A Killing Winter

by Tom Callaghan

  This wasn’t how it was supposed to end. Chinara, her long hair now grey, playing with a grandchild, while I watched approvingly. Long walks through the foothills above Karakol once the last snows of winter had melted away and the spring melt was cascading through the gorges. Quiet summer nights listening to her sleeping beside me, watching the morning light come up through the window.

  ‘You wouldn’t be telling me this, unless I’ve got a reprieve.’

  ‘When we heard you’d been assigned to the Tynalieva case, we already knew of your reputation. Through Vasily.’

  She nodded as I raised an eyebrow.

  ‘Surely you’re not surprised? He worked for us, for the Tajiks, the Kazakhs, for anyone who would slip a few thousand dodgy som his way. He said you were tough, reliable, good at carrying out orders. So we assumed you were on board to set this up as a race-hate crime: crazed Uzbek psycho slaughters Kyrgyz innocents, that kind of thing. While your government was also killing Uzbeks, to stoke the fires across the border.’

  ‘Why go to all that trouble? Simply burn a few houses down, and everybody’s ready to kick off, you know that.’

  Saltanat shook her head, and I watched how the raven wing of her hair folded back across her cheek.

  ‘Accountability. A riot is one thing, a coup organised by a foreign government is quite another. You need something to stir up terror, not just hatred.’

  ‘That’s why the mutilations? And the dead babies?’

  ‘Of course.’

  I lit another cigarette. There was a sort of mad logic to it, but I couldn’t see my government organising it. Not when it took us all our time to get the electricity working. A thought struck me: could this be disinformation? What if it was the Uzbek government setting things up, to reclaim Osh?

  I was wondering if aspirin would help, or only make my headache worse, when Saltanat’s phone rang. She stubbed out her cigarette, and walked towards the door. Too cold to stand outside, but I was clearly not meant to listen. I passed the time by remembering the curve of her breasts, and wondering if I was ever going to see them again. To have the woman you woke up with announce that she’s been ordered to kill you is not a great start to the day. On the other hand, I wasn’t lying face down looking surprised on the bedroom floor.

  Saltanat came back to our table, her face grim.

  ‘That was my Bishkek contact.’

  ‘And?’

  I searched her face for clues, but she remained impassive.

  ‘Your pal, Gasparian. Your colleagues released him, took him up to Ibraimova Street, to the scene of the Tynalieva murder.’

  I shrugged; nothing too unusual about that.

  ‘For what it’s worth, I don’t think he did it; doesn’t have the balls. I don’t think he did Shairkul either. He’s a liar and a pimp, sure, but he’s no killer.’

  Saltanat stared up at the stained and nicotine-yellow ceiling, watching her cigarette smoke ascend and melt into the general fug.

  ‘Well, if he was, he surely isn’t now.’

  I got a sinking feeling. Maybe I shouldn’t have left him in the loving care of Sariev. A shitty day might be about to get shittier.

  ‘What’s the story?’

  ‘Some genius decided that taking Gasparian to the “scene of his brutal crime” might spur a little remorse, perhaps even a confession and a plea for mercy. So they threw him in the back of a police car, headed up towards the Blonder Pub, and marched him down to where the body was found. He must have been guilty, because he headbutted his escort, put him on the ground and started running away through the trees.’

  She paused, gave me one of her trademark hard stares.

  I swallowed; I had a pretty good idea of what was coming.

  ‘The enormity of his crimes must have driven him insane, because he ran all the way to the bridge over the carriageway. You know, the one with the two-metre fence on either side? And that’s where he decided to end it all.’

  I pulled a face. It’s a long way down to the road, and nobody bothers too much about the speed limit there.

  ‘On to the road below?’

  ‘They’re still scraping him off tyres between there and Tashkent. But he must have been really determined to kill himself. How many people do you know who could climb a two-metre fence with their hands cuffed behind them?’

  I winced and ground out my cigarette, then waved to the waitress and pointed at my cup. I wanted something stronger, but I felt at enough of a disadvantage as it was.

  ‘Sariev?’

  Saltanat shrugged.

