A Killing Winter

by Tom Callaghan

  Suddenly I felt old, washed up, as if I’d been listening to the same lies, self-justifications and greed all my life. I nodded my head towards a doorway, to get us off the street. She took a final drag of her cigarette, flicked it away and stumbled after me.

  Out of the wind, her cheap perfume burnt my eyes. The top must have come off the bottle.

  ‘She was cut up, right? I mean, badly cut up? And someone shoved a baby inside her belly?’

  ‘You’ve got big ears, and someone’s got a big mouth.’

  She pouted. This wasn’t going the way she’d planned; grateful cop gives her a handful of notes and a Get Out of Jail card. She fumbled through her bag for another cigarette, found only an empty pack, crumpled it up, dumped it. I offered her one of mine, and she leant forward as I lit hers and mine. True romance. I could almost hear the violins.

  ‘My friend Gulbara told me a girl had been killed.’

  ‘And she knew, how?’

  I didn’t expect that she’d tell me. Gulbara, if she even existed, wouldn’t be likely to share her informant at the station with anyone. But you have to ask, make sure they don’t think they can get away with anything.

  ‘I wasn’t sure if I should believe her or not. But then Vasily told us as well. Said not to worry, that we could keep on working, that this guy wasn’t interested in working girls.’

  Typical Vasily. As long as the som came in, he wouldn’t give a fuck if his whole stable got slaughtered. Plenty more where they came from.

  As if she read my mind, Shairkul took a final, lung-bursting drag from her cigarette, threw it away.

  ‘He would say that, right?’

  I nodded.

  ‘So what should we do?’

  I shrugged again.

  ‘What did Gulbara say?’

  She took a step back, took a fresh look at me.

  ‘You don’t give a fuck either, do you?’

  ‘What do you want me to do? Give you money to catch the bus back to your village? Call out the army to give you twenty-four-hour protection? You know how it works.’ I threw her the tough-but-honest-cop stare. ‘You tell me what you know, I find the dickhead, book him in at the no-star hotel, and we all go back to work as normal.’

  Shairkul seemed less than reassured by this, and gestured for another cigarette. At this rate, it would be lung cancer that laid her out on Usupov’s slab, long before any crazies got to her.

  ‘She wasn’t one of us, not a regular working girl. But you already know that, right?’

  ‘I know what we know. What I want is what you know.’

  Even though the street was deserted, Shairkul looked over her shoulder before speaking.

  ‘She wouldn’t have lasted three hours without a pimp, you know how this town’s carved up.’

  I winced at the word, remembering the frozen stare gazing out past the trees towards uncaring stars, the uncoiled tangle of guts, the half-clenched fingers of the foetus.

  ‘So she was an amateur, that’s what you’re telling me?’

  Shairkul smiled; there’d be a price for her information.

  ‘Is there a reward?’

  ‘For you?’

  I stopped for effect, reached for my cigarettes. Shairkul grinned, the money already as good as in her handbag.

  ‘Let me explain. I saw the body of a young woman hacked up worse than I’ve ever seen, and I’ve seen plenty. Some other woman, if she’s still alive, is mourning the death of her unborn child. So my patience is not just wearing thin, it’s non-existent. And I’m in a hurry.’

  I grabbed Shairkul’s jacket and pulled her to me, so close that anyone passing by would think we were lovers, oblivious of the cold. I lowered my voice to the gentle, persuasive murmur that I’ve always found more menacing than a shout or a snarl.

  ‘Unless you start talking, I’m going to tell Vasily just how talkative you can be. You know how pimps feel about girls that use their mouths for something other than giving a customer a blow. And then you won’t be talking at all, will you?’

  I smiled with my mouth and not my eyes, and gently tapped her cheek.

  ‘Gulbara found her,’ Shairkul gabbled, face white under the caked prosti make-up. ‘She thought she might find some drunk up for a short time in their car, on the way home from the Blonder.’

  ‘Go on,’ I said, and tapped her cheek again to refresh her memory.

  ‘She saw the girl’s handbag. Good quality, designer. She figured there’d be money, a mobile, maybe even car keys.’

  ‘She didn’t think to be a good citizen and call us?’

