Tom Callaghan - An Autumn Hunting

‘But once you’re down here, you’re trapped. All the police or army have to do is sit up top and starve you out.’

Aliyev simply gave an enigmatic smile, so I guessed there would be a hidden exit, a tunnel with an entrance emerging a few hundred metres away. With the kind of wealth and influence he had at his disposal, digging it would have been no problem, and the workmen would be too afraid to talk. When Genghis Khan was finally buried, all the people who’d built his tomb were put to death, to ensure his body could never be found. I imagined Aliyev would have reminded everyone of that, as a precaution against loose tongues. We Kyrgyz have never been called talkative people; good money together with the threat of a painful death clamps most mouths tight shut.

I headed for the bathroom, used the chemical toilet, checked my mobile: no signal, not that I expected one, which explained why they hadn’t confiscated my phone along with my gun. Back in the main room, my new friends were watching the television news, the sound turned down low.

Aliyev beckoned me over to the table, pointed to a seat. I sat, uncomfortably aware my back was towards the bodyguards. Aliyev sensed my unease and smiled as he poured out two shots of vodka, pushing one towards me.

‘I’d rather have tea, if it’s all the same to you,’ I said. ‘Vodka doesn’t agree with me.’

‘I’d heard you’d stopped drinking after your wife died. Strange, most men would drink more.’

‘I wasn’t celebrating.’

The pakhan thought about my comment, simply shrugged. Perhaps I’d shown him a weakness he could later exploit, or a strength he needed to know.

I wondered how much more information was in the dossier Aliyev had obviously compiled about me, or whether it was just common knowledge among the low lifes I’d dealt with in the past. Either that, or he had filled the beak of someone at Sverdlovsky station. The look on my face must have been enough for Aliyev to seize his advantage.

‘I know a lot about you, Inspector. You don’t hold your palm out for breakfast money, your bank balance wouldn’t keep a sparrow alive, and you occasionally fuck some Uzbek tart. I don’t have positive proof you killed Maksat Aydaraliev, but I know his last meeting was with you. Your old boss, the chief, the one who was “killed in a tragic accident” – I’m sure you know more about that than the newspaper stories revealed.’

Aliyev raised his glass in an ironic salute, drained it, pushed the bottle away. He obviously didn’t subscribe to the traditional belief that once opened, a bottle had to be emptied.

‘You’re an intelligent man, Inspector. Resourceful. A man of principles, but willing to have those principles bent from time to time, if the cause is worth it. Which raises a few questions in my mind.’

He cocked his head to one side and raised an eyebrow, as if debating some unusual problem, or trying to solve a difficult crossword puzzle.

‘Questions I hope you can answer,’ he continued, ‘so I can settle any nagging doubts I might have. I’m sure you’ll agree that’s only reasonable.’

He steepled his hands, then pointed his forefingers at me. I was relieved he wasn’t aiming a gun, but that was short-lived. Because a forearm coiled itself around my throat, forcing me back into my seat, and I felt the cold metal kiss of a gun barrel just behind my right ear.

Aliyev leant forward, his gaze suddenly brutal, driven. Now I saw the strength of will that had lifted him to the heights of the Circle of Brothers.

‘I’ll ask you one question at a time; I wouldn’t want to confuse you. But I will have the truth, you understand? Otherwise the consequences may well be fatal.’

I managed to nod my head, the arm around my throat making it hard to speak.

‘To begin, who told you to lure me to Derevyashka? Who was responsible for the bomb that almost killed me?’

For a moment, thought escaped me. Panic swelled like vomit in my throat. Keeping calm and rational was my only hope of survival.

‘Why would I do that?’ I said. ‘I was with you when the bomb went off; I could have been killed as well. Why would I risk that?’

I saw him consider what I’d said, but the arm around my neck remained as relentless as ever.

‘And who says it was a bomb, anyway? They cook with gas cylinders there: an explosion, an accident, who knows?’

‘You arranged the meeting. You organised the venue. Maybe you thought it would be a simple hit, a couple of copper jackets in my head, not a bomb to wipe you out as well.’

‘What would I have to gain?’ I said. ‘You dead, the next in line steps up to the throne, and the wheel turns just as always. Anyway, you’re no use to me dead. Not with the situation I’m in.’

Aliyev gave a single low chuckle, one of those laughs without humour that tells you just how stupid he knows you are. He nodded, and the arm around my neck loosened its stranglehold.

‘On the run, every cop in the land seeing your head as the route to promotion? You honestly think you’re an asset, not a liability?’

I took my time fumbling for my cigarettes, ignored his frown, lit up, rocketed blue smoke towards the ceiling.

‘I’d agree with you, except you don’t have the full picture. You don’t know why I killed Tynaliev, or how much money’s at stake. More than you’ve ever dreamt of.’

‘Suppose you tell me, as we’ve got time on our hands?’ Aliyev said. Not a suggestion, an order.

‘My tea?’ I asked. ‘It’s a long story, and talking’s a thirsty business.’

I sat back and smiled, content to wait. The longer we waited, the longer I carried on breathing.

‘Zakir,’ Aliyev called, and the ugliest and scariest of the bodyguards came over. Aliyev told him to make tea, and Zakir obeyed, giving me a scowl that told me he’d rather be tearing my arms off. I made certain to give him an insincere smile as he slopped my cup down in front of me, watched him stomp back to his colleagues. If the killing started, Zakir would be the first one I’d have to take out.

I sipped at my tea: no sugar, no surprise there. A boiled sock would have tasted better.

‘I’m waiting, Inspector,’ Aliyev said, irritation plain in his voice. ‘Delayed anticipation is a much-overrated virtue.’

‘You know I’ve done some things for Tynaliev that weren’t exactly part of my official duties,’ I said. ‘Things that could get him into big trouble and me into a shallow grave.’

Aliyev stayed silent, gestured for me to continue.

‘We were like the USA and the old USSR; we both had weapons of mutually assured destruction, even if the minister was far and away the more powerful of the two of us.’

I took another sip of tea, wondering how plausible the story I’d planned would sound.

‘Tynaliev wasn’t a poor man. You have to be very stupid or very honest not to make a fortune in this country if you’ve got contacts and influence, a power base to back you up. But you know how it is with some people. More than enough is never enough, they always need – no, want – more. Money, sex, power, whatever.’

‘And the minister wanted what he didn’t already have?’

‘Tynaliev was a millionaire, several times over. He knew the secrets of the great and the powerful. He was a very big fish in a pretty small pond. But he wanted to be respected. By the oligarch billionaires who plundered Mother Russia. By the men in power in the Kremlin. A house off Chui Prospekt and a dacha near Talas were never going to be enough for him.’

I stubbed out my cigarette, shook the pack to make sure I had refills close to hand. I looked over at Zakir and his colleagues, huddled around a TV with the sound turned low. I lowered my voice to little more than a whisper.