  ‘Or Tynaliev’s men, maybe,’ she said. ‘I can’t imagine he’d be too happy with his daughter’s killer getting three meals a day for the next fifteen years.’

  Clearly Saltanat had never seen the inside of a Kyrgyz prison; a few months ago, the entire prison population of Kyrgyzstan sewed their lips shut with wire, protesting about the conditions inside. If the gangs didn’t get you, the beatings or the TB would. But it still had to beat making a final Nureyev-style pirouette through the winter air before ending your days as roadkill.

  I could see how the authorities would think it better all round if Gasparian was the killer, even if there was no evidence to link him to any of the crimes, let alone the ones in Uzbekistan. My boss would be happy, the word could go out that the guilty had been punished, and everyone could go back to filling their pockets. Unless the killings continued, of course, in which case, heads would roll – and I had a pretty shrewd idea whose.

  I turned my mobile back on and, as if he’d read my mind, a flock of calls from the Chief scrolled upwards. I didn’t need to read them to know what he’d be saying. Fortunately, reception is pretty bad this side of the mountains, and my finger accidentally hit the ‘delete all’ button.

  ‘What’s your plan?’ Saltanat said, watching me erase my career.

  ‘I rather think it’s time to call in professional help,’ I replied, and sat back as the waitress poured more tea.

  Chapter 26

  ‘If you don’t sort this shit out soon, the last massacre down here is going to look like a cultural visit from the fucking Bolshoi,’ Kursan told me, and looked over at Saltanat for confirmation.

  As ever, she looked non-committal and blew smoke into the air. We were sipping tea in our usual chaikana tea room. Or rather, Saltanat and I were; Kursan didn’t believe in non-alcoholic refreshment.

  Kursan had flown down at my request. No one had his ear closer to the ground for any whisper, or kept better contacts throughout the underworld of the thieves of law. I knew that the usual investigations wouldn’t get me very far, and it was a case of grasping at any thread that might turn into a rope. It might end up hanging me, but I was willing to risk it.

  Kursan looked around the chaikana and pulled a look of disgust.

  ‘Osh. I fucking hate it here. Nothing but stupid myrki, ugly women and shit food. You owe me for dragging me down here.’

  I shrugged; I’d never known Kursan not to complain about anything and everything, and if there was nothing to moan about, he’d complain about its lack.

  ‘There was a riot in Talas last night,’ he told us, in between gulps of vodka, mouthfuls of plov and lungfuls of smoke, ‘with people marching on the police station, demanding that the “baby killers” be brought to justice. No shooting, just shouting, but it’s only a matter of time. Same thing down here in Naryn. We’re blaming the Uzbeks, and for sure they’ll be blaming us. A couple more killings and the whole country explodes.’

  That was worrying. Talas is where the last revolution began, and Naryn’s the far side of the country. If Saltanat was right and this was a coordinated attempt at unrest, whoever was behind it was well funded and well organised. Forget mobiles or the internet; rumours carry between villages here within minutes, and they swell and get more impressive along the way. What’s being gossiped about in Tokmok becomes eyewitness accounts in Tash Rabat the next day.

  ‘So what are people saying?’ I asked.

 
; ‘Nothing in the papers, or on TV, of course. The White House won’t want to start a panic. And those poor fuckers in Tashkent only get to hear about the President’s latest exploits. Nothing as worrying as news for them.’

  Saltanat nodded. Throughout Central Asia, you only get told what the bosses want you to hear. Kyrgyzstan’s a little more liberal, but I wasn’t expecting to read a report of foreign baby killers any time soon.

  ‘You know all this shit about baby pills from China turning up in South Korea?’ Kursan continued.

  I nodded. The story going around was that thousands of capsules from China containing powdered baby foetuses were being sold around the Far East as general ‘cure-all’ medicine. The story was given extra credence thanks to China’s strict one-baby policy. Testing of the capsules was supposed to even tell you the gender of the foetus – usually female, since all Chinese families want to have sons rather than daughters. Naturally, we Kyrgyz are willing to believe anything bad about our neighbours. Was it true? Who knew? What mattered was who believed it, and what they would do about it.

