Tom Callaghan - A Killing Winter

‘Kursan, I really don’t feel like a moral debate on hooking right now.’

‘You want to meet up, have a few beers? You shouldn’t be on your own tonight.’

Solitude was exactly what I did want, but there was no use trying to persuade Kursan, and we agreed to meet up later at the Kulturny. It was a good way of showing the regulars who the hardest bastard on the block was, that anyone who fucked with me would get what Tyulev and Lubashov got. I suspected Kursan was also pretty keen on the idea of a terrified barman supplying drinks on the house all night.

I saw I’d got a call coming in, a number I didn’t recognise. The voice, however, I did. Honey drizzled over ice cream.

‘I see I underestimated you,’ she said, and her tone sent a shudder through me. The kind of shudder you get when a beautiful woman takes your hand and runs a slender finger across your wrist, a crimson nail raking your palm.

‘Your boss must be pleased with you. Solving a brutal sex murder, making sure the villains can’t do it again. You’ll probably get promoted. Or asked to join the Ministry of State Security.’

Her voice was mocking, playing with me. And the idea wasn’t entirely displeasing.

‘I’d be delighted to. If I had solved it, that is. But we both know differently.’

She paused for a moment. When she spoke, her voice was edged with caution.

‘Do we?’

‘Those two couldn’t organise anything other than selling third-grade whores and the odd shot of krokodil . Slaughtering a pregnant woman the other side of the country, getting the foetus over to Bishkek in the middle of winter, luring a senior minister’s daughter to somewhere where they could kill her, and then dumping the body? No way. And even if they could have done all that, what’s their motive?’

I listened hard for any clue to her whereabouts. But wherever she was calling from, it was as quiet as the grave.

‘If your boss is happy that the case is solved, if Tynaliev is pleased that his daughter’s killers are in a drawer next to her, you should be pleased.’

‘I’m not happy that I killed a man today. Even if he was trying to kill me.’

‘Are you sure it was you he was aiming for?’

I stopped. It hadn’t occurred to me that Tyulev might have been the target, not me. But it made a sort of sense. Vasily was known to be happy to whisper in anyone’s ear, if the folding was right. Meeting a Murder Squad inspector about a case that someone wants to quietly file away, what else could he be doing but selling information?

‘You told Lubashov to take Vasily down?’

Her only answer was to laugh. Husky, seductive.

‘You’ll give yourself a terrible headache, thinking about things like that.’

I remembered the bullet on the other side of the room. The last of the daylight was shining off the brass.

‘And you’ve already sent me the cure for that, right?’

Silence. And then a simple, cold warning.

‘It’s time for you to move on, Inspector.’

And then silence as she broke the connection.

It was 1 a.m. in the Kulturny. Lubashov had been replaced on the door by some identikit tattooed thug, just as ugly, just as burly and just as stupid. The only difference was that this one had a pulse and eight pints of krov in his veins. Kursan was ready to give him the Saturday-night stare, but my new reputation preceded me because the zalupa let us in without a word. Down the stairs still stinking of fear and piss, and into the half-lit bar.

The barman narrowed his eyes when he saw me, but he put an unopened bottle of Vivat on the counter. A memory like that, he should be over in the Hyatt, pouring overpriced cocktails and fiddling the change of foreign businessmen. I pointed at a bottle of mineral water, and that arrived just as promptly.

Vasily’s normal seat was empty, perhaps as a mark of mourning, so I went over and parked myself. The usual faces were still there; in fact, a couple of them probably hadn’t stirred since I was last in. No Shairkul, though; maybe she’d got lucky and was being pounded into the mattress by some drunk with little money and less hygiene. I made a mental note to go and see her in the morning, then focused on watching Kursan concentrate on draining the bottle.

I waved some som at the barman, and he shook his head. On the house, after all. I wondered if they’d run to a second bottle, in about fifteen minutes’ time, the way Kursan was upending his glass.

‘Save some for later,’ I said, as he poured his fourth or fifth in as many minutes.

He grinned and nodded sideways at the room.

‘This lot have probably been paying those two shitheads protection money for years. You want, they’ll club together and buy us champagne.’

I shuddered. Russian champagne is a taste you don’t ever want to acquire. As I finished my second glass of water, I saw out of the corner of my eye that one of the regulars was hovering nearby. Kursan half rose, fists ready, but I restrained him and swung round on my stool to face the newcomer.

He’d got his hand in his jacket pocket, and I didn’t like that. I pointed at his arm and he took his hand out. Slowly. Once I could see he’d got nothing more lethal in his hand than filthy fingernails, I nodded, giving him permission to speak.

‘We all heard about this morning, Inspector,’ he stammered, his eyes flicking between me and a very belligerent-looking Kursan. ‘They were pricks, and no one will miss them.’

‘You’re mistaking me for someone who gives a shit what you losers think.’

He nodded agreement; a man of importance had given judgement. In his tiny vodka-sodden world, I was someone of consequence, while the Chief or Tynaliev could walk in and no one would have a clue about the shit storm they could cause.

‘Of course, Inspector. But you ought to know,’ and here he leant forward and lowered his voice, ‘one person here was delighted to hear about those two.’

He paused for effect, saw I was less than impressed.

‘You know the working girl that comes in here? The beautiful one?’

Genuinely puzzled, I shook my head. He made an hourglass shape with his hands, and then, just in case I hadn’t got the picture, cupped his hands in front of his chest.

‘Shairkul. You know Shairkul?’

I wondered just how much vodka you’d need to consume over one lifetime to see Shairkul as a Kyrgyz Venus.

‘What about her?’

‘She couldn’t stop talking about how pleased she was.’

‘You’re surprised? Vasily probably kept ninety per cent of everything her pussy earned.’

‘No, she said she was going to make a lot of money off what she knew.’

Now I was interested.

‘Did she say what that was?’

The man looked abashed.

‘Well, she was going to tell me, she said you’d pay her a lot, but then the bottle ran out, and I didn’t have enough for another, so she went and sat with someone else.’

True love spurned; I was amazed we weren’t both in tears. He looked longingly at the couple of inches that still remained in our bottle, so I prised it out of Kursan’s paw, and held it out to him.

‘How long ago did she leave?’

He reached for the bottle, but I kept it just outside his grasp.

‘Maybe two hours ago?’

He looked so melancholy, I figured she must have left with company. I gave him the bottle, he smiled and scuttled away, pathetically grateful.

‘We hadn’t finished that,’ Kursan complained.

He started to gesture for another bottle, but I shook my head, grabbed his arm, and started to haul him up.

‘You want to go to another bar? What’s wrong with this one?’

‘What’s right with it?’ I wanted to ask, but just aimed him at the door.