  Even terrified, Shairkul smiled. We both knew that nobody does anything to help the police in this town, unless there’s something in it for them.

  ‘So Gulbara’s got a fancy new handbag. What about it?’

  ‘It’s what’s in the bag that’s important.’

  ‘And now you’ll take me to Gulbara, as long as you get your piece?’

  Shairkul nodded.

  ‘You want to get the bag sooner rather than later, da?’

  I couldn’t fault her logic.

  ‘We’ll go see Gulbara, and discuss it all later, OK? One hand washes the other.’

  I used my mobile to call a patrol car. When we got in, Shairkul gave an address on the far side of Osh bazaar. The patrol car’s flashing lights bounced off the hard-packed snow, the colour of blood, the colour of death.

  ‘Stop here,’ Shairkul said, ‘I don’t want police shaming me in front of my neighbours.’

  Which just about sums up how most Kyrgyz, decent or otherwise, feel about us.

  ‘You didn’t say you lived with Gulbara.’

  Now it was Shairkul’s turn to shrug.

  ‘You didn’t ask.’

  Having an idea what was in store, I borrowed a torch from the reluctant uniform, who grumbled about its return, and then we walked round the corner, towards a dilapidated khrushchyovk apartment block.

  The city is full of these relics of our Soviet days, solid, durable, ugly and practical, named after the former Soviet premier who’d had them installed across the Union. You‘d never describe them as stylish, but they’re an improvement on the shacks or yurts that we lived in before, especially when the winter sets in and the snow descends from the Tien Shan.

  The building’s five-storey cement prefabricated panels were stained and cracked, and some wit had spray-painted HILTON above the entrance. The metal door hung open, and we pushed through into the dark. You never find a khrushchyovka where the communal lights work, so I switched on the torch and we walked up the litter-covered stairs towards the lift. By some miracle, it wheezed into life and we rode in silence up to the fifth floor.

  Outside the apartment, Shairkul started to speak, but I held my finger up for silence. I didn’t want any surprises on the other side of the door, and that meant not alerting whoever was inside. She unlocked the heavy-duty steel door, and then the ornamental wooden door inside, and I gripped the Yarygin.

  We went inside.

  Someone had been smoking travka; the thick sweet smell was everywhere. But the apartment was clean and neat, cheaply furnished. Whatever failings Shairkul and Gulbara might have had, slovenliness wasn’t one of them.

  The bedroom door was ajar and, from the sounds inside, Gulbara was obviously hard at work. Reluctant to interrupt anyone’s pleasure, I peeked round the door. Plain walls, a couple of worn rugs on the bare concrete floor, a couple of half-drunk beer bottles on a bedside table. The ideal setting for an erotic tempest. The bed was creaking like an old ship in a storm, and Gulbara was moaning and groaning as if about to be shipwrecked.

  ‘Da, maloletka, da!’

  Gulbara might or might not have been a little slut, but the man thrusting between her legs was certainly a fat pig. Coarse black hair spread like a rug across his shoulders and down his back and on to the top of his arse. He was doing his best to push the bottle-blonde beneath him through the thin mattress, his head buried in her hair, nuzzling her neck.


  Gulbara’s eyes widened at the sight of me, and I put my finger to my lips as I tiptoed to the bed.

  I waited until the punter’s grunting accelerated, then placed the front sight of my Yarygin against his arsehole.

  I didn’t know if that triggered his orgasm or simply gave him a heart attack, but he squealed, yelled and farted all at once. He rolled off Gulbara, at some considerable pain to both of them, and covered his rapidly dwindling erection with both hands. Gulbara was less modest, probably as a result of fucking strangers morning, noon and night, and simply reached for her cigarettes on the floor.

  I did my best not to stare, and motioned Shairkul in the vague direction of the mattress. My smile was not guaranteed to inspire confidence in any of the trio.

  ‘Let’s all make ourselves comfortable, and then we can have a little chat.’

  Chapter 6

  ‘Let me put my fucking trousers on!’

