A Killing Winter

by Tom Callaghan

  ‘You’re a one-man, one-woman death squad,’ he said.

  I think he meant it as a compliment.

  ‘You’ve also solved the murder of the Minister’s daughter, and that poor girl over in Karakol,’ he added, clapping his hands together as if that was the end of the matter.

  ‘Not in a way that’s going to please Tynaliev,’ I said. ‘He was particularly keen to be the one handing out the summary justice.’

  ‘You had no option,’ he shrugged. ‘He can always go and piss on their graves.’

  ‘We might have sorted out some of the who,’ I said, ‘but we haven’t solved the why.’

  ‘Does why matter, if you’ve planted the bad guys underground?’ Kursan asked.

  ‘Too many unanswered questions that might come back to bite me,’ I said.

  Saltanat stubbed out the cigarette she was holding, only half smoked, and reached for my pack. So far she’d said nothing.

  ‘What do you think?’ I asked.

  ‘You’ve dealt with the little guys,’ she replied, her voice as expressionless as her face, ‘and the top guys will be too big to touch. Even if you know who they are.’

  ‘Maybe,’ I said, ‘but if Tyulev and Lubashov weren’t responsible for the murders, why come looking for me? And who killed the Russian? And Shairkul and Gulbara? And the women in Osh, the ones that got you involved in the first place?’

  Saltanat said nothing, sipped her coffee, both hands around the cup, as if for comfort.

  ‘What’s in the bag, brother?’ Kursan asked.

  I looked around to make sure we couldn’t be overheard.

  ‘About a million som worth of krokodil.’

  Kursan looked thoughtful.

  ‘No one’s cooked that up for their own private weekend recreation,’ I added, ‘so it’s got to be about smuggling. Either into the country, or to go abroad.’

  ‘The connection with the airbase?’

  I nodded.

  ‘Make it cheap here, ship it back to Mother Russia on a military plane, who’s going to stop and search that?’ Saltanat said.

  ‘You think that Spetsnaz woman, Marina Gurchenko, was involved?’ Kursan asked.

  ‘One way or another. Maybe she was the mule, most likely she found out about the smuggling route and wanted to stop it. And that’s what got her butchered. She was a medic, after all, the last person you’d expect to supply people with that stuff.’

  Kursan said nothing, but rubbed his fingers and thumb together. Money can buy you almost anything.

  ‘But she was pregnant, like some of the others,’ Saltanat argued.

  ‘I’m beginning to think all that was a way to get us off the scent, make us think there was some kind of serial-killer gang roaming the country, a cult. The smugglers hear about the killings; a copycat gets rid of their whistle-blower and points the finger away from the truth. The mutilations, the dead children; who’d link all that to a smuggling ring?’

  Saltanat looked unconvinced.

  ‘There are six heroin-smuggling routes out of Osh that we know about,’ she said. ‘Why not just go about business, nice and quiet, keep your head down, clean the profits and live well?’

  I took another mouthful of chai, and nodded agreement.

  ‘You’re right. There’s smuggling involved, but this isn’t just about smuggling. There’s something else behind all this, something bigger. But I don’t know what.’

  I drained my glass, set it down, and stared across the empty street. In the last few minutes, it had started to snow, painting the roads a gleaming white, unlike the thoughts in my head.

  Chapter 45

  We’d been in the Dragon’s Den for about forty-five minutes when a battered BMW pulled up outside and Kenesh Usupov got out. He looked around, as if lost outside the confines of the morgue, before coming in, kicking the snow off his shoes, and joining us. He nodded at the waitress and she brought over a hundred grams. Not for the first time, I wondered about what sort of life Usupov led beyond his scalpels and bone saws.

  Usupov produced a small paper bag, which he pushed across the table to Saltanat. The look on my face told him this wasn’t the time to make one of his jokes. Saltanat looked inside the bag, then took out one of the packets and passed it to me, before taking the rest to the bathroom.

  Usupov jerked his thumb at her retreating back.

  ‘I understand the no-baby tablet, but the other stuff?’

