Tom Callaghan - A Killing Winter

Kursan said nothing, but rubbed his fingers and thumb together. Money can buy you almost anything.

‘But she was pregnant, like some of the others,’ Saltanat argued.

‘I’m beginning to think all that was a way to get us off the scent, make us think there was some kind of serial-killer gang roaming the country, a cult. The smugglers hear about the killings; a copycat gets rid of their whistle-blower and points the finger away from the truth. The mutilations, the dead children; who’d link all that to a smuggling ring?’

Saltanat looked unconvinced.

‘There are six heroin-smuggling routes out of Osh that we know about,’ she said. ‘Why not just go about business, nice and quiet, keep your head down, clean the profits and live well?’

I took another mouthful of chai , and nodded agreement.

‘You’re right. There’s smuggling involved, but this isn’t just about smuggling. There’s something else behind all this, something bigger. But I don’t know what.’

I drained my glass, set it down, and stared across the empty street. In the last few minutes, it had started to snow, painting the roads a gleaming white, unlike the thoughts in my head.

We’d been in the Dragon’s Den for about forty-five minutes when a battered BMW pulled up outside and Kenesh Usupov got out. He looked around, as if lost outside the confines of the morgue, before coming in, kicking the snow off his shoes, and joining us. He nodded at the waitress and she brought over a hundred grams. Not for the first time, I wondered about what sort of life Usupov led beyond his scalpels and bone saws.

Usupov produced a small paper bag, which he pushed across the table to Saltanat. The look on my face told him this wasn’t the time to make one of his jokes. Saltanat looked inside the bag, then took out one of the packets and passed it to me, before taking the rest to the bathroom.

Usupov jerked his thumb at her retreating back.

‘I understand the no-baby tablet, but the other stuff?’

I reached forward and took the glasses off his face. He blinked, uncertain, a mole suddenly baffled by sunlight.

‘Last night, two bad boys grabbed her. One fucked her while telling her how he’d gutted Yekaterina Tynalieva, the other tried for a minet . She killed both of them. Hard. In ways you don’t often see, even on your slab. You really want to know some more, Chief Forensic Pathologist Usupov, I’ll ask her to explain it all to you?’

The tone of my voice left him in no doubt he’d be on my permanent shit list if he did. And, more worryingly, on Saltanat’s. I pressed all the antibiotic tablets out of their blister pack, washing them down with lukewarm chai .

‘Inspector, we’ve worked together a long time. You ask for something, I bring it, that’s the end of the matter, done and forgotten, da ?’

With a certain dignity, he fixed his glasses back on to his face. I bowed my head in agreement, wondered how much I could believe him, and then felt bad for doing so. A man who investigates the mysteries of the dead deserves all the trust we can muster.

I poured a handful of the capsules I’d found in the holdall on to the table, making sure no one in the bar saw me.

‘I need an analysis of these, Kenesh. Top priority.’

He took one and split it with his thumbnail, examining the contents.

‘Any idea what this is supposed to do?’

‘None. But they came with a Chinese label.’

‘Which you couldn’t read.’

‘Right.’

‘But which you’ve copied down for me to get translated for you.’

‘Mind-reader as well as forensic genius.’

Kenesh nodded. I suspected that was his opinion as well.

‘The woman you brought in. Tynalieva. Her father had her buried last week. All the government nomenklatura were there, showing their respect. And wondering if their families are next on the hit list, I imagine. Organising bodyguards, security, electric fences, the whole works.’

‘Creating terror and confusion,’ I said, more to myself than anyone else.

Saltanat had returned and overheard me.

‘Sounds like it’s working,’ she said, waving to the waitress for more coffee.

I looked over at Kursan.

‘What do smugglers want more than anything else?’

‘Apart from honest customers, you mean?’

Kursan thought for a moment, weighing up all the problems of his trade.

‘I stay away from drugs; there’s too much money to be made, and so you get people moving into the business who are too greedy, who want the big score first night out. They bring law down on the rest of us, kill each other or get killed.’

He pointed a finger at me.

‘Then there are the greedy ones on your side; everybody wants to wet their throat, but some people want to drink the whole fucking bottle. And that’s when guns come out.’

Kursan sat back, threw back his drink, watching me sip my tea.

‘What do we want? Peace and quiet, that’s what, one hand washing the other, everybody watching each other’s back, no trouble and happy customers.’

I nodded in agreement; more or less what I’d worked out for myself.

‘So terror and confusion doesn’t help your business?’

‘Trigger-happy border guards? Everybody’s mouth open for a bigger slice? Customers who figure it’s safer to lie low until the fire burns down? You think that’s how to run a business?’

Saltanat looked over at the smuggler with something approaching affection.

‘So this isn’t about smuggling?’

I shook my head; I was beginning to see some motive behind the game.

‘Just as this isn’t about serial sex killing, or cannibalistic cults. The murders, the drugs, all pieces in something bigger. We’re mistaking pawns for more powerful pieces, thinking there’s more than one game and that they’re unconnected.’

Usupov finished the last of his vodka and stood up. For a man who spent a good part of his working day slicing up the mangled remains of drunk drivers, he seemed remarkably unconcerned about getting back into his car. Maybe being up to your elbows in death every day breeds a certain fatalism.

‘All this speculation is very interesting, Inspector. But hard facts are what give answers. I’ll call you if I find out anything about the capsules. And you should get that hand seen to.’

He shook Kursan’s hand, nodded to Saltanat.

I watched his BMW disappear into a curtain of snow. There seemed nothing left to say.

Kursan escorted Saltanat back to the hotel, then drove to wherever he called home. I nursed a black coffee, watched my cigarette smoke sidle upwards towards the ceiling, used the time to gather together what I knew and what I could guess.

Fact: the Circle of Brothers organised butchering the Minister for State Security’s daughter, through Maksat Aydaraliev’s team.

Fact: the same team also slaughtered a pregnant woman in Karakol, dumped her foetus in Yekaterina Tynalieva’s womb.

The same people murdered the two working girls, Shairkul and Gulbara?

The same mutilations were carried out on women across the Uzbek border; by the Uzbek branch of the Circle of Brothers?

Unlikely that the Circle killed the Russian medic; security around any Russian military installation is too tight. Whoever did kill her knew of the earlier murders, but it wasn’t identical, even though she was pregnant.

I decided to give up for the rest of the night. Maybe things would look better in the not so clear light of a Bishkek winter morning. If it ever stopped snowing.

Remembering my visits to the Dragon’s Den with Chinara, I stared out of the window at the white patterns descending through the cold and the dark. Falling snow caught in the night’s street lights always saddens me. It’s the infinity of it all, thousands of millions of flakes, all different and all inseparable, trapped by the forces of air, wind and gravity, dragged down from the sky and falling to earth. It means something, I suppose, though I can’t say what.