Tom Callaghan - A Spring Betrayal

I nodded. My memories of the orphanage weren’t great, but I knew Gurminj was a good man. He’d told me once, in the days when I was still drinking, that there was no such thing as a child that couldn’t be helped, sometimes even saved. I was drunk in the way I used to get then, with enough anger and despair bubbling under to turn the world into a fleapit hotel with blood on the carpet and screams soaked into the wallpaper. But I wasn’t drunk enough to tell him that I’d seen some of the children he cared for grow up to be robbed or raped or murdered. Or to do those things themselves.

He already knew.

Gurminj pushed the evidence bags back toward me, distaste evident on his face.

“Not the nicest present I’ve ever had.”

“Try being given one when you’re twelve,” I said.

He stared back at me, perhaps unsure if I was insulting him.

“I missed my mama , my grandfather, even the sour-faced bitch he married. I wasn’t a country boy, I didn’t know anyone, and they all laughed at my city accent. So I told them they were all myrki , stupid peasants. I lost the first few fights, but then I learned it was easier to just get along with what they said. Or to punch first when I had to.”

“No one ever said living in an orphanage is easy,” Gurminj said, “but sometimes it has to be better than what went before. You remember the silent ones?”

I nodded. The children who didn’t speak, the ones who never caught your eye or smiled or joined in playtime games. The ones who did their best in the showers to hide the scars and burn marks on their arms and backs. And then there were the ones whose scars were all on the inside, who’d given up trying to understand why the world was treating them with such cruelty.

I picked up the envelopes with the identity bands, all that we had to give names, faces to the bodies.

“Seven more silent ones,” I said, memories vivid behind my eyes.

“There’s one thing you need to know, Inspector,” Gurminj said, pointing at the bags.

“You’ve traced the children already?” I asked.

“In a manner of speaking,” he said, producing a sheet of paper from a pile on his desk. “As you know, I’ve got contacts in other orphanages. Mainly, we keep each other posted on the latest nomenklatura bullshit from Bishkek. But you know, Akyl, there’s a market for the children we look after.”

I could sense the anger coming off Gurminj; no one cared more for the orphans under his care, no one was more aware of the need for vigilance against the predators that circle the pack.

“I don’t really approve of foreign adoptions,” he said. “I know all the arguments about finding a better life in America, in Europe. And God knows, anyone that can love a child that isn’t their own is a good person. But why should Kyrgyzstan become a baby farm for rich foreigners? What if you lose that sense of who you are, what it means to be Kyrgyz?”

I nodded, although I’ve often wondered if being Kyrgyz simply means being chained to an endless supply of misfortune.

“We watch out for the traffickers, the illegal adoptions. We’ve all heard about children being harvested for their organs, or for medicine. Does it happen? Maybe a myth, but who knows? There’s no end to the ways in which scum exploit the helpless, so they can have a fancy car, expensive vodka, a bleach-blond Russian whore with silicone tits. So I keep in touch with some of the security people in Kazakhstan, Uzbekistan, and we watch.”

Gurminj gave a mirthless smile that bared his teeth, held up the paper in his hand. God help anyone who abused a child under his care.

“The identity bands are genuine, no doubt about that. And the different colors show that they come from different orphanages as well as this one, as far away as Naryn and Osh. But that’s where the problem begins.”

He paused, and I stared across the desk at him, wondering at his silence.

“The numbers and the orphanages all tally. For once, Central Records didn’t screw it all up. But the children who wore them? Your problem is, they’re all still alive. And they all left their orphanages at least ten years ago.”

For a moment, I couldn’t make sense of what Gurminj told me. The bands had to be genuine, untampered with. When you were deposited at an orphanage, you were given a band to wear on your right wrist, the number already written on it, the number that tracked your progress or lack of it through the system. Then a lighter was held under the two ends of the plastic to melt them together. There was no way you could remove it without cutting it in half. And when the band got too tight, the old one was destroyed and a new one sealed in its place.

Tamper-proof: what the system captures, it doesn’t easily relinquish. The only thing more permanent would have been a tattoo, and even the government wouldn’t go that far.

“I don’t understand,” I said; this was the first solid fact I’d uncovered so far.

I looked more closely at the bands: I should have realized that they were far too big for such small children. As if he’d read my thoughts, Gurminj nodded.

“It was the first thing Usupov told me, that the bands were too big for the bodies.”

“So why didn’t he tell me? I could have started a check on identifying the bands.”

Gurminj shrugged, and pushed his palms toward the ceiling in a gesture of resignation.

“You said he flew up here? In a helicopter? So the case must be important to someone with plenty of pull, wouldn’t you say? Someone who wants the bodies identified. Or maybe wants them staying unknown.”

I’d always thought of Usupov as one of the good guys. We’d worked well in the past, and I owed him. But there’s always a first time for everything. The first kiss, the first fuck, the first betrayal, the first death.

Gurminj opened his desk drawer and took out a bottle and two glasses. Not easy with one hand, but he’d had a lot of practice.

“You still don’t… ?” he said, looking down at the glass he’d pushed toward me.

“Not today,” I answered, the familiar words a lie against the sudden craving I felt. The raw scent of the vodka, the oily look as it swirled around the glass and caught the light, the burn on my tongue and throat, the shudder as the alcohol hit.

“You won’t mind if I do?” he asked, poured himself a shot, threw it back.

“Your liver,” I said. “God help whoever gets it as a transplant.”

“When this shit happened,” he said, pointing at his empty shirtsleeve, “I used to feel my missing hand wanting to throw a punch all the time. At anyone who got in my way, who felt sorry for me, who assured me that it didn’t make a difference but she’d met someone.”

He poured another brimful, let it sit.

“I could imagine the cuts on my knuckles from someone’s teeth, feel the blow travel up my arm. The morphine didn’t take the pain away, it only pushed it aside, made it seem unimportant, like hearing a TV in the next room. But when it wore off, it was back to having life as my sparring partner.”

This time he sipped, the glass hidden in his one hand.

“So I quit the morphine, hit the vodka, hard at first, then tapered it down to a couple of glasses every two or three days. A kind of equilibrium.”

He tossed the rest of his drink back, made a face, smiled.

“Hardly doctor’s orders, but it gets me through the week.”

I knew the feeling.

“How about you, tovarich? How do you keep things balanced?”

The concern he felt showed in his face.

I picked up the evidence bags, stuffed them in my pocket, stood up, put my left hand out, a clumsy unfamiliar way to shake hands.

“Balance? It’s overrated, Gurminj, hadn’t you heard?”