I kicked the engine into life and headed toward the vague glow on the horizon that was Dubai. I’d never driven in the desert before, and I was very aware that if I got stuck, the day’s heat would kill me before nightfall. And if by some miracle rescue came along, then trouble would surely follow it.
All the rules of desert driving say that you never go out in only one vehicle, in case you get into trouble. Being stranded with no mobile connection to call for help, no GPS to ascertain your position and no other vehicle to pull you out of the sand can easily be fatal in that blistering heat.
Or, like Jamila and Lev, you just pick the wrong time, the wrong place and the wrong guy.
Somehow I managed to steer the car toward the smudge of light on the horizon, my nerves on edge, my stomach churning with fear, sore with bile and vomiting. After an hour or so, I judged I was close enough to stop and abandon the car. It would be all too easy for the authorities to track it down, and right now I needed a profile so low as to be undetectable.
I found some rags in the boot of the car, unscrewed the petrol tank cap and fed the rags in until they were soaked in fuel. I laid two on the front and back seats respectively, jammed the last one into the petrol tank. Somehow, during the beating, gravedigging and various excitements, I’d managed to keep my cigarettes and lighter. The rags on the seats lit easily enough, and I touched a flame to the one stuffed into the tank.
I turned and started to walk toward the city. Despite what you see in the movies, cars don’t suddenly erupt in a fireball. It takes a little while for the flames to spread and the heat to build up, time I used to get into the shadow of yet another construction site. The car was out of sight when I heard the dull thump of an explosion. I was outside a residential building, this one occupied, with only one or two apartments still lit up. Several cars were parked at the back of the building, and I checked each one to see if the doors had been left unlocked, keeping an eye out for a watchman.
The Porsches, BMWs and Audis were all secure, but I found an elderly Toyota whose door scraped open when I tried it. Probably used by the family’s maid to take the kids to school. No key in the ignition, but anyone who wants to stay in the police knows how to get round that. Two minutes later I was driving with minimum noise out of the gate and onto a feeder access to Sheikh Zayed Road. Now all I needed to do was get back to my hotel, clean up a little, then go discuss the night’s escapades with Lin.
I dumped the car somewhere in Karama, where it was less likely to stand out, since every other car seemed to be a Toyota as well, and made my way by a combination of foot and taxi back to my hotel. Showered, changed and looking remarkably good considering, I debated whether to call Saltanat, decided against it. I had no proof that Lev and Jamila were connected to the Chechen, and I couldn’t see Saltanat breaking cover just to give me backup. And I didn’t see Lin as being that much of a threat to me.
For what felt like the hundredth time in my short stay I walked into the Vista. The African doorman with biceps the size of my thighs nodded; after seeing me leave with Lin, I’d clearly gained respect for my stamina. Or my stupidity.
It was getting near closing time, and all around me last-minute negotiations were taking place, with prices dropping faster than in a closing-down sale. Even as I spotted Lin and walked toward her, the house lights came up, and the full horror of everyone’s choices became apparent.
Broken red veins from heavy drinking, nicotine-stained fingers and teeth, wattles drooping, skin as mottled as a week-dead chicken. It’s not distance that lends enchantment to the view, it’s darkness. And when the lights come on, the desperation is plain for everyone to see.
Lin did a double-take when she saw me and looked to see if Jamila or Lev was with me. I watched her pick up an empty beer bottle, wondered if she’d really try to hit me with it. I pried the bottle out of her fingers, feeling the last dregs flow over my fingers, the way I’d felt Lev’s blood burst onto my face. I set the bottle back down on the shelf behind Lin, made it clear that I was the one in charge.
“Lev and Jamila have been unavoidably held up,” I said, giving the smile I use to put the fear into people. “They won’t be joining us. So I thought we might go to your place, have a little chat. Friendly. No pressure.”
