A Killing Winter

by Tom Callaghan

  I unfastened my jacket, tapped my hip, felt the reassuring heft of my gun. Not the standard issue Makarov pistol, but a Yarygin I liberated from a hash smuggler over in Karakol. More kick, and seventeen rounds in the magazine. Kulturny.

  I stared at the door, gave it an experimental kick and waited. Nothing: silence bounced off the snow. I raised my hands in the air, and beckoned for the door to be opened. Still nothing. I pantomimed looking at my watch, shrugged and made a cutting gesture across my throat. But just as I was about to head to the station and return with a sledgehammer, the door swung outwards. With it came an unholy reek of piss, fried pelmeni dumplings and stale beer.

  A shaven head emerged, dotted with blue-black cobwebs – prison tattoos. Steroid-built muscles coiled and wriggled down arms bare in spite of the cold. A ripped T-shirt and greasy camo pants. Almost two solid metres of thug. Mikhail Lubashov, ‘of interest to Sverdlovsky Police Department’, as they say in court.

  I’d sent him down once before for administering a beating that left an Uzbek gang member in a coma, so Mikhail wouldn’t have taken kindly to me tapping on his door. But he’d have more sense than to keep me out, if he wanted the bar to stay open. Losing money wouldn’t sit well with his masters, and a coma of his own would be the least he could hope for if I shut the place down for a week or two.

  ‘Inspector –’

  ‘Past’ zahlopni, packun!’

  Mikhail didn’t take kindly to being told to shut his mouth, or to being called a little prick, but I thought I could live with the disappointment. Being pretty antikulturny myself when I choose to be, I decided it was best to let Mikhail know what was what from the off. I didn’t mind him hating me, as long as he feared me.

  ‘The usual collection of alkashi downstairs?’

  The naked Madonna on Mikhail’s biceps flexed her tits as he shrugged. Not one to give anything away, Mikhail settled for giving me the prison-yard stare. He liked to hint that he had been involved in the kidnap and disposal of Chechen mafia boss Movladi Atlangeriyev in Moscow a few years ago, but that was strictly to impress the punters. The cobwebs on his skull might have boasted to the world that he was a murderer, but Mikhail kept the tattoo on his belly that told the world he had a thing for kids well hidden. You don’t want everyone to know you’re a sex criminal, especially if you’re a paedo.

  I looked around and down the street. Empty, no one to witness any trouble, and that suited me just fine. I pulled my jacket open, let Mikhail see that I was on official business and tooled up. I knew about the baseball bat behind the door. And he knew I didn’t fuck about, not any more.

  ‘Mikhail, don’t take the piss.’

  He still said nothing, but stepped aside. The stairs down into the bar looked as inviting as a trip into the sewers. No lights; the darkness gaped like a broken mouth.

  ‘If any shit comes my way, Mikhail, I won’t take kindly to it, understand? Especially from an aborted shit like you. A single turd and I’ll cut you a new hole.’

  Mikhail pondered this for a moment, as if studying a particularly hard sentence about dialectical materialism, then nodded.

  I pushed past and headed downstairs into the dark, like falling into a nightmare.

  At the bottom of the stairs, a corridor that stank of piss and fear led towards another battered door, this one half open and as tempting to enter as an old hooker’s mouth.

  I went in.

  Two of the five overhead lights were blown, and another two simply lacked bulbs, so the atmosphere reminded me of my office back at the station. But my office didn’t boast a collection of thugs, alcoholics and prostitutes. Well, not every day, at any rate.

  A ripped and torn poster showed the ravages of drugs on a young girl’s face, her front teeth missing, blackened stitches above one eyebrow, deadness in her eyes. The headline read: ‘BEFORE KROKODIL, I HAD A DAUGHTER. NOW, I HAVE A PROSTITUTE.’ Underneath, someone had written in a shaky hand: ‘SO I’VE BEEN ABLE TO GIVE UP THE DAY JOB.’ Very kulturny.

  There were several mugshot faces dotted about the room, and a couple of hookers stroking a drunken civilian’s hair, but I finally spotted the guy I was hunting. Even in this light, leaning by the bar, glass of bootleg vodka in hand, Vasily Tyulev wasn’t difficult to pick out. Half the Kumtor gold mine’s annual output hung around his thick acne-spattered neck or pushed his stumpy fingers apart.

