Tom Callaghan - A Killing Winter

‘By the time the rumours get around, it’ll be whole orphanages and maternity wards massacred, you know that,’ Saltanat answered, as Kursan pushed his plate away, belched and stood up.

‘What did you do with the other hooker?’ he asked.

‘Gulbara? Saltanat has got her safely stashed away down south.’

‘You don’t think you should take her back to Bishkek? A witness to the last killing? Well, the last one we know about.’

He’d got a point, but I couldn’t help feeling it would prove difficult to convince Gulbara that going back to the scene of Shairkul’s murder was for the public good – or, for that matter, hers. So it made sense to get a more complete statement from Gulbara.

Kursan drained the last of his vodka, ditched his cigarette in the remains of his mutton stew, and we hit the road to Gulcha.

It was two hours later when Illya pulled up outside a whitewashed farmhouse on the outskirts of the village. Nondescript, like all the other villages we’d passed through, a huddle of single-storey buildings with pale-blue trim on the doors and window frames, net curtains drawn to keep out inquisitive glances. An occasional shapeless babushk a in muddy valenki and patterned headscarf dragged a small trolley carrying a milk churn back from the village spring; stray dogs barked and chased the car before they lost interest and skulked back home. Those were the only signs of life we saw.

‘This the place?’ I asked.

Illya simply nodded. A man of few words.

We got out of the car and I led us across the road towards the gate. The place was pretty run-down, last painted about the time that Stalin was slicing up the country, with cracks in some of the windowpanes. There was a dog lying by the side of the house, asleep, not the best watchdog in town.

As we got closer, I wondered why the dog didn’t jump up, start barking and snarling at us. And then I saw the red and grey puddle under its muzzle, dark against the mud.

If any birds had been singing, they were silent now.

I put one hand up to halt the others, and with the other hand I drew my gun. I didn’t have to look round to know that Saltanat was doing the same.

The plain wooden door was scarred at the bottom from decades of being kicked open by muddy boots, but that wasn’t the reason why it was hanging off one hinge.

The usual farmyard smells of damp earth, sheep’s wool and animal shit had an odd flavour overlying them, a sour, sickly stink that clawed at my nostrils. I pushed the door further open with my foot and moved slowly inside.

The smell was more powerful now, all too familiar. I thought back to my first killing, the old man butchered by his nephew in the one-room shithole, the walls smeared with blood, the entrails spilt out on to the bare concrete floor.

I could taste the blood in the air.

There’s a game we play in Kyrgyzstan called kok boru . It’s a kind of polo, where men on horseback battle to score a goal by hurling the headless corpse of a sheep or goat into a circle made of tyres. After an hour or so of being snatched up, dragged and trampled through the mud, the goat resembles nothing that ever lived, ripped and bloody, hoofmarks stencilled into raw flesh.

Which is what confronted me as I entered the main room.

Gulbara had defied the laws of physics and was in two places at once. Or rather, Gulbara’s lower half lay in the doorway into the bedroom, while her torso and head stared at me from a chair facing the window. The decorative felt shardyk hanging on the wall was spattered with pale flecks and grey slivers of torn meat. The wooden floor was a sea of blood, starting to crust and blacken in the cold air. I got closer to the body. Gulbara’s stomach was covered in a criss-cross and welter of razor cuts, none deep, none fatal, but enough to tell her that there was going to be no rescue. I hoped she was dead when her body was hacked in half, that her killer had been professional enough to see this as the next step in escalating the trouble, rather than a murder to be enjoyed and played over and over again in his head.

Gulbara died hard and slow, terrified and alone. And if I had anything to do with it, so would whoever did this.

A shadow fell across the floor, and I turned, raising my gun, ready to shoot. Kursan and Saltanat stood there, their faces numb with the room’s stench and swill and stain. I’ve seen violent death at first hand so many times; I forget how much it shocks normal people. It’s not something I’m proud of.

‘Don’t touch anything,’ I said, reminding myself that I was Murder Squad.

Kursan looked at me as if I was mad, and he was right. If we called the local menti , we’d be there for days. And if they discovered we’d got a couple of Uzbek Security people with us, the cell key might just get lost for weeks.

‘We’ll have to leave her,’ Saltanat said.

‘We can call it in from the road,’ I said.

‘What about her family? They could be back at any moment,’ Kursan said, looking over his shoulder at the broken door.

‘How did they find her?’ Saltanat asked, picking her way across the floor, avoiding the worst of the pools of blood. ‘She didn’t have any information worth having. Why take this risk?’

‘Scare a woman and you don’t achieve much,’ I said, ‘but terrify a village and that gets the word out and about. She’s a demonstration, the message that announces that nobody’s safe, so do as you’re told.’

‘That doesn’t answer my question,’ Saltanat said, raising her voice. ‘Illya. In here.’

The driver stomped down the path and into the house, eyes widening at the sight of so much blood.

‘When you brought her here from Osh, were you followed?’

Illya shook his head.

‘There was no one else on the road; I would have noticed.’

‘So who did you tell?’

He paused, for half a second too long.

‘No one.’

‘You’re sure?’

‘I swear.’

But I could hear the fear in his voice, sensed the sweat on his palms. Saltanat stared at him, deadpan. She made a terrifying interrogator.

‘Last time of asking, Illya.’

I could see that he was wondering which the least bad option would be, trying to make his mind up. Finally, he looked down at his steel-capped boots and mumbled something.

‘I had a pivo or two last night. With my cousin. He was talking about the murders, about the missing kids. Maybe I said something.’

He looked worried. Saltanat took a step closer to him.

‘I never said anything about bringing her here, honestly. I’m not stupid.’

‘You mentioned her name, maybe. Heard about the hooker that shared an apartment with one of the dead girls? Nice tits. Comes from around here? Monkey tattooed on her pussy? Bitch called Gulbara. Is that how it was, Illya?’

‘No, I mean, maybe I said her name.’

‘And maybe your cousin told his pal, who told their best friend, don’t tell anyone, keep it to yourself? And this is where we end up, Illya. Staring at something off a butcher’s slab.’

Illya said nothing. The scorn in Saltanat’s voice hung in the air. She looked at him, and sighed. When she spoke, there was resignation in her voice.

‘OK, Illya, question time over. We’re through here. Time to go.’

As Illya nodded, Saltanat took another step closer to him, produced a gun from nowhere, and calmly pumped two bullets into the side of his head, just behind his ear.

There was surprisingly little blood, though it wasn’t as if the room needed any more. Saltanat had used a 9mm, so the two bullets rushed around inside Illya’s head like hyperactive puppies, failed to find an exit, then rolled over and went to sleep. There were a few flecks and smears on Illya’s boots and camo pants, but I couldn’t tell whether it was his blood or Gulbara’s.