  ‘Well, they’re saying that Kyrgyz boy babies make the best medicine. I told you that, right?’ Kursan said.

  I nodded again. I supposed the Uzbeks were saying the same about their sons.

  ‘So this is a plot by the Chinese?’ I asked.

  Kursan looked at me as if I was half-witted.

  ‘It’s the Uzbeks doing it, and blaming the Chinese,’ he said, ‘stirring the shit until it’s ripe, like they always do. So the trouble starts, and when the Uzbeks start shooting, it’s all in self-defence.’

  ‘Or it’s the Kyrgyz doing the killing, and claiming we’re doing it to discredit the Chinese,’ Saltanat said, clearly not happy about Kursan’s conspiracy theory.

  ‘I’m not saying that your murders are trivial,’ I replied, looking over at Saltanat, ‘or that ours are. But are they really going to stir up a war?’

  ‘By the time the rumours get around, it’ll be whole orphanages and maternity wards massacred, you know that,’ Saltanat answered, as Kursan pushed his plate away, belched and stood up.

  ‘What did you do with the other hooker?’ he asked.

  ‘Gulbara? Saltanat has got her safely stashed away down south.’

  ‘You don’t think you should take her back to Bishkek? A witness to the last killing? Well, the last one we know about.’

  He’d got a point, but I couldn’t help feeling it would prove difficult to convince Gulbara that going back to the scene of Shairkul’s murder was for the public good – or, for that matter, hers. So it made sense to get a more complete statement from Gulbara.

  Kursan drained the last of his vodka, ditched his cigarette in the remains of his mutton stew, and we hit the road to Gulcha.

  *

  It was two hours later when Illya pulled up outside a whitewashed farmhouse on the outskirts of the village. Nondescript, like all the other villages we’d passed through, a huddle of single-storey buildings with pale-blue trim on the doors and window frames, net curtains drawn to keep out inquisitive glances. An occasional shapeless babushka in muddy valenki and patterned headscarf dragged a small trolley carrying a milk churn back from the village spring; stray dogs barked and chased the car before they lost interest and skulked back home. Those were the only signs of life we saw.

  ‘This the place?’ I asked.

  Illya simply nodded. A man of few words.

  We got out of the car and I led us across the road towards the gate. The place was pretty run-down, last painted about the time that Stalin was slicing up the country, with cracks in some of the windowpanes. There was a dog lying by the side of the house, asleep, not the best watchdog in town.

  As we got closer, I wondered why the dog didn’t jump up, start barking and snarling at us. And then I saw the red and grey puddle under its muzzle, dark against the mud.

  If any birds had been singing, they were silent now.

  I put one hand up to halt the others, and with the other hand I drew my gun. I didn’t have to look round to know that Saltanat was doing the same.

  The plain wooden door was scarred at the bottom from decades of being kicked open by muddy boots, but that wasn’t the reason why it was hanging off one hinge.

  The usual farmyard smells of damp earth, sheep’s wool and animal shit had an odd flavour overlying them, a sour, sickly stink that clawed at my nostrils. I pushed the door further open with my foot and moved slowly inside.

  The smell was more powerful now, all too familiar. I thought back to my first killing, the old man butchered by his nephew in the one-room shithole, the walls smeared with blood, the entrails spilt out on to the bare concrete floor.

  I could taste the blood in the air.

  There’s a game we play in Kyrgyzstan called kok boru. It’s a kind of polo, where men on horseback battle to score a goal by hurling the headless corpse of a sheep or goat into a circle made of tyres. After an hour or so of being snatched up, dragged and trampled through the mud, the goat resembles nothing that ever lived, ripped and bloody, hoofmarks stencilled into raw flesh.

  Which is what confronted me as I entered the main room.

  Gulbara had defied the laws of physics and was in two places at once. Or rather, Gulbara’s lower half lay in the doorway into the bedroom, while her torso and head stared at me from a chair facing the window. The decorative felt shardyk hanging on the wall was spattered with pale flecks and grey slivers of torn meat. The wooden floor was a sea of blood, starting to crust and blacken in the cold air. I got closer to the body. Gulbara’s stomach was covered in a criss-cross and welter of razor cuts, none deep, none fatal, but enough to tell her that there was going to be no rescue. I hoped she was dead when her body was hacked in half, that her killer had been professional enough to see this as the next step in escalating the trouble, rather than a murder to be enjoyed and played over and over again in his head.