  This from the fat pig; Gulbara didn’t care who checked out her goods as long as there was a cash purchase. He reached for his clothes, and I shook my head, waved the Yarygin, and he sat back up. I’m not an admirer of the male nude, especially when it’s fat, furry and about thirty kilos overweight. But you never know what people have in their pockets; a four-centimetre scar down my right forearm taught me that the difficult way. Besides, being naked with a gun pointing at you loosens the tongue. Not to mention the bowels.

  ‘Name?’

  ‘Who the fuck are you? Don’t you know who I am?’

  ‘If I did, I wouldn’t be asking, would I?’ I said in my most reasonable voice. He was recovering now, and wondering what the play was. I could see him reasoning he’d already be dead, if this was a hit. Maybe he believed he was important enough not to get robbed by some street hood. And I wasn’t working the irate husband badger game with the girls. So just who the fuck was I?

  I decided to confuse him a little further.

  ‘You’re a good citizen, right? Helping this unfortunate young woman back on to the straight and narrow, right?’

  He answered by leaning over Gulbara and spitting on to the floor.

  I leant forward and gave his kneecap a little tap with the Yarygin. His reflexes were OK, I had to give him that.

  ‘Dumb arsehole!’

  I shook my head and looked disappointed.

  ‘I’m not dumb, I’m the one with the gun. And as for being an arsehole, well, we’ve all seen yours. So I’ll ask again. Name?’

  He remained silent, and my patience was shrinking faster than his prick. We could have gone on playing tough guys all night, but I’d better things to do.

  ‘Relax, I’m law. Murder Squad. I don’t give a fuck if you get her to give you a blow in the centre of Ala-Too Square. I want to talk to her, not you. Your name, then you can fuck off.’

  Pride meant he didn’t want to tell me. The Yarygin and being bollock-naked meant he would.

  ‘Gasparian. Khatchig.’

  Armenian. That accounted for the furry back. And the attitude. We Kyrgyz don’t hate the Armenians as much as we hate the Uzbeks or the Uighurs or the Kazakhs or the Tatars or the Russians, or, to be honest, anyone who isn’t Kyrgyz and most people who are. But there are a couple of gangs from Yerevan working the heroin routes from Afghanistan into the American military airbase, and our home-grown bad guys don’t care for foreign competition.

  ‘So what is this? You’re looking for a sweetener?’

  He mimed cash with thumb and forefinger, and reached down for his trousers.

  ‘Empty your pockets. Slowly. Finger and thumb. The other hand. And if anything naughty comes out, you’ve just had your last come.’

  He nodded understanding. A wallet thick with som. Car keys: he drove a BMW, judging by the fob. A fancy mobile. And a switchblade with a pale horn handle. His ID said he was telling the truth, at least about his name.

  ‘Kick the knife over here.’

  He did so, and I looked around for something to pick it up with, to avoid smearing any fingerprints. The only cloth near to hand seemed to be Gulbara’s panties. I’m not a fastidious man, but sometimes this job makes impossible demands. I dropped the panty-wrapped knife into my pocket, smiled, and then tapped Gasparian on the knee again. This time, not gently.

  He roared, the bellow I’d come to associate with his sex life, and clutched at his knee. He tried to stand, but had to grab at the wall for support. Gulbara sniggered, the sort of laugh you’d expect from a naked woman with a tattoo of a monkey climbing into her pubic hair.

  ‘You’ll need to go to a hospital with that knee,’ I told him. ‘Should keep you out of trouble for a few hours.’

  ‘Cunt,’ he muttered, but I could tell his heart wasn’t in it.

  I picked up his clothes, walked out into the hallway, and flung them through the open door. He took the hint and limped past me, his knee already starting to swell. He tried the dead-eye stare, which impressed me about as much as his dick did, and waited until he was in the safety of the hallway before he snarled, ‘This isn’t over.’

  I smiled politely, shut the doors and bolted the inner one. Someone back in Sverdlovsky would have his record; it wouldn’t be hard to find him if I needed to.

  I turned back to Gulbara, who still lay sprawled in the wreckage of the bed.

  ‘Get dressed.’

  ‘You’ve got my panties. Going to sniff them when you get home?’ She spoke with a thick country accent; Osh, or maybe Naryn. Come to the big city to make her fortune.

