Tom Callaghan - A Spring Betrayal

“He’s with me,” Saltanat replied, not answering the question. Finding out I was Murder Squad and on the run wouldn’t inspire him with confidence, I knew that. So I kept my mouth shut and my jacket closed to keep the gun from scaring him.

“I said only you,” Kamchybek whined, in a squeak so high I looked around for bats.

“Do I look that stupid?” Saltanat asked.

I thought she looked deadly, a warrior queen dressed in black, but saying so wouldn’t be helpful.

“He’s here to protect you,” she continued, her eyes never leaving his face.

“Protect me from what?” he asked, his eyes wide and terrified.

“From me beating you into a coma if you’ve wasted my time, if you lie to me about anything.”

“Hey, I called you, right? Why would I lie?”

“Let’s call it misdirection.” Saltanat’s mouth smiled, her eyes threatened.

Kamchybek took another blast of rocket fuel, pointed first at the bottle, then at us.

I shook my head. Saltanat merely looked pained.

“I’ll be honest with you, okay? I’m not saying I’ve never done anything wrong, who can? I sell a little travka to smoke from time to time, maybe a DVD player or a cell phone that’s a tiny bit toasty. But I have limits, principles. You understand?”

We both nodded: I knew where this conversation was taking us.

“I keep my ears open, always good to know what’s hot, what’s not, get a stride ahead of the competition. But I was in here the other night, a little bit of business, and there are two guys, hammered, talking some shit, real shit, you understand?”

Saltanat looked over at me, made a gesture of impatience. I held up my hand to stop her, nodded encouragement to him. Good cop, bad cop routine. I’ve done a lot of interrogations over the years; it’s always more productive to say as little as possible, let the truth fall through the silences in between the lies.

“They were boasting to each other about the sex they liked. Rough stuff. Kids. Said it didn’t matter, boy or girl. Long as the kids got hurt.”

Saltanat’s eyes narrowed, so I spoke before she could kick off.

“Two drunks talking in a bar. Spinning the usual lies about how often they get laid, and with whom. Nothing new there. Maybe all just fantasy,” I said.

Kamchybek shook his head, and looked across at the two street-meat women.

“That’s what I thought at first. This place doesn’t attract the best kind of crowd.”

He paused, demolished another vodka.

“Anyway, they finished their bottle, staggered off with a couple of working girls for an alleyway fuck. But one of them, the one with the beard, he left his phone behind. One of those fancy ones that connect to the Internet. Worth a few som . So I slipped it into my pocket, finished my shot, headed for home. I didn’t want them coming back and asking me if I’d seen a cell phone waiting to be stolen. They both looked pretty capable, not big, but muscular, and I’m in no shape to be running. Never was much of a fighter, either.”

“And?” I prompted.

“Got home. Switched it on, pressed a few buttons. And a film started playing.”

Saltanat and I waited as Kamchybek wiped his forehead with a handkerchief that had been clean around the turn of the century.

“Well, it was… well, I’d never seen anything like it. And I’ve been around. Even used to be a bit of a ladies’ man when I was younger.”

Now it was my turn to be impatient. The longer I stayed in the Kulturny, the more likely it was someone who knew me would put a call into Sverdlovsky station, and then I’d be dancing in the soundproofed basement room where we do the hard talking.

“Let’s speed it up, shall we? What made you decide to call my colleague here?” I asked.

“The two men, I got the feeling they were connected, protected. Just the way they didn’t seem to give a fuck whether anyone was listening. I’d heard a whisper about that porn mule being arrested in Tashkent, so I put in the call, got your colleague here. Didn’t want to risk talking to the wrong person.”

Kamchybek reached into his pocket and pulled out an iPhone. Still not speaking, he pressed a couple of buttons and the cell phone lit up. He handed it over to me as a film clip started playing.

The clip was shaky and slightly out of focus to begin with, then became clearer. It opened with a close-up of a wrist, wearing an identity band. The sight of it tugged at my guts, remembering the one I wore in the orphanage. I tilted the phone so that no one else in the bar could see the screen, and muted the sound. Saltanat moved closer to me so that she could also watch.

What we saw was horror.

The boy must have been about nine, but the look of terror in his eyes was ancient. His mouth was open, a silent scream, which stopped only when a man’s hand slapped him hard across the face.

I heard Saltanat gasp beside me, and felt her turn away.

“I’ve seen this,” she said, disgust overwhelming her voice. “In fact, I can’t stop seeing it.”

I watched on, the rape, the murder. The bar’s stink of pelmeni , sour beer, and stale piss smelled stronger, my stomach rising in nausea. The images swam before my eyes, as if I was watching from the bottom of Lake Issyk-Kul, and I wondered if I was going to faint.

Then I was bending forward, dry retching, the taste of bile sharp as razors in my throat.

That was when I felt a sting in my left shoulder, looked up to see Kamchybek’s eyes open wide, as a red poppy bloomed on his chest.

Blood. Not his blood. Mine.

Ignoring the fire in my shoulder, I turned to see Lubashov, the doorman from outside, Makarov in hand, struggling with the magazine, his face twisted with rage and fear.

I reached across my waist to grab my gun with my right hand, but Saltanat already had her Makarov out, left hand gripping her right wrist, the gun pointed arm’s length at Lubashov’s head. I’ve always believed that center mass of the body is the best target to put someone down—it’s how I’d killed his brother—but there’s no doubt staring into a small black circle of death focuses the mind to a surprising degree.

“Down. Don’t think about it, do it. Gun down or I put you down,” Saltanat commanded, taking a step forward. I could see Lubashov calculating the odds on unjamming his gun, taking aim, and pulling the trigger. He didn’t stand a chance.

It was one of those moments when time freezes, cigarette smoke suspended against the ceiling lights, a moment of gray, where everything becomes electric and vivid. I looked over my shoulder. There was a scorch mark on my jacket as if someone had tapped me with a red-hot poker, and a certain amount of blood, but nothing I’d need a transfusion for. If I hadn’t bent down to gag though, it would have been very different. With no need for a blood transfusion.

Like a man doing a mime act in extreme slow motion, wading through particularly sticky glue, Lubashov lowered the gun down on the floor. It looked as if Mother Lubashova wouldn’t need to buy a second tombstone. But Saltanat didn’t take her eyes off his hands, her gun off his face.

“You’ve got a good explanation for trying to kill a police officer?” she said.

Lubashov looked about to burst into tears.

“My brother,” he mumbled, said something nonsensical about revenge. Over the years of what I laughingly call my career, I’ve learned that the weakness of all these wannabe gangsters is that they mistake violence for an instant solution instead of a last resort. But shooting a Murder Squad detective will bring a wealth of shit down on everyone, even if he’s wanted for questioning.

Saltanat moved forward, beckoning Lubashov back with her gun, until she could pass his gun back to me.