  ‘Vasily, how are you, whoreson?’

  Now the funny thing was that Vasily really was the son of a whore, but he preferred not to be reminded about it whenever we met. So I saw it as part of my official duty to protect the public by citing him on every occasion as an example of the awful consequences of unsafe sex.

  Vasily kept up his mother’s tradition by running a string of second-rate girls out of a run-down apartment over on Jibek-Jolu, but until the last revolution he’d also had a neat scam, telling the gullible he was the nephew of the president, a fixer without compare, the man to make magic happen and problems disappear. Not true, of course, but I was always amazed how many people would hand over a bundle of som in the hope it would buy some favours. Of course, after the last revolution – when the president fled the country, taking only a dozen large suitcases and the country’s savings with him – Vasily got a fair number of threats from people who suddenly wanted their money back. Which was why he kept Mikhail Lubashov around, as a head bodyguard and thug.

  Vasily was a pretty shitty human being, but he kept his ears to the ground, his eyes open and his mouth shut, except when I wanted answers.

  Which is what he did then, as he took a final drag of his papirosh, dropped the butt to the floor, ground it out with his heel and spat on the floor. He looked over at me, one bushy eyebrow raised, and jabbed at his mouth with his thumb. I nodded at the unspoken question, and snapped my fingers at the barman as he reached for a particularly dodgy bottle.

  ‘Nyet, top-shelf stuff, the Vivat.’

  The barman reached for a half-empty square bottle, and I shook my head.

  ‘Unopened.’

  The barman nodded, and put a full bottle in front of me. He didn’t ask for money; there was never any question of me paying in there. In dives like the Kulturny, the house ‘vodka’ is one part petrol, one part piss, two parts poison: with an unopened branded bottle, you stand a slight chance of making it home before cirrhosis or blindness set in.

  I picked up the glass before the barman had time to pour, gave it a wipe with my shirt tail, holding it up to the light, checking for smears. I took my time, reminded everyone who was the boss around here. We do things my way, in my time, or we all pay a visit to the tiled and soundproofed room in the basement of the Sverdlovsky Station.

  I poured a glass, left it untouched; it’s not been unknown for someone to slip a knockout into a likely punter’s drink, then roll them once they’ve passed out. I ran my finger round the cold rim of the glass and looked over at Vasily. Expensive leather jacket, Versace jeans, spotless white Nikes. But he still looked like a third-rate thug, the ’roid-rash covering his neck, the gold-coin rings rapping on the bar as he raised his glass and put the contents down with one swift, practised swallow.

  ‘So, Inspector, a social call?’

  I rolled my eyes, poured him another shot.

  ‘I heard about your wife. If you ever need, you know, a spot of physical relaxation, just call me. On the house.’

  I winced at the thought of fucking one of Vasily’s skank hookers, and resolved to rip his tongue out with pliers if he ever mentioned my wife again. Vasily mistook my look for one of anguish at my loss, and tried to look sympathetic.

  ‘It’s about a girl.’

  Vasily shrugged.

  ‘It usually is when you come to see me, Inspector.’

  ‘Murdered.’

  ‘If she was strolling down Sovietskaya without a care in the world, you wouldn’t be looking me up, would you?’

  A hint of cheek, which I lost no time slapping down.

  ‘A prick up your arse, V
asily.’

  ‘The girl on Ibraimova?’

  I nodded. Whatever else Vasily was, he was well informed. Maybe from a squealer back at the station, given a bonus every week for a few bites of information here and there.

  ‘Nasty.’

  I nodded again, waiting for Vasily to volunteer more, but he just shrugged again.

  ‘Not good for your business, a killing like that.’

  ‘It’s got my girls worried, I can tell you that. I’m giving Mikhail a few extra som to keep an eye on the place.’

  ‘You’re all heart, Vasily.’

  ‘A businessman is all, Inspector.’

  He paused and looked at me more closely.

  ‘Not a regular sex killing, then? We don’t usually see the police as concerned as this when a crazy guts a moorzilka.’

  ‘Someone else been asking?’

  ‘No.’