  Gulbara died hard and slow, terrified and alone. And if I had anything to do with it, so would whoever did this.

  A shadow fell across the floor, and I turned, raising my gun, ready to shoot. Kursan and Saltanat stood there, their faces numb with the room’s stench and swill and stain. I’ve seen violent death at first hand so many times; I forget how much it shocks normal people. It’s not something I’m proud of.

  ‘Don’t touch anything,’ I said, reminding myself that I was Murder Squad.

  Kursan looked at me as if I was mad, and he was right. If we called the local menti, we’d be there for days. And if they discovered we’d got a couple of Uzbek Security people with us, the cell key might just get lost for weeks.

  ‘We’ll have to leave her,’ Saltanat said.

  ‘We can call it in from the road,’ I said.

  ‘What about her family? They could be back at any moment,’ Kursan said, looking over his shoulder at the broken door.

  ‘How did they find her?’ Saltanat asked, picking her way across the floor, avoiding the worst of the pools of blood. ‘She didn’t have any information worth having. Why take this risk?’

  ‘Scare a woman and you don’t achieve much,’ I said, ‘but terrify a village and that gets the word out and about. She’s a demonstration, the message that announces that nobody’s safe, so do as you’re told.’

  ‘That doesn’t answer my question,’ Saltanat said, raising her voice. ‘Illya. In here.’

  The driver stomped down the path and into the house, eyes widening at the sight of so much blood.

  ‘When you brought her here from Osh, were you followed?’

  Illya shook his head.

  ‘There was no one else on the road; I would have noticed.’

  ‘So who did you tell?’

  He paused, for half a second too long.

  ‘No one.’

  ‘You’re sure?’

  ‘I swear.’

  But I could hear the fear in his voice, sensed the sweat on his palms. Saltanat stared at him, deadpan. She made a terrifying interrogator.
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br />   ‘Last time of asking, Illya.’

  I could see that he was wondering which the least bad option would be, trying to make his mind up. Finally, he looked down at his steel-capped boots and mumbled something.

  ‘I had a pivo or two last night. With my cousin. He was talking about the murders, about the missing kids. Maybe I said something.’

  He looked worried. Saltanat took a step closer to him.

  ‘I never said anything about bringing her here, honestly. I’m not stupid.’

  ‘You mentioned her name, maybe. Heard about the hooker that shared an apartment with one of the dead girls? Nice tits. Comes from around here? Monkey tattooed on her pussy? Bitch called Gulbara. Is that how it was, Illya?’

  ‘No, I mean, maybe I said her name.’

  ‘And maybe your cousin told his pal, who told their best friend, don’t tell anyone, keep it to yourself? And this is where we end up, Illya. Staring at something off a butcher’s slab.’

  Illya said nothing. The scorn in Saltanat’s voice hung in the air. She looked at him, and sighed. When she spoke, there was resignation in her voice.

  ‘OK, Illya, question time over. We’re through here. Time to go.’

  As Illya nodded, Saltanat took another step closer to him, produced a gun from nowhere, and calmly pumped two bullets into the side of his head, just behind his ear.

  Chapter 27

  There was surprisingly little blood, though it wasn’t as if the room needed any more. Saltanat had used a 9mm, so the two bullets rushed around inside Illya’s head like hyperactive puppies, failed to find an exit, then rolled over and went to sleep. There were a few flecks and smears on Illya’s boots and camo pants, but I couldn’t tell whether it was his blood or Gulbara’s.

  I was too surprised to react, but Kursan reached over and forced Saltanat’s hand backwards, twisting the gun out of her fingers with a single swift motion.

  ‘What the fuck was that about?’ he asked, slipping the gun into his pocket. Saltanat looked as unruffled as ever. Crazy bitch she might have been, but I couldn’t help wondering if she ever felt anything, or whether she was ice queen all through.