Tom Callaghan - A Spring Betrayal

“I know, Minister. But that’s not all he does.”

“You don’t like rich people, do you, Inspector? Or foreigners? Or me?”

I stood up, and I saw Tynaliev’s hand move under his desk. Panic button, or maybe a gun. But I didn’t care.

“This isn’t about what I do or don’t like, Minister. And I can’t imagine someone as important as you cares what I think. It’s about justice. For seven dead babies dumped in a field to rot. For an honest orphanage director who was shot for protecting children. For the boys and girls whose final hours were nothing but pain, shame, and humiliation. That’s what it’s about, Minister.”

Tynaliev sat back, and I heard the expensive leather of his chair creak.

“You’re either a very brave man, Inspector, or a remarkably stupid one. It hasn’t occurred to you that you might have been sent on a wrong track by your Uzbek lady friend? Maybe shift any blame from them to us?”

I shook my head, my legs suddenly feeling weak. I saw my hand shake as I raised the bottle to my mouth. I sat down and finished the water.

“I think you’d better explain, Inspector, don’t you?”

It wasn’t a question, more like a death sentence. I just didn’t know for whom.

Over the next hour, I outlined the points in the case I had against Morton Graves, reducing Saltanat’s involvement to that of an occasional helper, omitting her role in Albina’s death entirely. If I was going to sink without a trace, I wasn’t going to drag her down with me. He listened in silence, only interrupting occasionally to clarify individual points or the sequence of events.

I finished and looked at Tynaliev. He didn’t look convinced.

“You obviously are aware that I know Morton Graves?” he said. “That we share certain business interests? So I suppose you’re wondering if I’m involved in his other activities? If I enjoy watching rape and murder porn? Maybe even join in with the fun and games? That’s why you’ve taken out insurance?”

I shrugged, noncommittal.

“I don’t think you knew anything about the porn, Minister, or the illegal adoptions, or the rapes and murders,” I said.

I’ve interrogated enough suspects to know when they’re lying to me, and I watched Tynaliev for his reaction.

“But you’re not sure?” he said.

“I’m a policeman,” I said. “Murder Squad. You once said I was the best. That’s because I suspect everyone. Including you.”

Tynaliev stood up and walked toward the window, his back to me as he spoke.

“You did me a great service once, Inspector, in the tragedy of my daughter’s murder. You brought me the man behind her death, in such a way as to minimize scandal and political upheaval. I owe you for that.”

He turned and walked to the door.

“More to the point, Yekaterina owes you that, for giving her justice,” he added, and a hint of sorrow crossed his face, quickly replaced by the mask of a politician.

“Wait here,” he said, and left the room.

I looked over at the vodka bottle, felt more tempted than I had for months. I might have insurance in the form of documents with Usupov and Saltanat, but that wouldn’t help me if I was found floating face down in the Chui.

Tynaliev came back, this time with a gun in his hand. My gun. If you’re going to die from a bullet in the head, I decided, there was a sort of poetic justice in it being the one you’d used to kill other people.

Tynaliev sat behind his desk, my gun pointed loosely in my direction, not loosely enough for my liking.

“This could be the story. You somehow got your gun past my security people, maybe a temporary failure in the scanner, or you bribed someone to smuggle it in beforehand. You came to my study, waved the gun about, and then confessed to taking part in filming the rape and murder of young Kyrgyz citizens. You told me you couldn’t stand the guilt and shame any longer, then you put the barrel of your gun in your mouth and blew your brains out all over my very expensive Parisian wallpaper.”

He paused, raised an eyebrow, moved the gun to aim directly at me.

“I don’t think there would be a problem with anyone believing that story, do you? And your ‘insurance’? Lies spread by an unnamed foreign power, out to discredit me and cause political unrest. Not much of a legacy you’d leave behind you, Inspector.”

“If you’re going to do it, then do it,” I said. “Otherwise, with all due respect, Minister, I don’t think you’ve got the balls.”

Tynaliev nodded, considering his options, pushed the gun toward me.

“Put it away. We’re going to visit my friend, Mr. Graves.”

We left the minister’s house in a convoy of three, topped and tailed by SUVs filled with Tynaliev’s security team. The lead car had some sort of radio device, because every red light changed to green as we approached Graves’s villa. The metal gates swung open and we drove in. I could see the scorch marks on the gravel from the grenade I’d thrown over the wall, but there was no sign of the car. A handful of Graves’s thugs stood at strategic points around the drive, and the tension and reek of violence hit me like a hammer on the head. One sudden move, a scowl that became a challenge, and guns would start blasting at everything that moved.

Tynaliev took a call on his cell phone, listened, spoke a few words in English, then opened the car door.

“Out,” he said. “And come with me.”

I wondered if this was a setup; there seemed no alternative but to obey. Flanked like a warlord by his warriors, Tynaliev walked to the front door of the villa, still marked with shrapnel scars. As we arrived, Graves opened the door, put out his hand. The two men shook, both too confident to indulge in anything as obvious as showing off their power.

“Mikhail.”

“Morton. Can we speak in Russian, so the inspector can understand you?”

“Da.”

Morton Graves seemed even more intimidating than when I’d seen him before. Then he was violent, insane, obsessed. Now, a calm business persona gave him respectability. But there were still the same hard muscles under his shirt, his shaven head massive, his eyes calculating, unreadable.

“You’re here to investigate the attack on my compound?”

Graves pointed to the scarred door, the scorched gravel, shrugged his shoulders, as if genuinely surprised such a thing could have happened to a respectable businessman.

“Please, I’m forgetting my manners. Do come in. Chai? Something stronger?”

His Russian was precise, if oddly inflected, slightly old-fashioned. I found the courtesy with which he spoke more menacing than when he’d announced he was going to kill me. We followed him into a room that obviously served as an office. The bodyguards remained outside, sizing each other up, working out who was the hardest.

“I was surprised to get your call, Mikhail,” Graves said. “Not least when you said serious charges had been laid against me.”

He smiled, and I sensed the confidence of the man, his ruthlessness. Tynaliev sat down and gestured at us to do likewise.

“This is the officer accusing me of something?” Graves said, staring at me as if I were prey, and he was one of our mountain eagles waiting to swoop, then strike.

“Inspector Borubaev—” Tynaliev began, before Graves interrupted him.

“Forgive me, but I was under the impression the inspector had been suspended for possessing and distributing hard-core pornography. And he has some sort of involvement with the Uzbek security forces. Not really very wise, or patriotic, wouldn’t you say, Inspector?”

“Don’t mess around with me, Graves, you’ll regret it if you do,” I said. “I know what you’ve done, what you like to do. I’ve been there, and I’ve got the burn marks to prove it.”