Lin could hardly do anything else but nod. The shock in her face at seeing me had been as harsh as the blow Lev had doled out to me. The fear in her eyes told me that she’d known what Lev and Jamila planned to do to me, that it was as if a ghost had tapped her on the shoulder and asked her to accompany him to the grave.
The line of taxis waiting to help the drunk and the horny get home stretched as far as the main road. Business is always good at that time of night, when lust and greed defeat sense and dignity. Hands slithered over buttocks, groped bulges, stroked dangerously. None of my business, but I couldn’t help thinking that at times human beings are a sad denial of evolution.
“You want a cab?” Lin asked, struggling to put a normal tone in her voice. She even put her arm through mine, so that her breast was crushed against my elbow. I let her; it was one way of blending in with the rest of the crowd.
“I don’t think so,” I said. “I’d like to revisit that lovely car park where we last met. I’ve so many happy memories, and so much has happened since that I want to share.”
Lin tried to pull away, but I tightened my grip.
“Don’t be silly, Lin,” I said, the menace in my voice as naked as a switchblade in the moonlight. “How far do you think you’d get in those heels? And you really don’t want to annoy me. Do you think anyone gives a fuck about one more dead Vietnamese hooker?”
I recognized defeat in the way she sagged against me, heard the first sniff of tears, felt the first shake of the shoulders.
“Relax,” I said. “I’m not going to hurt you. There might even be some money in it if you help me. You scratch my back and I don’t slash yours. Win-win all round, right?”
We’d reached the center of the car park, and I steered us to a spot between two parked vans where we couldn’t be seen by anyone passing. Judging by the stink of fresh piss, someone else had had the same idea before us.
“Where are Lev and Jamila?” she asked.
“Don’t worry about them; they’ll turn up sooner or later,” I said, and I was pretty sure that one day they would, maybe after the next big sandstorm. “Right now what I want to know is why did you call them?”
Lin swallowed, looked around but couldn’t spot an escape route. And I was pretty sure that when she’d taken my arm, she’d felt the weight of the Makarov in my pocket. No point telling her I was out of bullets.
“I told you before: they helped me. There aren’t many people in this city who’d do that, and most of them want something in return.”
The fear in her voice was being slowly replaced by a kind of fatalism, an acceptance that I was going to kill her. But she still tried to play the only cards she had.
“If you don’t hurt me, I’ll do anything you want. You can fuck me however you want. I’ll suck you until you scream. You can hit me, do anything. But don’t kill me. Please.”
“How old are your children?” I asked. Women like Lin always have children; it’s part of the reason they end up where they do in the first place.
“Nine, and eleven. Boy and girl.”
“Father?”
Her face registered disgust, and she didn’t bother to reply.
“They live with your mother?”
She nodded. It might have been a cliché, but that didn’t stop it being painful for her and her children. Maybe they didn’t know how their mother paid for the school uniforms and the textbooks, how there was food on the table and new shoes when they needed them. But one day they would guess, or an older kid at school would taunt them, and their childhood would be over. Worse, the daughter might follow her mother, and the circle would begin again.
Maybe Lin thought that seeing her maternal side would win me over. She was wrong. I took her chin
between my thumb and forefinger, applied just enough pressure for her to realize I was all business, and that pleasure wasn’t part of any potential bargain.
“Natasha? The Kyrgyz girl. The one I’m looking for. You have any idea where she is? Think carefully now, Lin. I’m only going to ask you once. And I’ll be very unhappy if you lie to me.”
I don’t like threatening women, but when it comes to getting the truth in a hurry, soft words aren’t enough. You need soft words backed by a knuckleduster to get your point across.
I thought of Natasha’s severed finger, of the likelihood that she’d been beaten, raped, maybe even killed and dumped as somewhere as anonymous and pathetic as Jamila and Lev’s grave. I didn’t have time for courtship and a slow dance.
“Time’s up, Lin. Time to talk. Or time to . . .” And I let my silence spell out my message, her options, or lack of them.