  I reached forward and took the glasses off his face. He blinked, uncertain, a mole suddenly baffled by sunlight.

  ‘Last night, two bad boys grabbed her. One fucked her while telling her how he’d gutted Yekaterina Tynalieva, the other tried for a minet. She killed both of them. Hard. In ways you don’t often see, even on your slab. You really want to know some more, Chief Forensic Pathologist Usupov, I’ll ask her to explain it all to you?’

  The tone of my voice left him in no doubt he’d be on my permanent shit list if he did. And, more worryingly, on Saltanat’s. I pressed all the antibiotic tablets out of their blister pack, washing them down with lukewarm chai.

  ‘Inspector, we’ve worked together a long time. You ask for something, I bring it, that’s the end of the matter, done and forgotten, da?’

  With a certain dignity, he fixed his glasses back on to his face. I bowed my head in agreement, wondered how much I could believe him, and then felt bad for doing so. A man who investigates the mysteries of the dead deserves all the trust we can muster.

  I poured a handful of the capsules I’d found in the holdall on to the table, making sure no one in the bar saw me.

  ‘I need an analysis of these, Kenesh. Top priority.’

  He took one and split it with his thumbnail, examining the contents.

  ‘Any idea what this is supposed to do?’

  ‘None. But they came with a Chinese label.’

  ‘Which you couldn’t read.’

  ‘Right.’

  ‘But which you’ve copied down for me to get translated for you.’

  ‘Mind-reader as well as forensic genius.’

  Kenesh nodded. I suspected that was his opinion as well.

  ‘The woman you brought in. Tynalieva. Her father had her buried last week. All the government nomenklatura were there, showing their respect. And wondering if their families are next on the hit list, I imagine. Organising bodyguards, security, electric fences, the whole works.’

  ‘Creating terror and confusion,’ I said, more to myself than anyone else.

  Saltanat had returned and overheard me.

  ‘Sounds like it’s working,’ she said, waving to the waitress for more coffee.

  I looked over at Kursan.

  ‘What do smugglers want more than anything else?’

  ‘Apart from honest customers, you mean?’

  Kursan thought for a moment, weighing up all the problems of his trade.

  ‘I stay away from drugs; there’s too much money to be made, and so you get people moving into the business who are too greedy, who want the big score first night out. They bring law down on the rest of us, kill each other or get killed.’

  He pointed a finger at me.

  ‘Then there are the greedy ones on your side; everybody wants to wet their throat, but some people want to drink the whole fucking bottle. And that’s when guns come out.’

  Kursan sat back, threw back his drink, watching me sip my tea.

  ‘What do we want? Peace and quiet, that’s what, one hand washing the other, everybody watching each other’s back, no trouble and happy customers.’

  I nodded in agreement; more or less what I’d worked out for myself.

  ‘So terror and confusion doesn’t help your business?’

  ‘Trigger-happy border guards? Everybody’s mouth open for a bigger slice? Customers who figure it’s safer to lie low until the fire burns down? You think that’s how to run a business?’

  Saltanat looked over at the smuggler with something approaching affection.

  ‘So this is
n’t about smuggling?’

  I shook my head; I was beginning to see some motive behind the game.

  ‘Just as this isn’t about serial sex killing, or cannibalistic cults. The murders, the drugs, all pieces in something bigger. We’re mistaking pawns for more powerful pieces, thinking there’s more than one game and that they’re unconnected.’

  Usupov finished the last of his vodka and stood up. For a man who spent a good part of his working day slicing up the mangled remains of drunk drivers, he seemed remarkably unconcerned about getting back into his car. Maybe being up to your elbows in death every day breeds a certain fatalism.

  ‘All this speculation is very interesting, Inspector. But hard facts are what give answers. I’ll call you if I find out anything about the capsules. And you should get that hand seen to.’

  He shook Kursan’s hand, nodded to Saltanat.

  I watched his BMW disappear into a curtain of snow. There seemed nothing left to say.