  But the way he hesitated before speaking made me think that I wasn’t the only one on the trail.

  ‘The word is that she was cut up bad, real bad. So you’re looking for her killer?’

  ‘No, not yet.’

  ‘Then what are you looking for?’

  ‘The other victim. Another woman.’

  Vasily looked knowing. About the woman not being a regular street girl. About her gutted womb. And the foetus dumped inside her. Vasily’s squealer deserved an extra wad of som that month.

  ‘Who told you?’

  I was getting very tired of Vasily’s shrug. Disrespectful. And more important, wasting my time.

  ‘Word gets about, you know how people gossip.’

  I decided it was time to hunt down Vasily’s little blabbermouth, and tweak his tongue. Then Vasily surprised me.

  ‘Have you thought there may not be another victim? Maybe the baby was newborn, unmarried mother decides to dump the shame, killer finds it and decides it’s time to start cutting?’

  I lit another cigarette, gave myself time to consider.

  ‘Maybe she was his girlfriend, he wants kids, she won’t give him a son, he goes crazy, they fight, it gets out of hand, and she ends up under the birch trees.’

  No, I’d already convinced myself that this wasn’t a spontaneous murder, no blood-stained knife thrown away in a panic, no tyre tracks or footprints to give us a clue. There was someone out there who loved the power; the resistance and give when you took the knife that you’ve lovingly whetted and honed and drew it across someone’s flesh. But there was no reason why Vasily needed to know that.

  ‘Save the detecting for me. You hear anything? Anybody kinky giving your girls a weird feeling?’

  Vasily half laughed, revealing a set of teeth that were half grey, half gold.

  ‘My clientele as killers? It’s the best they can do to get a stiff one most of the time, they’re so drunk. I swear, when they come, it’s not spunk, it’s pivo.’

  He paused, remembered and started to reminisce.

  ‘There was a guy, couple of years back, he had a thing for Irina – you know, the Uzbek from Jalalabad, the one with only one tit? Wanted to bite her remaining nipple off. Total crazy. Offered to pay, took out a roll of notes big enough to stuff a cushion. But I said to him, what use is damaged goods to me? Didn’t like that, tried to cut up rough.’

  ‘This pork-chewer, you know his name? Where he is?’

  ‘First question? No idea. Second? You know the runway extension out at Manas Airport? The one for the transport planes at the US base? Couldn’t say where exactly, but he’s under it. Happy digging.’

  ‘Vasily, you’re as much use as a split condom. But if I hear that you know something, and you decide to keep it all to your shit-rotten self, then zhopu porvu margala vikoliu, understand?’

  Vasily nodded, sombre. When an Inspector promises to rip you a new arse and then poke out your eyes, it tends to focus the mind. Vasily slipped another mask on to his face, the one of genuine concern and community duty.

  ‘It’s terrible, terrible, that murders like these happen,’ he said. ‘That poor girl.’ He shook his head at the iniquity of the world, before the mask slipped. ‘Besides, it’s bad for business.’

  ‘You’re all heart, Vasily,’ I said, and pinched his cheek, not like a babushka with her favourite grandson, but hard enough to make his eyes water and his head twist forward. For a second, I thought I’d provoked him enough to kick off, and I slipped my hand towards the Yarygin. He saw my move, and settled back, rubbing his cheek.

  ‘Always a joker, Inspector, always good to see you.’

  I gave him the hard stare until his gaze broke, and then walked to the door. My shoulder blades itched, but he didn’t have the balls to try anything. Not that day, at any rate. But I didn’t feel really comfortable until I was up the stairs and out on the street. There was no sign of Lubashov, never a bad thing, and the freezing air tasted sweet and clean.

  It had started to snow again, and the tracks I’d made earlier were already half hidden; a couple of hours, and it would be as if I’d never existed. I thought of the young woman under the trees and the soft white flakes that bloomed on her body, of Chinara and the earth that covered her face, and my cheeks were wet with snow, or perhaps tears. For perhaps the thousandth time, I wondered how I could carry on in a world where love always ends. And for the thousandth time, I told myself that no one really dies until there is no one left to remember them. All any of us can do is try to weather each storm, and help the ones we love to do the same.

