Tom Callaghan - A Killing Winter

But the other guard was just as fast, and launched a savage kick at Aydaraliev’s ankle. The old man grunted in pain, and lurched back towards the wall. And by then the first guard had recovered, jumping down on to the landing and sweeping his gun back into his arms.

‘Surely you don’t want to leave already, Maksat? The tour’s only just begun.’

And then we were at the bottom of the stairs, pushing through a doorway, along a narrow unpainted hallway, and towards the furnace room at the back. Smudges and smears of coal streaked the floor, while the walls were black with coal dust. The furnace was made from rough cast iron, with a small glass window where coals would normally glow and burn. But that night, the furnace, like the house, was cold and empty.

A coal hammer, a pair of pincers with which to feed the furnace, and a heavy spade leant against one wall. Aydaraliev’s eyes widened as he spotted them. He’d been in cellars like this before, used tools in ways for which they were never meant.

It takes very little to hurt a man to the point where he talks, wants nothing more in the world than to say the words that make the agony go away. Small, innocent things: a sliver of wood, a pair of nail scissors, a needle. That’s all you need to make a man weep and scream and piss himself.

Small things, like the rogue cells that feasted on Chinara’s breast, devouring it like a child turned cannibal, dragging her down into the earth.

I could taste raw meat in my mouth at the thought of what was to come.

‘If I’d known we were having guests, I’d have had the furnace lit, Maksat. Keep you warm; at your age you don’t want a chill.’

Her use of his first name belittled him, stripped him of the prestige and dignity he’d taken as his due for so long. She spoke patiently, as if talking to a retarded child, someone who needs everything explained from start to finish using single-syllable words.

‘Saltanat, this isn’t going to help.’

She turned to look at me. Out of the corner of my eye, I saw Aydaraliev set his jaw.

‘No?’ she said.

‘Look at him. He’s tough, he won’t talk easily. But he’s old. Probably a bad heart, vodka, a papirosh in his mouth for the last sixty years.’

Now there was an amused look on her face.

‘Don’t tell me Murder Squad’s finest is worried about his civil liberties. I’m surprised you’re not insisting on the first punch. Or maybe you’ve forgotten about the headless cops?’

‘I’m just saying killing him throws more shit at the fan. How many more enemies do we need while we try to solve this?’

She raised her eyebrow, and the scar that furrowed it gleamed bone-white.

‘We, Inspector? I don’t recall us partnering up.’

She looked over at Aydaraliev, then back at me.

‘What makes you think you’re not in for more of the same? Remember, I told you I was sent to deal with you, da ?’

I hadn’t forgotten, but I had hoped she might have.

She took down the pincers from the wall, tested them by snapping the jaws together. The snick of the blades meeting was thin, unremarkable. You wouldn’t hear it above a scream or a curse.

She ran her thumb along one edge.

‘The trouble with these is they get blunt so easily. So it’s much harder to cut through something, takes longer too.’

‘Just get on with it,’ Aydaraliev snarled. ‘If this is meant to terrify me, try harder.’

Saltanat flashed a brilliant smile, and I could have sworn that her eyes sparkled.

‘I wouldn’t waste my energies, pakhan . Everyone in the stans knows how tough you are. So I thought we’d just chat, and I could persuade you to do the right thing.’

Aydaraliev gave a sharp bark of a laugh and spat on the floor, his phlegm quickly absorbed by coal dust.

Saltanat’s smile never faltered as she reached into her pocket and took out her phone.

‘I’m a long way from home, pakhan , you know how it is, you miss your family and friends. But these new phones, you can even get real-time video on them now.’

She held the phone in front of Aydaraliev, angling it so that we could both see the screen.

‘Of course, I’m not old enough to have a grandchild. But you are.’

It was hard to see from where I stood, but I could see that an image of a young girl filled the screen. Aydaraliev said nothing, but his lips narrowed.

‘Ayana, isn’t it? Such a pretty name. A real charmer. Nearly twelve, she’ll be a woman soon.’

The girl on the screen waved and was suddenly pulled away off-screen. Her image was replaced by that of a burly man, who grinned, revealing a row of gold teeth. He was unshaven and thuggish, and neither I nor her grandfather were in any doubt about the implied threat, or what would happen if he didn’t talk.

Saltanat switched off the phone, and stood in front of the pakhan . He stared back at her, his eyes black with hate, but there was a tremor in one corner of his mouth. She pulled the hammer off the wall; one face was flat and blunt, the other tapered to a point.

‘It’s your own fault really, Maksat. I know that we could give your spine the xylophone treatment, play dentist’s visit, even smash your balls into pancakes with this hammer, and you wouldn’t sing to us. You’d bite your own tongue out and spit it at me first, right?’

Aydaraliev said nothing, but from the slump in his shoulders I could see Saltanat had won.

‘So here’s the deal. You tell us what you know – everything you know – and she’ll go home tonight. And still be a virgin, to be bride-stolen by some idiot with more balls than sense. Otherwise,’ and she pounded one fist on another, the Russian gesture for fucking, ‘well, my guys have cameras, and all the other equipment to make a very special film, the sort that’s very popular on the internet. Nipples scissored off, tits hacked off, I believe you said. They’re small of course, her still being just a girl, but they’ll be sensitive enough. What would your gang say about that? Must be hard to owe allegiance to a pakhan who can’t protect his own family.’

Aydaraliev nodded.

I felt vomit rise in my gut and burn my throat, imagining a devochka screaming, begging, her parents being held down and forced to watch as their world was stripped bare of everything decent and innocent. I wondered if Saltanat was human, or merely a psychopath. If she was a torpedo who kills to order, you’d have to be on her hit list, money in the bank. If she was a psycho, then no one would be safe until she’d been put down without mercy.

Aydaraliev looked round at us, stopping at me.

‘What do you think of this, Inspector? This is how you do your business? This makes you better than me? Maybe even worse?’

‘I don’t have any more to say than you do,’ I answered, knowing that it was a cheap answer; weak, the way that I seemed to be around Saltanat. I stumbled over my words, shut my mouth. I could have made an argument for this being the quickest way to solve the case. But silence is one, or both, of two things: consent and the desire to survive.

‘Let’s go back upstairs,’ Aydaraliev said, holding his hands wide. ‘If I’m going to talk, let’s not do it in a fucking coal cellar. If you’re going to plant lead in my skull, treat me like a man.’

Saltanat led us up to the ground floor, into a room at the back of the house, bare as the others, with only three kitchen chairs for furniture. She motioned for the two of us to sit down, while the guards watched from the door.

‘It’s not a lot to ask for, pakhan ,’ she said, and I noticed that she’d switched back to the honorific. ‘We want to sort all this trouble out and end it. It’s bad for my business, and it has to be worse for yours. In exchange? You get to foot the bill for your granddaughter’s wedding feast a few years from now.’