Tom Callaghan - A Spring Betrayal

“I didn’t expect to hear from you again,” he said, wiping his face dry with a towel. “Not until you’d sorted out all that business about child porn in your apartment.”

“I’m working on that,” I said, “but things keep getting in the way. Like being beaten up, tortured, being hunted by my former colleagues, having old friends turn their faces away from me.”

To his credit, Kenesh looked ashamed for a few seconds.

“I have to think of my family first, Akyl. And how could I help anyway?”

I nodded; if I wanted Kenesh to help me, I had to show him I wasn’t one to bear a grudge.

“I got the word, from someone very senior,” I said, not wanting to mention Tynaliev by name. “They said the Be On The Lookout for me was being unofficially scaled down.”

“There’s talk you were set up,” Kenesh said. “Maybe by people who supported the chief before he went away. You know, revenge.”

I knew that wasn’t the case; the people who’d backed the chief wouldn’t have rolled him in a snowdrift if he’d been on fire. Those people move on, to the next deal, the next scam, the next ass to kiss.

“I want you to do me a favor,” I said, and watched as Usupov immediately looked cautious. “Don’t worry, you can see I’m not wearing a wire.”

“Not unless you’ve hidden it in a very uncomfortable place,” Usupov said, in a rare flash of humor.

“Well, if I was, you don’t want to speak into the microphone,” I said, and the tension in the air seemed to ease. I scooped another bucket of cold water out of the tub, poured it over my head. The shock was like a punch in the face, but it gave me a moment to work out how to convince Usupov to do what I was about to ask.

“We should leave separately,” I said, “but before you go, there’s something I want you to collect from my locker.”

“What is it?” he asked.

“Nothing to worry about,” I reassured him, “but I’ve done a lot of digging about the dead children we unearthed. I’m pretty sure I know what happened to them, and why. But in case someone’s digging a hole for me, I’ve made some notes, and I want you to hang onto them.”

I paused, staring into Usupov’s eyes to reinforce the seriousness of what I’d just said.

“Then if I don’t turn up, or if they find me after someone’s given me a Makarov kiss, send them to the editor of Achyk Sayasat . You know how antigovernment they are; they’ll publish right away, and you can’t close all the mouths. An anonymous tip-off. You won’t be implicated.”

“I suppose I can do that,” he said. “But why don’t you just send the information to Tynaliev? You’d get rehabilitated, the porn charges would go away, you’d have the minister backing you all the way.”

I didn’t want to let Kenesh know Tynaliev was possibly involved in the murders; he’d be out of the banya and down Ibraimova without stopping to get dressed. I told him where I’d hidden my notes, watched as he headed toward the changing room. I decided to give him ten minutes before leaving, just enough time for one more shower to ease some of the stiffness out of my joints.

That was when I saw the burly guy with a shaven head and a chest full of prison tattoos as he came into the shower room.

And when he noticed me.

He started to move toward me. Naked, the slabs and sheets of muscle across his arms and chest were clearly visible. He could snap me in half with all the effort it takes to part a pair of chopsticks. The plaster cast on his hand was a souvenir of my hitting him with the tire iron back at Graves’s house, and his scowl suggested he wasn’t in a forgiving mood.

He stood between me and the changing room, and I knew there was no other way out of the banya , or time in which to get dressed. I moved away from the steam rooms, toward the corridor that leads to the circular pool, pushing through the door as he followed me. He moved slowly, with the curious grace you sometimes see in burly, overmuscled men. He knew I was cornered, intended to relish the time he had in which to kill me.

In the pool room, he took hold of a nearby broom, jamming it through the door handles to prevent anyone else joining us. The pool was deserted, the water impassive, motionless. Light from the windows placed high upon the walls spilled down through the water, reflecting and shimmering off the blue tiles. It looked like a very good place to die.

I moved to the far edge of the pool, so we faced each other. For every step he took in either direction, I could match him, so we remained opposite each other. Theoretically, it was a dance we could carry out for hours, or until someone came to investigate why the pool room door wasn’t opening. But I couldn’t rely on him not having a colleague with him, still getting changed, who would spot his partner’s absence, follow him, and then have me trapped as they closed in on either side. I had to act.

I walked slowly around the pool toward him, flexing the muscles in my back and shoulders. I got to within three meters of the man, his eyes never leaving my face. The light reflecting off the water gave him an almost unreal intensity. I could see every pore in his skin, every hair on his arms and legs, the heft of his belly. The blue-gray tattoo in the center of his chest was of a Russian church with three onion domes: he’d served three prison sentences. The dagger piercing his neck told me he’d committed murder while in prison, and he was available for hire. It wasn’t a hard guess to work out his latest assignment.

I knew that the plaster cast on his hands would be a weapon as long as he wasn’t in the water, where it would become a liability. So I dropped my head, raced toward him, then dived into the water, dragging him in with me.

We both touched the bottom of the pool at the same time, my arms wrapped around his waist, while he tried to club at my neck with his cast. The cold water bit into my wounds like a starving wolf. I kept my head tucked into my shoulders, so they took the worst of his blows. The resistance of the water and the weight of the cast meant he couldn’t really hurt me. I kept hold of his waist, punched his stomach as hard as I could. It was like hitting a side of beef, his muscles rock solid. I clenched my fist, hit him again. The air in his lungs exploded upward in a giant bubble. Still holding my breath, I reached down and twisted his balls. His mouth opened in a silent scream and he started to panic. I let go of him, and pushed myself up to the surface. The pool is three meters deep, so I started to tread water, waiting to see him appear.

It was then I realized he couldn’t swim. He broke the surface, eyes wide in terror, his legs unable to find the bottom, arms thrashing the water and sending waves over the tiled surround. I swam to the far side of the pool and clambered out. If I tried to help him, he’d probably drag me down in his panic, drown me with him. A result, even if it didn’t work out so well for him. I stood there, water dripping down my body, hair plastered to my head, looking down.

His arms waved underwater, the way weeds sway with the current of a river, quickly at first, then slower, losing momentum as his lungs filled with water. Finally, he lay motionless at the bottom of the pool, anchored by the cast on his hand.

I knew he would have killed me, choked the life out of me or held me underwater. I was sure he’d killed before, watching the life go out of his victim’s eyes, replaced with nothingness. Perhaps he’d been the man who’d raped and murdered Alina back at the hotel. I imagined he would lie in bed and relive the taking of life with a pleasure that went beyond sexual feeling.

But none of that made me feel any better about standing by and watching another man drown.