  I spat to flush the bar’s rancid stink out of my mouth, and started trudging through the snow towards home. But I’d only walked a couple of blocks from the club when I heard the crunch of footsteps behind me, not quite a run, coming up fast.

  The Yarygin was already in my hand, safety catch off, as I swung round to face my future.

  Chapter 5

  I was a split second away from aiming and pulling the trigger when I saw that it wasn’t Lubashov or one of his droogs about to deliver a coup de grâce.

  ‘For fuck’s sake!’

  The kind of squeaky voice you hear when a grim middle-aged slag tries to convince you that she’s young and desirable, despite the overwhelming evidence. At least this one was young, but you’d have needed a lot of vodka on board to find her desirable. Skirt just about covering her moneymaker, thick legs turning blue with cold, trowelled make-up and a cleavage of plucked chicken skin. She started to walk towards me, reaching into her handbag.

  ‘Staying right where you are will do just fine,’ I said, all too aware that I’d been about to blow a teenage prostitute out of her fake leather boots. I holstered the Yarygin and put my hand in my pocket, where she couldn’t see it shake.

  ‘And you can take your hand out slowly,’ I added. Most of these girls carry razors, and more scars are something I don’t need. Her face revealed annoyance and fear as she took out her cigarettes, tapped one from the pack and waved it at me for a light. I ignored it so, with a melodramatic sigh, she rummaged in her bag for her lighter. Smoke mingled with her breath on the air, making her head disappear into a thick blue fog for a brief second.

  ‘You don’t remember me?’

  As she drew deeply on her cigarette and plumed the smoke upwards, I looked at her. Something about her was familiar, but she could have been a thousand working girls I’ve seen over the years, defiant outside, broken and cowed inside. The same lacklustre hopes beaten out of her by poverty, drugs and the fists of a hundred men.

  Her eyes stared back at me, black and unreadable, marbles in the pallor of her face.

  ‘Shairkul? You remember? You helped me a couple of years back?’

  I shrugged.

  ‘Outside Fire and Ice at closing time? Some bitch tried to stab me, when her punter decided I’d be the better ride. I punched the cow out, and you stopped me doing worse.’

  A memory surfaced. I vaguely remembered taking a knife out of some girl’s hand, throwing it in the gutter and telling her to piss off before I took her down the station. I’d given her a
few som and bullied a reluctant taxi driver into taking her home. Maybe this was her, but maybe not. Shairkul, meaning ‘joyful’, but there was nothing very joyful about her.

  ‘You could have arrested me, but you didn’t. So I owe you.’

  I stayed silent. Gratitude isn’t something you generally expect from a working girl. Life throws enough shit at them without them having to drop to their knees at the memory of a good deed, or do any favours once they’re there. She might have had something to tell, but I didn’t expect her to volunteer the information.

  ‘I saw you talking to Vasily. In the bar.’

  Now I placed her. One of the two hookers in the corner, getting a punter to rise to the bait.

  ‘You were asking about the murder up on Ibraimova, weren’t you?’

  ‘And if I was?’

  ‘I might be able to help you.’

  ‘You know who she was?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘You know who killed her?’

  ‘No.’

  Shairkul smiled, revealing a wide-gapped row of golden teeth. Business had obviously been good, once upon a time. She knew she had my interest now, and I was waiting for the squeeze.

  ‘I left that pisshead back there to come and talk to you. That’s got to be worth something.’

  I nodded, and her smile got wider. A mistake; a couple of her teeth were missing, and it didn’t add to her charms. She stepped forward and put her hand on my sleeve.

  ‘It’s fucking cold. Maybe we can go somewhere?’

  I removed her hand, and nodded again.

  ‘I’ve got a spare bed you can have. Down the station. You might have to share with some ninety-kilo bulldyke dreaming of breaking in a sweet little slut like you, but hey, it’s all girls together, right? And in the morning, when you’ve rinsed out the blood, we can have our little chat.’

  Her face hardened, and she turned to spit.

  ‘You’re a bastard, Inspector, I bet you have to pay to fuck your wife. Everyone else does.’

  She took a step back at the look on my face, and held up her hands in apology.

  ‘OK, sorry, start again? I can help you. With the killing? There’s a reward going, maybe? For information? And Vasily doesn’t have to know, right?’