Tom Callaghan - An Autumn Hunting

My heart pounded, tearing itself out by its roots in my chest, panic tight around my throat, as if I were about to be garrotted. I couldn’t go back to my apartment: it would already be ringed with snipers, and a Spetsnaz team waiting to take me down with maximum commitment. Which would mean doubling my body weight with all the bullets they’d pump into me. I was fucked, not for the first time, but never this comprehensively before.

The only thing to do, apart from going home to commit suicide by sniper, was to stick to my original plan and head for the Kulturny. I dumped the car with the doors unlocked and the keys in the ignition. It was going to be somebody’s lucky day, at least until they were stopped and discovered they were driving a stolen car involved in a murder. Their day would go downhill very fast after that.

I didn’t expect a warm welcome, and I wasn’t disappointed. Once I’d got through the steel door and the inept frisking by the duty thug, I walked down the stairs through the delicate aroma of piss, cheap beer and pelmini dumplings. Still thinking I was police, the thug hadn’t tried to take Tynaliev’s Makarov, a dead weight tucked into my belt at the back, pressing into my kidneys. It’s never been a good idea to go into the Kulturny looking as if you’re unarmed.

The torn poster on the wall showing a dead-eyed, drug-ravaged teenage girl was still there, with the headline, BEFORE KROKODIL, I HAD A DAUGHTER. NOW, I HAVE A PROSTITUTE. Someone had added a mobile phone number, followed by ONLY $10 FULL SERVICE. Good to know the spirit of enterprise was alive and well, if not free. I tore off the phone number, screwed it up, threw it to join the rest of the rubbish on the floor. Sometimes, small things are all you can do to try to improve the world.

I didn’t recognise any of the faces clustered at the bar; the informants I’d known in the past were either dead or behind quite another sort of bars. I could still pass for police, unless the word was already out I was now not just little people but a wanted prestupnik into the bargain.

I walked to the bar, my feet sticking to the beer-sodden floor, waved the barman over. He was new since my last visit, which was probably just as well. But he could recognise what I was, even if not by name, and his attitude announced he didn’t like law in any form.

‘ Privyet, kak dela ?’ I asked, smiling as if looking for a new best friend.

The barman said nothing, giving me his hardest stare, the one that said, ‘If you weren’t law, there’s a baseball bat under the counter just waiting to kiss you.’ I didn’t give a fuck about that, and he quickly knew it, because he set about wiping a dirty glass which he placed in front of me.

‘ Nyet ,’ I said, shaking my head to the unspoken question. He raised an eyebrow, shrugged, pushed the glass to one side.

‘I’m looking for someone.’

‘So join a dating agency,’ he muttered.

‘You want to join one?’ I asked. ‘How about smashedupface.kg or kickinballs.com? They work for you?’

He tried for a snappy comeback, decided it wasn’t worth the grief.

‘A lot of people come in here,’ he said, turning the dirty glass in front of me upside down. ‘Maybe whoever you’re looking for doesn’t come here.’

‘The clientele too upmarket, you think?’ I asked, pointing at two elderly prostis in the corner, at a table of alkashi so far from reality they thought they were sipping champagne in the Hyatt Regency.

‘If they can pay, they can drink here,’ he said. ‘This is a free country, last time I looked.’

You didn’t look very hard or very long, I thought, but then, who does? It pays not to rock the boat. I wondered what the probable penalty would be for killing a state minister. I imagined it would depend on whether he was in favour or not.

‘Like I said before, I’m looking for someone.’

‘And I can help how, exactly?’

I didn’t like his tone. I didn’t like the baseball bat under the counter. So I used one hand to seize his shirt and pull him over the bar. He fumbled for the bat, and I shook a finger in his face, scarily close to his eyeball.

‘We seem to have got off to a bad start,’ I said, my voice quiet and calm, the way I used it to scare suspects into a confession. ‘I suggest we start again.’

I looked around the bar; no one seemed to have noticed our little disagreement. But then, when you’re in the Kulturny, someone else’s business is definitely none of yours. Interfere and a world of pain lies in wait.

‘Whatever you say, officer.’

The staff at the Kulturny learn to recognise the look of law very early on. I pushed him back, gave his cheek a condescending little pat.

‘That’s much better,’ I said, giving him the Sverdlovsky basement smile. ‘Now, my colleagues needn’t check everything’s legal and above board here. No bottles without tax labels, no smuggled cigarettes, no working girls, that sort of thing. Everything’s peaceful, everyone’s happy.’

I checked out the alkashi quietly working their way through a bottle of the very cheapest stuff. Petrol is less lethal, and probably tastes better. I jerked my thumb in their direction, nodded at the barman.

‘Give them another. On my bill.’

We both knew there would be no bill, but it’s always good to keep an audience sweet, or in this case, oblivious to the world around them.

‘I’m looking for Kanybek Aliyev,’ I said.

The barman flinched, looked around in case someone was keeping an ear cocked at our conversation.

‘That’s not a very good name to drop around here,’ he said. ‘Some people like to keep themselves to themselves.’

‘And some people like to keep themselves in one piece,’ I said. ‘Preferably not sharing a cell with people who don’t appreciate a loose tongue.’

I could smell fear coming off the barman, the way a ripe cheese or rotting meat starts to stink.

‘You’re afraid of him. I understand that,’ I said, ‘but he’s not here, I am. And you’d do well to be afraid of me too.’

I pushed myself away from the bar, made for the door.

‘I’ll be back in a couple of hours. Make a quiet phone call, suggest a meet. It’s to everyone’s advantage. Especially yours.’

And with that, I headed towards the stairs, wondering how to stay out of trouble for the next two hours.

I walked up to the Russian Embassy on Manas Avenue, found a seat in Sierra, the expensive coffee shop next door. I figured the last place people could find me would be sipping cappuccino, nibbling at a slice of over-moist, overpriced cherry tart. Being so close to the embassy might even be a bonus; not that I could seek asylum, but the embassy guards might deter manic gunplay.

The coffee shop was packed with smartly dressed customers all staring at their expensive smartphones or even more expensive laptops, a world away from my usual existence. Perhaps the corruption and vice and murder I dealt with on a daily basis took place on another planet in a distant galaxy, where ‘hit me again’ didn’t mean add another shot of espresso. But it wasn’t a world where I could ever belong. The dead have too much claim on my time, and they don’t carry laptops.

The coffee did nothing to steady my nerves, and I relived the moment when Tynaliev’s bodyguard died at my feet, the stink of his death still fresh in my nostrils. You should never get used to it, even as a Murder Squad inspector; if you do, then it’s time to look for a new career. In an abattoir perhaps.

Finally, I couldn’t bear the waiting any longer, flagged down one of the taxis waiting outside, and headed for Time Out, a restaurant on Togolok Moldo, two or three minutes’ walk from the Kulturny. He wasn’t pleased at the short ride, but then there’s never any pleasing Bishkek taxi drivers. A short fare and they grumble about leaving their favoured spot; a long journey and they complain about not getting a fare back. Every few months, a taxi driver is found dead at the wheel, shot or stabbed or strangled. I’m only surprised it’s not every week.