Tom Callaghan - A Killing Winter

I followed a trail of blood spots back to an open door. I could see the edge of a bed and, just beyond that, a foot. It didn’t move, and I suspected neither would the body it was attached to. I looked round the doorframe but there didn’t seem to be anyone waiting to attack. There was a washbasin in the corner, with towels hanging from a row of hooks. As I took them, something crunched under my feet, and I looked down to see shards and fragments of a water glass, streaked and stippled with blood. That wasn’t all that was lying there.

I took a quick look at the thing that had been Azan, and saw that his shirt and hair were drenched in blood. I didn’t know who had made the terrible scream I’d heard earlier, but my money was on Azad.

Back downstairs, I handed the towels to Saltanat, looking away as she knotted them around her waist. They looked like a rather stylish multicoloured skirt, at least from a distance.

‘Mobile?’

‘No. You?’

‘Smashed.’

‘And a gun?’

Saltanat shook her head. So we were without weapons, wounded and in pain, unable to call for help, we’d just killed three members of the most ruthless gang this side of the Caucasus, and I had no idea where we were.

I knew we’d have to get moving, find shelter somewhere. Leather Jacket’s best friend might be on his way over to share a finger or two of the good stuff, and maybe cook one of my fingers into the bargain. I went through Leather Jacket’s leather jacket and came up with a set of car keys. I waved them at Saltanat, with a look of triumph I was very far from feeling, and started to head for the front door.

‘Wait,’ she said, ‘we should search the place.’

‘You’re keen to wait for their friends to arrive?’

She looked at me without blinking, and I discovered again how her eyes had no end to their depths.

‘You’re Murder Squad. Maybe we might stumble across a clue or two?’

I paused, nodded.

‘Five minutes, then we’re out of here.’

In fact, it didn’t take five minutes to search the entire house. All the rooms were empty, except for the basement, which neither of us wanted to revisit, and the bedroom. Under the bed was a black holdall, containing tightly wrapped packages full of a rust-coloured powder. Krokodil , I imagined, maybe twenty thousand dollars’ worth, enough to take a lot of addicts in Bishkek to a painful grave. There was also a gallon-sized plastic jar with a handwritten label in Chinese, full of thousands of small red and yellow capsules. I broke one open, and a grey-green powder spilt out. I sniffed at it, but there was no smell, and it wasn’t a drug I recognised.

I zipped the holdall closed and checked my watch; time to get out of there before the rest of the gang rolled up for their share of rape and torture.

Our good luck held; on a table in the hallway were a couple of Makarovs. We checked they were loaded, and I slung the holdall over my shoulder. If nothing else, I could use it as a bargaining tool.

I pushed the door open and a shaft of pure sunlight darted through the gap. As we stepped outside, I saw that we were only a few blocks away from my apartment. The sunlight was brutal, and my eyes throbbed in sympathy with my hand. A bus clanged past, startling us as we looked for the car.

Saltanat pointed at a beige four-door Audi. I pressed the lock control, and then we were speeding down Ibraimova. Five minutes later, I parked up the street, a discreet distance away from my building, and we headed for my apartment. A passing babushka stared at Saltanat’s unusual skirt, spotted the guns in our hands, and decided that none of this was any of her business.

Once inside, I locked the door and edged a chair against the handle for extra protection. Saltanat walked into the bedroom and took the stack of towels from the wardrobe. While she was showering, I laid some of Chinara’s clothes on the bed, wondering for the hundredth time when I was going to give them away, thankful that I hadn’t.

I called Usupov at the morgue, and explained to him that I was going to need the morning-after pill, some retrovirals and the strongest antibiotics he could lay his hands on. He agreed and didn’t ask why; his interest is only in the dead.

I bandaged my hand as best I could, made a couple more calls, put my gun on the kitchen table within easy reach, and waited.

It was almost an hour before Saltanat appeared, and the sight of her in some of Chinara’s clothes was an ice pick in my heart. Wearing something other than her customary uniform of black top and jeans, she looked more vulnerable, somehow younger. I had to remind myself that she’d just put down two of Bishkek’s most violent criminals.

‘How do you feel?’

She shrugged, opened the fridge door and pulled a face. A batchelor’s provisions: stale lepeshka , a couple of elderly tomatoes and a bottle of vodka. She took the top off the vodka and swilled some around her mouth before spitting it into the sink. She repeated this a couple of times, then recapped the bottle.

The rape hung between us like a curtain. I felt powerless, uncertain what to say or do. I’d seen more than a few sex crimes, but they’d always ended in murder. I didn’t know how to deal with a victim who’s still breathing.

‘I’ve organised some medicine,’ I said. ‘We can pick it up later. Or I’ll go and get it now, if you want.’

She said nothing, stared out of the window.

‘You want to call someone? To take you back to Tashkent?’

Still nothing.

When she did speak, it was in a flat, emotionless tone, as if describing the plot of a boring film peopled by bad actors in which nothing much happens.

‘The big one held me down while the other one ripped off my jeans.’

‘You don’t have to tell –’ I began, but she held up her hand to silence me, and continued to stare out of the window.

‘While he was inside me, he kept telling me about how they’d killed Yekaterina, how they’d just snatched her off Chui Prospekt when she was getting into her car. Outside a club, people walking past, but nobody did anything to help. They already had the foetus, in a Beta Stores plastic bag, like a joint of meat they were taking home to make shashlik . They’d driven from Karakol that morning, after killing the village girl. Their boss had told them who they were supposed to target. The Minister’s daughter, she was picked out to be the victim, she wasn’t a random choice.

‘He kept pushing and pushing in me, and he got faster and faster as he was whispering to me how he stabbed her, and how when they’d both had as many turns with me as they wanted, they’d cut me the way they’d cut her. And the big one kept sniggering, the way people do when they hear a dirty joke, and telling the other one to hurry up.

‘And he was telling me about how they sliced open Yekaterina’s belly, how hard it was to cut through the muscle, and then the knife just slid in and her blood spilt out over his wrist, hot and steaming in the night air. And she wanted to scream, as he took her life and spat it away, but his hand was over her mouth, and she could feel the cold snow against the back of her thighs start to melt as her blood warmed it, and her hips were pushing upward against the cold. And then it all started to go dark for her and the stars started to go out, slowly at first and then faster. And finally they peeled her open and dumped the foetus inside, the way you’d throw spoilt meat into the garbage, and that’s when he came inside me.

‘And I kept telling myself that at least he hadn’t tried to kiss me, to force his filthy tongue inside my mouth.’

I said nothing, but couldn’t help thinking that they hadn’t died hard enough, or slowly enough, or with enough excruciating pain. My hand hurt, and I realised I’d clenched it into a fist.