Tom Callaghan - A Spring Betrayal

“Now the fun part,” Saltanat said. “Put your jacket back on.”

I did as I was told, and waited for instructions.

“Fall forward, and don’t use your hands to break your fall,” Saltanat said. “We need this to look convincing.”

I was convinced she was enjoying this rather too much, but I fell forward, my face buried in the snow, arms flung out. Saltanat placed the steak under the bullet hole, and I could feel a clammy sweat on the back of my neck. Saltanat spattered some of the blood by my side, and I could taste its rich scent in the back of my throat.

“Stay still,” she commanded. I didn’t move for four or five minutes, until she told me to get up.

I lumbered to my feet, brushing snow and dirt off my face, out of my hair.

“My jacket’s fucked, I suppose,” I grumbled, wiping the worst of the blood against a clean patch of snow.

“Not at all,” Saltanat said, scrolling through the photos she’d taken. “A bullet hole, what could give you more street cred than that, a Murder Squad inspector who survived an assassination attempt?”

It would be all too easy for someone to repeat the exercise, next time for real. I’d seen too many bodies sprawled out on pavements, in fields, under birch trees, to think the same fate could never await me.

“Won’t they want to see my face?” I asked. “Find out who I am, I mean, was?”

“The last thing we want is for someone to recognize you,” Saltanat said. “Better to say we decided to turn you into food for the crows. By the way, you make a lovely corpse.”

“That’s what I’m afraid of,” I said, started back down the hillside toward the car, until I slipped and landed on my ass, felt the snow seeping wet into my trousers. Saltanat’s laughter followed me all the way down.

The Voice at the other end of the phone was guarded.

“Yes?”

“Mr. Graves?” Saltanat said.

Silence.

“You spoke to a former colleague of mine the other day.”

“Did I?”

“Regarding a series of financial transactions that, in the event, never happened,” she said. Her tone was officious, impersonal. Saltanat could play the ice queen to perfection.

“And?”

“There was a series of cancelations at a local hotel. Perhaps you read about them?”

“Perhaps.”

The voice was noncommittal, giving nothing away, not even confusion or misunderstanding.

“The colleague who spoke to you is no longer with our organization, ever since we discovered he was acting on his own, without our authority. His employment was terminated. And so was he.”

More silence.

Saltanat continued, the frost in her voice amplified by the formality of her language.

“As a gesture of our commitment to an amicable solution, we’re sending you photographs of his resignation. We hope this ends any unpleasantness between our two organizations. Please accept our apologies.”

After a moment, the Voice spoke.

“Damage was done, costs incurred. I would expect some form of compensation.”

Discussing death, violence, crime, in the language of the boardroom. Not for the first time, I wondered if the entire world was greedy and corrupt. The biggest thieves sit at boardroom tables discussing takeovers and share options. And the only handcuffs they ever get to put on are golden.

“I quite agree, Mr. Graves,” Saltanat continued, “but my superiors feel the quickest way to deal with this problem is to simply let the matter drop, and we both continue to go about our respective businesses as before.”

The Voice started to speak, but Saltanat abruptly broke the connection. She handed the cell phone to me.

“You might want to have a look at your corpse,” she said. “That’s not something you get to do every day. And then take a hammer to the phone.”

I thumbed through the images of my dead body in the snow. They looked pretty convincing, and it wasn’t as if I’d never seen such things before. The close-up of the bullet hole with the charred meat and powder burn was particularly effective.

“So Graves gets these, and decides the problem’s over. Then what?”

Saltanat took the phone back from me, and started to dial a number.

“His problem is just starting, whether or not he believes it’s been sorted out. Once I send a photo of the hotel, together with your holiday snaps.”

“Sending them where?”

“To your old colleagues at Sverdlovsky station. Together with a text that the very dead body in the photo is yours, that the hotel massacre is involved, and that our friend Mr. Graves knows something about both. Let’s see what they do then.”

You can only admire such deviousness.

An hour later, we were parked a couple of hundred yards away from Graves’s mansion when the first squad car arrived. An officer got out of the passenger seat, adjusted his uniform, squared his peaked cap, said something into the gate intercom.

After a couple of moments, the side gate swung open and the ment went inside.

“This is your version of stirring the sewage and seeing what floats to the top?” I asked. Saltanat shook her head.

“Nothing so direct,” she answered. “We watch what happens, and that tells us just how well protected Graves is. He’s got to be giving a lot of beaks something to drink; maybe this will tell us whose.”

“Sverdlovsky’s going to be very happy the missing inspector is going to stay missing,” I said, “but I hope that’s only going to be temporary.”

I tried a light-hearted voice, but Saltanat looked at me, concerned perhaps I was losing my edge, my fire.

“You know, Akyl, if you wanted to get out of Kyrgyzstan, we could go to Tashkent. New papers, a new identity, you could start over again.”

I took her hand, squeezed it.

“I’m touched you’d do that for me,” I said. “Honestly.”

I looked around and waved a hand in the general direction of the mountains.

“But this is home. Not much, I know, but…”

I shrugged, then leaned forward and kissed her cheek.

“This is where I am, this is what I do. Without it, I’d be nothing.”

Saltanat raised an eyebrow.

I smiled, then stiffened as a black limousine turned the corner, parked behind the squad car. Tinted glass prevented us from seeing who was inside. The uniformed driver opened the rear door and an elegant middle-aged blond woman emerged. Dark glasses covered her eyes, but even at a distance, I saw she was attractive, slim, head held high, full of confidence. Her hair was piled up in a French braid, and her clothes were expensive. From GUM in Moscow, or Bond Street in London. A lot of Russian oligarchs live there now, and they like their mansions expensive, their cars high-end, and their women stylish. Why steal billions of rubles from the Russian people if not to enjoy the fruits of your labors?

“You know who she is?” I asked, flicking through the filing cabinet in my mind, not coming up with any immediate answers, although there was something familiar about her. Saltanat frowned, said nothing.

I did recognize the man who got out of the car and walked with the woman toward the gate. I’d last seen him just a few days before, drinking pivo at a market stall in Jalalabad.

Mikhail Ivanovich Tynaliev, minister for state security.

“So now we know,” I said, lit a cigarette, my hand trembling. I’d expected Graves to be connected, but hadn’t imagined it would be so high up.

“We could have guessed Graves and Tynaliev would know each other,” Saltanat said, “but we don’t know how close the connection is. Graves has legitimate businesses. It could be Tynaliev is involved in those, but not in the porn.”