Tom Callaghan - A Killing Winter

‘I’m informed that you’re a specialist in this sort of crime?’

‘I wouldn’t say that, Colonel, but I’m Murder Squad, currently investigating a series of murders…’ I paused, before adding, ‘which may or may not be linked to this woman’s death.’

My qualified answer didn’t satisfy Barabanov, and his eyes narrowed as he stared at me. Terrifying if I’d been a nineteen-year-old recruit. But I wasn’t, so I gave the stare right back.

‘And what “may” link them, Inspector?’

‘I really am not at liberty to discuss a matter of Kyrgyz State Security.’

Barabanov said nothing but reached inside his immaculately pressed jacket, covered with a row of service medals, and took out a sheet of paper, handing it to me.

I read the fax to myself:

You will give Colonel Barabanov your complete cooperation in every particular, and answer any questions he may have regarding your investigation, holding nothing back.

I decided to return a little friendly fire of my own.

‘Colonel, the quickest way to work out what is and isn’t relevant is for me to find out all the facts first.’

I could see he was reluctant to share information, so I decided to coax the answers out of him.

‘The victim, who was she?’

‘Marina Gurchenko, one of the health personnel on the base. Seconded here a year ago.’

‘A jealous boyfriend? Enemies that you know of?’

‘She was well liked by her colleagues, I know of no reason why anyone would wish to do… this.’

Barabanov looked over at the mound of flesh against the door, but his face showed no emotion. Not a man to face across a chessboard.

‘A question. Was she pregnant?’

For the first time, Barabanov betrayed some emotion. He looked at me warily, as if I’d just produced a switchblade but wasn’t quite sure how to use it. When he answered, I could sense the caution in his voice.

‘Why do you ask? Is that relevant?’

‘It’s a common factor in the murders I’m investigating,’ I stated. ‘And I don’t want to disturb the body before a Crime Scene team arrives.’

‘This is a Russian airbase. Considered Russian territory. We will handle this matter ourselves. Your presence here is only due to the influence of your superiors.’

He tapped the fax to reinforce his point. But I could scent something else besides the bouquet of death.

‘I ask again, was she pregnant?’

Barabanov paused before answering.

‘Yes.’

‘That may well be a motive, Colonel. A married colleague, having a fling? Worried about what his wife and children back home would think, what they might do?’

‘That would hardly justify this ferocity, would it?’

Now we were on my turf, and I sensed his authority diminish.

‘Colonel, I’ve seen people hacked into fragments over a bottle of samogon , cocks and breasts sliced off, brains blown out of both ears over a thousand- som loan. There’s nothing humans won’t do to each other, believe me.’

He nodded. He’d probably been in Chechnya, almost certainly in Afghanistan. He knew what people were capable of.

‘She was pregnant,’ he said, ‘but I’m certain that this wasn’t the act of a married boyfriend afraid of the consequences.’

Saltanat spoke, for the first time, and I suddenly wondered why the Colonel hadn’t asked who she was, or what she was doing there.

‘And what makes you so sure, Colonel?’

‘Because I am… was… the father.’

As a Murder Squad, you learn pretty quickly which cases require priority solving. But I’d never been involved in the murder of a pregnant Russian army officer before; my first and probably best idea was to head to the Kazakh border and hole up for a couple of decades.

But Marina Gurchenko’s murder put me firmly in between two of the country’s most powerful men: the Minister for State Security, and a Russian Colonel with enough firepower at his disposal to drive us back to being nomads.

Both men wanted their respective victims avenged. Mikhail Tynaliev was expecting to see banner headlines about dedicated security forces hunting down a ruthless killer; Barabanov wanted the whole mess shipped quietly back to Mother Russia, and the case file accidentally shredded. Both men expected me to solve the crime. And failure wasn’t going to be an option.

For a moment, I wondered if the Colonel could have organised the whole thing, had a few useless women slaughtered, so that when it was Gurchenko’s turn, it would look like we had a serial killer prowling the land with a set of butcher’s knives. But it would have been much easier for Barabanov to just arrange an accident; a lorry backing up without due care and attention, or an overdose and the shocking discovery that a member of the medical team abused drugs.

I walked over and crouched beside the body. Sometimes it’s easy to forget you’re standing over someone who only hours ago was laughing, making plans, wondering what to call her baby.

All of that had been taken away from her, stealing even her dignity as well as her hopes and beauty. Murder is the ultimate theft, leaving only a ransacked house, unfit for human habitation, ready to be razed back into the ground.

I reached out to turn the body over, but Barabanov pulled my arm back.

‘We’ll see to that,’ he ordered.

‘I can hardly help investigate this murder if I can’t examine the body,’ I said.

It was a battle of wills and, if I’d been in his regiment, I’d have already been doing punishment drill. But I wasn’t, and he needed my knowledge more than I needed his. He reluctantly nodded, and I rolled the body over, away from me.

Marina Gurchenko slithered over, drying blood dark and flaking on her skin. The first traces of lividity had begun, but there were no signs yet of rigor mortis. I’m no Usupov, but I guessed that she’d been dead less than three hours.

‘How often is this hangar used?’

Barabanov looked thrown by the question.

‘When the gunships are operational, or during regular servicing. The last time anyone would have had any reason to be in here was when the flight you came in on left here.’

‘And the hangar isn’t guarded?’

‘This is a military base. No one gets past the wire, or the guards.’

‘So your security was breached?’

Barabanov shook his head.

‘I ordered a full search as soon as the body was found. Nothing, no gaps in the wire, no tracks in the snow, no vehicles came or left.’

It was time to ask some dangerous questions, the sort that you normally ask with a weapon in your hand.

‘If you didn’t discover the body until after the krokodil had left for Osh, why did it come for us?’

‘I had orders.’

I waited. I’m very good at waiting. Sometimes that’s all it takes. And he hesitated.

‘I was told to give every assistance to a security agent of a friendly foreign nation.’

That would be Saltanat, then. Kursan and I had just managed to hitch a ride. I still hadn’t figured out Saltanat’s involvement in all of this. An Uzbek Security officer? A double agent for the Russians? On the side of the victims, or hunting with the killers? All I knew, from the way she’d executed Illya, was that she was quick-thinking, efficient and ruthless.

I turned back to Marina’s body. The similarities with Yekaterina Tynalieva’s corpse were unmistakable: massive damage to tissue and organs. But there were puzzling discrepancies as well. Where Yekaterina was precisely, almost surgically opened and her flesh peeled back, Marina’s pelvis had been smashed apart by a powerful blow with an axe. Marina was naked and slaughtered indoors; Yekaterina was fully clothed and died in the open air. It seemed pretty certain that I was hunting more than one murderer.