  Chapter 46

  Kursan escorted Saltanat back to the hotel, then drove to wherever he called home. I nursed a black coffee, watched my cigarette smoke sidle upwards towards the ceiling, used the time to gather together what I knew and what I could guess.

  Fact: the Circle of Brothers organised butchering the Minister for State Security’s daughter, through Maksat Aydaraliev’s team.

  Fact: the same team also slaughtered a pregnant woman in Karakol, dumped her foetus in Yekaterina Tynalieva’s womb.

  The same people murdered the two working girls, Shairkul and Gulbara?

  The same mutilations were carried out on women across the Uzbek border; by the Uzbek branch of the Circle of Brothers?

  Unlikely that the Circle killed the Russian medic; security around any Russian military installation is too tight. Whoever did kill her knew of the earlier murders, but it wasn’t identical, even though she was pregnant.

  I decided to give up for the rest of the night. Maybe things would look better in the not so clear light of a Bishkek winter morning. If it ever stopped snowing.

  Remembering my visits to the Dragon’s Den with Chinara, I stared out of the window at the white patterns descending through the cold and the dark. Falling snow caught in the night’s street lights always saddens me. It’s the infinity of it all, thousands of millions of flakes, all different and all inseparable, trapped by the forces of air, wind and gravity, dragged down from the sky and falling to earth. It means something, I suppose, though I can’t say what.

  Leaving five hundred som on the table, I headed out into the cold, regretting leaving my ushanka in the apartment. Halfway across the road, my eyes tearing up against the cold, I heard the first shot. The snow hanging in the air reflected the report, so I couldn’t identify the direction it came from. I tugged the Yarygin from its holster and dropped to one knee, all too aware I was a sitting target, dressed in black against an expanse of white. A second shot, but as far as I could tell, nowhere near me. I heard the smash of a window, broken glass tumbling on to cement. Lurching to my feet, I ran towards the hotel. Another shot, and the snow off to my right kicked up in a powder. I ducked, faked a run to my left, then zigzagged towards the entrance. With no target in sight, there was no point in shooting, but I let off a couple of rounds into the air, hoping to distract the shooter long enough to get cover.

  I shouldered the hotel door open, raced through the lobby. The desk clerk was tucked away behind the counter, hoping the cheap plywood would deflect stray bullets. The lift doors next to the stairs gaped open, but I knew better than to get trapped inside a moving box with only one exit and plenty of warning of its approach. I took the stairs two at a time, checking the turn between each floor, moving across to the cover of the lift-shaft walls. My heart punched my chest, and adrenaline in my bloodstream was making my hands shake. Not good if you’re about to face an armed man.

  I waited thirty seconds on the landing below the fourth floor, and listened.

  Nothing.

  The walls in hotels like these won’t stop anything larger than a .22, so the other guests would be in their bathrooms, lying in the tub, if they had any sense.

  I flattened myself against the wall to make a smaller target. The door to my room was open, but there was no sign of anyone. I made a quick check, but the room was empty, reeking of cordite and singed bedding. There were two neat bullet holes in the pillow, just where my head would have been if I’d been lying asleep. A glance under the bed, but the holdall with the krokodil was gone.

  Saltanat’s door was shut, but I remembered the third shot and breaking glass, and burst into the room. The bed’s thin mattress sprawled on the floor, snow drifting in through the broken window. The frame was one of those that only allows you to open the window so far; I guessed the glass had been punched out to take a shot at me. Apart from that, there was no sign of any disturbance.

  Or of Saltanat.

  In the lobby, I hauled the terrified desk clerk out from behind his hiding place. He saw the Yarygin in my hand, started crying and telling me about his widowed mother. To get some sensible answers, I put the gun away and showed him my ID.

  No, he hadn’t seen anyone come into the lobby, no, nobody had checked in after us, all he knew was he heard some shots from upstairs. Yes, he’d called the police, told them, they were sending a police car straight away. Now, please, could he go home?

  I told him to wait to tell his story, walked outside, to the flashing red and blue light that had just arrived.

  ‘No need for an ambulance,’ I said, holding my ID in one hand and keeping the other well away from my gun. ‘No one on the scene, either. The only thing to report is a broken window.’

