Tom Callaghan - A Spring Betrayal

I guessed we were back at Graves’s compound. I held my breath, waited for the trunk to open, hoping I’d catch someone off guard, if only for a few seconds.

With luck, it might even be Kurmanalieva herself, and I could sort out Saltanat’s problem with her there and then. The catch clicked, then daylight poured in.

To his credit, the thug who peered down at me had quick reflexes. He was almost fast enough to step back and shout that I’d somehow got free. But I was faster. I felt as if I were moving in slow motion, with all the time in the world to take aim, register the surprise in his eyes, watch his mouth open to cry out. The knife left my hand with the same snap of the wrist I’d practiced so often. Sunlight caught the blade, like a sudden flash of summer lightning, moving with the effortless grace of an eagle swooping on its prey.

The lightning turned scarlet as the blade hit the man’s neck, just below his left ear. Even as the first arterial spray jetted a thin stream into the air, I was pushing myself forward, feet on the trunk’s rim. The man’s hands grappled with the blade, as if pulling it out would somehow stop the pain, darkness already spilling into his eyes. I snatched the handle, twisting and pulling sideways, and with my other hand brought the tire lever down between his eyes.

His blood splashed warm and sticky down my face. I was in a moment that lasted for hours, now bringing the tire lever down on the hand holding a gun glimpsed in the corner of my eye. Bones splintered, the impact jarred my arm, and as if from miles away, I heard a scream of anger, realized it was mine.

And then everything snapped back to the present, as I felt the unmistakable bite of a gun barrel pushed into the back of my head.

“That’s quite enough, Inspector,” a woman’s voice said, harsh and brutal as a raven’s cry. “I’ve no wish to kill you. Yet.”

I paused, getting my breath back, feeling adrenaline rush through me. I dropped the knife and the tire lever. They lay beside the corpse of the man they’d just killed, almost as if I’d had nothing to do with his death. A few feet away, another man clutched at his shattered hand, bent double, face gray with pain and shock. After the trunk, the air tasted fresh, vital. I wondered how long I’d be around to savor it.

“You have the advantage of me,” I said, in my best tough Murder Squad voice, feeling my knees tremble as my heart slowed.

“I do,” she said, and the gun pressed harder against my skull. “And I intend to keep it that way.”

“Albina Kurmanalieva,” I said. It wasn’t a question.

“You’ve been busy, you and that bitch,” she said. “But she was never stupid, that one. You? Like all men, the merest sniff of pizda and you lose what brains your mother gave you.”

I shrugged, very slowly, so as not to give her the opportunity to pull the trigger.

“So where do we go from here?” I asked. Suddenly, I felt sick to my stomach. The blood smearing my face felt like a mask I’d assumed as a disguise, only to discover I couldn’t peel it off. The stink of too-strong perfume was cloying, and I could taste bile rising in my throat. When she spoke, it was all I could do to stand still and not vomit.

“I’m sure you’re an ambitious man,” she murmured, her voice making my flesh crawl. “I thought we might make a movie star of you, Inspector.”

I’ve spent a lot of my working life in cellars, one way or another, and the experience has never been a good one. All too often, a cellar has seemed like a prelude to being permanently underground. I’ve been beaten, tortured, threatened with death in cellars. I’ve watched people die, helped them die. I’ve stood by in basement interrogation rooms as a burly ment beats a confession out of a suspect. Cellars are not my favorite places. But as somewhere to die, they’re almost unbeatable.

Nothing looked to have changed in the cellar since Saltanat and I broke into the house what seemed like years ago. No fresh bloodstains on the floor, the hooks and knives still in their racks, ropes and chains coiled on shelves. Not that I could see much, since leather straps held my head, wrists and ankles securely in place against a semi-upright wooden table that stank of dried blood.

I took comfort in the thought that no one else had stared into the unwinking eye of the camera since we’d started our hunt. A small boy kicking his football against a wall with a goalmouth chalked on it, a little girl singing lullabies to her favorite doll; they were safe, if only for the moment. If I was the price to be paid for their safety, that goes with the territory every policeman signs up for, the day they pin on their badge and strap on their gun.

I was under no illusions about my bravery. I’d seen too many people broken in cellars to believe that. The toughest guys loosen their tongues if you push a needle under their fingernails or a lit cigarette against their eyes. The Circle of Brothers might take an oath of silence, but where are your brothers when you watch someone pouring a cup of hot oil into a funnel or whetting the edge of a kitchen knife? It takes so little to make a man talk, sometimes just the thought of the pain to come is enough.

“I apologize, Inspector, for not having anywhere more congenial to chat with you,” Kurmanalieva said, her voice hoarse and menacing. She came into my line of view, her blond hair tied back in a ponytail, her suit immaculate. When you have something very special to sell to collectors, you can afford to buy the very best for yourself.

“I thought this was one of your favorite places, Albina,” I said, using her given name to show my contempt. “The only place in the world where you can reveal your inner nature.”

Kurmanalieva smiled. This close to her, I saw the generous lipstick did little to hide thin, bloodless lips. Her skin looked stretched, waxy. I wondered if it was vanity that had inspired the plastic surgery, the nips and tucks, or simply to avoid being captured in the field. Her face was that of a woman in her early thirties, I guessed, but her hands were old, compact and brutal, veins like blue strings under the skin. Early forties? It didn’t really seem to matter. I didn’t think she would want to fuck me before killing me.

“I want you to know, Inspector, I don’t enjoy the things I’m about to do to you. Not like some of my colleagues. They sometimes get carried away in their enthusiasm, with tragic consequences. Tragic for the individual, of course, but also tragic because one may not get all the information required. Then there’s all the mess and fuss involved in disposal.”

She reached forward and drew a fingernail across my forehead, pausing to hold it against my right eye, its touch as light as a spider’s web.

“Me, I know exactly what I’m doing. When to start. When to stop. When to let someone consider the error of their ways in trying to be brave.”

She pressed her fingernail ever so slightly harder, and I could feel the edge hard against my eyeball. Three millimeters more and she would blind me. Then, almost coquettishly, she pulled her hand back.

“And that, Inspector, is why I am the best. Unfortunately for you.”

She turned and strode out of my sight. I heard the creak of a chair, the rasp of a match, the quick breath in and the satisfied exhale.

“It’s a cliché that people enjoy a cigarette after sex, don’t you think? Personally, I like to smoke before I get down and dirty, before I set to. It’s the ritual, you see. And control. Smoke and fire and death, all in that one little white tube of passion. You’ve heard people say they’d die for a cigarette? Sometimes I make it come true.”

I sighed, as if I’d heard it all before.