Saltanat said, refusing to lose the argument, picking up her bag and heading for the door, ‘but I’m going to eat.’

  *

  I’ve had more companionable meals; Saltanat savaged a piece of semi-raw meat the size of a plate, while I picked at an omelette. Neither of us spoke, and the waiter could tell the temperature at our table hovered somewhere around absolute zero. Finally I pushed my plate aside, reached over, took her hand. She started to pull away, but for once I didn’t let go straight away.

  ‘You’re pregnant,’ I said, in my most matter-of-fact voice, ‘and I’m the father. So we both have to act like grown-ups and make some serious decisions.’

  Saltanat looked at me, and for a second I could have sworn she had tears in her eyes. Or perhaps it was just pollen from the rose on our table, and I was giving her the benefit of the doubt.

  ‘You think I haven’t thought about that?’

  ‘I’m not saying that,’ I said, waving the waiter away as he came to clear the plates and probably eavesdrop, ‘but once we’re out of this mess, we have to decide what to do next.’

  ‘Akyl, you’re the one in a mess, not me,’ Saltanat said. ‘I’m not the one on the run, I’ve got a country, a home to go to. You’ve got nothing, except a life expectancy you could time with a stopwatch. And you want to know what I’m going to do about this baby?’

  Her laugh combined amusement, anger and sorrow in equal doses.

  ‘If I keep it, and if it’s a boy, I’ll name him Akyl, after his late father. There; happy now?’

  ‘And if it’s a girl?’

  ‘Then I’ll call her Akyla, because of her lack of balls.’

  ‘Why do we have to fight about this?’ I said, reaching for her hand again, watching her pull away.

  ‘Because you’re going to be dead soon, and that will break my heart.’

  And with that, she pushed her chair back and stalked out of the door, leaving me to pay the bill.

  Chapter 47

  As Saltanat had organised, Achura’s body was gone, perhaps transported in a laundry basket. There was going to be hell in the morning when it was time to wash the sheets and pillowcases.

  ‘Do you wish you and Chinara had kept your baby?’

  We were lying in bed together, close but not quite touching, having wordlessly agreed on a truce once I got back to the room. It was a question I’d often asked myself, both before her death and after, and I’d never been able to resolve the issue in my mind.

  ‘Hard to bring up a child without a mother,’ I said. ‘Almost cruel, even.’

  ‘And what if there is no father?’

  ‘That’s a little different,’ I said. ‘Look how many Kyrgyz fathers don’t see their children from one year to the next. I don’t mean the ones who just get divorced once they get bored of the sex and the responsibilities, I’m thinking of the ones who go to Moscow to work shit jobs for shit pay, so they can send roubles home. They’ve got no choice, so the kids grow up under their mother’s influence. Is the absence of a father good or bad? I don’t know, but for most people there isn’t a choice.’

  ‘So you think
I should keep it?’

  ‘I can’t tell you what to do, Saltanat, I never have been able to do that. It has to be your choice, but I’ll support you totally in whatever you decide.’

  We lay there in silence, until I felt her hand reach over, take mine. I rolled towards her as she did the same, our heads colliding in the dark. I winced, awakening the bruise from the headbutt I’d given Achura, then felt Saltanat’s hand on the back of my neck, her breasts soft against my chest, her thighs tight and determined against mine.

  We kissed, hesitant at first, the way you do after an argument, when you’re not sure if the bond between you has fully returned, then with more passion as the memory of being a couple surged back again. And then all memory dissolved into the moment . . .

  It was still dark when Saltanat shook me awake from a dream in which Achura kept advancing towards me, a grim smile on her face, while I pumped bullet after bullet into her with no effect.

  ‘I’ve put the do-not-disturb notice on the door, so we’ve got at least until noon to get out of here, and out of Malaysia,’ she said. ‘Don’t worry, I’ve already booked our tickets while you were asleep.’

  I sat up and looked around the room. I knew that half an hour after we left, I’d remember nothing about it, and it struck me I’d lived a lot of my life in just such a fashion. And the things I did remember were precisely those I wanted to forget.

  ‘You’ve got time for a shower,’ Saltanat said, throwing a towel at me, ‘or I’m not sitting next to you on the plane.’

  ‘Where are we going?’ I asked, heading for the bathroom door. ‘Or is it a secret?’

  ‘It’s time to end this. I’m sure you’ll be pleased. You’re going to Kyrgyzstan.’

  *

  ‘I wonder how Quang enjoyed his first night in captivity. A very different Bangkok Hilton to the one he’s used to,’ I said, with a certain malicious satisfaction.