  I didn’t say anything about the two bullets meant to excavate my skull; I needed to get on with finding Saltanat straight away. I half recognised the uniform who got out of the car, then I placed him. The recruit who’d found Yekaterina’s body. He didn’t look any more sure of himself now than he did then.

  ‘Inspector,’ he mumbled, ‘the report says shots fired, we have to –’

  ‘Car backfiring,’ I interrupted, ‘probably a couple fighting over where to eat, and a window got broken. Simple.’

  The uniform looked more puzzled than ever, but he took one of the cigarettes I offered him. We both lit up, and I patted him on the shoulder.

  ‘Smart work, though, getting here so fast, you’ll be taking my job one of these days.’

  As expected, the flattery put him at ease, but he still looked confused.

  ‘Thank you, Inspector, but how is it that you’re here as well?’

  I did my best to look slightly sheepish but also secretly boastful.

  ‘Officer, I have a lady friend,’ I said as I traced an outline in the air with my hands that would make the girls working the strip clubs on Chui look flat-chested. ‘And my lady friend has a husband. A husband who maybe doesn’t understand that old friends can meet to catch up with each other’s news, and to reminisce about the past. I’m sure you appreciate my situation.’

  To make sure the message lodged in whatever lurked in his skull, my wink would have looked theatrical from the other side of Bishkek.

  He smirked in understanding, and was heading back to the patrol car when a thought struck him.

  ‘Inspector, the Chief sent a message to all active officers. If we see you, you’re to report in person back at the station. Day or night.’

  ‘No problem,’ I said, though the news had me more than a little worried. ‘But no need to mention that you’ve seen me tonight. You understand, I haven’t finished talking with my friend? We’ve got a lot of catching up to do.’

  He grinned, and retraced the imaginary silhouette in the air with his hands.

  ‘Exactly, officer, a man can be forgiven much in the name of friendship, da?’

  The uniform touched the peak of his cap.

  ‘Funny, really, we almost didn’t turn up for the call.’

  I was puzzled; trouble at a tourist hotel and officers are al
ways quick to respond, if only to issue on-the-spot fines for ‘irregularities in paperwork and visas’.

  ‘Why’s that?’

  ‘Well, two minutes before we got here, there was another patrol car racing away down Frunze, and we wondered if they’d picked up the call first. But we thought we’d better check.’

  ‘Good thinking,’ I said, ‘keep on like this and there’ll be a commendation in it for you.’

  His broad smile split his face, and I felt almost guilty for leading him on. Once the patrol car had disappeared down Frunze and the coast was clear, I walked round to the back of the hotel, to the side overlooked by our rooms, and checked the snow for footprints, tyre tracks, signs of a struggle. I didn’t spot any clues to suggest Saltanat had been abducted by aliens. In fact, I didn’t find anything at all.

  My hand throbbed in the cold, and I suspected the burns were getting infected. Back at the Dragon’s Den, I poured vodka over my hand to disinfect it, rather than into my brain to clear it. For the next two hours, I ran through the same facts in my head over and over again, wondering what it all meant, where Saltanat was, and how we had been found so quickly.

  And then everything slotted into place.

  Chapter 47

  Two in the morning, and the last remaining waitress had been giving me the moody eye for the last hour. I dumped a couple of thousand-som notes on the table, waved away the half-hearted offer of change. The bar lights immediately dimmed; she was taking no chances on a thirsty customer strolling by for a nightcap.

  The snow had stopped falling, as heartless and final as a whore’s kiss. The sky was a delicate tissue of stars, suspended in the stillness and clarity that follows a storm. I checked my mobile; a dozen messages, all from the Chief. I already knew what they contained: a long litany of my various faults, sins and transgressions, ending with an offer of forgiveness, as long as I solved the case.

  I remembered the rookie’s words: day or night. But at this hour, the Chief would be snoring his way towards a furred tongue and a rough head in the morning. So it was the ideal time to show that I’d obeyed orders by reporting in, without actually having to see him.