  ‘I’m sure you’ve got another pair for best. Get dressed so we can talk, or you can come down to the station as you are. It’s cold enough out there to freeze the nipples off a whore. Given your job, I wouldn’t run the risk.’

  Once Gulbara had slithered into a red dress short enough to delight a gynaecologist, we went into the sitting room. Shairkul reached into a wall cupboard and brought out a bottle of Kyrgyz brandy and three small mismatched glasses. I nodded and watched her pour three shots. I waited until the two women had downed theirs before I sniffed at mine. Rough, raw, perfect for weather like this, for a case like this. I raised the glass to my lips, pretended to join them, then put it down, untasted.

  ‘I won’t beat about the bush,’ I began, ‘especially not with the monkey that lives there. Its bite might be poisonous.’

  Neither woman smiled. Judging by a couple of track marks in the crook of Gulbara’s left arm, that wasn’t the only monkey she was carrying around with her.

  ‘You found a dead woman last night. Found her handbag as well. And that’s what I’m here for. Anything else you do outside of that, I’m not interested. Understand?’

  Gulbara nodded, and Shairkul refilled the glasses. They drank again. Companionable silence.

  ‘I had nothing to do with her dying, you understand?’

  I waited for her to continue, my eyes never leaving her face.

  ‘She was dead when I came past. I was heading for the bridge over Ibraimova, looking for a taxi. No business, too cold. And then I saw her.’

  Gulbara gave a theatrical shudder at the memory, and held out her glass for another drink. I shook my head at Shairkul; I didn’t want Gulbara pissed before I’d had a chance to hear her story.

  ‘You saw her.’

  Not a question. I nodded my head.

  ‘I thought at first it might be one of the regular girls. An occupational hazard. But not the way she was dressed. Too smart for a tart. And too pretty.’

  Suddenly Gulbara looked like the frightened, vulnerable woman just out of her teens that she was behind the harsh make-up and the cheap nylon dress. She knew there was a killer out there in the dark, maybe waiting for another woman, maybe looking for a prostitute to slice and hurt and scar and maim, looking to turn her into so much cooling meat. Death comes to all of us, and the best we can hope for is that it’s painless and quick. All too often, it’s neither.

  ‘I could see there was nothing I could do. And too many trees there, too much cover, no one around. He could have
been hiding, waiting for the next one. Maybe five minutes earlier and it could have been me.’

  She waved her glass again at Shairkul, and this time I let her drink, a single long swallow that left her breathless.

  ‘So you took the handbag and legged it?’

  ‘What would you have done?’

  ‘You didn’t touch the body?’

  ‘You are joking. I just grabbed the handbag and I was away on my toes. Didn’t even look inside until I was in a taxi.’

  ‘Any money?’

  Gulbara looked at me as if I was a myrki peasant straight up from the village. I sighed.

  ‘I need to know if she was robbed as well. If it was about money or about something else. So I want to know, right?’

  Gulbara muttered something I didn’t catch.

  ‘How much?’

  ‘A thousand dollars. New notes. Hundreds.’

  ‘And where is it?’

  She looked away.

  ‘You fed the krokodil?’

  She said nothing, but glanced down at the tracks on her arm. My only witness a junkie, any hint at motive snug in a dealer’s back pocket, and snow starting to fall again. Christ.

  I snapped my fingers.

  ‘Bag. Now.’

  Shairkul reached into the wall cupboard and pulled out a smart shoulder bag, the sort a woman might wear to an exclusive party, drinks in the 191 Bar, a job interview at one of the embassies. To my eyes, it looked expensive, but I’m a man, what do I know?

  Chinara would have been able to tell me the label, the date, the price from across the room. Her handbags, her jewellery, even her shoes, still in the wardrobe, waiting for me to find the courage to get rid of them, dispose of her presence. For a second, I could have sworn I could smell the perfume she wore, as if she’d entered the room, was standing behind me. And then I remembered she’d gone.

  For ever.

  I took the bag from Shairkul and gently put it down on the red rug that was the concrete floor’s only covering. Rich, soft cream leather. Ornate gold metal clasp. A logo saying ‘Prada’. If it had said Pravda, I might have been better informed.