Tom Callaghan - An Autumn Hunting

‘So?’ he said, leaning forward. ‘What’s your answer? Job or jail?’

I opened my mouth to speak, but he never heard my reply.

Because that was when the bomb went off.

An irresistible hand lifted me up and threw me backwards, bringing the table down on top of me. The windows behind me turned to sheets of ice that fractured and split, throwing diamond sparkles high into the air. Someone had poured hot wax into my ears, then punched both sides of my head; all I could hear was a distant bellowing, as if someone on the other side of the park was shrieking nonsense through a bullhorn. I put my hand to my thigh, found it wet, wondered if I’d been shot, put my fingers to my lips, tasted tea.

I scrabbled on the floor for my gun, found it where I’d dropped it, the weight reassuring in my hand. I cocked the hammer, ready for whatever would come next. Aliyev was sprawled against a pillar, the same one that had spared me a lot of the blast. He hadn’t been so lucky. His forehead had been ripped open, probably by a wooden splinter, and his face wore a scarlet mask. His eyes were swollen and bruised, his pupils dilated with shock. He mouthed something at me, but I couldn’t hear anything above the bells tolling endlessly in my head.

I looked around at the wreckage, hoping to catch sight of the bomber, saw a woman’s coat on the ground, shredded and part covering what had once been a body and was now a butchered carcass. Either she’d intended a suicide bombing, or her willingness to die had failed her at the last minute and she’d triggered the timer too early to make a clean escape. Either way, she wouldn’t be answering any questions down the station.

Over by the bar, next to the till, one of the pretty waitresses was trying to glue her face back onto her skull, while her friend did her best to comfort her, saying over and over again it was just a scratch, nothing serious. I couldn’t hear the words, but I recognise the comfort of lies all too easily.

We had to leave before the police and ambulances arrived. They would certainly know Aliyev’s face, and every officer would have seen my ID photo, labelled ‘SHOOT ON SIGHT’. I hauled Aliyev to his feet, using my sleeve to wipe away the worst of the blood on his face, and together we crunched our way over shards of glass and spears of wood, stumbled through the devastated bar and out onto the street. The air was full of the stink of smoke, burnt wood, half-cooked flesh.

Aliyev’s bodyguards were running towards their boss, fifty metres too far away, sixty seconds too late. The leading two pushed me aside, took Aliyev’s arms and half-dragged, half-carried him towards the car already moving towards us. The third man grabbed my arm and collar, propelled me towards the SUV. I was thrown into the back seat, then we were racing at speed down Togolok Moldo, past the football stadium, towards Jibek Jolu.

We crashed through the red light, turned right, ignoring the cars around us that slid to a halt or slammed into each other. A car as expensive as this one, driven like this, means only one thing to the average Kyrgyz motorist; these are people you don’t want to get involved with or you might end up with something far worse than a dented bumper.

Aliyev was starting to come round out of the shock. The wound on his forehead screwed his face into a grimace of pain. The nearest bodyguard held a cloth to his boss’s forehead, doing his best to stop the blood pouring down over his cheeks. But scalp wounds are messy, with so many blood vessels close to the surface of the skin. You end up bleeding like a slaughtered goat, with the wound looking far worse than it actually is. Aliyev would be able to boast a striking scar, would probably use it to bolster his reputation as a pakhan that took no shit from anyone.

I could tell the bodyguards were uncertain about me; they knew I was law, but they’d also just seen me rescue their pakhan . Time to hold back in case I was important, until Aliyev recovered enough to give them orders. I wondered about pulling the door open, rolling out and taking my chances in traffic. But we were going way too fast for that, and any attempt to get away would look like a confession to having been party to the bombing. My hearing was starting to return, and I could make out the driver asking where to go. Aliyev was barely conscious, so it was time I took control, to prevent my being pulled out of the car at the roadside and taking two shots to the head.

‘Tokmok,’ I ordered, as if no other choice was sensible or safe. The driver turned around, as if to question my destination, stared at me, nodded, put his foot to the metal. I realised I was still holding the Makarov. Sometimes even a simple command needs a little extra encouragement. And Tokmok was seventy kilometres away, which gave me some breathing space to think and plan.

By now, we were on the outskirts of the city, and I gestured to the driver to slow down. He saw my signal in the rear-view mirror, lifted his foot a little off the accelerator. There was no point in getting stopped by an officious traffic cop looking to earn a little lunch money. The guys in the car weren’t the sharpest knives in the box, and they would be worried, suspicious, ready to shoot it out with anyone who stopped them, especially if they wore a uniform. There had been enough violent death for one day, and I didn’t intend becoming an addition to the total.

‘Where are we taking the boss?’ the biggest thug asked. I looked at his tattooed knuckles, at the weight of his fists, wished I had an answer.

‘The safe house, of course,’ I improvised. The network of the Circle of Brothers stretches all the way across central Asia and Russia, and when you’re shipping industrial-sized amounts of heroin around the region, it pays to have several choices for storage and somewhere to hide. Tokmok was far enough out of the city to serve as a bolthole in time of trouble, but not so far away someone might get ideas about usurping the throne.

‘What about a doctor?’ he added, gesturing at Aliyev, who groaned and closed his eyes. ‘Someone to stitch his head, check for brain damage?’

‘You don’t have a tame doktor sharlatanov ?’ I asked, fake incredulity flooding my voice. ‘I thought this was a serious outfit.’

‘The boss will know someone,’ he said, scowling at my insult.

‘And he’s in a fit state to tell us?’ I asked. ‘Don’t bother both your brain cells, you don’t want to wear them out, I’ll sort something.’

Tokmok doesn’t have a lot to recommend itself to a visiting tourist. Once you’ve seen the town’s main attraction, a Soviet Ilyushin bomber perched on a pedestal as if in the throes of take-off, all that’s left is the usual collection of drab shops selling fruit or vegetables as a sideline to shifting bottles of vodka to a dour population. We drove around until I spotted an apteka , a pharmacy whose windows were as heavily barred as the State Treasury. The sullen woman inside directed us to a doctor’s house a couple of streets away, off the main road to Issyk-Kul.

The bodyguards helped Aliyev into the shabby waiting room stocked with mismatched chairs, while I explained to the doctor that our friend had been in a car crash and needed stitches. Judging by his wary gaze and clear nervousness, I could tell he didn’t believe me, but when I showed him the Makarov, he quickly remembered his Hippocratic Oath.

Twenty stitches later, Aliyev’s forehead looked like a badly sewn curtain, but the bleeding had stopped. I persuaded the doctor to forget we’d ever been there, and he couldn’t have been more eager to do just that. He didn’t forget to take a fistful of notes for his time and trouble though; doctors are the same wherever you go.