Tom Callaghan - A Killing Winter

She handed me a pair of gauntlets and a pair of goggles, so I pulled my ushanka down over my ears and almost broke my foot trying to kick-start the bike. Eventually, the engine grumbled into life, and I ferried the two of us back into Bishkek, the Ural bucking and twisting as we rode over potholed and broken roads.

By the time we reached my apartment, I felt as if I’d been frozen deep into the heart of an iceberg. With no sensation in my fingertips, I fumbled with the key until Saltanat took pity on me and opened the door. A welcome blast of warm air hit me, thanks to the city’s central pipes.

‘Drink?’ I asked, heading for the window sill, wondering if Kursan had finished all my vodka. Saltanat walked into the kitchen, returning a moment later with Chinara’s photograph. I replaced it, looked at Chinara’s hair caught in the wind, tried to remember the moment.

When you’re the one left behind, memories splinter into fragments, until the most real thing about your dead wife becomes the pictures you keep on the shelf, the scent of her perfume fading in an empty drawer.

I took the Makarov bullet and held it up between thumb and forefinger for Saltanat to see.

‘The strong medicine you promised me. Still got my name on it?’ I asked.

Saltanat had the grace to look ashamed. She shook her head and, for an instant, her beauty lit up the room. Then she caught the bullet I tossed to her, and she became the ice lady again.

‘Bathroom,’ Saltanat said, pushing me towards the tub. ‘A hot bath, thaw out, and then we work out our next step.’

I was reassured by the ‘we’; I hoped it meant that she didn’t plan to kill me any time soon. But remembering how calmly she’d ended Illya’s career, I waited until she left the room before taking my Yarygin from its hiding place and tucking it underneath a towel by the side of the bath.

Just in case.

Steam swelled and billowed up to the ceiling as I lowered myself into the tub, gritting my teeth against the heat. I could barely see across to the door, so I hoped that Saltanat didn’t decide to change her mind.

Lying there, the heat seeping back into my bones, I thought back to what the pakhan had said.

‘ I was asked to cause terror and confusion. Which I did .’

I felt tired beyond exhaustion; all I wanted to do was sleep, with no dreams, none of the recent dead opening their eyes and beckoning to me.

Terror and confusion.

The key to all this. But a key I was incapable of turning.

So I started on the long slide into sleep, deep and safe in the embrace of the water.

I was more than half asleep when the bathroom door opened, and I felt a hand on my chest. For a second, I thought it was Chinara, come to tell me it was time to go to work. But then, as the hand pressed down harder and was joined by another, I realised where I was.

Saltanat’s weight bore down on me as I struggled to sit up. Unable to move, my arms thrashing by my sides, I started to panic. But I was held fast.

‘Relax,’ Saltanat murmured, and I felt her hands move down from my chest and over my stomach.

I tried to sit up, water spraying everywhere, and it was only then I discovered she was as naked as I was.

Her hands moved lower down, taking hold of me.

‘Don’t tell me you didn’t think of this when we were back in Osh,’ she said. ‘That you didn’t want me to do this.’

And then she leant forward, and kissed me, and I was lost, as surely as if I was in a dark and lonely forest with no path to follow and no guide to lead me.

Later, after we’d stumbled to the bed, her never letting go of me, dragging me on top of her, we lay with arms and legs as entangled as the sheets, and I started to drift off into fitful sleep. A sense of guilt washed over me; the last time I’d slept with a woman in this bed was with Chinara, the night before her final trip to the hospital. I’d held her close, both of us unwilling to admit this was the end, knowing it all the same. But I’d still gone to bed with Saltanat, willingly, eagerly. Perhaps that’s another part of surviving; seeking warmth and comfort, in the arms of a stranger, even an enemy.

I checked my phone. As I’d expected, a whole string of missed calls beckoned me, all but one from the Chief. I anticipated him ripping into me, screaming and wanting to know why the fuck I was still messing around on the Tynalieva case, one sorted out to everyone’s complete satisfaction with the corpses of Tyulev and Lubashov.

Pointless to try to explain that they hadn’t done it. Even if I told him that the Circle of Brothers had put out a contract on her, he’d only tell me that they hired the dead men to carry it out. And if I was honest, I didn’t know how to move the case forward.

Or if I’d see Saltanat again.

Or, more probably, if she’d want to see me.

I unravelled myself from the sheet and her legs, rolled over, facing away from her. The dull ache in my back reminded me that I hadn’t done this for a while. And then everything flowed into sleep and the comfort of a woman’s body beside me.

When I woke up, I was alone, the radio playing softly in the other room. That was where I found Saltanat, a towel wrapped around herself, inspecting the spines of half a dozen well-thumbed books.

‘I didn’t think of you as a poetry lover, Inspector.’

‘Not me, my wife. You know she’s a… was a teacher. Physics. She always said that there were laws science couldn’t explain, but poetry could.’

‘She had good taste, your wife. In poets, I mean. Blok, Pasternak, Akhmatova, Esenin.’

The names brought back memories, of Chinara sitting by the window, in the last of the daylight, reciting the odd line or two, almost chanting, words she believed gave light and meaning to the darkness.

‘I’m not much of a reader. I didn’t understand most of it, even when she explained it to me.’

What I didn’t add was that Chinara believed poems explained the world, but I sometimes wondered whether only bullets could change it.

Saltanat riffled through one of the books, as if hunting a quotation, something to suit the moment.

‘My husband read all these. He taught, as well. But literature; even had a few poems published.’

I felt awkward. A third person had entered the room unobserved, waiting to be introduced.

‘Don’t look so worried. I’m not married any more. Perhaps I read the wrong poets. The only things his new wife recites are dress sizes and bank statements.’

To move the conversation to safer, shallower waters, I showed her my phone.

‘The Chief. I’m summoned. Probably assigned to traffic.’

Her smile made me want her all over again.

‘Maybe he wants you to investigate the mysterious death of a leading underworld figure?’ she said.

‘A Member of Parliament’s been murdered?’ I asked.

It’s common knowledge that half of our elected officials are busy stealing from anyone with two som in their pocket, and sometimes the victims take it personally.

‘If he asks you to investigate Aydaraliev’s death? Conscience or cock?’ Unable to reach the former, she stretched out her hand and gave the latter a squeeze.

‘Underworld killings are notoriously difficult to solve,’ I said, considering my words carefully. ‘And in the absence of any witnesses, or forensic evidence, almost impossible to get a conviction. Someone may have dropped a hint, given an order, but that’s not proof. And the public don’t like us wasting our time on murders that take bad guys off the streets.’

‘I thought you might say that,’ she said, and sat back in her chair.

I pulled on my trousers, and fastened my Yarygin to my belt.