Chapter 41
It’s the quiet menace that gets the answers, I’ve always found. Shout and yell and scream, people think you’re angry, that the storm will pass. Make them believe you’re not issuing threats but promises, the words pour out like an avalanche high in the mountains when the ice starts to melt in the spring.
And that’s how it was with Lin.
“I liked Natasha,” she said. “I mean, she wasn’t Vietnamese, and she didn’t work like the rest of us, but she wasn’t stuck up. She must have had money not to work, but she didn’t throw her money around, try to look flash with the cash. She’d buy you a drink, maybe; a couple of times she lent me a taxi fare, money for supper, that kind of thing. But she was always interested in how you were, how things were at home, if your kids were doing well at school, you know.”
I hadn’t thought of Natasha as the world’s most considerate person, but maybe knowing she’d been hooked up with a bastard like Tynaliev had prejudiced me. But I remained unconvinced. Like hookers, mistresses learn to become mirrors, reflecting what a man wants to see, to hear, to believe. As amateur psychologists, the two professions have no rivals. A man’s ego and desires can be unpicked, analyzed and replaced without him even noticing. And then it’s the turn of his wallet.
It’s not that I don’t believe in love; I just know how hard it is to find, and more importantly to keep.
Lin looked around nervously. The police in Dubai aren’t keen on working girls meeting customers on the streets, and if she had any condoms in her bag, that could get her into serious trouble, maybe even deported.
“The thing is,” she continued, “Natasha only came to the bar to blend in with the other Kyrgyz girls. Socializing was only part of it. She believed in finding safety in a crowd. I knew she was afraid of something, or someone, but she wasn’t the sort of person who’d confide in you. She always hid behind a mask.”
I realized Lin was more perceptive than I’d given her credit for. Stay in my job long enough and you run the risk of confusing the person with the profession. It was a mistake I’d made in the past, one I always intended never to repeat. I smiled, hoping to reassure her.
“Did she ever mention anyone specific?” I asked. “Someone who was out to find her, maybe to hurt her?”
“Not really, but she was always very careful who she talked to. Men, I mean.”
“In the bar?”
“Most of the time the guys are OK, for arseholes. They get lonely, they get drunk, they get horny. Some of them paw at you like a piece of meat that they’re considering buying, but you’d be amazed how many are quite well behaved, considering.”
“But the guys she wanted to avoid?” I persisted.
“She didn’t want to talk to anybody Russian or Chechen. I guess she must have had a bad experience once.”
Remembering the severed finger delivered to my hotel, I thought “bad” was probably an understatement, but I didn’t enlighten Lin. She was scared enough already.
I decided that I wasn’t going to get any more information out of Lin unless she thought I was one of the good guys, in Dubai to help Natasha. It was something of a long shot, but right then I didn’t have a lot to lose.
I took a step back, taking away the threat of being so close, shrugged.
“You’re right about Natasha,” I said, lying with all the fluency a career in the police force will give you. “She did have a bad experience. With a boyfriend back in Bishkek. Older, married and quite important. She broke off the relationship, and he couldn’t accept her decision. That’s why she came to Dubai, to get away from him.”
“So why are you here?” Lin asked. “You’re here to drag her back to him, even though she doesn’t want to go?”
“No, he realizes he’s lost her and just wants her to know that it’s all water under the bridge as far as he’s concerned.”
I knew that the only way Tynaliev would be happy was if his money was back in his hands, tucked up in an offshore bank somewhere warm and private, and Natasha was somewhere cold and painful. But there was no need for Lin to know that.
“Do you know if she met any Chechen men?” I asked as casually as I could manage.
“I saw her talking to one man a few days ago, in Russian, but I don’t know where he was from. Not Asian though, I could tell that.”
There was no way I could know if that had been Boris, or perhaps one of his men, but it was the only assumption I could go on.
“You remember what he looked like?”
“Black hair, slicked back, and a beard. Wore a leather jacket, an expensive one. Maybe in his mid-thirties. Handsome enough but not my type.”
