Tom Callaghan - A Killing Winter

I did my best to seem modest, while looking Otkur up and down. Burly, above average height for an Uighur, dark, expressionless eyes, with a long face made longer by a knife scar running from his left ear to the corner of his mouth. He noticed my gaze, and drew his index finger down the length of the scar.

‘You won’t find my picture in your files, Inspector,’ he said, ‘and you won’t find the son of a whore who gave this to me, either. Not in one piece, anyway.’

The grin he gave wasn’t reassuring, his scar twisting across his cheek.

‘I wasn’t planning on looking for your mugshot, not if you can help me out. Anyway, I assume some obliging squealer back in the Prosecutor’s Office managed to spill coffee on your dossier?’

‘Law, always suspicious,’ Otkur said, turning to his thugs, who smiled obligingly. ‘Who can say how these unfortunate accidents occur?’

‘The case I’m investigating wasn’t an accident,’ I said, my voice harsh. Back to the business in hand. I was cold, hungry, and my arse felt like I’d been thrashed after eight hours on the road. My gun might have been in the boot of Kursan’s car, but I was still an Inspector, Murder Squad, and people shouldn’t ever forget it.

Otkur’s face grew serious. He would be a ferocious enemy, cunning, implacable. But then there were plenty in Bishkek Number One who might say the same of me.

‘Inspector, Kursan and I do business together now for many years. I don’t like Kyrgyz, he doesn’t like Uighur. But we understand each other. No drugs except for weed, no girls. It’s straightforward, business. But sometimes, shit happens you can’t ignore. That’s when you stand up, be a man. Make sure the scum, the low life know their place, bottom of the shitpile.’

He paused, and we lit cigarettes. He plumed the smoke out, and I watched the cloud flood through the snowflakes. I guessed we were somewhere the other side of Karakol, up towards the Kazakh border. Before we headed back to Bishkek, perhaps I’d have time to visit Chinara’s grave. Maybe permanently.

‘You know Chinese medicine.’

It was a statement, not a question. I looked over at Kursan, who nodded.

‘Only what Kursan tells me.’

‘You fuck a Chinese pussy, they go crazy because you’ve got a dick like they’ve never seen before. So, naturally, they complain about their men. So after they’ve given their bitches a touch of muscle to quieten them, the guys start wondering about medicine.’

‘Rhino horn, tiger bones, that sort of shit?’

Otkur laughed, and dropped his cigarette on to the snow, where it hissed for a second.

‘Shanghai? Beijing? Maybe you find the genuine article there. Urumchi? The arse-end of China, Inspector, so they make do.’

I stayed silent.

‘Remember, people want to believe. Tell them something is good, it might even be true, if they believe it hard enough. And something they really want, they pay good money for.’

‘And they want what?’ I asked, having a good idea of the answer.

‘Remember what Genghis Khan said? “There is no greater joy than conquering your enemy, riding his horses, taking his wives and daughters.” Nothing changes; we all want long life, stiff dicks and many sons.’

I looked over towards the mountains, where the last sunlight was turning the snow blood orange and red.

‘What has all this got to do with a murder in Bishkek?’

‘You can’t get rhino horn or tiger bones for sex, you go for the next best thing. Something you can harvest, with an endless supply, something that proves a man’s strength.’

Otkur paused.

‘In the border villages, they believe nothing’s as powerful or as virile as an unborn baby boy. Energy untapped, undrained. Harvested fresh while the heart still beats, mother’s blood flowing through its veins.’

I thought back to the morgue, the unborn child ripped from its mother’s womb, his eyes accusing me of betrayal, and my mouth filled with bile. When I spoke, I sounded weak, incredulous.

‘Human foetuses, you mean? Children?’

He paused and spat. When he looked back at me, his face was grave.

‘Women don’t go missing around here. They’re always close to home. Unmarried, they could be bride-stolen. And once they’re wed, they’re a symbol of their husband’s strength, his property.’

The thugs nodded in agreement. Kursan swore under his breath. Then silence, except for the wind.

‘A pregnant village girl goes missing. The other side of the country, the daughter of a member of the nomenklatura is murdered, and another woman’s dead child is dumped in her womb like so much trash. I don’t see the connection.’

Otkur nodded his head, as if in agreement. The scar on his cheek stood out livid against the bitter cold. I blinked against the snowflakes and turned my collar up, but nothing could warm me against the sour feeling in my gut.

‘And you’d be right, Inspector.’

Otkur’s face was unreadable, his eyes never leaving mine.

‘Except?’ I asked.

‘The village girl isn’t missing any more. But her unborn child is.’

Otkur told me the story, leaving out no details, his voice calm, measured, but with anger apparent in his eyes.

Her name was Umida Boronova. Nineteen years old, married just ten months, to Omurbek Boronov. He’d been at school with her, and had asked her out repeatedly, always being refused, unable to stop hoping. So one evening, he and his best friend drank a litre of home-made for courage, drove his battered Moskvitch to the edge of the village, waited for two hours until Umida appeared.

They grabbed her, screaming and kicking, and drove to Omurbek’s house, where his mother and three sisters were waiting. The women helped Omurbek wrestle the girl out of the car, and dragged her into the single-storey house with the whitewashed walls and pale blue window frames. All evening, they told her what a good catch Omurbek was, how he’d inherit the farm when his father died, about his kindness to his sisters, his respect for his mother and aunts. All the time, Omurbek waited outside in the car, finishing off a second bottle and wondering if the scratches on his face would leave a permanent scar.

Umida fought, wept, begged the women to let her go home. Again and again, they told her how lucky she was, tried to put the white scarf over her hair to show her acceptance of Omurbek as her husband. They pointed out the fine china, the white linen, the elaborate brass samovar. And finally, worn down, terrified, wanting nothing more than her ordeal to end, Umida agreed.

And now, a year later, she’d faced something much worse. Missing for two days. The whole village turning out to look for her, knowing that an eight-months-pregnant woman out in a Kyrgyz winter stood no chance of surviving the night. Then the finding of her body, face down in a snowdrift, already half shrouded, arms and legs frozen into position. Lifting up the body, hearing her fingers snap like twigs, blood half frozen into a thick black puddle beneath her, squelching like a boot being pulled out from thick mud. And then seeing the belly sliced open, the gaping wound and absence, the placenta torn, amniotic fluid spilling out in a grotesque imitation of birth.

Even before the police were called, the word reached Otkur. An important man, a chelovek who could organise the hunt, track down the killer, bring him back to the village to face a justice more determined and brutal than anything a cynical uniform would hand out.

‘Can you find out if she’d seen a doctor? Maybe her blood group is on file?’ I suggested, knowing that it was unlikely. Umida was a poor girl from a poor village, with no money for doctors; her mother and the old women would have cared for her during her pregnancy. If you die in childbirth in this part of the world, that’s just how it is.