Tom Callaghan - An Autumn Hunting

Outside the restaurant, we went through the ritual haggle about the fare. As he drove away in a gust of bad-tempered blue-black exhaust smoke, I made the call.

‘ Da ?’

I recognised the barman’s voice, unwelcoming as ever.

‘ Tovarich ,’ I said, keeping my voice neutral. He knew who was calling, because I heard the phone clatter onto the bar, listened to the buzz of gibberish and swearing they call conversation in the Kulturny. After a moment, a new voice came on the line.

‘You want to speak to someone?’

‘To meet someone,’ I said. ‘Not the same thing.’

I’d expected the voice of a thug, foul-mouthed, barely articulate, hoarse from a hundred cigarettes and a daily bottle of vodka. Instead, I heard the calm, soothing tones of a late-night radio host or a therapist advising his patients to relax and consider their problems from a new perspective. The voice told me I was up against someone considerably more intelligent and dangerous than I’d hoped for.

‘A philosopher, I see. A mind capable of making distinctions. Not one of the usual Kulturny clientele. Most of them can’t distinguish between reality and delirium tremens.’ He paused. ‘Of course, that is reality for some of them.’

‘I want to meet Aliyev. Alone,’ I said. No humour in my voice.

‘So do a lot of people. A popular fellow, Mr Aliyev.’

‘I’ll be outside the Derevyashka bar in seven minutes. I’ll wait for three.’

‘I’d love to oblige, but without an introduction, I’m sure you understand the difficulties. Problems of security, timing. Impossible.’

‘Tell him Akyl Borubaev will be waiting for him,’ I said, adding a little menace to my voice.

‘The Murder Squad inspector?’ The mocking tone was gone.

‘Your seven minutes starts now, don’t waste it,’ I said, and broke the connection.

It’s only a couple of minutes’ walk from Time Out, and one advantage of choosing Derevyashka as a meeting place is that it stands to one side of a small park with a few sparsely spread out trees and bushes, a single road running past the one entrance. A statue of the writer Maxim Gorky, wearing a moustache whose bushiness would have made Stalin jealous, looks down on the proceedings with an air of indifference. Perhaps he knows better than to get involved.

I’ve always believed the notion that events fundamentally change who we are is too simplistic. Yes, we’re not the same person at forty as we were at fifteen, but to say that experience alone is responsible doesn’t accept that we might have ‘progress’ built into us. We might not want children when we’re teenagers, yet crave them in our thirties; change is our only constant.

Shooting Tynaliev may not have been my smartest idea, but we reach our own conclusions about morality and codes of ethics without realising it, until circumstances call upon us to act on them. And it would be that morality and code of ethics that would determine how I dealt with the Circle of Brothers mafia, their stranglehold over organised crime, the Bishkek police, anyone else with an interest in seeing me dead.

It would be impossible for Aliyev to arrange an ambush in such a short time, just as hard for his men to appear without my spotting them first. It may not have put the odds in my favour, but at least it wasn’t an attempt at suicide on my part.

I lit a cigarette, swore yet again to quit, leant against a wall hoping to look like someone waiting for his blind date to show. I’d been there nine minutes, having smoked my way down to burnt fingers, and was ready to leave, call and make another assignation, when Aliyev appeared at the far end of the park. I’d read his file at the station, remembered his photograph, taken through a car window as he entered a smart restaurant, bodyguards beside, before and behind him. He’d taken a detour, away from the direct route from the Kulturny, and I gave him extra points for caution.

He wasn’t a blind date exactly; his eyesight was fine. But he walked with a limp, his left leg doing a drag and a twist with each step, as if caught in a net. He used a thin black cane to support his weak side, and I wondered how he’d managed to gain the top seat in the Circle of Brothers. Brains, I decided, uncertain whether they were a good or a very bad thing as far as I was concerned.

As he approached Derevyashka, he’d spotted me, made me as law. But I admired the way he walked past, not giving me a second glance. Just a middle-aged cripple out for a couple of beers, a bowl of pelmini soup, and a ‘whatever happened to’ chat with the regulars.

I waited until he’d pushed the door open, then followed him inside.

Derevyashka means ‘wood’, and when you see the place, you understand why. Imagine a mad Siberian’s attempt at building a log cabin, designed under the influence of some particularly potent vodka laced with magic mushrooms. Aliyev had taken one of the tables furthest from the door, facing the room, close enough to the exit into the beer garden to provide an escape route if it all turned tits up. I sat down opposite him, slid my gun onto my lap, gave a barely perceptible nod. Seeing him close up, he seemed fragile, insubstantial. Most of the Circle of Brothers crew I’d encountered over the years had been big guys, fists like boulders, bellies like barrels, hair shaved down to stubble, prison tattoos staining mottled flesh as a testament to their crimes. I’d obviously been dealing with the lower orders.

I ordered coffee, Aliyev asked for green tea. For once, the service was immediate, and I didn’t think it was because of my presence. We sat in silence until the drinks arrived, which gave me the chance to inspect him more closely. Obviously Russian by family, which made his position at the top of the tree even more unusual. Once Kyrgyzstan got its independence, a lot of Russians decided there’d be better pickings back in Moscow or St Petersburg or Novosibirsk. And since crime, just as much as nature, abhors a vacuum, the local element quickly rose to the top, did their best to make sure they stayed there.

Aliyev’s eyes were the washed-out blue you see in the sky above the mountains, on those clear sun-blasted autumn days that feel brittle and fragile, ready to snap at the slightest movement. The lobe of his left ear was missing, possibly a punishment cutting from his youth, but he wore his hair swept back, making no attempt to hide the missing flesh. Strong jaw, clean-shaven, no surplus fat on his face. A mouth as thin and brutal as a carp, elderly and cunning.

His hands were heavily veined, the nails trimmed back, with long thin fingers that looked as if they would be equally at home chalking algebra equations on a blackboard or tightening around a rival’s throat. He could have been any age between forty and sixty, and it was clear he hadn’t stayed alive this long by being stupid. I didn’t know what he could tell about me; not even my mirror tells the whole truth of who I am. But he didn’t blink, look away, or drop his eyes. He had the gaze of a surgeon or a psychopath, impossible to read.

My coffee was watery, bitter, and Aliyev’s tea didn’t look any more appetising. I didn’t add sugar, didn’t want him to think I couldn’t take whatever was served to me.

Finally, he spoke.

‘Maksat Aydaraliev.’

I nodded, showing I knew the name, admitting nothing more. The pakhan , the boss Saltanat and her colleagues had gunned down and dumped in the snowdrifts outside the Kulturny that dark freezing night.

‘I believe it’s you I have to thank for his unfortunate demise, Inspector,’ he said, his voice as free of emotion as if he were reciting the Trans-Siberian Railway timetable. I raised an eyebrow, to suggest I had no idea what he was talking about. He gave a sardonic smile at my reaction, bluff and counter-bluff.