As if to let me know what was her type, Lin pressed her breast back against my arm, pouting at my lack of response.
The description certainly fitted Boris—and probably most of the men in Chechnya as well—but it was all I had to go on. I fumbled in my pocket, gave Lin a handful of notes.
“Get a taxi home,” I said, “and stay there for a couple of days. I think Natasha might be in trouble, and you don’t want to get involved, I promise you.”
As I walked away, I didn’t think she’d follow my suggestion. And when I looked back, she was already making her way back to the bar, hoping for one more customer. I guess for some people money trumps everything, even life.
Chapter 42
I hadn’t really expected to get any fresh information from Lin, but it was dispiriting all the same. Sometimes you hear the vital link in a case from the most unexpected mouth, but more often it’s a long trudge with no clear destination at the end. It’s not the glamorous career the Russian crime soaps show. And they don’t show the dirt and the death that goes with it either.
Back at my hotel, I put in a call to Saltanat, gave her my news, which took approximately thirty seconds, even speaking slowly.
“So you’re no further forward,” she said. Again, not a question. And I noted the “you” rather than the “we.”
“You’ve run down any leads?” I asked in my most innocent voice.
“They’ll stay submerged as long as they think I’m after them,” Saltanat said. “It’s you they’ll try to find. They’ve got ten million reasons to get in touch.”
I had the horrible feeling that I was nothing but a Judas goat, staked out in the open, waiting while Saltanat hid in the shadows with a sniper’s rifle, ready to take out the wolves as they came down from the mountains to feast. And if a shot accidentally came my way, I wondered if she’d lose any sleep over it.
“I should give it a day or two,” I said, “otherwise they’ll get suspicious. They’ll be watching me, so I should look as if I’ve given up, decided to go back to Bishkek.”
“For one of your plans, that’s quite sensible,” Saltanat said, and I could hear the humor in her voice.
I waited for a moment, just in case she decided to invite me back into her bed, but that had been clearly a one-time deal. I said goodnight, switched off my phone, lay down on my bed, wondering if sleep would ever come. When it did, fragments of my life with Chinara and the hours spent with Saltanat rolled and broke against
each other, as if their faces and bodies were somehow interchangeable. When I stumbled awake, it was in a confusion that left me nervous, sweating and profoundly weary.
I spent the next day doing all the things tourists do when they are about to go home. I bought a couple of cheap souvenirs, went to the flydubai travel office to confirm my flight, wandered around the Mall of the Emirates staring in shop windows at things I didn’t want and couldn’t afford.
I didn’t bother to look out to see if I was being followed; I could sense eyes on my back, caught the occasional glimpse of someone staring at me in the reflection of a window. The most obvious surveillance is by amateurs who try too hard, pretending to read a newspaper while peering over the top, checking their watch every thirty seconds, or carrying two jackets in case I notice one. I knew how to shake them off within five minutes, but the more convinced they were that I’d given up the hunt for Natasha, the more relaxed they would be.
I’d seen one man lurking in the hotel lobby, saw him go into the travel agent as I was walking away down the street. The girl at the desk would have confirmed I was due to fly back to Bishkek the following evening. Call it getting an alibi in advance.
Finally I’d had enough of window-shopping, and my feet had had enough of marble floors, so I stood in the shadow of a Metro station until a taxi pulled up, clambered into the back, gave the address of my hotel.
In the rearview mirror I saw two men waving for taxis that weren’t stopping. Sometimes you don’t even have to try to disappear. I settled back, began to drift off and tried to drown out the Hindi music that plays in every taxi in Dubai. All I wanted now was a shower and a break in the case.
Someone must have heard my prayers, because that’s when my phone rang. I answered, heard nothing but sobbing, the kind that rips at your eyes, chokes your throat, threatens to overwhelm you. I knew it wouldn’t be Saltanat, so that left only two possibilities: Natasha and Lin. I threw the mental dice, guessed Lin.
A Summer Revenge Page 17
