Tom Callaghan - A Killing Winter

‘Cards on table?’

‘Sure,’ I said, ‘let’s see your hand.’

‘You came down here looking for that prostitute? Gulbara?’

‘She’s a witness in my case.’

‘Well, there’s a problem.’

She lit up, opened her window, plumed smoke through the gap. Considerate. She gave me a hard, appraising stare.

‘Do you want to fuck her?’

The question took me by surprise, and so did hearing her swear.

‘Why would I want to do that?’

She shrugged, and took another hit of nicotine.

‘Lots of men do.’

‘Lots of men will fuck anything with a pulse, but I’m not one of them.’

‘How long since your wife died?’

I didn’t know how she’d heard about Chinara, but a slow anger started up, at her death being thrown so casually into the conversation.

‘Being a widower doesn’t mean I want to fuck a krokodil -shooting hooker.’

I didn’t make an effort to disguise my rage, and she nodded slowly.

‘She’s worried that if you don’t want to fuck her, there’s only one thing you do want.’

‘Which is?’

She stared at me, unblinking, those black impenetrable eyes never leaving my face.

‘To kill her.’

‘See it from my point of view, Inspector.’

Gulbara was sitting across from me, clutching a cup of tea as if it was the only thing stopping her freezing to death. But the café was warm, and her shivering was due to coming down off the drugs. Her hair was scraped back and tied in a loose ponytail; she looked much younger, but maybe that was because she wasn’t naked, and the track marks on her arms and thighs weren’t on display. I imagined the monkey was still clambering into her pizda , though.

‘I come back to the apartment, and I find… well, you saw what happened to Shairkul. The handbag led some very bad people to us. And you were the one who took the bag from me, who passed it on to someone. Who else knew about us, we were just working girls? The bag belonged to somebody rich, important. Someone who’d want their thousand dollars back.’

‘How does that make me the one who killed Shairkul?’

Gulbara looked uneasy and sipped her tea.

‘Maybe not you, but someone who could make the police look the other way. A politico, maybe, one of the high-ups. What’s a dead hooker to one of them?’

I sighed, and drank my own tea. Without asking, Gulbara added more to my cup, filling it halfway, the perfect hostess.

‘You found a body, hacked and mutilated, with a dead foetus in her belly. Then you find your flatmate and work colleague in the same condition. You think I keep a store of dead baby boys just in case I want to make a murder more interesting?’

I reached across and pulled up her sleeve, the rotting krokodil greenish-brown against the pallor of her skin.

‘How much of that shit are you shooting up?’

My voice had risen and I was getting curious stares from the people at the next table. Gulbara looked down at her cup, and I noticed that her fingernails were chewed down to the quick.

‘Saltanat told me you were OK.’

I looked across at the other woman at the table. At least now I knew her name.

She nodded.

‘You’re one of the good guys, Inspector. Or…’ Saltanat paused to consider, ‘at least you don’t mind killing the bad guys.’

‘I don’t want to kill anyone,’ I said, and drank more tea.

‘Doesn’t stop you being pretty good at it, though.’

Her tone was mocking, as if I was a joke to which only she had the punchline.

I looked over at Gulbara. The cop banter wasn’t helping her calm down. And then it struck me that I didn’t know if Saltanat was law; I didn’t know anything about her, except that she scared the shit out of me.

‘Are you taking me back to Bishkek?’

I looked at Gulbara, tried to reassure her with a calm voice and an understanding gaze.

‘You’re not suspected of anything, there isn’t a warrant out for your arrest. I just need your deposition. Give me some answers, and I’ll see that there won’t be any paper out on you, not even for fleeing the scene of a crime.’

Saltanat surprised me by nodding in agreement. I gave Gulbara my most winning smile.

‘Tell me what you know, it ends here. No having to go back to Bishkek.’

‘I don’t have a minder any more, anyway, do I?’ Gulbara asked, guessing that I’d given Gasparian the hard word.

Once back in the Kulturny, she’d be fixed up with a new protector in seconds, whether she wanted one or not, but I decided not to share that cheerful thought.

‘Stay in Osh, maybe,’ I suggested. ‘Get off the krokodil ?’

She looked defensive, and tugged the sleeves of her coat further down over her wrists.

‘It’s only every once in a while, to relax, for my nerves.’

We both knew she was lying; if the krokodil kept biting her, she’d got a year left, maybe two if she was really unlucky. But it was her call, and I was a murder cop, not a drugs counsellor, a father figure or a knight in tarnished armour come to the rescue. Gulbara knew that too, knew what lay ahead as surely as if I’d shown her a photo of a pile of freshly dug earth, with her name and face engraved on the headstone.

I gave up on the cheap advice, and got down to her statement. Saltanat listened intently, saying nothing, her eyes narrowed from the smoke of her cigarette. What Gulbara had to tell me was pretty much as I expected: no, she didn’t know who Shairkul was meeting, didn’t know anything about Vasily, or what he might have done to get Lubashov so pissed off with him. One thing she did tell me was that Shairkul was also working off the books, servicing clients she’d found on her own account. Which meant she got to keep the money, but risked a beating from Gasparian if he found out. But I already knew Shairkul’s pimp wouldn’t also be her killer.

‘The dead woman, she was somebody important?’ she asked, wondering if she should continue to be scared.

I thought about saying every murder victim is important, if only to their family and friends, but I knew both women would see that as the worst sort of lie. Yekaterina’s father could turn Bishkek upside down to find his daughter’s butcher, but I’d be lucky if I could get Shairkul anything more memorable than a cheap cotton shroud and a state-dug pit.

‘Her father’s a big guy,’ I said, and left the rest unspoken. ‘You know anything about Shairkul’s family?’

I thought I could trace her easily enough, but it never hurts to save time when you’re hunting a murderer.

‘She’s… was… from Tokmok,’ Gulbara said, her face screwed up as if to help her concentration, ‘but I don’t know anything about her family. She said they didn’t get on.’

I couldn’t say I was surprised; not many parents are delighted when their darling daughter decides to start selling herself under the trees in Panfilov Park. It was time to push Gulbara a little harder.

‘How did your house burn down?’ I asked, throwing out the question as if the answer didn’t really matter.

Gulbara fiddled with her tea, and I sensed a new tension.

‘It’s my mother’s house, not mine. When the recent troubles came, well, we’re Uzbek, and this is a Kyrgyz district. Mama lived through the killings twenty years ago; when it all started up again, she just grabbed what she could and headed for Doslik.’

We Kyrgyz call the Uzbekistan border Doslik, while the Uzbeks insist it’s called Dostuk. Neighbours, and yet we can’t even agree on a common name. It turned out that Mama had crossed into Uzbekistan and headed for relatives in Tashkent, fleeing the authorities on both sides. A lifetime’s home suddenly in hostile territory, what else was she to do? Yet again, I felt weary despair at my country’s endless acts of hate, stupidity, violence.