Tom Callaghan - A Killing Winter

‘You drive,’ she said, ‘and I’ll snuggle up in the back with my true love.’

And in case I mistook her meaning, she stroked the barrel of her gun.

‘Him?’ I asked, looking down at Yuri.

‘You give a fuck?’ she said, and motioned our captive into the car.

Now that she’d mentioned it, I didn’t, but I didn’t want him to freeze to death either, even if he was gang muscle. I made an anonymous call, and organised a patrol car to pick him up and deposit him in a nice warm cell. Then I slid behind the wheel, fired up the ignition and we lumbered out into the night.

We headed east along Chui Prospekt, past the power station with its veil of smoke hanging in the air. I kept one eye on the mirror, but traffic was light, and I was pretty sure we weren’t being followed. Saltanat directed me to the outer edge of Bishkek, towards where a rash of new houses was springing up. The potholed road was replaced by a rutted dirt track, and we bounced and lurched from side to side. Now would have been the time for Aydaraliev to make his move, but Saltanat had her gun pressed firmly into his belly, ready to cut him in half if he tried anything.

We arrived at a large three-storey house, surrounded by a two-metre wall. Someone must have been watching for us, because the blue ornamental gates swung open as we approached, and I steered the car through the gap. The gates immediately closed behind us. I parked beside the front door, and got out of the car.

A guard immediately frisked me, while another pointed his Kalashnikov in my direction. They dragged Aydaraliev out of the car and searched him, much more thoroughly. When they were satisfied, they led the two of us inside. A wooden staircase spiralled up to the first floor and down into the cellar. Other than that, the entrance hall was completely empty. We were pushed forward into one of the rooms at the back, told to sit on the floor. For a safe house, the place seemed pretty basic. There was no heating, and our breath hung in the sour air like steam.

Saltanat walked in and leant against the wall. She’d left her Kalash in the car, but the two guards who flanked her had more than enough firepower. It struck me that the pakhan wasn’t their only prisoner, and Saltanat had no more reason to feel friendly towards me than she did towards the old man. I remembered she had been sent to kill me, and my stomach gave a lurch.

‘No point trying to remember your way here again, Inspector.’

Maybe she meant I wouldn’t be leaving here again, or the place was only a temporary bolt-hole. I suspected that the pakhan wouldn’t be leaving at all. If so, he was showing no signs of it worrying him. He was a murdering bastard, but I had to admire his balls.

He levered himself up from the floor and walked towards Saltanat. The guards tensed, and I braced myself for catching a bullet in the crossfire, but Aydaraliev held his hands apart, stood in front of her.

‘I know you’re a torpedo , you know I’m top boss, a vor v zakonye . Let’s not pretend. I don’t expect you to let me walk out of here with my cock in my hand. It’s not in my nature to give out information. You put a bullet in my head, then you get it quick from my followers. Same shot, behind the ear, guaranteed.’

He paused and looked at Saltanat without blinking. His face could have been chiselled out of granite for all the emotion he showed.

‘Or, you give me shit. The pliers. The hammer. The usual. I know. I’ve used them myself. That happens, they find my body, you get worse. Nipples scissored off. Make a movie of you getting gang-fucked front and back by my boys and your tits hacked off, send it to your family.’

He told her this with as much emotion as if he’d been explaining how to distill extra-strength home brew, then gave a gesture of resignation; all this was out of his hands now.

‘Or one last option. I should be grateful, you showed me that I’ve let things slide, maybe got a bit complacent in my old age. Employing useless pricks like Yuri, and those two clowns who let you stroll up and take them. You let me walk, all is peace.’

He looked around the bare room, weighing up whether the beatings and killings, the drugs and the bribes, the dacha and the money, had all come down to this, dying against stained and peeling wallpaper in a bitterly cold house.

‘You drive me back into town, we draw a line under all this nonsense. But I have to have a little taste of something for my trouble, you know that. Otherwise, someone starts whispering, “Maksat, he’s getting soft, lets some pussy take him for a ride, and in his own fucking car.” And I can’t have that.’

‘So what do you want, top boss?’

The pakhan gave another of his mirthless smiles, his eyes considering the odds that he might get out of here alive. He looked over in my direction.

‘His head.’

Saltanat looked as if she was considering the option. I wondered what my chances were of getting a Kalash off one of the guards, giving the room and everyone in it a severe chastisement, then getting out and through the gates alive. I didn’t rate them. I didn’t like the long silence from Saltanat either. I’m not stupid enough to think that a night passed out drunk next to someone constitutes romance, but she and I were at least supposed to be on the side of the men with the white hats.

‘Not good enough, Maksat,’ she said. ‘It doesn’t help me get what I want to know. Who’s killing these people, and why? You walking out of here with your mouth shut isn’t going to happen. You think your shitty little gang can get to me? I had no trouble getting to you, did I?’

She cracked her knuckles and I realised I was involved with a truly dangerous woman.

‘Give me your hand.’

He stretched out his right arm, and she took his hand in hers, almost tenderly.

‘You know, us Uzbeks, we’re pretty straightforward people, not like you shaman-following Kyrgyz. To us, a storm is just a storm, a mountain just a hill grown too big for its own good. But that doesn’t mean we can’t look into the future.’

She turned his hand over and ran her forefinger over the scars on his palm, inspecting the twisted and ripped flesh where his fingernails had once been. When she spoke, it was with sadness.

‘You suffered a great deal at the hands of the Inspector’s predecessors. Your hands are testament to that. But I can read more than your past here, Maksat. I can see your future, see you opening your heart to me. Because you’ve finally arrived at the place where we bury strangers. You’ve been brought here by the voices of the dead.’

She nodded at the two guards, who took the pakhan by his arms. His face was a mask of resigned defiance, as if he’d always known that this is how it would end. For a moment I was reminded of my mother, the same absolute refusal to submit, the identical unwillingness to accept that anything can exist greater than your own strength of will.

‘I had seventy years. A lot more than you will have.’

Saltanat remained unmoved, then one corner of her mouth twitched upwards, and I realised that I’d never seen her smile.

‘Perhaps you’d like to look around the house. Not very interesting architecturally, and the decor leaves a little to be desired.’

She reached for a corner of the paper peeling away from the wall and tugged at it. The paper was damp and ripped with no resistance, revealing spots and blisters of mould and damp seeping through the plaster. I thought of the nails torn out of the pakhan ’s fingers, and felt sick.

‘I thought we might start with the cellar.’

We were at the top of the stairs when Aydaraliev made his move. The stairs wound down around a central post, and there was no handrail on the inner edge. So it wasn’t difficult for the old man to elbow one guard off-balance, then smash his fist into the guard’s shocked and open mouth. The Kalash skittered and tumbled down the stairs, and came to rest on the half-landing. The pakhan moved fast, hands reaching out for the barrel.